Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Three: Caelo Ruinam)
01-23-2012, 01:42 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
Had New Ray known what he was about to do, he probably would've relished it a bit more. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a forseeable set of events without near-omniscience, so he had no idea just what he was about to do to Tor.
After all, all he was doing was getting the station to power up sooner than otherwise. Even he didn't see how that could directly affect the other contestants.
-
Tor had been stalking down a hallway and trying to find something to take out his anger on when he came upon the greenhouse. It was an interestingly vertical room, its spiralling structure made of all sorts of glass and metal, and there were many, many plants that Tor couldn't possibly recognize.
More interestingly, though, there were a few that he could recognize.
When humans first found out about Telpori-Hal medicine, there was a bit of culture shock. Drugs in human culture had moved far, far away from the herbal remedies of old, concentrations of the active compounds being packaged up in efficient, time-release capsules that made administration easy and effective. The actual plant origins of many of them had been all but forgotten, and finding out that the Telpori-Han had gone in precisely the opposite direction was a bit of a shock.
Tor, having cultivated a Telpori-Hal's typical garden in his quarters on his old ship, was no stranger to the assorted botanicals his species used for various medical treatments, so he recognized the kalamritul right off the bat. It was kalamritul, no question; the scent, the flowers, the leaf shape, all were precisely right. He couldn't have asked for a better coincidence.
Just as he was wrapping a good amount of the plant around his arms, though, fate decided that luck needed a bit of balancing, and Scofflaw's efficiency changes kicked in. The frequency of core flux changed by a few millihertz, every light in the base became 10% dimmer, and several low-use and high-drain sections of the facility were detached.
Tor's first instinct was that there'd been a gravity failure. They weren't uncommon, and the thought didn't really panic him. Most artificial-gravity systems failed on a somewhat-regular basis, and he wasn't fazed by sudden weightlessness.
When he noticed the clouds whipping by, though, what was actually happening became apparent. The options available to him were fairly limited. Resignedly, he grabbed for a bit more kalamritul and looked around for something hard.
Skydiving was a bit of a niche sport among Telpori-Han. It was simple enough: jump from a height and regenerate on the way down, hitting the ground before it completed. Most of the time, the jumper just reformed and walked away. In a few rare cases, they'd mis-time and end up in their new body and still mid-air. The brochures always made sure to mention how rare that was. They always failed to reassure people like Tor.
-
Skybound Isle was a tiny island that had been in the center of a fairly large lake near Doubleton. Up until recently, it had only been inhabited by a half-sane, tinkering hermit whose greatest accomplishment was not burning off his beard. That had all changed when Lady Midday had begun her assault on all things not to her liking, however; a motley group of adventurers had come to the island, the tinkerer had burned off his beard, and the island had ceased to be in a lake. It had, in a last-ditch effort to reach the floating fortress of Caelo Ruinam, become airborne, propelled by an improbable combination of wooden helicopter blades and rocket boosters. Slowly, shrouded in an artificial cloud to mask it from anyone looking down from the fortess above, it ascended.
"Hard to port!", O'Keele bellowed from the crow's nest. The shout roused Kernitt from his standing nap at the island's wheel, and the old man whirled it around.
"What is it?", demanded Baghim. "O'Keele, what do you see?!"
The spry, wiry archer slid down the island's mast and leaped to the ground. "Parts of the fortress just started falling off, and one's coming down right near us!"
"Dear Lyna," Baghim breathed. "We could be crushed, or worse- revealed! We have to do something!"
"What, like turn hard to port?"
"Yes, exactly!" Evidently the big man had forgotten entirely about what had prompted the conversation.
Fortunately, O'Keele was spared having to explain it to him, as the metal-and-glass spire that was the greenhouse whooshed by, the force of the wind knocking both to the ground.
A second or two passed, and the two were just getting to their feet when a flaming projectile slammed into the ground close enough that the shockwave knocked them down again.
Alex, the group's leader, dashed out of the shack and over to the pair.
"Alex," Baghim exclaimed, "the fortress is falling apart!"
"It is not," O'Keele retorted. "It was pretty clearly intentional, and aside from the ones I saw, it doesn't look like they're planning to knock off any others."
"And what happened here?" Their leader pointed to the crater a short ways away.
"Not sure. Something came down with the part of Ruinam we dodged, that's all we know."
-
Tor felt great. He'd reformed in a nice, warm crater, and nothing seemed to be in a position to bother him. Scofflaw was up in the sky somewhere, and so were the rest of the other contestants. Tor could just wait it out down here on the ground and he'd be fine.
"I think it's a person!", someone said.
It really was nice to be in a big, hot crater like that. Humans used saunas to feel good, but there was more water in the air than was comfortable for a Tempori-Hal.
"Hello? Are you alright in there?"
Wait, what if he piped the excess heat from the Phoenix' engines into a single room? It's not like the energy would be missed; there was plenty of background radiation to go around, after all, all he'd have to do is open up the receptors a bit.
"O'Keele, go get Tock."
"Sure thing, Alex."
Why hadn't anyone done that before? Were there any inherent flaws in the system that would make it infeasible?
Something clanking and metal grabbed Tor's feet and started dragging him out of the crater. It was a shame, it was a nice, warm crater. He'd miss it.
"It appears to be conscious," a buzzy, mechanical voice said.
Tor found himself in front of a stern, authoritative face, which was asking him if he could hear it.
"Yeah, definitely," he replied, his mind still trying to figure out why there weren't hot-rooms on Telpori-Hal ships.
"Ah, good." The face got a bit less stern. "Are you alright?"
"Well, I don't think I've had any kalamritul this strong before, but I'm good, yeah. How are you?"
"...Fine. Do you know where you are?"
"A multiversal battle to the death."
There was an exasperated pause before the face started to talk again. "You just fell from Caelo Ruinam and landed on Skybound Isle."
"Oh, an island? That's interesting; I haven't been on an island in ages."
Alex sighed. "Look, my point is, we're going to be reaching the fortress in about half an hour. When we get there, you're welcome to either stay here or come with us, but if you get in our way, we'll have to assume you're working with Midday."
The news that he wasn't, in fact, going to be spending some nice, relaxing time on the surface would've fazed him if he didn't have quite so much kalamritul in his system. Instead, he just nodded his head a bit and went back to trying to figure out how to make a dry sauna for his ship.
Alex just sighed, turned away from the light-brown, metal-clad humanoid, and stared up at where the fortress was, past the cloud enclosing the flying island. She was going to stop Midday, no matter what the cost, and she wasn't about to worry just because some spaced-out guy had fallen into her party's midst.
Had New Ray known what he was about to do, he probably would've relished it a bit more. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a forseeable set of events without near-omniscience, so he had no idea just what he was about to do to Tor.
After all, all he was doing was getting the station to power up sooner than otherwise. Even he didn't see how that could directly affect the other contestants.
-
Tor had been stalking down a hallway and trying to find something to take out his anger on when he came upon the greenhouse. It was an interestingly vertical room, its spiralling structure made of all sorts of glass and metal, and there were many, many plants that Tor couldn't possibly recognize.
More interestingly, though, there were a few that he could recognize.
When humans first found out about Telpori-Hal medicine, there was a bit of culture shock. Drugs in human culture had moved far, far away from the herbal remedies of old, concentrations of the active compounds being packaged up in efficient, time-release capsules that made administration easy and effective. The actual plant origins of many of them had been all but forgotten, and finding out that the Telpori-Han had gone in precisely the opposite direction was a bit of a shock.
Tor, having cultivated a Telpori-Hal's typical garden in his quarters on his old ship, was no stranger to the assorted botanicals his species used for various medical treatments, so he recognized the kalamritul right off the bat. It was kalamritul, no question; the scent, the flowers, the leaf shape, all were precisely right. He couldn't have asked for a better coincidence.
Just as he was wrapping a good amount of the plant around his arms, though, fate decided that luck needed a bit of balancing, and Scofflaw's efficiency changes kicked in. The frequency of core flux changed by a few millihertz, every light in the base became 10% dimmer, and several low-use and high-drain sections of the facility were detached.
Tor's first instinct was that there'd been a gravity failure. They weren't uncommon, and the thought didn't really panic him. Most artificial-gravity systems failed on a somewhat-regular basis, and he wasn't fazed by sudden weightlessness.
When he noticed the clouds whipping by, though, what was actually happening became apparent. The options available to him were fairly limited. Resignedly, he grabbed for a bit more kalamritul and looked around for something hard.
Skydiving was a bit of a niche sport among Telpori-Han. It was simple enough: jump from a height and regenerate on the way down, hitting the ground before it completed. Most of the time, the jumper just reformed and walked away. In a few rare cases, they'd mis-time and end up in their new body and still mid-air. The brochures always made sure to mention how rare that was. They always failed to reassure people like Tor.
-
Skybound Isle was a tiny island that had been in the center of a fairly large lake near Doubleton. Up until recently, it had only been inhabited by a half-sane, tinkering hermit whose greatest accomplishment was not burning off his beard. That had all changed when Lady Midday had begun her assault on all things not to her liking, however; a motley group of adventurers had come to the island, the tinkerer had burned off his beard, and the island had ceased to be in a lake. It had, in a last-ditch effort to reach the floating fortress of Caelo Ruinam, become airborne, propelled by an improbable combination of wooden helicopter blades and rocket boosters. Slowly, shrouded in an artificial cloud to mask it from anyone looking down from the fortess above, it ascended.
"Hard to port!", O'Keele bellowed from the crow's nest. The shout roused Kernitt from his standing nap at the island's wheel, and the old man whirled it around.
"What is it?", demanded Baghim. "O'Keele, what do you see?!"
The spry, wiry archer slid down the island's mast and leaped to the ground. "Parts of the fortress just started falling off, and one's coming down right near us!"
"Dear Lyna," Baghim breathed. "We could be crushed, or worse- revealed! We have to do something!"
"What, like turn hard to port?"
"Yes, exactly!" Evidently the big man had forgotten entirely about what had prompted the conversation.
Fortunately, O'Keele was spared having to explain it to him, as the metal-and-glass spire that was the greenhouse whooshed by, the force of the wind knocking both to the ground.
A second or two passed, and the two were just getting to their feet when a flaming projectile slammed into the ground close enough that the shockwave knocked them down again.
Alex, the group's leader, dashed out of the shack and over to the pair.
"Alex," Baghim exclaimed, "the fortress is falling apart!"
"It is not," O'Keele retorted. "It was pretty clearly intentional, and aside from the ones I saw, it doesn't look like they're planning to knock off any others."
"And what happened here?" Their leader pointed to the crater a short ways away.
"Not sure. Something came down with the part of Ruinam we dodged, that's all we know."
-
Tor felt great. He'd reformed in a nice, warm crater, and nothing seemed to be in a position to bother him. Scofflaw was up in the sky somewhere, and so were the rest of the other contestants. Tor could just wait it out down here on the ground and he'd be fine.
"I think it's a person!", someone said.
It really was nice to be in a big, hot crater like that. Humans used saunas to feel good, but there was more water in the air than was comfortable for a Tempori-Hal.
"Hello? Are you alright in there?"
Wait, what if he piped the excess heat from the Phoenix' engines into a single room? It's not like the energy would be missed; there was plenty of background radiation to go around, after all, all he'd have to do is open up the receptors a bit.
"O'Keele, go get Tock."
"Sure thing, Alex."
Why hadn't anyone done that before? Were there any inherent flaws in the system that would make it infeasible?
Something clanking and metal grabbed Tor's feet and started dragging him out of the crater. It was a shame, it was a nice, warm crater. He'd miss it.
"It appears to be conscious," a buzzy, mechanical voice said.
Tor found himself in front of a stern, authoritative face, which was asking him if he could hear it.
"Yeah, definitely," he replied, his mind still trying to figure out why there weren't hot-rooms on Telpori-Hal ships.
"Ah, good." The face got a bit less stern. "Are you alright?"
"Well, I don't think I've had any kalamritul this strong before, but I'm good, yeah. How are you?"
"...Fine. Do you know where you are?"
"A multiversal battle to the death."
There was an exasperated pause before the face started to talk again. "You just fell from Caelo Ruinam and landed on Skybound Isle."
"Oh, an island? That's interesting; I haven't been on an island in ages."
Alex sighed. "Look, my point is, we're going to be reaching the fortress in about half an hour. When we get there, you're welcome to either stay here or come with us, but if you get in our way, we'll have to assume you're working with Midday."
The news that he wasn't, in fact, going to be spending some nice, relaxing time on the surface would've fazed him if he didn't have quite so much kalamritul in his system. Instead, he just nodded his head a bit and went back to trying to figure out how to make a dry sauna for his ship.
Alex just sighed, turned away from the light-brown, metal-clad humanoid, and stared up at where the fortress was, past the cloud enclosing the flying island. She was going to stop Midday, no matter what the cost, and she wasn't about to worry just because some spaced-out guy had fallen into her party's midst.