trans_9 | Dungeon Keeper

The Tapestry had spoken. Not in words, but in ideas and images, ciphers and cryptic nonsense that had been laboriously deciphered, interrogated with spells and technology, pieced together from scrap. They had led here.

Planet Designation: AST994-III Status: Terrestrial, K-class. Non-sentient life: None. Semi-Sentient Life: None. Sentient Life: None. Water: None. Climate: Desert/barren. Landscape: Rocky crags. Air: Normoxic concentration: 29% oxygen, 60% nitrogen, 3% xenon, 6% trace gases, such as hydrogen, krypton, and argon. Air Pressure: 14.352 pounds per square inch. Sky: Red. Cloudless. Sun: Class A star. Warnings: Information from Tapestry indicates significant underground population. Subsurface information not available. Use caution. Mission: ?

Somewhere down there, an object valuable and vital to the mission lay in wait, something so important that its existence was encoded into the Tapestry itself. Whatever it was, they needed to get it.

The only problem was, how to get in? The subterranean world had no access to the surface, and to physically breach it would not only be prohibitive, but catastrophic to the point of apocalypse to that underground world. Science could not solve this problem; thus, the crew turned to magic. The Tapestry had provided what were, after some analysis, unquestionably teleport coordinates. Five of them, for three people each.

To ensure the crew members were not lost, nor left behind without help, contingent spells were laid upon them, to return them to safety and help should they become injured, or should they find the item.

Without further ado -- with no natives to meet and negotiate with, no further preliminaries to make or plans to be made -- each of the five groups, with their supplies and equipment, were taken to the start.

[OOC: Don't worry too much about posting order. I will jump in where a response from the mysterious sky narrator is needed! Going with this, if you feel you're getting lost or outraced in posting, let me or the group know and we'll slow it down. The explicit purpose of this plot is for everyone to have fun, so please speak up if there's anything anyone can do to make that happen better!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, at least we've got a bit of peace and quiet now," noted the Doctor, who was still in a better mood than he had any real right to be. He wandered over to give Billy's shoulder a comforting squeeze, still watching the lights.

And then it hit him.

"Of course!" He laughed. "It's so obvious. Brilliant. Brilliant."

Billy exhaled, releasing that frustrated sigh that made his hair fly up. He turned to look at the Doctor and start over with their thinking. That was when the sudden epiphany caught him off guard, leaving Billy to lean back and wonder what he'd missed.

"What was it, Doctor?" He'll learn something, even though he didn't get it. There's that.

The floating face also waited, curious to see if the Doctor in fact had figured it out, or was simply planning to roll an Intelligence check and beg the DM to rule the problem solved based on the results.

Well, the Doctor would prefer to be assumed right simply because he's the Doctor, but his mundane is happy to take whatever they can get.

The floating face had returned to listen to the answer, but the Doctor turned to look at Billy instead.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The answer he expected was something along the lines of ‘no’ or ‘probably only to a Time Lord’.

"I'm afraid I haven't twisted the problem to reach the precise insight required," he answered, still staring at the ground. What was eluding him so much?

Clearly the Doctor had arrived at the insight that the question's numbers required one to enclose a square, then count the entire area of said square! ~~HINTHINT~~ That should make it easy for them to answer!

"Blimey, that's an impressive way of saying 'I don't know'," said the Doctor, though there was no malice in his words. He always liked this bit. The bit were he got to show off.

"We've been making too much work for ourselves," he explained to Billy, "All we need to do is use the numbers to enclose a square. Just a square. And then the area is our answer."

Billy was unusually quiet, though the way his cheeks burned indicated that he was still listening. Of course. The odd numbers had thrown him off. The lines had to be placed in a certain way to make a square in the end, and he hadn't quite grasped it. He might've even stumbled on the solution and dismissed it.

He silently drew the bigger square with the tiles, using the time to regroup. If it got more dangerous from here, he'd need to prove sharper than this. Learn, move on, do better. "Thirty-six."

"Excellent! That is quite correct." The face smiled, though its voice became almost apologetic. "And now you will forgive one more test... just to make sure you can handle them, you know."

The squares all winked out save for one broad column, the light of which rose upwards in shimmering brilliance -- then abruptly vanished in turn. In its wake, a scorpion the size of a bus lifted its pincers and its tail, clearly intending bodily harm to the pair.

"Ah."

The Doctor's bright grin died on his lips as he looked up at the scorpion in front of them. It reminded him of the creature the Doctor Lazarus had muted himself into, convinced that immortality was worth any price. It certainly looked just as bad tempered.

"I think I preferred the riddles."

"So did I," Billy quickly agreed. He'd prepared for the possibility he would need to fight---it was just a little more threatening than he expected. Come to think of it, sending just two of them up against an unknown threat was dangerous. He wished they'd had another choice.

Billy yelped, rolling to the side. It was coming after him first---smaller target, easy to pick off. Or so the scorpion thought.

He ripped the elaborate buckle from his belt and jumped, thrusting the small trinket out as he had a hundred times before. "Triceratops!" A white light encased him in mid-air, and the Billy that landed in front of the scorpion was very...blue, to say the least.

"Every monster has a weakness. We'll stun it!" But not before dodging again. Those claws were fast! Billy would have to be as fast. He pulled a gun-like object from his side holster, aiming. Anything he shot from this angle was likely to bounce off, wasn't it?"

Dungeon Keeper

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I couldn't resist, I'm sorry. ^.^

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