Outside 49: I don’t remember what it looks like either

[5a Violista]

[Found a Fortress]

"Wait, um, I still -" she still has her sword!
You can't just hug someone who has a sword!
It's really dangerous!
Especially a sword like this that can burn and cut things really easily!

June raises her hand to keep the sword away from everyone else so that they won't get cut on it, because a victory hug where someone gets cut is no victory. She needs to...

Oh.
The sword's gone again. She still has the crossbow, so she can't really hug back, and can just lean in.


Once the victory hug is over (and they're not in active combat so she actually has time), June looks around the room for some kind of shut-off valve or power box that can be turned off or something. "Y'all think it'll get dark once we shut this all off?" she asks.

[Deathkeeper]

Found a Fortress

Spako returns Pepper's hug. As has been established, he and Pepper give each other lots of hugs. Then Spako goes about retrieving his sword.
"Don't worry, June. I can help you folks who can't see in the dark." chirps the kobold, his little scepter brightening into light again. Only this time the light stays shining from the head instead of flying out to stick to something.

[Rebonack]

[iDungeon]

At Linus' question Jeanette nods and holds out her arms to take the box.

Assuming Linus hands it to her?

She'll grip the thing with both hands and STRAIN!

There's probably a POP as the lock breaks and the box opens.

Well!

That's one way to pick a lock, right?

She hands it back to Linus and heads into the chamber to scoop some loot.

Inside the box?

There are several fancy looking signet rings, some sealing wax, and several scroll cases. Also? A sealed letter. Nifty!


[Found a Fortress]

"Any adventurer worth her salt should always carry a light source or two," Pepper says as she begins looking over the control panel.

Hmm...

This one looks pretty important.

She grabs one of the great big switches and throws it!

Immediately there's a sputtering sound from the boiler as the lights all go out, save for the dull glow of the boiler and Spako's scepter. Spooky!

[Deathkeeper]

iDungeon

Hm. Linus doesn't know much about signet rings. His family might have gotten their land by cozying up to a noble ages ago, but signets never really came up.
Linus can't hear much, but he can read just fine. He breaks the seal on the letter and opens it. Maybe there will be some letter of introduction to reveal whose these belonged to. They don't seem valuable on their own aside from the metal value of the rings.

[5a Violista]

[Found a Fortress]

"Thanks," June tells him for the light.

She makes a confession, then: "So I guess I'm not an adventurer worth any salt, then." Unless the sword glows, but she doesn't want to keep it out all the time in case that drains its energy, or something. Seems like it would be a pretty poor idea, she thinks.

She looks back and tries to remember which direction the elevator shaft was, according to the map.
"So it's...this way, I think?" she says.

[Deathkeeper]

Found a Fortress

Spako shakes his head.
"Don't worry, June. You're a beginner. And besides, you got pulled into this without prep time. No one's going to criticize your prepping with that."
He looks around.
"Yeah I think that's where we came from. Good thing we brought rope and stuff for the elevator shaft." Sometimes wings alone can't cut it. Off they go!
Hopefully no one trips on anything.

[Rebonack]

[iDungeon]

Linus opens mail that isn't his, a Federal offense!

Within is a bill of sale and deed for a castle and surrounding lands!

...on some other world that may or may not actually be connected to the Nexus anymore.

There are some general descriptions that might allow a person to find the area described, though.

No telling what condition the area might be in. Might still be in good shape! Or it might be a creepy run down castle full of werewolves and vampires.

Only one way to find out, right?

Jeanette, in human shape once again, gestures at the third door along the north wall with the shuttered that opened after they slew some leyeons. They hadn't ever checked that one out and maybe there's something useful in there? So far our heroes have just made use of keys they found.


[Found a Fortress]

"Your armor is glowing though?" Pepper replies, confused.

Its very true.

The armor is made of light and it glows pretty all the time. Maybe it can glow brighter? But it sounds like June doesn't want to try to make it glow brighter.

Oh no.

Thinking about how dark it is seems to have triggered it all on its own and now it's shining brightly.

On to the elevator! The elevator has no door to speak of. Instead, there's a large platform in a shaft with a lever in the middle and cogs hooking into slats along the walls of the shaft. There's also a little maintenance shaft that should allow our heroes to get down below the platform.

[Deathkeeper]

iDungeon

Werewolves can be good patients. If they're the mostly docile kind. Just don't let their teeth nick you.
Linus puts away the box and follows after Jeanette into the third door. So far both key rooms have been loot-based detours, so this should probably get them further into the dungeon. Which is probably good, though Linus does want to make sure he's thorough enough to find the other two of Sword's lost ornaments.
Hopefully his ears recover in a few minutes as well.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Steelbite Canyon]

"Well now, that was quite the reception they laid on for us." Atreyu mutters, wiping away the last bit of fleshy stuff (his own fleshy stuff) from his hands. Not pleasant at all.

The vines tighten their grip on the peg-legged man. That's hopefully him dealt with for the time being.

Atreyu takes a step forward, looking between Magdalene and Fido. "Reckon you oughta know when yer beat, kid. Ain't worth burnin' yerself out over this, right? And missy?" He looks over at Magdalene, "Worth giving him a chance to surrender, right? Don't finish him off. We could do with one of 'em to question."

[Earl of Purple]

Steelbite Canyon

As the engine of the motorhome starts to sputter into life, Calm Reed arrives and rips the front wheel off, tossing it aside like a child's toy. The driver screams and fires a short, unaimed burst through the door and window, though the low-powered hand-made rounds barely punch through the thin metal and glass of the motorhome's side. He'll drop the gun after and leave the vehicle's cab into the body, before kicking open the side door and jumping out, ready to run.

Fido spits out a laugh, which turns into a gurgle as the magic feasting upon his body extend to the point that he can't laugh any more. If Magdalene lessens off, Fido can survive and be questioned- though the first thing he'll do if he feels the wendigo's energy slow he'll send another entropic blast of his own, at Atreyu. Otherwise, he's dead- but there's others they can question if they want to, since the driver and the peglegged man aren't dead yet.

The peglegged man struggles, but can't move. He's stuck where he is. Might be there's others around, too. This community isn't large, but there's plenty of space in the five motorhomes surviving for more than seven people.

[5a Violista]

[Found a Fortress]

OH.
You know how, like, when you're driving at night and your eyes adjust to it all and so you can't really tell whether the headlights are actually on or not? Where, if you thought about it, you'd be able to easily tell that, yes, the headlights are actually on but it just doesn't occur to you?
It's like that.
June had kind-of forgotten that she was also producing light and just assumed that all the visibility around was coming from everyone and everything else.
Her face goes flush from embarrassment when Pepper points that out, and June pointedly does not acknowledge the topic anymore, hoping that that somehow stops other people from thinking about it, too.

It isn't until they get to the elevator that she decides to speak again.
She walks over to the shaft and looks down. "Looks pretty far..."
Then, she turns and goes to the center of the platform and the lever. She tries to wiggle the lever in the wrong directions, to see how easily it could withstand her own weight and strength. "Right here probably wouldn't be a good place to tie the rope..." she says. Where else would be a good place? Around a cog?

[Deathkeeper]

Found a Fortress

"Well we could tie it around one of these big pipes. Plenty of wide ones around here."
Spako points to a large metal pipe going from the floor into the wall. It's hard to see in the dark, but with Spako's guidance June should be able to get the rope around it.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground Interaction Wanted!

It's a narrow, unmaintained road through a dense forest, a route used in getting goods between Inside and Skyside without paying taxes and hopefully avoiding the eye of Intersection. The road was paved, once, but the tarmac cover is old, cracked and the forest is encroaching upon the edges. At this point, a small clearing has been hacked out of the forest to provide a rest stop for caravans of smugglers, traders and slavers passing through this way. In the clearing, there's a log cabin and three vehicles, plus an old stone well. The log cabin has been demolished, the log walls kicked in and splintered by great force. The three vehicles are a light utility van painted black and spattered with mud, a battered old red pick-up truck with the flatbed piled high with wooden boxes and another pick-up, this one painted khaki and fitted with a bolt-action anti-tank rifle on the cab, fired by somebody who stands in the back. The technical fighting vehicle wasn't very useful this time, however, as it has been kicked onto its side and the muzzle of the weapon is buried in the dirt. Lying around the camp are six bodies; two crushed in the ruins of the cabin, one bitten in half next to the wrecked technical, one lying next to the well, and one lying in the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing.

The final corpse is being tossed into the air by the architect of this destruction, a fossil Carcharodontosaurus, with a barrel wired into its ribcage and wires connecting the bones to a system of pistons and motors enabling the extinct beast to move. The teeth have been capped with titanium to improve the threat they pose.

[Morty]

[Steelbite Canyon]

Calm Reed is ready when the driver jumps out and crosses the distance between them in a few powerful strides, then tries to grab him in a vice-like deadlock.

"Running is not going to help you. Answering our questions might. Am I being clear?"

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

A cloaked woman - Seraphina - was leaving Riverside (trying to find her way back to the beach where she has all her stuff) when she got hopelessly lost. How hopelessly? Well...she's closer to Inside and Skyside than she is to Riverside.

She unfortunately wanders until she finds a narrow, cracked road. And after following it for a while, she nears the campground. Cars! A cabin! Great! Seraphina speeds up. Maybe she can. . .

The cloaked redhead then notices what kind of awful scene she's stumbled on to. She stops.
"Oh my gosh. What sort of nightmare did I run in to?"
A robot dinosaur skeleton. Dead people. It's like she found the set of some horror movie, or something.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

When Seraphina speaks, the dinosaur turns towards her and opens its jaw. A speaker attached to its neck emits a pre-recorded roar- a lion's roar, amplified and distorted by poor-quality electronics. It turns its head, though, the cameras placed in the skull not spotting Seraphina yet. It stomps in her general direction, head turning to look for her. It hasn't spotted her yet, which is probably a good thing- its titanium-capped teeth look very sharp, and judging by the corpses, are perfectly capable of killing people.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Seraphina brings her hand up to her mouth, to stop herself from accidentally speaking.
Wow, that thing's got great ears. She hopes it doesn't have a good sense of smell.

So, what she needs to do is get behind a tree or something, she thinks. Seraphina glances down and behind her to make sure that she's not going to step on any sticks - they always find you when you step on a stick - and moves backwards. Not too fast, in case that makes too much noise. She backs up down the trail, moving towards a suitably large tree.

Once she gets there, she moves it between her and the robosaur. It's only then that she feels safe breathing (through her hand) again.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

Losing track of where Seraphina is, the mechanical allosaur roars again before turning back to the campsite and stomping to the van. It presses one giant stone foot against the cab and adjusts its weight until the windscreen shatters and the bonnet buckles. Someone inside the van screams, and the robot roars again before lifting its foot off the vehicle and headbutts the side of the van, knocking it over.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Seraphina's pretty lucky that she still had a hand over her mouth.

That robot just killed someone else. She had hoped it had already killed everyone, but it looks like there are (or there were) still more people alive in there. After taking several deep breaths, she peeks out from behind the tree. From here she can't really see the campsite, so...

Seraphina crouches, removes her hand, and as quietly as possible gets closer - to another tree. Low to the ground, she looks out again. What if there's more people there still alive? She's got to help them! She's not sure how, but somehow she's go to help them! Is there anyone by the ruined cabin? The well? The other cars? She looks at all of them trying to see if everybody's dead or if there might still be someone alive.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

All the visible people are dead, very much so. Most have been bitten or thrown by the animatronic dinosaur; the one exception is crushed under logs from the smashed cabin. The back door of the van has burst open at one side, and someone just reached out to close it again. So there's someone still alive in the van, possibly more than one person, but they could be injured or otherwise unable to escape.

The Carcharadontosaurus has gotten distracted by something and is stomping over to the far side of the clearing, where it proceeds to knock a small tree over before roaring.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Definitely someone in the van!

After the van was crunched and tipped, whoever was in it is almost certainly either injured or pinned. Even if Seraphina sneaked up to it, she still wouldn't be able to help without a lot of time. And the robosaur probably wouldn't give her time to do anything. But she has to do something!

In general, dinosaurs are not very agile so if a large one like that was chasing her, she could probably outmaneuver it. Except this one is robotic instead of muscle-powered, so it doesn't have to depend on the material property limitations of muscles. Shoot, that wouldn't work. Throwing a rock as a distraction probably wouldn't work either, since it can clearly knock down trees and so it might just attack everything around and she'll get crushed by a tree.

...
How about those wires? The robosaur looks like its 'muscles' are being powered by those wires, so if she just managed to tear out a couple of them then it wouldn't be able to chase after her. Might even fall over as it struggles!

But, of course, she needs a plan. The tree she's currently hiding behind could maybe be knocked over by the robosaur.

Seraphina looks around for the sturdiest nearby tree, then, crouching, goes over to it. On the way, she picks up some stones and a decent-sized stick.

Once by the tree, she puts them in her cloak's inside pockets, then starts climbing the tree, high enough to be (hopefully) too high and mostly out-of-sight for the robo-dino.

Then, after ensuring she has a secure hold on the tree, hurls one of the rocks at a nearby tree. Come on, come over here.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

The robosaur might not rely on muscles, but its movements are distinctly robotic, jerky and rather clunky, so Seraphina could potentially outmanoeuvre it.

The dinosaur turns at the rustle of the thrown rock in the branches of the tree, and roars again. The distorted electrical sound is pretty loud, but not supernaturally so. It stomps over and turns its head, biting into the tree with its titanium-tipped teeth as low to the ground as it can, and starts to heave. The wood creaks and groans as the tree resists being pulled up, but the mechanical menace doesn't give up.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

The robosaur is attacking the tree that she's in?
It was definitely worth the risk to go to this tree instead of the one she was hiding behind before, then!

Seraphina suspects this is going to be really dangerous so she takes her time breathing and psyching herself up.

Okay!
Okay.
Okay.
Ready.

She climbs down the tree a little to get closer to the dinosaur, and then jumps! at it. She aims for the neck, so that she can wrap her arms around the robot's neck. That way, even if her arms get cut up on the exposed metal or whatever, she won't bounce off the robot.


Seraphina sees the robosaur attacking the other tree.

Okay! That's great!

Holding on tight to her own tree with one hand and her legs, Seraphina grabs another rock she pocketed and readies it, while watching the robosaur.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

The robotic Carcharadontosaurus roars again as it finally pulls the tree up, dragging roots from the earth and tossing it aside. One of the fossil teeth has gotten stuck in the wood, pulling free from the stone of the mechanical monster's jaw and remaining in the tree. It moves along, investigating the upper branches of the fallen tree, smashing the wood even more as it tries to find the source of the noise that attracted its attention. Its back is to Seraphina, though the tail and hips are nearby. She could jump onto the tail, or throw her rock at it- as it moves, she occasionally gets a chance to throw a stone at the barrel in its ribcage that everything is wired into.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Nope, Seraphina's not going to try jumping onto the robot's back. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do and you'd never catch her even considering doing something like that.

Seraphina throws the rock at the barrel-thing, hoping it dislodges some wires or causes a short or a break or somthing.

Then, she follows it up with the stick she also picked up earlier: she holds it like a spear, and waits again until a good time to throw it, and then throws that one at the same place. C'mon, please tear out some wires. Preferably some leg-wiring, is what she prays.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

The rock hits the barrel, bouncing off and hitting one of the hydraulic cylinders that serve as the mechanised fossil's muscles, which starts to leak. The water sparks occasionally as it hits the wires controlling the mechanisms, and the mechanical monster turns towards where it came from. The stick then hits the wires and tears some out. The animatronic dinosaur's limping towards Seraphina's tree, its leg not responding properly as it continues to leak fluid. It's stopped sparking, as there's no longer any electricity reaching the areas past the knee joint and the ankle and toes have frozen, which really doesn't help the bizarre device from advancing.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Success!
Well,
Half-success!
It still has one leg so it can still get around, but at least it can't get around easily.

Seraphina keeps on waiting, hoping that more of the leg had been damaged. Or at least part of the other leg.
Since it doesn't look like that's happening, Seraphina thinks about what else she could do. She has a couple more rocks, but now that it's gotten closer, the robot doesn't have any convenient spaces to throw things at. Maybe she could get another sturdy stick? Maybe even an entire branch this time?

She reaches up, trying to break off a branch from the tree - but it's too thick.

But she can't give up!
If she gives up, she'll probably die like all those other people.

Since the branches farther upwards are easier to break (and it might try a last-ditch jump at her, or something), Seraphina climbs upwards.

[Earl of Purple]

Smuggling Route Campground

The robotic dinosaur reaches Seraphina's tree and roars again, smashing its shoulder into the tree with enough force to shake it. Hopefully, Seraphina is able to keep her grip and doesn't fall out. Otherwise she'll basically be at the monster's mercy. It tries shaking the tree again, but doesn't have enough momentum to make the tree shake as much the second time.

[Shadowcaller]

[Walk in the Woods - Thariza]

"Or what? It's going to stop you getting valuable data from me?" Thariza backs away from the door quickly. "Besides, I barely know her and I don't give her orders."

[Dimensional Troubles]

"This expedition was not relegated to a fixed route. Interestingly enough, so far every environmental alteration has coincided with encountering another entity. I wish to test and see if this hypothesis holds true." the drone stated evenly. "Would you care to take the vanguard?" It would also be more prudent to have at least more than one other in an assistive capacity, though perhaps not in a sense of corroborating the ongoing investigation.

Still, the chance to encounter a live dragon was not to be passed up. Untainted samples would be exquisite to have.

[Walk in the Woods - Thariza]

"WAIT! We will open the-"

Then the dragon comes crashing through the wall in a cloud of dust as pieces of it goes flying everywhere.

As she stands there in the middle of the chamber the door next to the wall slides open.

"-gate."

The Other Ambrosia looks around. "Where are the demons?!"

"You realize how pointless what was, don't you?"

"Demon!" The dragon quickly turns around, supposedly in the direction of the voice, but as it seems to be coming from every direction.

But with no visible demon, she turns to face Thariza and leans in and whispers. "Are they invisible?" Or at least as close a giant dragon can get to whispering.

[Dimensional Troubles]

"I shall, though we're not going to intentionally try to trigger more entities appearing." The armored woman clarifies as she gives the drone a glance.
But it does look like they won't have to trigger anything as a group of strange beings comes running past them, heading in the same direction as the two, just as they've started moving.
"Like those, we're not going to engage with them. Whatever what they might be, it looks like they have their own business with the dragon." Looks like they're all heading towards the large temple-like structure. But the good news are that the storm and the lighting is gone, which means that there aren't more strange creature encounters, besides those warriors that just charged past them of course.

[5a Violista]

[Smuggling Route Campground]

Unfortunately, rather than holding on tightly, Seraphina was climbing and only had a single hand holding on securely.

With the tree shaking, her foot slips and she falls up until her now-outstretched hand catches her. Her hand twisting on that branch cuts it up, and her other arm brushed against the tree trunk as she fell, giving her a gash in that arm.

But, that's not all.
Because she's not at all in a secure position, when the tree shakes again her fingers slip and she starts falling down the tree again.

Seraphina painfully lands on a tree branch much farther down. In fact, it's close enough to be within reach of the robotic dinosaur (if it stretched upwards or stood on two legs or jumped or something).

She groans.