EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA | DRAGON

[cherrywood]

Characters: ALL!
Date: February 12th - 28th
Location: Keeliai
Situation: The discovery of an artifact from the first war against Malicant reveals the land of Kithika within a dimension of the Death Plane... and just happens to be contained inside a bottle.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

OOC INFORMATION ♦ CITY OF KEELIAI ♦ INSIDE THE BOTTLE ♦ THE WORLD EATER
For nearly two days the brave quest takers have been sequestered at the sullied Temple and its grounds, the thick jungle and swamp preventing them from leaving. There are faint tremors that run through the ground and in the middle of the third night, the ground gives a great heave, jostling everyone from their rested states. In one of the Temple rooms, a sinkhole has appeared to reveal not spongy ground beneath, but a dark tunnel leading down into the earth. It doesn't take much to widen the entrance and follow the gentle downward slope that leads out to the north, and a walk of about two hours (which surely would feel like longer to those who don't enjoy being trapped in low, dank places) leads them under the swamp itself. By the time the tunnel slopes upward, the muddy ground has turned hard and packed with small chips of rock and sand; the terrain above is changing and as they emerge upward through a fissure in the ground...

---

OOC NOTE: The Aftermath comment will be unfrozen and its direction posted on February 23rd, based on the outcome of the other threads.

---

OOC INFORMATION
Landfall Questions | Approved Item Requests | Player Plot - Kryptonian Rampage OOC

CITY OF KEELIAI
Emperor's Orders: Miasma Explained | Marshaling the Forces | A City Under Siege | Halting the Scourge

INSIDE THE BOTTLE
Crossing the Swamp | Decayed Grounds | The Sullied Temple | Stone Idols | Item Discovery

THE WORLD EATER
Battling the Dragon | Soul's Poison | Kryptonian Rampage | The Guarded Pool | Weighing the Options | Aftermath

Comments

[strategisch]

"I understand what you mean. All the better that we becalmed it."

Alright, sheathes, blades, engine, triggers... Everything is in order. Armin looks back at Kurt in an expectant sort of way, meaning to walk with him back to where-ever the exit was.

"Although I admit at first I was ready to kill it. I guess that's just my instinct when he comes to huge things. But Miss Sabriel showed me the spring and what the water there did."

[spideyfanone]

Since it seems to be his call, he starts walking. He's drooping a little, but this level of activity is something he's pretty used to, for good or for ill, and he's not in too much of a hurry. "See, at this point I just want to check first if something's being used as a meat-puppet by something evil. Plus I figured I'd be useless in a fight against that, so I went looking for the Gordian knot to cut. There usually is one." Not always, and sometimes the price is still high, but it's always worth a look.

[strategisch]

Armin walks with him, at a pace that's between labored and leisurely.

"I don't have your experience for these kinds of situations. These days I wish I did. Brute force approaches don't work anymore."

[spideyfanone]

Being the experienced one is a weird prospect, but he doesn't exactly mind. It's just a lot of responsibility. "Some people can swing brute force, but even then..." He pauses uncomfortably and a little too long. Usually he can keep intrusive thoughts of people he's lost at bay unless he's alone and has to face what's inside his head. "It's only rarely going to solve your problem."

[strategisch]

Armin notices the pause, but doesn't press him about it. Kurt admitted to being traumatized. Sometimes a person can lose themselves in that.

"There's still a lot I have to learn."

[spideyfanone]

"Well, you have more options now that you're not limited by the tech level at home. If you want you can watch while I work on getting you a better power source and I'll see if I can teach and tinker at the same time. And there are lots of people here doing stuff besides brute force." Even if most of them seem to be inclined to start stabbing first when confronted by a dragon you could build cities on.

[strategisch]

"I'd like to see how you build and fix things," he says with a smile, "I've never seen someone build an engine from scratch. In my world, it takes a lot of people a lot of time just to make one."

[spideyfanone]

The interest is flattering, so of course he tries to explain it away immediately. "Infrastructure and mass production, and then later 3D printing, or at least that's how it went at home. If you don't have streamlined factories, then you have to make each part separately. When I was at home I could order anything I couldn't just have made in a hurry. Here it's kind of... somewhere in between."

[strategisch]

"So you had lots of factories and services that could make parts of things for everybody?" he gathered from what Kurt was saying, although he had no idea what a "3D printing" was, "But you can still mock up something more or less on your own?"

[spideyfanone]

"I know enough about how to improvise. Sometimes there's no way around it when you're engineering." Might have to borrow tools from work, but nothing about Armin's tech was too intimidating by his standards. He'd manage. "This is pretty mechanically simple. The trick is going to be being precise enough."

[strategisch]

"Yes, if the measurements are not exact the cabling may not work, or shoot off-center, or the rotating parts will stick... There's a lot of room for error."

[spideyfanone]

"Which is, I'm betting, why it's so labor intensive back where you're from. But I'm sure I can figure a way." And it's so nice to have a project. He's perking up just at the thought, despite the exhaustion of the journey and the fight with the dragon. "I've been doing stuff like this all my life."

[strategisch]

"If all of this works out, I owe you something," he remarks, even though he notices how pleased Kurt seems to be to have something to do at all, "It would be great if I could practice more often."

[spideyfanone]

"I guess I wouldn't turn down a favor or anything, but we're all on the same team. I mean, mostly. Roughly. Us versus the giant disembodied evil hanging over all this, anyway." Since he knows Armin, at least, has people who aren't on his side. But still, they're all in club turtle.