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[ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.
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<blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7645252" data-attributes="member: 79141"><p><strong>Session 235, Part One - The Severed Sea</strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"><strong>The Severed Sea</strong></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"><strong></strong></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">When Rumdoom and Hildegaard returned to the Coaltongue, Korrigan thought better of bringing Kai along for their underdark explorations, and sent Quratulain back to the mother ship too, to protect him. Quratulain accepted this order without question, so it was unnecessary for Uriel to add, “I fear that mundane weapons will be of little use here in any case.” To which Quratulain responded, “There is nothing mundane about <em>my</em> weapons.” Calily decided that she would return to the Coaltongue too.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Those who remained on Shabboath checked out the sinkhole more fully. Creepers extended half of its depth, constantly dripping water into shallow pools in the rocks below. The tunnel then extended laterally for a while before it reached a deep, wide pool. It would be impossible to bring the Sunfish here, so they went back to check out other sinkholes. Eventually they found one where the water lay immediately beneath the hole. Korrigan shifted into his water form (a power he still had a habit of referring to as <em>Meld with Mavisha</em>despite its recent disconnection from that plane); Uriel took on the form of a squid; together they explored the tunnel to ensure that it was big enough to justify lowering the <em>Sunfish</em>.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">It was: deep, branching and circuitous. They kept on going, maintaining telepathic contact. While they waited on the surface, Uru modified his tiny biomechanical friends for aquatic use, fitting them with miniaturised rebreathers. (These were prototypes he had not even tested out.) Gupta noted that several vaknids had approached and appeared to be watching them from a distance.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">The scouts eventually found their way through to a vast body of water. How vast was unclear. Korrigan tried to inform those on the surface of this fact and at once discovered that telekinesis was no longer possible, which was disturbing. He wondered if this was a lake, and if they could surface, and so immediately headed up, rising a couple of hundred feet before meeting with a thick, waxy barrier. Neither he nor Uriel could identify this substance or name its origin. Uriel spotted hagfish-like eels – eyeless and barbed – swimming all about them. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Korrigan declared his interest in exploring further before bringing the <em>Sunfish</em> down, reasoning that it would be useful to know if the craft could surface: was there an air pocket above the wax? Uriel – who had counselled against coming down here in the first place – noted that there was something quite out of character in his old friend’s slightly reckless insistence on probing deeper and deeper into the depths with fewer and fewer allies. He gently insisted that they return to the surface and come back with the <em>Sunfish</em>, which was after all their initial plan. Korrigan reluctantly agreed and they did so.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">After setting up a number of contingencies with the <em>Coaltongue</em> – namely that, should the king and his companions not return for any reason, the remaining unit members should continue their quest to explore the Gyre, create golden icons and find a way to get back to Lanjyr – they lowered the <em>Sunfish</em> into the sinkhole as far as they could, before dropping it the rest of the way. Uru, dressed in a fetching sailor suit, took the helm, with Gupta as his co-pilot. Down they went.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Eventually, they came to the vast expanse of water and, having first established that they were too deep to maintain radio contact with the Coaltongue, rose to the level of the wax and began tracing the wall of the cavern. Uriel spotted the barbed eels shooting up through small holes in the wax, then slithering back down again. Occasionally, they clutched something in their mouths when they returned: bats! This was a lake after all.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Korrigan wondered if the wax was itself a barrier to communication, since they were able to communicate with each other freely. Uriel said that he felt the same presence he had detected on the surface – a psychic presence that caused a kind of interference in its proximity. But the emanations weren’t directional and he couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Having dealt with that question, Uriel now dealt with another – he transformed into a barbed eel, and shot up one of the hole they were using, finding open air on the other side. The receptors the eels used relayed information to him – movement overheard, which he presumed to be the bats. Uriel then shifted form again, this time into a giant bat (so as not to present a tempting target to any other eels), and used echolocation to establish that this chamber was very large – extending far beyond the range and limit of the bat’s echolocation. Caution prevented him from flying around in this form. He switched back to eel form, returned to the water, and became a squid once again.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">They resumed their circumnavigation, keeping a careful mental track of the location of the entrance hole, which was difficult, since the wall of the cavern was not circular or regular. In the end, after half an hour – at the end of which they merely established that this lake was very, <em>very</em> large – they turned around and headed back to the entrance, which they marked with an invisible symbol. This done, they then headed down. And down. Several hundred feet. The water became soupy and they spotted small fragments on the bed – shell or bone. Now they moved directly out, perpendicular to the cavern wall, hugging the bottom. The layer of detritus on the bed became thicker as they went and eventually the fragments became larger and more identifiable: bones; humanoid bones – skulls and ribs and femurs. Many, many creatures had died here.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">“Drawn down here to explore, perhaps?” Uriel mused, pointedly.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Something loomed large in the water above them: what turned out to be the tip of a large structure, like an incredibly large, fat stalactite composed of the same waxy substance as on the surface of the water, from which this tower of wax depended. There were holes in the structure large enough for the <em>Sunfish </em>to enter, and so they went inside. Within were twisting tunnels that could not have been caused by the natural passage of water. These were far too abstract, sharp and strangely beautiful, like the interior cavity of a shell, or an earlobe – curved and carved, unlike the flat, functional seal above. After some time navigating this strange labyrinth – coming across occasional exits as they went; always heading gradually higher and higher – Gupta wondered aloud if they would find anything resembling a chamber, or if it was just tunnels all the way to the top. At that very moment, the tunnel they were currently following, gave out onto just such a chamber: broad and high, with many entrance and exits throughout, leading away like valves from a heart. But the chamber was empty. Uru suggested blasting it with the Tyrant Eye but his plan was overruled. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Uriel used location loresight here, and was instantly overwhelmed by psychic emanations – alien and unintelligible. He had never experienced such a powerful mental assault when using loresight before, and it left him reeling. When he eventually recovered, he tried to make some sense of what he had experienced, but could not do so, save to confirm that a very puissant mind indeed had occupied this chamber for a very long time. Korrigan at last demonstrated something of his customary caution, and suggested they leave the lake entirely. Uriel used the <em>detect planar energies </em>ritual the Voice of Rot had taught them. If this being was not native to Shabboath, they could follow its trail. But it must have been native, as the ritual failed. By the time he was done, Korrigan had changed his mind again, driven by curiosity to investigate further. This time they decided to exit the tower and follow it up to the surface in the water outside.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">When they reached the wax barrier, Uriel found a hole and went through it again. Again, in giant bat form he used echolocation to establish that there were strange structures nearby, hemispherical lattices formed by clasped fingers of wax. He returned to the water, and it was decided that they should try to breach the wax barrier here. Uru began to use the Tyrant’s Eye to cut a hole; unlike the very basic mechanical means of firing and shutting off the eye in more-or-less a straight line, Uru was able to use his ghostly friends to manipulate the eye quite finely.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">It took some time. The hole was three-quarters done when Uriel saw that something was coming.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">At first it looked like a shoal of glowing fish, blinking in and out of sight but generally coming closer. Only as they neared did it become apparent that they weren’t ‘blinking’, but passing behind a much larger, darker shape which they were endlessly circling around. This thing was not at all streamlined, and yet it powered through the water at incredible speed, as if the water around it were less of an obstacle than thin air. A huge, segmented shell, the size of a house, with three glowing ‘eyes’ peering out of its segments, and three thick rubbery tentacles trailing behind it.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Both Uriel and Korrigan tried to communicate with the creature, while Uru rotated the <em>Sunfish</em> and prepared to fire if necessary. He had set the eye up to fire as a default – he was holding it closed. If something happened to him, it would fire automatically. He warned Gupta to take over in such an eventuality.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">The creature powered forward, heedless of all telepathic greetings, reached out with a rubbery tentacle and grabbed Korrigan. Psychic energy coursed through him, and might have driven him quite mad, were it not for the anchoring power of the Humble Hook. The creature let go of him and kept on moving, leaving him hanging limp in the water, feeling disconnected from his own body, as if he were in fact the creature, moving at speed towards the <em>Sunfish</em>, ploughing past Uriel who was able to weave its fate as it passed (a spell that connected him to the destiny of the target).</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Uru fired. The Tyrant’s Eye struck the creature and pain coursed through Korrigan, who had somehow been psychically linked to it. (Fortunately, the Hook once again protected him from suffering any real harm.) Shortly after the beam hit it, the creature vanished. Gupta peered through the porthole to confirm that it had in fact gone, not simply turned invisible.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">What was it? Was it real, or a manifested psychic memory? Gupta thought on it for a while, and intuited that it had been a psychic projection of some sort.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Nothing happened for a while. Since cutting a hole seemed to have provoked it, it was agreed that Uru should finish the job. This he did, and proceeded to then slice up the circle they had made such that it would easily part when the <em>Sunfish</em> rose through it. Uriel kept an eye out, and announced that not one but <em>two</em> forms were approaching – both more easily visible than the first as the main body itself was aglow: one a blue and red harlequin, the other sporting purple striations. Again, Korrigan tried to reach out to them as they approached.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Suddenly, Uriel was aware of the approach of the being whose fate he had woven. It loomed upwards from the depths having approached from below, and emitted as net of eerie, slimy bars. These bars wrapped around anything they struck, forming a sticky acidic mesh; otherwise, they dissipated in the water. Uriel dodged clear, but the slime struck the Sunfish, eating into the hull, and interfering with propulsion.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Korrigan avoided being grabbed by the blue and red projection; the other swept past him and tried to grab Uriel, who darted away and wove its fate too. Korrigan swam towards the <em>Sunfish</em> and tried to hack off the acidic bars around the propeller. Gupta took the controls and turned the craft while Uru brought the Tyrant’s Eye to bear on the stripey purple manifestation. He fired and it vanished. Uriel fended off more tentacles. Korrigan ordered Uru to fire again and, with the help of his ghostly hands he turned the eye towards it, fired again and caused it to vanish too. The third creature – the original with the fiery fish-motes – vanished of its own accord.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Uru sent his biomechanical creatures out to try to fix the leaks that had sprung up in the hull of the <em>Sunfish</em>, but the damage could not be easily fixed. Korrigan wondered if they shouldn’t head back now. These beings were very dangerous, and further contact did not promise to yield further insights. Uru was keen to investigate the waxy structures on the surface, having gone to all that trouble to make a hole. But no, discretion finally got the better of them, and they returned to tunnel from whence they had come, hoping to cover the four miles without further encounter.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">To their relief and surprise, the creatures did not return and they eventually came to the tunnel Uriel had marked. They entered, only to discover that it had been sealed by wax, about thirty feet in! It was then that the three projection appeared, crawling into the tunnel from behind them. There was a flurry of tentacle strikes, eerie slimecraft and unpleasantness. Instead of firing at the creatures, uru focused the Tyrant’s Eye on the wax barrier. It didn’t appear to be working! Gupta concentrated and realised that it was an illusion.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">When she announced this fact, Uriel dug deep and invoked a powerful divine symbol. It split into three beams of radiant fire, striking each of the psychic projections and causing all three to vanish once again.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">Limping back to the Coaltongue, they were all surprised when Gupta said, “I think we should go back and get to the bottom of all this.”</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">“She didn’t say that,” Uriel explained.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">“No, I didn’t,” said Gupta. “Whatever it was.”</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'">After more exhausted silence, Uriel couldn’t help but say, “I’d like to reiterate my earlier suggestion that we don’t go down there.”</span></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gideonpepys, post: 7645252, member: 79141"] [b]Session 235, Part One - The Severed Sea[/b] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri][B]The Severed Sea [/B][/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]When Rumdoom and Hildegaard returned to the Coaltongue, Korrigan thought better of bringing Kai along for their underdark explorations, and sent Quratulain back to the mother ship too, to protect him. Quratulain accepted this order without question, so it was unnecessary for Uriel to add, “I fear that mundane weapons will be of little use here in any case.” To which Quratulain responded, “There is nothing mundane about [I]my[/I] weapons.” Calily decided that she would return to the Coaltongue too. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Those who remained on Shabboath checked out the sinkhole more fully. Creepers extended half of its depth, constantly dripping water into shallow pools in the rocks below. The tunnel then extended laterally for a while before it reached a deep, wide pool. It would be impossible to bring the Sunfish here, so they went back to check out other sinkholes. Eventually they found one where the water lay immediately beneath the hole. Korrigan shifted into his water form (a power he still had a habit of referring to as [I]Meld with Mavisha[/I]despite its recent disconnection from that plane); Uriel took on the form of a squid; together they explored the tunnel to ensure that it was big enough to justify lowering the [I]Sunfish[/I]. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]It was: deep, branching and circuitous. They kept on going, maintaining telepathic contact. While they waited on the surface, Uru modified his tiny biomechanical friends for aquatic use, fitting them with miniaturised rebreathers. (These were prototypes he had not even tested out.) Gupta noted that several vaknids had approached and appeared to be watching them from a distance. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]The scouts eventually found their way through to a vast body of water. How vast was unclear. Korrigan tried to inform those on the surface of this fact and at once discovered that telekinesis was no longer possible, which was disturbing. He wondered if this was a lake, and if they could surface, and so immediately headed up, rising a couple of hundred feet before meeting with a thick, waxy barrier. Neither he nor Uriel could identify this substance or name its origin. Uriel spotted hagfish-like eels – eyeless and barbed – swimming all about them. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri] Korrigan declared his interest in exploring further before bringing the [I]Sunfish[/I] down, reasoning that it would be useful to know if the craft could surface: was there an air pocket above the wax? Uriel – who had counselled against coming down here in the first place – noted that there was something quite out of character in his old friend’s slightly reckless insistence on probing deeper and deeper into the depths with fewer and fewer allies. He gently insisted that they return to the surface and come back with the [I]Sunfish[/I], which was after all their initial plan. Korrigan reluctantly agreed and they did so. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]After setting up a number of contingencies with the [I]Coaltongue[/I] – namely that, should the king and his companions not return for any reason, the remaining unit members should continue their quest to explore the Gyre, create golden icons and find a way to get back to Lanjyr – they lowered the [I]Sunfish[/I] into the sinkhole as far as they could, before dropping it the rest of the way. Uru, dressed in a fetching sailor suit, took the helm, with Gupta as his co-pilot. Down they went. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Eventually, they came to the vast expanse of water and, having first established that they were too deep to maintain radio contact with the Coaltongue, rose to the level of the wax and began tracing the wall of the cavern. Uriel spotted the barbed eels shooting up through small holes in the wax, then slithering back down again. Occasionally, they clutched something in their mouths when they returned: bats! This was a lake after all. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Korrigan wondered if the wax was itself a barrier to communication, since they were able to communicate with each other freely. Uriel said that he felt the same presence he had detected on the surface – a psychic presence that caused a kind of interference in its proximity. But the emanations weren’t directional and he couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Having dealt with that question, Uriel now dealt with another – he transformed into a barbed eel, and shot up one of the hole they were using, finding open air on the other side. The receptors the eels used relayed information to him – movement overheard, which he presumed to be the bats. Uriel then shifted form again, this time into a giant bat (so as not to present a tempting target to any other eels), and used echolocation to establish that this chamber was very large – extending far beyond the range and limit of the bat’s echolocation. Caution prevented him from flying around in this form. He switched back to eel form, returned to the water, and became a squid once again. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]They resumed their circumnavigation, keeping a careful mental track of the location of the entrance hole, which was difficult, since the wall of the cavern was not circular or regular. In the end, after half an hour – at the end of which they merely established that this lake was very, [I]very[/I] large – they turned around and headed back to the entrance, which they marked with an invisible symbol. This done, they then headed down. And down. Several hundred feet. The water became soupy and they spotted small fragments on the bed – shell or bone. Now they moved directly out, perpendicular to the cavern wall, hugging the bottom. The layer of detritus on the bed became thicker as they went and eventually the fragments became larger and more identifiable: bones; humanoid bones – skulls and ribs and femurs. Many, many creatures had died here. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]“Drawn down here to explore, perhaps?” Uriel mused, pointedly. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Something loomed large in the water above them: what turned out to be the tip of a large structure, like an incredibly large, fat stalactite composed of the same waxy substance as on the surface of the water, from which this tower of wax depended. There were holes in the structure large enough for the [I]Sunfish [/I]to enter, and so they went inside. Within were twisting tunnels that could not have been caused by the natural passage of water. These were far too abstract, sharp and strangely beautiful, like the interior cavity of a shell, or an earlobe – curved and carved, unlike the flat, functional seal above. After some time navigating this strange labyrinth – coming across occasional exits as they went; always heading gradually higher and higher – Gupta wondered aloud if they would find anything resembling a chamber, or if it was just tunnels all the way to the top. At that very moment, the tunnel they were currently following, gave out onto just such a chamber: broad and high, with many entrance and exits throughout, leading away like valves from a heart. But the chamber was empty. Uru suggested blasting it with the Tyrant Eye but his plan was overruled. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Uriel used location loresight here, and was instantly overwhelmed by psychic emanations – alien and unintelligible. He had never experienced such a powerful mental assault when using loresight before, and it left him reeling. When he eventually recovered, he tried to make some sense of what he had experienced, but could not do so, save to confirm that a very puissant mind indeed had occupied this chamber for a very long time. Korrigan at last demonstrated something of his customary caution, and suggested they leave the lake entirely. Uriel used the [I]detect planar energies [/I]ritual the Voice of Rot had taught them. If this being was not native to Shabboath, they could follow its trail. But it must have been native, as the ritual failed. By the time he was done, Korrigan had changed his mind again, driven by curiosity to investigate further. This time they decided to exit the tower and follow it up to the surface in the water outside. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]When they reached the wax barrier, Uriel found a hole and went through it again. Again, in giant bat form he used echolocation to establish that there were strange structures nearby, hemispherical lattices formed by clasped fingers of wax. He returned to the water, and it was decided that they should try to breach the wax barrier here. Uru began to use the Tyrant’s Eye to cut a hole; unlike the very basic mechanical means of firing and shutting off the eye in more-or-less a straight line, Uru was able to use his ghostly friends to manipulate the eye quite finely. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]It took some time. The hole was three-quarters done when Uriel saw that something was coming. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]At first it looked like a shoal of glowing fish, blinking in and out of sight but generally coming closer. Only as they neared did it become apparent that they weren’t ‘blinking’, but passing behind a much larger, darker shape which they were endlessly circling around. This thing was not at all streamlined, and yet it powered through the water at incredible speed, as if the water around it were less of an obstacle than thin air. A huge, segmented shell, the size of a house, with three glowing ‘eyes’ peering out of its segments, and three thick rubbery tentacles trailing behind it. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Both Uriel and Korrigan tried to communicate with the creature, while Uru rotated the [I]Sunfish[/I] and prepared to fire if necessary. He had set the eye up to fire as a default – he was holding it closed. If something happened to him, it would fire automatically. He warned Gupta to take over in such an eventuality. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]The creature powered forward, heedless of all telepathic greetings, reached out with a rubbery tentacle and grabbed Korrigan. Psychic energy coursed through him, and might have driven him quite mad, were it not for the anchoring power of the Humble Hook. The creature let go of him and kept on moving, leaving him hanging limp in the water, feeling disconnected from his own body, as if he were in fact the creature, moving at speed towards the [I]Sunfish[/I], ploughing past Uriel who was able to weave its fate as it passed (a spell that connected him to the destiny of the target). [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Uru fired. The Tyrant’s Eye struck the creature and pain coursed through Korrigan, who had somehow been psychically linked to it. (Fortunately, the Hook once again protected him from suffering any real harm.) Shortly after the beam hit it, the creature vanished. Gupta peered through the porthole to confirm that it had in fact gone, not simply turned invisible. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]What was it? Was it real, or a manifested psychic memory? Gupta thought on it for a while, and intuited that it had been a psychic projection of some sort. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Nothing happened for a while. Since cutting a hole seemed to have provoked it, it was agreed that Uru should finish the job. This he did, and proceeded to then slice up the circle they had made such that it would easily part when the [I]Sunfish[/I] rose through it. Uriel kept an eye out, and announced that not one but [I]two[/I] forms were approaching – both more easily visible than the first as the main body itself was aglow: one a blue and red harlequin, the other sporting purple striations. Again, Korrigan tried to reach out to them as they approached. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Suddenly, Uriel was aware of the approach of the being whose fate he had woven. It loomed upwards from the depths having approached from below, and emitted as net of eerie, slimy bars. These bars wrapped around anything they struck, forming a sticky acidic mesh; otherwise, they dissipated in the water. Uriel dodged clear, but the slime struck the Sunfish, eating into the hull, and interfering with propulsion. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Korrigan avoided being grabbed by the blue and red projection; the other swept past him and tried to grab Uriel, who darted away and wove its fate too. Korrigan swam towards the [I]Sunfish[/I] and tried to hack off the acidic bars around the propeller. Gupta took the controls and turned the craft while Uru brought the Tyrant’s Eye to bear on the stripey purple manifestation. He fired and it vanished. Uriel fended off more tentacles. Korrigan ordered Uru to fire again and, with the help of his ghostly hands he turned the eye towards it, fired again and caused it to vanish too. The third creature – the original with the fiery fish-motes – vanished of its own accord. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Uru sent his biomechanical creatures out to try to fix the leaks that had sprung up in the hull of the [I]Sunfish[/I], but the damage could not be easily fixed. Korrigan wondered if they shouldn’t head back now. These beings were very dangerous, and further contact did not promise to yield further insights. Uru was keen to investigate the waxy structures on the surface, having gone to all that trouble to make a hole. But no, discretion finally got the better of them, and they returned to tunnel from whence they had come, hoping to cover the four miles without further encounter. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]To their relief and surprise, the creatures did not return and they eventually came to the tunnel Uriel had marked. They entered, only to discover that it had been sealed by wax, about thirty feet in! It was then that the three projection appeared, crawling into the tunnel from behind them. There was a flurry of tentacle strikes, eerie slimecraft and unpleasantness. Instead of firing at the creatures, uru focused the Tyrant’s Eye on the wax barrier. It didn’t appear to be working! Gupta concentrated and realised that it was an illusion. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]When she announced this fact, Uriel dug deep and invoked a powerful divine symbol. It split into three beams of radiant fire, striking each of the psychic projections and causing all three to vanish once again. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Limping back to the Coaltongue, they were all surprised when Gupta said, “I think we should go back and get to the bottom of all this.” [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]“She didn’t say that,” Uriel explained. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]“No, I didn’t,” said Gupta. “Whatever it was.” [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]After more exhausted silence, Uriel couldn’t help but say, “I’d like to reiterate my earlier suggestion that we don’t go down there.”[/FONT][/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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[ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.
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