Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 5: Value City Mall!]
07-11-2010, 11:30 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
In many ways, intelligence is the greatest gift a being can receive. The ability to plan, the capability for abstract thought, and possibly most of all, the capacity for change all yield great power when used correctly. Throughout the multiverse, billions of fragile and unremarkable species had kicked and bitten and learned and fired and thought their way to the tops of their respective food chains solely through their cognizance. It was a good tool. It worked.
But just the same as everything else that worked in a large variety of situations, there were times when intelligence was a burden. The more complicated the mind, the more ways it could break or hiccup or turn in on itself; humans, balls of neuroses that they are, are excellent examples of this fact. Schrotgolems, with no corporeal brain and a chaotic and slapdash nature, have a mind that unravels more readily than most, to the point of a kind of "racial madness". Doubt, overcuriosity, and hesitation serve any sapient being poorly during stressful or dangerous situations, and the frazzled thing that was Gestalt after several rounds of this battle (and especially after his brush with Samuel) was plagued by all the worst aspects of intelligence. Its stress-induced atavism had come at exactly the right time; reversion to unthinking instinct focused the golem's power and removed its hesitation. Frustration and repetition yielded to clear and primal insight.
Gormand's bulk flowed like a wave of sewage through the door, putrid meat and sodden tentacles bubbling and shrieking; the thing's crumpled eye snapped around the room, looking blindly for its victim. Whatever profane senses it still had locked onto the small pile of boxes and lazily-sweeping broom and it hauled itself towards its intended target, appendages flailing even before they were close to being in range. The golem, for its part, merely sat serenely, broom idly pushing a small pile of fingers into the larger mass of gore. As the meat-beast approached, there was a cracking sound from the ceiling of the store, and flakes of plaster drifted down onto the scene of devastation below; most of the lights flickered and went off as the wiring ripped out of the ceiling and walls, tangling itself in and around Gormand's acrid bulk. Live electricity surged through the colossal zombie, its pasta limbs twitching errantly as it emitted a piercing, bubbling shriek.
Aside from a slight huddling together and the cessation of sweeping, there was still little obvious motion from the taciturn Gestalt. The tangle of wires itself did little to actually hold back the monster, but the current seemed to be doing a fair job of keeping it still; nevertheless, there was no real damage done to the hulking leviathan of rancid flesh. There was some creaking and pinging from the walls, but nothing overtly seemed to be happening. Ordinary zombies began filtering into the room around Gormand, a shambling army of slack- and missing-jawed corpses. They seemed confused as they entered that nothing appeared to be moving, and could sense only the uninteresting dead flesh that once made up Lainey and her other selves. With no real target or direction, the resumed the aimless limping that occupied most of their time.
Several figures were snapped in half by the narrow pipes that sprang out of the walls. Copper tubing curled in like the legs of a dying insect, and the room filled with a soft hissing noise, barely audible over the baleful moans emanating from Gormand and the occasional groan of other zombies. Gestalt and its new broom slid farther back against the far wall from the door, pipes weaving a fence around the boxes. The revenants moved as though to attack the golem, but couldn't push through the copper barricade; with a final adjustment of the tubing, all the tips pointed outwards towards the attacking horde. Several fruit bins slid ponderously across the blood-spattered floor and formed a casing around the crates.
A small, bright-green object slid dispassionately out from the bin-barricade. It was about three inches long, made of translucent plastic, and filled, in two chambers, with a clear fluid. It was topped with a metallic mechanism of some sort, which was itself dominated by a rough wheel and some kind of trigger. Once it was clear of the fence of pipes, device righted itself and hovered several inches into the air. Only one zombie noticed it, and approached the object at its usual stumbling pace.
The lighter flicked itself.
Clara, who was having niggling doubts as to whether she ought to still be calling herself that, maintained the expression of beatific calm she usually wore; inwardly, though, she worried about her companions. The other mage was clearly not a very pleasant sort. Seemed too much like the sort of necromancer you think of whenever someone says Dark Lord Whatshisface, Bane of the Living. The spaceman mostly just seemed dazed and confused, and mostly just tagging along because no other course of action presented itself. Still, Konka Rar was obviously remaining civil for the time being, and Galus was probably just not too bright, bless his soul, but Maxwell...
His expressions bothered the old nun. He was clearly very intelligent, much more than herself, but... The way he carried himself and gestured and had a habit of letting himself detach for moments from the world around him... He seemed like one of those geniuses that was a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Toeing the line of madness, no common sense to speak of, and always ready to build a doomsday device. Not because they wanted doomsday, or because they were evil, but because nobody had every done X, Y, and Z before, and wouldn't it be interesting to see what happened if they did?
Reminded her a lot, a whole lot the more she thought about it, of Sister Marguerite. Poor girl. Found an old copy of the Vere Incredibilis Malum Libri, wasn't it? Summoned an elder being from deep beyond the veil of time and matter just to ask it why it hated life so much. Shoddy abjurations, rushed wards... Took a week to get the monastery back in order.
Still, it was nice to have someone sapient around who had some kind of knowledge of what was going on, even if he did tend to go on a bit. Clara's intuition said he was going to get someone hurt, but what did she know? She was just a silly old woman, and this boy had obviously survived for some time with opponents like that flying black terror around, so he must be more grounded than she gave him credit for. She did wonder, quite a lot, what his plan was, and-
The sound was like nothing she'd ever heard, living or dead. It was less that she heard it, even, so much as a wave of solid noise washed over her and everyone around her. As her eardrums shut down in protest, she spun around, only to see a roiling wall of fire pouring out into the food court from one of the side-shops. Several bodies were pushed along before it, limbs snapping off and bouncing against the stands and walls of the food court. Even after most of the fire receded, leaving only burning tables and smoldering corpses, the ringing in her ears persisted. Much of the main foyer of the mall was in disarray, the force of the blast carrying anything not nailed down with it, and the sheer number of coal-blackened bones the hallway had belched out was staggering.
The impromptu bomb shelter slid open. Rather, the burning splinters and searing metal that remained of it parted. The boxes inside were still there, but many were scorched or smeared with soot, and one had a large crack up its side. The pipes in front of them were still spewing gouts of fire, scorch marks widening on the floor; the golem calmly kinked several of the lower ones and parted its fence, boxes sliding out of their enclosure. It saw no reason to stem the fire still blazing out of many of the higher tubes, so it didn't. Gestalt slid aimlessly down the hall, pushing its broom in front of it, and left the inferno behind without a thought.
A wave of stench flowed out of the hallway to Grocer Delight now that the explosion was gone: spattered across the walls and ceiling were chunks of rotting, burning meat. Several globs of what was probably Gormand but could just as easily have been bits of any other zombie at this point dripped into the schrotgolem's path and were calmly gathered into the unspeakable pile of filth and ash its broom was pushing along.
The gawping group by Splash World were nonplussed when a series of boxes and a broom glide silently out from the source of the explosion. Half of it was, anyway. Maxwell and Galus were only too unsurprised to see their competitor emerging from the hellstorm, but the lich and the nun had no idea what it meant.
Clara herself muttered a few syllables; it was a simple spell that let her temporarily see spirits that were interacting with the material plane. Ordinarily these ghosts showed up in at least a vague semblance of the form they had in life, or if they had never been alive embodied the concepts or places or things they represented, but... The boxes were surrounded by turbulent, vaporous shapes and colors, tendrils of which occasionally reached out to caress or surround a nearby object. Watching it made her eyes water, and she quickly dismissed the spell.
The nun moved as though to say something, but caught Maxwell's and Galus's expression and it clicked. "S... Someone you know?"
In many ways, intelligence is the greatest gift a being can receive. The ability to plan, the capability for abstract thought, and possibly most of all, the capacity for change all yield great power when used correctly. Throughout the multiverse, billions of fragile and unremarkable species had kicked and bitten and learned and fired and thought their way to the tops of their respective food chains solely through their cognizance. It was a good tool. It worked.
But just the same as everything else that worked in a large variety of situations, there were times when intelligence was a burden. The more complicated the mind, the more ways it could break or hiccup or turn in on itself; humans, balls of neuroses that they are, are excellent examples of this fact. Schrotgolems, with no corporeal brain and a chaotic and slapdash nature, have a mind that unravels more readily than most, to the point of a kind of "racial madness". Doubt, overcuriosity, and hesitation serve any sapient being poorly during stressful or dangerous situations, and the frazzled thing that was Gestalt after several rounds of this battle (and especially after his brush with Samuel) was plagued by all the worst aspects of intelligence. Its stress-induced atavism had come at exactly the right time; reversion to unthinking instinct focused the golem's power and removed its hesitation. Frustration and repetition yielded to clear and primal insight.
Gormand's bulk flowed like a wave of sewage through the door, putrid meat and sodden tentacles bubbling and shrieking; the thing's crumpled eye snapped around the room, looking blindly for its victim. Whatever profane senses it still had locked onto the small pile of boxes and lazily-sweeping broom and it hauled itself towards its intended target, appendages flailing even before they were close to being in range. The golem, for its part, merely sat serenely, broom idly pushing a small pile of fingers into the larger mass of gore. As the meat-beast approached, there was a cracking sound from the ceiling of the store, and flakes of plaster drifted down onto the scene of devastation below; most of the lights flickered and went off as the wiring ripped out of the ceiling and walls, tangling itself in and around Gormand's acrid bulk. Live electricity surged through the colossal zombie, its pasta limbs twitching errantly as it emitted a piercing, bubbling shriek.
Aside from a slight huddling together and the cessation of sweeping, there was still little obvious motion from the taciturn Gestalt. The tangle of wires itself did little to actually hold back the monster, but the current seemed to be doing a fair job of keeping it still; nevertheless, there was no real damage done to the hulking leviathan of rancid flesh. There was some creaking and pinging from the walls, but nothing overtly seemed to be happening. Ordinary zombies began filtering into the room around Gormand, a shambling army of slack- and missing-jawed corpses. They seemed confused as they entered that nothing appeared to be moving, and could sense only the uninteresting dead flesh that once made up Lainey and her other selves. With no real target or direction, the resumed the aimless limping that occupied most of their time.
Several figures were snapped in half by the narrow pipes that sprang out of the walls. Copper tubing curled in like the legs of a dying insect, and the room filled with a soft hissing noise, barely audible over the baleful moans emanating from Gormand and the occasional groan of other zombies. Gestalt and its new broom slid farther back against the far wall from the door, pipes weaving a fence around the boxes. The revenants moved as though to attack the golem, but couldn't push through the copper barricade; with a final adjustment of the tubing, all the tips pointed outwards towards the attacking horde. Several fruit bins slid ponderously across the blood-spattered floor and formed a casing around the crates.
A small, bright-green object slid dispassionately out from the bin-barricade. It was about three inches long, made of translucent plastic, and filled, in two chambers, with a clear fluid. It was topped with a metallic mechanism of some sort, which was itself dominated by a rough wheel and some kind of trigger. Once it was clear of the fence of pipes, device righted itself and hovered several inches into the air. Only one zombie noticed it, and approached the object at its usual stumbling pace.
The lighter flicked itself.
Clara, who was having niggling doubts as to whether she ought to still be calling herself that, maintained the expression of beatific calm she usually wore; inwardly, though, she worried about her companions. The other mage was clearly not a very pleasant sort. Seemed too much like the sort of necromancer you think of whenever someone says Dark Lord Whatshisface, Bane of the Living. The spaceman mostly just seemed dazed and confused, and mostly just tagging along because no other course of action presented itself. Still, Konka Rar was obviously remaining civil for the time being, and Galus was probably just not too bright, bless his soul, but Maxwell...
His expressions bothered the old nun. He was clearly very intelligent, much more than herself, but... The way he carried himself and gestured and had a habit of letting himself detach for moments from the world around him... He seemed like one of those geniuses that was a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Toeing the line of madness, no common sense to speak of, and always ready to build a doomsday device. Not because they wanted doomsday, or because they were evil, but because nobody had every done X, Y, and Z before, and wouldn't it be interesting to see what happened if they did?
Reminded her a lot, a whole lot the more she thought about it, of Sister Marguerite. Poor girl. Found an old copy of the Vere Incredibilis Malum Libri, wasn't it? Summoned an elder being from deep beyond the veil of time and matter just to ask it why it hated life so much. Shoddy abjurations, rushed wards... Took a week to get the monastery back in order.
Still, it was nice to have someone sapient around who had some kind of knowledge of what was going on, even if he did tend to go on a bit. Clara's intuition said he was going to get someone hurt, but what did she know? She was just a silly old woman, and this boy had obviously survived for some time with opponents like that flying black terror around, so he must be more grounded than she gave him credit for. She did wonder, quite a lot, what his plan was, and-
The sound was like nothing she'd ever heard, living or dead. It was less that she heard it, even, so much as a wave of solid noise washed over her and everyone around her. As her eardrums shut down in protest, she spun around, only to see a roiling wall of fire pouring out into the food court from one of the side-shops. Several bodies were pushed along before it, limbs snapping off and bouncing against the stands and walls of the food court. Even after most of the fire receded, leaving only burning tables and smoldering corpses, the ringing in her ears persisted. Much of the main foyer of the mall was in disarray, the force of the blast carrying anything not nailed down with it, and the sheer number of coal-blackened bones the hallway had belched out was staggering.
The impromptu bomb shelter slid open. Rather, the burning splinters and searing metal that remained of it parted. The boxes inside were still there, but many were scorched or smeared with soot, and one had a large crack up its side. The pipes in front of them were still spewing gouts of fire, scorch marks widening on the floor; the golem calmly kinked several of the lower ones and parted its fence, boxes sliding out of their enclosure. It saw no reason to stem the fire still blazing out of many of the higher tubes, so it didn't. Gestalt slid aimlessly down the hall, pushing its broom in front of it, and left the inferno behind without a thought.
A wave of stench flowed out of the hallway to Grocer Delight now that the explosion was gone: spattered across the walls and ceiling were chunks of rotting, burning meat. Several globs of what was probably Gormand but could just as easily have been bits of any other zombie at this point dripped into the schrotgolem's path and were calmly gathered into the unspeakable pile of filth and ash its broom was pushing along.
The gawping group by Splash World were nonplussed when a series of boxes and a broom glide silently out from the source of the explosion. Half of it was, anyway. Maxwell and Galus were only too unsurprised to see their competitor emerging from the hellstorm, but the lich and the nun had no idea what it meant.
Clara herself muttered a few syllables; it was a simple spell that let her temporarily see spirits that were interacting with the material plane. Ordinarily these ghosts showed up in at least a vague semblance of the form they had in life, or if they had never been alive embodied the concepts or places or things they represented, but... The boxes were surrounded by turbulent, vaporous shapes and colors, tendrils of which occasionally reached out to caress or surround a nearby object. Watching it made her eyes water, and she quickly dismissed the spell.
The nun moved as though to say something, but caught Maxwell's and Galus's expression and it clicked. "S... Someone you know?"