Outside 46

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

How does Jace respond to this?
He turns invisible. Yeah, he doesn't have any big explosion powers that wouldn't involve bombing his own location, so his best bet is to just hide for a moment and slink away until he can get a better shot off.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

The bear suspected that wouldn't work. If it only had a magical ability that caused people to attack it.
Alas, it would imply some pretty insulting things of the stirges mothers if it could, but all that comes out is another roar as it charges towards the blood-suckers attacking Jace. It swipes at the overgrown mosquitoes, attempting to rend as many of them as possible.

[8BitNinja]

[Strange Forest]

Gary and Geneva will come across a snow covered forest. Although there are lots of trees and foliage, the forest seems devoid of animal and human life. On the ground, scorch marks, brass bullet casings, and empty magazines and clips are strewn about, but no human biological matter seems to be around, except for Gary's now mostly covered footprints. After a while, the two will reach a patch where it looks like the snow melted. This is where Gary stops and says "Well, here we are. I hope this helps you out."

((I'll post description soon if anyone wants to join in on this scene))

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

The stirges becomes rather confused when their prey abruptly vanishes. With their only food source gone, they beat a hasty retreat, flapping up the cave-chimney to find a nice dark spot to tend to their wounds.

And with that, our heroes are left alone once again, the floor littered with dead bugbats.

Short of trying to climb the narrow shaft the gross bugs fled through, this appears to be a dead-end.

Ah well.

They can't all be winners, right?

Looks like our heroes are going to have to do some dreadful backtracking.

Unless, of course, they decide to try searching behind that one stalagmite over there. Probably nothing back there aside from slick rock. Totally unremarkable. They shouldn't even bother, honestly.

[Strange Forest]

Geneva gives a hum as she glances around. "Weird. Almost as if it only grabbed you and the landscape, but none of the other people. Didn't have any issue with gobbling up the trees, though. How odd..."

She heads over to the patch of melted snow an draws an odd device from her inventory, causing it to materialize in a wave of electric blue pixels. She extends a tripod from the bottom and sets the machine up, fiddling with it both directly and through her wrist computer. After a few minutes, a trio of saucer-sized drones disengage from the device, buzz straight up into the air, and begin to slowly spiral outward.

"Alright! Surveying outpost is ready. And now just one more touch-" she says as she withdraws a small sign affixed to a completely mundane galvanized steel spike. She hammers it into the dirt next to the automated surveying station.

Should Gary read it, he'll find it says:

Important scientific study in progress. Please do not tamper with the equipment.
-Geneva Richards

"There! All done. My gear will collect the data I need, provided roving hooligans don't decide to kick everything over for the fun of it."

[8BitNinja]

[Strange Forest]

Geneva gives a hum as she glances around. "Weird. Almost as if it only grabbed you and the landscape, but none of the other people. Didn't have any issue with gobbling up the trees, though. How odd..."

She heads over to the patch of melted snow an draws an odd device from her inventory, causing it to materialize in a wave of electric blue pixels. She extends a tripod from the bottom and sets the machine up, fiddling with it both directly and through her wrist computer. After a few minutes, a trio of saucer-sized drones disengage from the device, buzz straight up into the air, and begin to slowly spiral outward.

"Alright! Surveying outpost is ready. And now just one more touch-" she says as she withdraws a small sign affixed to a completely mundane galvanized steel spike. She hammers it into the dirt next to the automated surveying station.

Should Gary read it, he'll find it says:



"There! All done. My gear will collect the data I need, provided roving hooligans don't decide to kick everything over for the fun of it."

Gary says "Do you need help with anything else? If not, do you know where I should go?"

[Rebonack]

[Strange Forest]

Geneva checks her wrist computer again, humming to herself. "No? At least i hope not. I've designed my gear to streamline the setup process as much as possible. The quicker I can get it up and running the less likely it is that I'll be harassed by a random encounter near delicate machinery. The diagnostic station is otherwise self-sufficient."

Which is really handy!

Being required to stand around in a field for hours on end would be pretty dull.

As no doubt Gary is aware. Being a solider typically involves long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.

"Where you should go? As in... where you can stay? Where you could work?" Geneva replies. "Well, you have quite a few options there. My husband runs the umbrella organization that oversees the City's security forces. Though I don't know if you're tired of conflict by now. If you wanted to do something more akin to what you did before the war, there are plenty of farms surrounding the City. That would be quite a bit more peaceful."

Unless of course the farm gets attacked by brigands.

Or undead.

Or mean goblins.

Or really, really cranky giant gummy bears.

Or what have you.

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

Jace reappears, satisfied. "Not so bad, was it? Alright, quick look around." Jace says, casually throwing Zebes off his arm like a trained falcon to flit about the place, looking for discarded treasure in nests or wherever the GM is hiding it it might be.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

The bear isn't bothering turning back in case those stirges were still lurking around. It wasn't too keen about bothering to look around, just eager to continue in the other direction. But if it can smell something interesting, it might just change its mind.

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

Zebes does some searching while the bear begins heading back toward the entry cavern!

Mrs Bear probably won't encounter too much on her way back, aside from water, rocks, and darkness.

As for Zebes, he discovers a large stainless steel lever sticking out of the floor behind the large, unremarkable stalagmite. It's the sort with a big red knob at the top and a little sign hanging from it.

The sign reads:

If you are an adventurer, please do not pull this lever.
-Howard the Necromancer

Well.

That isn't conspicuous at all.

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

Trap.
"Trap."
But is it the bad kind of trap, or the really bad kind of trap? There's only one way to find out.
Zebes returns to Jace, who gets ready to run, and uses a little Mage Hand to move the letter from waaaaay over there 30 feet away.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

The bear stops as Jace starts doing stuff, had they found something?
It looks closely on, just what were they up to now?

[8BitNinja]

[Strange Forest]

Geneva checks her wrist computer again, humming to herself. "No? At least i hope not. I've designed my gear to streamline the setup process as much as possible. The quicker I can get it up and running the less likely it is that I'll be harassed by a random encounter near delicate machinery. The diagnostic station is otherwise self-sufficient."

Which is really handy!

Being required to stand around in a field for hours on end would be pretty dull.

As no doubt Gary is aware. Being a solider typically involves long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.

"Where you should go? As in... where you can stay? Where you could work?" Geneva replies. "Well, you have quite a few options there. My husband runs the umbrella organization that oversees the City's security forces. Though I don't know if you're tired of conflict by now. If you wanted to do something more akin to what you did before the war, there are plenty of farms surrounding the City. That would be quite a bit more peaceful."

Unless of course the farm gets attacked by brigands.

Or undead.

Or mean goblins.

Or really, really cranky giant gummy bears.

Or what have you.

Gary says "I'll join up with the guard. I don't like fighting, but that's why I do it, so others don't have to in the future. Besides, this place doesn't look like France or North Africa or the Pacific, I'm pretty sure guard duty wouldn't be involving huge invasions. Do you know where I can go to sign up?"

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

The lever is pulled!

With a mechanical CLUNK! a bunch of jagged rocks and about four gallons of glitter are dumped all over the area the lever is in. And about five seconds later, a zombie comes tumbling down the shaft, too.

"Uuuggh..." the undead moans as it begins staggering to its feet.

The thing isn't very fast.

Looks like Jace's assessment was correct!

That was totally a trap.

[Strange Forest]

Geneva refrains from making comment on the 'huge invasions' part.

There hasn't been an invasion in a while at least.

That counts for something.

"Intersection headquarters," Geneva replies simply as she holds out one hand toward Gary. "I can get us there pretty fast, but you'll have to hold my hand. And there will be a bit of a light show, too! But don't worry, it's completely harmless psionic overflow. Totally normal."

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

Jace laughs. He wonders if they could try to climb the shaft, but that doesn't seem practical. So he settles for pulling out his tiny revolver, shooting a magic missile at the zombie, and following the way the bear was going.

Two missiles if the first doesn't kill.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

The bears eyes widens. The jagged rocks were self-explanatory, but the glitter? They were dealing with a real madman here.

Then again, anyone that decided to live in a smelly place like this was probably a bit mad.

Oh well, the party was over, lets explore deeper!
Anika heads straight into the other passage, keeping an eye out for more potential traps. She might get distracted by any breathtaking sights of nature though.

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

Jace fires his wand gun of magic missile!

Pew pew!

The bolts plow into the zombie, staggering it slightly.

It's still coming, though!

Jace might have to walk briskly to escape.

Getting back to the main cavern shouldn't be too terribly difficult. Even with a lone zombie slowly shambling after our heroes. Though it may still be a good idea to get rid of the thing before they go too much further. What if the zombie's constant moaning alerts the other undead? What if the thing's gross smell makes our heroes queasy? What if the zombie gets stuck between some rocks and flails impotently while being annoying? Those are some pretty serious hazards!

Best to do something about it.

[8BitNinja]

[Strange Forest]

Geneva refrains from making comment on the 'huge invasions' part.

There hasn't been an invasion in a while at least.

That counts for something.

"Intersection headquarters," Geneva replies simply as she holds out one hand toward Gary. "I can get us there pretty fast, but you'll have to hold my hand. And there will be a bit of a light show, too! But don't worry, it's completely harmless psionic overflow. Totally normal."

Gary says "I don't know anything about psionic overflows, but you've done nothing to make me distrust you and you've only helped me so far." He grabs Geneva's hand and braces for whatever form of transportation Geneva has that he is unaware of.

[Rebonack]

[Strange Forest]

Gary takes Geneva's hand and several things happen at once.

First?

Something akin to pink fire begins to lick from her eyes as an unseen wind picks up, sending her hair flapping in the breeze as snow is shoved away from her. A feeling of power fills the air, not terribly unlike the feeling of a thunderstorm building in the distance. The sensation of raw potentiality grows sharply over the next several seconds until it collapses inward with an echoing sound not unlike a reverberating bell.

Should all go as planned, Gary's vision will go white-

-for a just a moment.

When everything clears, he'll likely find himself standing in front of the Intersection office.

Teleportation! How handy.

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

With a sigh, Jace empties the other three chambers.
Undead are such troublesome threats.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

The bear turns back into its humanoid form. "Sure that will work? Might be one of those immortal ones you have to bury head-deep." Anika had seen them! Really annoying buggers, no matter what you did they always got up on their feet again.

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

Maybe it IS one of those annoying ones that has to be buried up to its head?

Because it just took all three of those shots and just rag-dolled around a bit before continuing its not particularly speedy shamble toward Jace.

If he doesn't move away he'll soon be within gross zombie groping range!

Don't let it grope you, Jace, it's rude and icky!

"Guuuuugh..." the zombie moans.

Stupid zombie, being all undead and durable.

If only they had a paladin around to smite it. That would probably help.

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

Jace groans audilbly (again) and uses the trick he did before, using his magic on the water to freeze (and stab) the zombie in place.
"We don't have time to be burying enemies." he insists.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

"We're on a schedule?" 'Miss Bear' teases as she hears Jace's annoyance. "But no, I'm not gonna bury zombies. I was just saying that this one will be difficult to deal with." She pauses as she sees Jace's ice trick. "That might do it though." Hopefully. Someone ought to get props for making an really annoying trap though.

[Rebonack]

((Intersection HQ is in the Inside thread, sorry))

[Galleon Rock]

The zombie gets icicle shish kabob'd!

Surely this will finally put the awful thing to rest since there's no way it could have possibly survived this time arou-

"Guuuuuugh..." the zombie moans, flailing from its icy prison whilst remaining otherwise immobile.

Geeze.

This thing just won't quit, will it?

Maybe if they tried setting it on fire?

Too bad they're both pretty short on abomination-searing holy power.

[8BitNinja]

((Intersection HQ is in the Inside thread, sorry))

((It's alright. I removed the post and then replied there))

[Deathkeeper]

[Galleon Rock]

"We are! I have to be back to pick up my daughter from school in eight hours." Jace insists. With the zombie properly imprisoned, he continues walking down the hall.

[Shadowcaller]

[Galleon Rock]

"Right. Let's hurry then." Daddy of the year coming through, make space!
Anika takes the lead in case they would get jumped by more zombies. But hey, at least there were no zombie puzzles like in that one dungeon she explored...

[Rebonack]

[Galleon Rock]

So would that be a zombifed puzzle?

Or a puzzle which involves zombies?

Regardless!

Our heroes take the dry path, descending deeper into the cave! The path is cramped and winding, and the adventurers will probably need to crouch a bit in several places to avoid hitting their head on the ceiling. But before long, they'll come upon a chamber full of stone slabs, each with a skeleton laying atop it. Skeletons wearing armor. With weapons laying beside them.

This isn't suspicious at all.

Not even a little bit.

Two passages branch off from the chamber, one to the north and one to the east.

[Deathkeeper]

Galleon Rock

"Gentlemen, do you have permits for those swords? State ordnance says no weapons without a permit. I'll have to confiscate those." he declares at the skeletons. He moves to begin stealing their weapons.

And maybe punt off a head or two while he's at it.

[Shadowcaller]

Galleon Rock

Both. Anika is just relived those skeletons aren't holding stone slabs or something with symbols on them instead. That would have meant that this was a big puzzle, which she simply didn't have the patience for.

Now they just needed to kill some skellies.

"Officer Jace is right, you're all under arrest boys. Only stoners are laying around sleeping at this hour so we're going to have to confiscate everything." Anika will move to do the same thing as jace does. Now they can both be idiots!