[IC] Waiting for Godot

[Powder Miner]

To his likely quite intense relief, Kusuke would find that his drive worked quite well -- as Satomi stepped back a little, each of his test movements worked as they normally did -- moving a certain number of feet no longer brought him right next to Satomi and no longer startled the hell out of her, but put him that number of feet in that direction, and moving a certain amount of time did the very same, which Ena could confirm through her now-rectified logs.

 

Satomi mused on Ena's words. "Yes, I think it quite likely that they would bring the distortion with them -- if they do hail from this place, then they are every bit as much a piece of it as the air, and the dirt, no? Plus being in a realm like this tends to corrupt one's soul to go along with it; such is the way of realms, sometimes. Nonetheless, we ought to bring in at least one of those two to talk about it. Nobody would have more experience with this place than them, and the thinner one of those two men, though still somewhat addled, seemed to know more about the area."

[StormLord]

After he pulled the rod of materials out of the earth Tim marveled for several moments, before turning and walking it back to the Weatherlight.  Once inside he breathed a sigh of relief at the ship seeming to maintain a constant and "normal" reality around them.  He took the time to imprint each material in the rod before dismissing them into abstracted suspension and making his way toward Satomi, Kusuke, and Ena.

"It's good to know everything seems to be normal in here.  I found something in the earth while I was digging around, a sort of rod composed of several valuable and odd materials.  I don't have any clue who or what would've put the thing there, but I intend on clearing more of the area out in search of more artifacts."

 

Using a some Iron and Redstone with his Philosopher's Stone Tim synthesizes some Medium Covalence Dust.  He uses this to coat and enchant a twig of oak wood into a Divining Rod that will be drawn to high EMC value items nearby.

 

Int of 8,

+4 bonus due to Quick Learner,

Nearby Sheikah Enchanting Table to boost related crafts,

 

[Strider]

"I wonder, if they would be able to eat the food we bring, on this ship? It seems possible that breathing the air and eating the food might affect them in some way. If a place like out there can slowly 'corrupt' them, shouldn't the alternative be possible? I only wonder, would they become more clear-minded and informative, or would they forget what they have experienced. . . " Ena displayed a spinng question mark on her face plate as she spoke.

 

"Oh, and Tim, what materials did you find?"

 

[Chevaleresse]

Kusuke shrugged. "If it comes to it, I can just send them back. The distortions might interfere with it, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue." He stepped towards the exit, trying to brace himself and focus on his own internal sense of time before stepping out into the tumult that was this strange world. After a brief moment to adjust to it again, he moved up to the skinnier of the two men. "Would you mind coming with me for a sec? I want to ask you some questions in here. Nothing bad, but I think it might help us find Godot."

[StormLord]

"Constantan, Osmium, Diamond, Microcline, and Pitchblend.  At least in my world I know the first two are coveted by mechanists looking towards more advanced machines and I believe that Pitchblend can somehow be reduced to a nuclear fuel, but the process I am unsure of."

As he spoke Tim pulled out and gestured to various pieces of the samples he collected, before putting them all back away.

"If you're interested in working on that vessel we started earlier I've still got it contained in here, I can drop it off something in a hanger if you'd like."

[DragonRage]

“Uh, sure.  Shouldn’t hurt it. I can always make a new one if it gets trashed,” Victor projects a copy of Gae Bolg and passes it to Leo. 

[Powder Miner]

Tim

Against pretty much all odds, Tim found that the process to make a Divining Rod went pretty much completely normally. He converted Iron and Redstone into Covalence Dust, and though a caked residue that Tim wasn't familiar with and couldn't really identify was created (and would have to be chiseled off of the ground if he wanted to mess with it), the Medium Covalence Dust came out just fine. Then when he applied it to the stick of oak, there actually wasn't even any side effect or byproduct or anything. He just got the Divining Rod he was looking for.

 

Perhaps, though, the larger surprise was the results that his Divining Rod gave him on use. Aside from the residue of the crafting process, which was slightly larger in value than everything around it, the Divining Rod detected absolutely nothing at all that had high EMC in the area, no matter where Tim walked -- nothing. Either the strange rod was genuinely the only high-value item in the whole place, or something else was going on.

 

Spoiler

Crafting Roll: 3 vs. 5

Quality Roll: 47

Randomness: 61, 40

 

Tim gains the Divining Rod:

 

Divining Rod:

This item allows the user to sense items of high value through walls and floors within a range of 10 meters, though what exactly "high value" is is tied to Tim's particular EMC system. If someone other than Tim uses the Divining Rod, they need to make an INT check in order to parse the results, this being harder the richer the results are.

Kusuke

The reply Kusuke received from the gaunt man was loud... but it had to be, over the deafening cacophony of an incredible amount of glocks simultaneously firing, courtesy of the GLOCKMAN kind of just idly standing there and existing shootily.

”WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!”

”I THINK HE WANTS YOU TO GO WITH HIM, DIDI!”

”OH. SURE!”

 

And Didi followed Kusuke into the ship -- once he crossed that threshold, he froze for a moment, gaping. Not frozen in time, or in space, or anything, but simply stunned. Those inside the ship would note that with Didi's presence the atmosphere in the ship regained the surreal, disturbing feeling that it had outside, but thankfully much lower in power, and Kusuke would note that the horrible feelings particular to him didn't seem to come with Didi, merely a base sense of things not being quite right.

”Oh. ...oh. I...”

 

Vitor

Vitor got to projecting a Gae Bolg, but once again something bizarre happened, and what Vitor got was not quite what he'd meant to create. On one hand, he got an item that was a permanent object, instead of a temporary hardlight construction... but it wasn't quite the Gae Bolg that the Brazilian Mage was used to. Instead it was a... green spear, with indented patterns where Gae Bolg had its raised lines. Holding it, Vitor could innately feel it responding to something in his soul, although quite weakly since it seemed that whatever Essence it was responding to was not very strong in him. Leo, on the other hand, could at least feel this bond clearly enough to tell that the spear links to his heart in some way.

 

Spoiler

Randomness: 21, 89

 

Reverse Gae Bolg (Level 1):

In Soviet Russia, heart stabs you. This green spear, with indented lines crisscrossing its hilt, bonds to the user's heart and soul for the duration it is held, and doesn't seem to actually hit any harder with stronger thrusts -- instead, the damage that it deals seems to be directly derived from the bond with the heart and soul that the spear takes on. It still stabs through flesh physically, but it's magic rather than the literal point of the spear that does so. The spear doesn't function at all for anything without a literal heart... and for anything with multiple, that seems to somehow filter out into the spear's damage.

 

Deals 2d6+[ESS] damage. For each additional heart the user has above their first, the spear does 1d6 additional damage, and if the user has no heart it does no damage.

 

[Strider]

"Sure, later. And if you want nuclear fuel, we can try to figure it out. There's probably a method available to us to reduce the uranium oxides. But later. For now, I wish to see what happens with Didi in here."

 

"So, Didi, tell us what you're feeling?"

[Chevaleresse]

While Ena asks her questions of the man, Kusuke did some small tests of his power. That odd feeling in the air was back, but it felt like the temporal effects might have subsided, at least. Could he still move through space and time properly? 

 

He also did an examination of the man, as best as he could. He wasn't particularly good at actually feeling how other people were moving through time, but maybe he could tell something? Failing that, he'll ask if he can do some similar tests on him, to see how Didi responds.

[StormLord]

Tim huff at the rod not working right, or the seemingly strange nature of the world.  He wasn't quite sure which was to blame and honestly?  He didn't really care.  He returned to the Weatherlight irritated that even within the ship this world's influences were interfering with his projects.  He scrapped up the greyish remains from the creation of his Covalence on a piece of paper and threw both it and the divining rod in his bag of holding.

He needed somewhere more stable to work, somewhere more free of distractions and unlikely to warp his magic in unfamiliar ways.  Funnily enough Hell of all places was sounding better and better.  So he ventured into the ship and found a nice quiet place to setup a portal, not that it would be quiet for long.

 

Tim setup a mighty obsidian archway the stretched from floor to ceiling in the back of the forge room and with a single spark activated it, tearing a hole in the veil between worlds.  A silky purple "pool" suspended in the archway acted as a break point and transition.  Almost immediately a loud warped pulsing could be heard in all nearby rooms and distantly anywhere in the ship, portals had a tendency to teleport even sound, warping it beyond recognition after it echoed back several times.

 

Tim stepped through, leaving the active portal behind screaming into the abyss without so much as a note.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Outside the Weatherlight on the bare dirt, those keen of eye might have noticed the a white glowing glyph appeared on the ground several minutes ago.  Though, even those of less keen eye certainly noticed when it flared to life and summoned up a glassy floating disk above it.

The "disk" in question was a large oval floating vertically directly above the glyph, both the outer edge of the disk and the glyph were burning with a white/blue flame that had no heat to it.  Though the surface of the disk was partially mirrored those that try to look through catch glimpses of what was on the other side, stone brick, moss, dried blood, a skeleton, and....cell bars?

 

Nothing immediately happens as people approach it, at least until someone touches it.  Those who do are quickly sucked in and transported to the other side, where they can be seen through the glare alive and well.

[Powder Miner]

Kaiu Satomi had stepped outside of the Weatherlight for a moment, eyeing the rounder of the two men of this world and wondering just what precisely was going on in this place and exactly how they fit into it, ignoring the aura of unease (for now -- she could only hope that there was not some sort of Taint she would have to contend with). When the glyph originally showed up on the ground, Satomi didn't register it at all -- after all, it was pretty much just a vaguely lighter blur to her at any distance. It was, perhaps, not possible to refer to Satomi as someone "of keen eye", after all. But, of course, when it burst into a full portal, she sure noticed THAT. "What the... I guess this might be like those windows to other realms in the void...?"

 

Curiosity rapidly began to get the better of her, and with a pensive "hmmmm", she approached the portal, pulled a rod from one of the assemblages of weaponry tied to her back, and poked at the portal with the wooden rod. Then it yanked her through it with a shriek that cut off as she was sucked through, though she could be seen looking around, checking her weapons, and waving on the other side.

[Endlessblaze]

"Huh. Well I take it thats not what you were expecting? Man this place is weird. Its not going to be easy to get any normal work done like this if this keeps up, Though it does seem like a chance to get some valuable research in....Hmm"

Leo thinks a bit, before running off with a "Ill be right back" and getting far enough away from the Glockman that the sound waves wont do anything significant to mana

Obviously if he wants to get some work done, he should first identify the nature of the distortion, and or the medium of that distortion.
For his first test, Leo creates four 'Strings' of mana and observes them. One string of mana from his own body, one string of his own thaumic mana, and one string of the local ambient mana. 

The fourth string is also composed of Leo's own thaumic mana, but he casts Metamagic White on it, inclining it much more towards law and order.

By observing these four strings, Leo hopes to observe, compare, and contrast any distortions that arise in them, and learn more about these strange forces that are acting upon them.



 

[StormLord]

Roll: 15, 1
Blitz: 31, 88

 

The first string resists the effects of this plane quite well, being made of mana so thoroughly saturated with Leo's being it hardly reacts.

 

The second string drifts as Leo holds it up, stretching somewhat beyond what he might have expected but never terribly far.

The third string remains for a moment before strange things start to happen, it changes at first into a ribbon, and then braided cord, one end stretches out snapping to a location several feet away before flickering back, the whole piece becomes invisible at one point.  The strange events continue until the mana erodes itself away.

 

The fourth acts similar to the second, which is to be expected, save that it instead seems to develop and repeating pattern to its own odd twitches.

 

Never the less the long each of the strings stews in the local ambience the less stable they become, eventually acting similar to the third string before breaking down totally.

[Powder Miner]

Leo

A tweak:

The first string does indeed resist the effects of the plane incredibly well -- better than any of the others, this one actually maintaining its stability until dispelled.

 

The second string and third string both react in the exact same way: wildly, with the second one flickering and basically just generally tripping out, while the third one actually briefly turns into a somehow-tangible piece of code, that feels like a ribbon and consists entirely of text reading (quotation marks and characters beforehand included): VnE="Nothing happens".

 

As for the fourth string, the results are quite interesting -- not only does the string stay normal and stay stable for some time, but it stabilizes any parts of strings in a small space around it... or, well, at least until the fourth string disappears entirely with an audible "pop".

 

Kusuke and Ena:

Randomness: 80

Randomness: 13, 88

 

There's some unsteadiness in the usage of his abilities on the ship, and Kusuke does find it noticeable, with a 5 second jump forwards becoming a 7-second one, but what he's experiencing now is absolutely nothing compared to what he'd been experiencing outside of the ship. As for Kusuke's tests on Didi himself... well, the effects were certainly more pronounced. Upon trying to teleport the man a brief bit forwards in time, he instead disappeared for a significant time, and only flickered back after a couple of rather awkward minutes.

”--what's your plan for Mozzarella, then?” He blinked, and looked around. ”...oh. Well... I suppose that would be that, then. You really did send me back.”

 

He took a few moments, then, before he replied to Ena, folding his hands together and putting them under his chin as he lapsed into deep thought. He took in a deep breath, and then let out a long sigh. ”That was it... if I recall, then I'm... right. Right. Well, to answer your question, I feel much clearer here. My memory certainly works with better recall... see, out there, it doesn't... it doesn't really let you remember. I do sometimes, a little bit, but I forget a lot too. I can't really say for sure how much I remember in general, I'm afraid. Poor Gogo never gets to remember anything at all... except for me and, of course, except for Godot.”

[Strider]

"Yes, I expect you would remember Godot." Ena stated in a monotone. It was clear that the mental and temporal effects were built into the world, but, it was still uncertain if there was an effect inherent to these two mens minds that built additively with the effects from outside, or if it was just the world.

 

"Do you think we could bring Gogo on here, and see what he thinks? Do you think he'd like that?"

[Powder Miner]

Ena's first remark draws an extremely dark chuckle from Didi -- perhaps shockingly so, as it was laced with a deep and resigned bitterness that seemed to soak every single bark of laughter. "Yes, of course you would. That's the one thing of us neither can escape. But what can we do? We have to wait for Godot. Even after all of this! You are all at least something different, though." He let out a long sigh, now, and then just shrugged. "As for Estragon, I... honestly, I don't know. I don't think.... I don't think he remembers much of anything, so... I don't know how he'd react. But... maybe it would be good for him. Maybe it would be bad for him."

 

Here, Didi fell silent for a moment, the gaunt man tapping his fingers against his cheek as he contemplated. "Gogo would know better than me, normally... he was always better with that sort of thing, except... that... well, he doesn't remember not remembering things, either."