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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 322757" data-attributes="member: 1210">What happens when you plug this in here?Here you go... the conclusion of Game #486, in which things go horribly awry for our heroes!By the way, you ever notice how if, as a dm, you need a lever pulled, a button pushed, a door opened, a binding sundered, etc, you can really count on pcs to do it for you?Anyway, on with the story......The ship is fascinating to explore.  There is a lot of space in it; it’s huge, and the party has by now seen the huge boiler-like area where the crystals that fuel the ship are fed in.  In fact, they helped Titus load it up.  The control panel that they tampered with they have left alone; but one thing that has caught the party’s eyes is a single crystal control rod that is unlike the rest.  It has two prongs coming out of it rather than being shaped like a long needle.  Neither they, nor Titus, have yet seen a place to plug it in.  It’s about the biggest adventure they can find on board; there are hundreds of the copper bugs, but all are inert.Titus remains distant, often being absent except for meal times.  He is learning his ship- trying to find out its capabilities and how to control them.  One day, while exploring the bowels of the vessel, Sith, Bolfol and Horbin find a strange panel with two adjacent depressions in it.  Shaped differently from most of the plugs on the ship, they look tailored to the mysterious two pronged crystal control rod.  Could the mystery be solved at last?  The three adventurers clamber up ladders, crawl through small passages, and walk through metal hallways, finally reaching the control panel.  There, on the floor in a heap of other unused control rods, is the two-pronged plug.  “Should we talk to Titus first?” Bolfol suggests.But this is one of the times when Titus isn’t around; his gear hounds guard his inner sanctuaries, and they don’t seem to understand when people talk to them.  The three have no way to reach him.“Oh well,” Sith says cheerfully.  “We tried.”The three adventurers, demonstrating their collective wisdom, take the mysterious two-pronged crystal control rod back down to the chamber with the panel with the plug it looks like is made for it.  The walls of the room are lined with a strange copper metal.  Bolfol, Sith and Horbin cluster around the panel.  Sith holds the plug, and gingerly inserts it.Immediately, there’s a distant but LOUD noise.  And lights go on.Lots of them.  The orcish necromancer tries to pull it out, but the rod, once inserted, seems to be pretty set on staying put.  So he buffs himself with a bull’s strength and tries again, to no avail.Then there’s the sound of hatches opening everywhere and sudden activity... The bugs have animated.The party bursts into action.  A door seals them in with a hiss.  Over a dozen of the little bugs are pouring in to the chamber with them.  Most are copper but one is gold and several are silver.  There is the smell of ozone as the gold one fires a bolt of coruscating lightning into the three adventurers.  The two silver bugs are firing little missiles at Horbin.  The party strikes, whirls, smashes; Sith destroys the gold construct with the chain he took from the mistress of chains.  A silver one pops a spinning sawblade on Horbin, but he adeptly parries it and strikes back.  In less than a minute the clockwork bugs in the area with them are destroyed.But the lights are on, everywhere, and the noises!  It sounds like something exploded somewhere, and the ship feels like it’s shrinking.  And the thought of fighting all the hundreds or thousands of clockwork bugs they’ve seen makes their stomachs shrink.  The three move as quickly as they can back towards the main deck, and they go only a hundred feet before encountering a marching line of scores of the copper horrors.  But the bugs ignore them, so rather than attacking them and perhaps drawing attention, the three characters simply beat feet.On the deck, all is chaos.  It’s all kinds of foggy, but clearly the water level has risen significantly relative to the deck in just the few moments since the rod was plugged in.  Yes, mom, the ship is sinking.  And let’s not forget about the bugs!  And what blew up, anyway?  But hey, at times like this, what’s an adventurer to do?  Outnumbered thousands to three, with drowning coming up soon- and boy, won’t that huge, huge, ship make some kind of whirlpool or something when it goes down?- things look dark for our heroes.But never underestimate the gods!  Praying fervently to Dexter that there’s somewhere close enough to reach, Horbin casts water walk on everyone he can find.  And water breathing.  Sith casts fly so he doesn’t even need to worry about it.  The ship is going down, no joke here... hope everyone made it off!  But boy it’s foggy right now, and  where are we going now, anyway?Next time: a couple of new friends and so much wisdom damage it hurts!</blockquote>

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