Apocalypse Junction

Locales abroad of the city centers, from out of doors to the outer planes.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway

"Mist Anders." chirps the squirrel. "Patron of animals, winds, and travelers. Which could include you! The travelers I mean, not winds and animals. Unless you want to. Uh. Anyway, I'm here to get you people out of here as best I can. It sounds like there are complications?" he asks innocently. Hm. This guy is kind of big. Maybe he could magic up a cart or something.
"I think Tristan has taken care of a good chunk of the zombies outside. So you're good for now. But you uh. You can't really survive indefinitely sitting in the same place."

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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

A tendril, like many things poked thus far, is poked with the spear.

It feels squishy. Kind of rubbery. And it flicks away at the touch. Doesn't really go anywhere given that it is growing out of a tree, but it still seems to protest to this abuse in its own non-verbal way.

Then?

Smelling!

Also a good thing to do if poking with a stick doesn't yield the information one needs.

There is no scent of fear.

But there is a smell like fresh snow mingled with ashes and a hint of ozone. Depending on how magically attuned the figure is, they may be able to tell that whatever this stuff is, it's strongly attuned elementally speaking. It DEFINITELY doesn't smell like the deep sea. Or brine. Or fish-rot. Still concerning, though.

Utter stillness continues to grip the forest, the silence heavy and oppressive like a great weight bearing down on the traveler.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

The figure is about as magically attuned as a rock that also happens to be Wenomir-shaped. Which is to say, not at all.
Not to say that the lack of magic can't be a magic of its own.
But the figure do know where fish belong. It was in strange underground houses made of metal, not in forests made of stone!
Which meant this place was lying to them which was quite impressive as it wasn't even saying anything. It was lying with smell. Very deceptive.

They put their mask on properly and then calls out as if to counter the silence. "ANYONE THERE?!"

A pause, as if waiting for a reply.

"NO NEED TO BE SHY!"

Another pause as the traveler takes a look around, starting to move in the direction of that smell if there is one.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Ruined Motorway]

"That squirrel is talking," the balding man repeats, apparently registering none of the actual words here. Considering he hadn't actually looked out the window to see the centaur it is understandable that this is something of a shock.

"Wasn't no talking squirrel out there before. Are you that same horseman?" the woman asks.

Which is...

I mean, honestly, that isn't an unreasonable question to ask.

IS he that same horseman?

Or is this just the patron squirrel saint of beasts and travelers?

All important questions that need to be answered here.


[Petrified Forest]

No fish smell!

Very very specifically no fish smell.

Just the smell of stone and ash and ozone.

No need to worry about fish. Or think about fish. No fish at all here.

The stranger begins following the not-fish smell which leads to the small stream nearby with its patches of concerning glowing water. IN the water are similarly glowing blue... eels?

They look something like eels.

But not quite.

The eels are all squirming around pointlessly, since there isn't anything else alive in the water. Just small eels about the size of a pen. Much too small to be poked with a spear effectively. Will their non-pokability prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for the traveler?

Stay tuned to find out!
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

What's an 'eel'? Well, whatever they were it was suspicious.
Being the only living creatures around with everything around them eaten it lead the wanderer to believe they might have something to do with it or at least know something about it.

The stranger peers down at the stream and waves at the creatures. "Hey, you aren't the monsters eating everything are you?" They inquire just in case they could talk. This forest looked enchanted after all so you'd never know!

"Yeah, I though so too. This is normally when the people that know stuff do their things to find out what has happened here but right now it's just me so..." The wanderer demonstrates by poking the water the creatures wiggle around in with their spear. "Nothing? Yeah, I figured that too..." The wanderer kneels down to see if they could find any tracks or whatnot. They were pretty good at tracking at least so if they could find out anything it would be through that method.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway

"Of course. Horses can't climb through windows so I needed something smaller. I don't think you people understand what's going on. I think you've been separated from your world and landed in ours. Of course your world seems to be pretty crap and covered in zombies so honestly I feel like you're mostly better off? I don't think you'll be home for Christmas though." he doesn't know if they had that. Or family to go home to. He decides not to broach the subject.

"Point is, magic is real here, and two very magical people are attempting to save your lives."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

Well obviously an eel is what you get when you take a fish and make it long like a snake.

Easy!

Anyway, the monsters eating everything don't respond to the mysterious stranger, as they're a bunch of weird glowing eels squirming around in the water. While some eels will be happy to eat any pizzas you throw at them, most are disinclined to talk. But this IS the Nexus so you never know, right?

Then the water is spear-poked.

This provides significantly less problem solving than the stranger might have hoped. Though one of the eels DOES split in half about a third of the way down its body length, revealing a mouth with WAY too big teeth which which it tries to clamp onto the spear. This probably won't do a great deal of anything to the spear but sometimes it's the thought that counts.

Regardless of what the poke-master decides to do, there ARE in fact some deer tracks nearby. As well as some human tracks.

Looks like a human that wasn't wearing any shoes.

Those tracks lead away from the stream uphill, toward a rather conspicuous looking wooden tower on top of a nearby hill. Maybe a fire lookout?


[Ruined Motorway]

"So you're a magic talking squirrel horse man and we just fell through a wardrobe into Narnia?" the balding man asks. His tone is a bit incredulous, but considering the situation he can probably be forgiven. "Should I watch out for witches, too?"

A fair question.

"Beats watching out for zombies," the woman retorts as she gets one shoulder under the unconscious man's arm. "C'mon, help me move him. That other guy had a... a flame thrower or something? If they can burn the zombies down we can get out of here."

"Yeah but what happens when something worse than a shambler shows up, huh? What then?" mister bald guy retorts.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

"Whoops, did I scare ya' little guys?" The stranger remarks as they pull away the spear. "Sorry about that. It's my only way of prodding stuff without using my hands." They reach into their robes and pull out an wrapped-up item which reveals itself to be strips of dried meat once the wandered have pulled back the carefully wrapped papers.

They take out a single strip of meat and dips it into the stream. "Here ya' go. Put in a good word for me to your parents!"

They then take a strip for themselves to chew on underneath their mask before getting up to follow those human tracks. Maybe whoever they belonged to could tell them about what was going on here?
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

The eels are provided with MEAT!

They clamp onto it and within a few seconds it has turned to lifeless grey stone and sank to the bottom of the stream.

Which is concerning.

Then it's time to start following some tracks! Away from the stream, up over the hills, through the petrified forest. And toward the sound of an elk bellowing. The animal sounds pained. And when she spies the beast it's clear why. Patches of its flesh have been replaced with jagged grey stone shot through with neon blue veins. A mess of twitching tendrils hang limply from its mouth. Where it ought to have antlers there are instead craggy stone points. Its head has been shoved to the side making room for a SECOND head; a horrible serpentine thing that looks like a scaled up version of the eels.

The animal wanders in circles blindly, bellowing out its agony.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

Huh.

Well, the wanderer is pretty sure the water must have been playing a trick on her.
You couldn't turn meat into stone. Unless that stone was the fist used for stone-paper-scissors of course but that was a different matter entirely.

They consider this matter as they follow the trail. The act of tracking being almost second-nature at this point, allowing her thoughts to wander.

Since wasn't there snakes that could turn people into stone? Since those little things kinda looked like snakes didn't they? And the wanderer knew all about snakes and they rarely doing their reputation any favors-

The strangers trail of thoughts are interrupted by that heartbreaking noise.
Oh no!

She breaks into a sprint in the direction of the cry and can soon be seen peeking out from behind one of the petrified trees.
The wanderer let's out a sigh as the spots the animal. Why could she never meet any nice snakes? Why did they always have to be so mean?
Stepping behind the tree again the stranger takes a deep breath.
Okay, she knew what to do here.

Peeking out again the wanderer makes sure she hasn't made any sudden noises before taking aim and throwing the spear with tremendous force right at the elk. Aiming right where she knew its heart would be.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

You can turn meat into stone if there is magical nonsense involved.

And no, these snakes don't seem very nice. Sometimes snakes can be nice. But this doesn't appear to be one of those times. Maybe one of these days out heroes can meet a nice snake. That would be a pretty great change of pace, right? Meeting a nice snake?

So.

Mutated elk.

The traveler HURLS her spear at the beast and transfixes it straight through the heart! Thankfully there wasn't more stone growing over that spot otherwise stabbing it would have been much harder. The beast gives one final bellow of pain as a spray of disconcertingly neon blue blood spurts out of it before toppling over. The serpent head, however, doesn't react so placidly. It begins hissing and thrashing and its whole face splits open and SIX MORE smaller faces come wriggling out and flailing around wildly and it's all really disturbing.

After about thirty seconds of violent convulsions the mutant head likewise falls still.

Where the glowing blue blood pools on the ground little tendrils start growing.

Weird.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

The wanderer knew nice sneks but the majority seemed pretty awful. Especially these kinds of sneks.
She sticks her tongue out in disgust when she sees the result. Not the elk dying but all that other stuff.
Then she grips her spear which has somehow returned back to her hand and gets closer to investigate.

Meaning that she's going to poke the mutated heads with her spear a whole lot more of course.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

All the other stuff WAS pretty bad, to be fair.

So.

Now comes more poking.

The elk AND its parasitic friends are rapidly turning into stone. Not a smooth marble statue. Oh no. It's crumbly, porous rock akin to volcanic scoria. The sort of stone that might be nice for landscaping but not much else.

The fire in this creature has died. The water has dried up. All that remains is earth and air.

Weird.

Poking the corpse neither hinders nor hastens the process.

Silence, once again, settles over the petrified forest.

...
....
.....

Which is immediately cut by someone yelling, "YOU UGLY SON OF A BITCH!" really loudly from the direction of the fire tower.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

Whoa, they really were turning to stone!
If she hadn't seen it happening right in front of her eyes she would have scarcely believed it.
Did that mean the creatures ate rock? But they were also rock themselves apparently-

The trees! Had they turned the trees into rocks too?!

She audibly gasps at the revelation when she hears the yelling.
Oh right, the guy tracks!

Putting her spear over her shoulder she starts to make a beeline towards the sound, jumping over the gross rocks as she runs if there's a need for it.
It sounded like someone needed help and she'd be the one to provide it!
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

Yelling often means something is going down.

Especially in cursed forests full of oppressive stillness.

The stranger runs through the woods, vaulting over the odd fallen logs and around stoney trees until they find themselves at the base of the wooden (but not petrified!) fire tower. Of note are two mutated bear statues in varying states of horribleness standing in stony stillness around a picnic table near the base of the tower.

There's ALSO fragments of a human statue that, given all the neon blue slime nearby, must have split open just a few minutes ago.

While the stranger is contemplating what these things could mean someone jumps off the top of the tower. The someone is a human(?) man in a rather cobbled together looking suit of scrappy armor and a pair of distinctively dragony looking iron horns on his head. He lands with a stormy blast, eating the force of the impact and sending little stones bouncing away from him. He's holding onto a bardiche of fine make, more or less a stick with a large axe blade affixed at both the end and further down the wooden haft.

A fellow wielder of pointy sticks!

Obviously a trustworthy fellow.

He has a few gashes on him, but that is pretty quickly fixed when he pulls out a small flask and knocks it back before tossing the glass over his shoulder.

After a moment he notices the travel and quickly takes a combat ready stance.

"You aren't going to explode into a mess of snakes are you?" he asks suspiciously.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

It's quite an athletic display running through the woods in all those grabs yet the stranger goes full throttle through the petrified woods. Bouncing over stone and log until she finally reaches the tower.

Oh two of those giant dog-animals. But even as little as she knew about them it was pretty obvious these didn't look right. For one, they weren't usually made of stone.
Her attention has just turned to the remains of what looked like it might have been a person when an actual living person came flying from above!
"AHh!"

Reflexively, even as she yelps, she has angled the spear 90 degrees downwards. Now ready to very aggressively poke any monsters invading her spear-enforced personal space.
But it looked like this fellow wanted to talk. Guess he was the one screaming earlier?
Her pose relaxes ever so slightly. "Uh, explode? No, I don't feel explode-y today." She allows herself to take one hand off the spear and wave at the man. "I'm Raheeda by the way. Nice to meet you."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Rebonack wrote: Jan 20, 2023 6:03 pm
[Ruined Motorway]

"So you're a magic talking squirrel horse man and we just fell through a wardrobe into Narnia?" the balding man asks. His tone is a bit incredulous, but considering the situation he can probably be forgiven. "Should I watch out for witches, too?"

A fair question.

"Beats watching out for zombies," the woman retorts as she gets one shoulder under the unconscious man's arm. "C'mon, help me move him. That other guy had a... a flame thrower or something? If they can burn the zombies down we can get out of here."

"Yeah but what happens when something worse than a shambler shows up, huh? What then?" mister bald guy retorts.
Ruined Motorway

"No, I'm a horse person with magic based on wind, travel, and animals, and talking carries over. And yes you should watch for witches, but probably not here."

Mist waves his tail.
"Sorry, my only form with hands is too big for this room. I can help when you get outside. And for the record, if something worse than a shambler shows up, your wooden door and shotgun wouldn't really help. Frankly if you stay I give you two weeks, tops."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

For a brief moment two pointy sticks are brandished at two pointy stick holders.

But that isn't the battle for today.

When Raheeda confesses her lack of impending detonation the fellow the the bardiche likewise relaxes his guard. "Okay, okay that's good to hear. There's been too much of that in the past few minutes," he says, glancing back at the tower and-

His eyes fix on the shattered once-human statue and its goopy fragments littering the ground.

"Wait that guy was still in one piece when I was checking the tower."

This is, of course, a concerning revelation. It isn't a concerning revelation shortly followed by a jumpscare, however. But it IS followed by a decapitated, partly petrified human stumbling down the stairs from the tower. Sprouting out of his neck is a boutique of writhing blue eels, which is of course quite horrible.

"Turned out the people in the tower weren't people and I didn't have much room to swing up there," the fellow says as he grips the shaft of his weapon between the head's two loops with one hand and further back on the shaft with the other. Then he points the pointy end at the approaching horror and-

kra-KOOM!

Fires a shotgun blast of metal fragments and lightning at the thing. The force of the impact hurls the horror off its feet, leaving it momentarily stunned as it quite literally gets its breath knocked out of it.

"I'm Glycon. There's probably going to be another one of those things coming down the- oop, there it is now," he says, pointing his weapon at the second horror that begins climbing down. This one, unlike the other, still has a head. Though its body is a mess of porous stone full of neon blue ooze and tendrils.

"You don't know what these things are, do you? I'm pretty sure they don't belong to any of the old gods."



[Ruined Motorway]

"My wooden door and shotgun were FINE before this idiot brought someone who had been gooped to my doorstep!" the balding man yells back. THen glares at the woman. "I should have just left you two to die. Everything was FINE before you showed up and brought the zombies with you."

Wow.

Rude.

They say a crisis brings out what's really in a person's heart.

And what's in this guy's heart is apparently being a jerk.

"I really don't care anymore, Bob. We're leaving," the woman insists.

Now...

They just need to get past the barricades and leave!

Easy, right? Especially since Tristan has got all the zombies distracted.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway

”’Kay cool. You can sling blame all you want, doesn’t change that you have a limited food supply with no livestock or crops to replenish it. Have fun starving to death in a few weeks. Pray when you want me to come bail you out.”

Mist turns to go before realizing he has to be explicit.
”I’m serious, by the way. Pray and I’ll probably hear it.”
And then he scurries out to meet the lady and her unconscious friend by the door.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Rebonack wrote: Jan 22, 2023 3:37 am [Petrified Forest]

For a brief moment two pointy sticks are brandished at two pointy stick holders.

But that isn't the battle for today.

When Raheeda confesses her lack of impending detonation the fellow the the bardiche likewise relaxes his guard. "Okay, okay that's good to hear. There's been too much of that in the past few minutes," he says, glancing back at the tower and-

His eyes fix on the shattered once-human statue and its goopy fragments littering the ground.

"Wait that guy was still in one piece when I was checking the tower."

This is, of course, a concerning revelation. It isn't a concerning revelation shortly followed by a jumpscare, however. But it IS followed by a decapitated, partly petrified human stumbling down the stairs from the tower. Sprouting out of his neck is a boutique of writhing blue eels, which is of course quite horrible.

"Turned out the people in the tower weren't people and I didn't have much room to swing up there," the fellow says as he grips the shaft of his weapon between the head's two loops with one hand and further back on the shaft with the other. Then he points the pointy end at the approaching horror and-

kra-KOOM!

Fires a shotgun blast of metal fragments and lightning at the thing. The force of the impact hurls the horror off its feet, leaving it momentarily stunned as it quite literally gets its breath knocked out of it.

"I'm Glycon. There's probably going to be another one of those things coming down the- oop, there it is now," he says, pointing his weapon at the second horror that begins climbing down. This one, unlike the other, still has a head. Though its body is a mess of porous stone full of neon blue ooze and tendrils.

"You don't know what these things are, do you? I'm pretty sure they don't belong to any of the old gods."
[Petrified Forest]

"There's-" Raheeda gestures towards the monster coming down the stairs but it seems like the man has already noticed as he's blasting it with a shotgun.
"Oh." He got one of those dynamic sticks. Like a bow without a string and a lot more explosive. She had never been able to figure those out.

But as she second one climbs down those very same stairs it might suddenly find that there's a very pointy stick impaling its chest. Since in but a instant it seems to have somehow left Raheeda's hand and struck it. "Eh... sorry, no. I don't know a lot." Apart from spear related things it seems. "What's an 'old god'?"
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Ruined Motorway]

Bob scowls at the squirrel.

SCOWLS!

He has YEARS worth of food at his minimart! Assuming he continues to ration it.

"Fine! Get out of here! I don't need none of your carcasses laying around here anyway!" he yells after them as they head down the stairs.

There's an empty fridge shoved up against the front door of the minimart to prevent anything from getting in. The woman lays down her unconscious friend on the floor and begins shoving on the fridge, slowly scooting it out of the way.

"Could I get some help?"

If he can turn into beasts can't he turn into... like... a bear or something? Those are pretty strong.


[Petrified Forest]

DYNAMIC STICK!

That's a pretty good name for it.

You have to admit, though, that a shotgun axe is a pretty great weapon, as far as weapons go. You can axe things OR you can shotgun things! Both are very helpful when you find the need to inflict significant violence on something nearby without actually getting close to it. One of the major downsides of the bardiche is, of course, its relatively short haft compared to other polearms. But the addition of a shotgun nicely solves that problem!

So!

Now there's a zombie with a spear sticking out of it. The trusses on the bottom of the tower are pretty close together and the spear stuck into the zombie through a narrow gap in them. This results in quite a bit of clattering as the zombie continues trying to move but is busy getting hung up on things as long as the spear remains lodged in it. The OTHER zombie is rather shakily standing back up after getting laid out by the shotgun blast.

It's at about this point that Glycon pulls a small iron object from a pouch on his belt. "They're... gods, I guess? From a long time ago? Primordial maybe? Look, I'm not a priest or anything. I just know they started waking up and dumping their servants into the world and that ruined everything."

A crackle of lightning licks across the iron ball moments before he tosses it in the general direction of the tower.

The ball proceeds to unfurl into some sort of horrible horned serpent crackling with electricity and covered in grinding iron scales like the teeth of a rock-drill. It wraps around the recently shotgunned zombie and begins hugging it rather violently.

"I don't think these guys are servants of the old gods, though. Not exactly nice. Just once it would be great if I didn't have to deal with zombies."

Ugh.

Zombies.

Glycon has definitely got zombie fatigue.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

Yeah, weren't all gods old? Certainly older than her at least. They were pretty good at ruining things though, she had to agree on that part.
"Pretty sure zombies are just magical slaves or something, servants get compensated." An important distinction!

The spear is now in Raheeda's hands again. But it's also still impaled in the zombie. Huh.

With her still free hand she gestures at the creature now squeezing the unlife out of the zombie. "So what's up with the snake?" She inquires rather casually.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway

Mist squares up to the refridgerator with a confident look.
"Let me help!" His form stretches and swells-
into a giraffe, which immediately smashes his head on the ceiling and drops back into a squirrel.
"Ugh. Wrong animal. Do you have any idea how many animals there are? Too many. Always reaching for the wrong ones."
Then he poofs into a black bear (all of Mist's forms keep the scarf, the flute on a belt around his waist, and the ring, which usually expands to being a silver bracelet on forms without fingers) and begins helping with the fridge.
"Take him outside when you're done. I'll put this back when we're done here. I can't leave Bob with a giant hole in his defense even if he's an asshole."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

"...I think Old God servants get compensated?" Glycon replies, though he does sound very certain. "The payment is probably bad, though. 'Join the Hungering Hart and you get to be a horrible monster that eats people instead of getting eaten by a horrible monster!' Bet they don't even get vacation time."

The zombies should unionize or something.

"The snake?" he replies, as if he had already forgotten it was there. "Oh right, that."

It's busy crushing the zombie to bits.

"I stole some power from the Old God Typhon. Mugged the guy, really. So I can use that to do some really useful things like conjuring up metal snakes."

It's a really practical ability with a wide variety of applications.

"...you know I was expecting whatever hatched out of that statue to have attacked us by now."

A loud hiss is all the warning our heroes get before something horrible leaps out of a nearby tree and tries to tackle Raheeda. REALLY horrible. An eel-like mouth with seven smaller snakish necks and heads squirming out of it. An awful frog-like body with six arms ending in disquietingly human hands. A long tail ending in a hook-ringed sucker. All slick and slimy and dripping blue goop.

"Oh there it is."


[Ruined Motorway]

Donk.

The woman just sort of...

Stands there.

And watches a self-proclaimed god of sorts smack his head on the ceiling.

Now she's wondering if there's still time to change her mind.

So! Fridge moved. Thankfully the wind is still blowing their scent away from the zombies otherwise they probably would have noticed them. As it stands they're still being slowly lead away by Tristan waaaaay over there. He seems to be doing pretty well!

By the time Mist gets back the woman will be squinting at Tristan in the distance. "That isn't a flame thrower, is it?"

Nope.

More magic.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Keeper »

Ruined Motorway

Mist likes to think his occasional bumbling is endearing.
A few minutes and several rounds of animal shapes later Mist puts the fridge back in place, scoots through a gap in the window boards, and returns to centaur shape , laying down in the dusty dirt.
”Yeah I don’t know it’s some kind of molten metal throwing spear? I don’t get it. Anyway load him up and I’ll carry him. Try not to poke his face on my sword.”
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Shadowcaller
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Shadowcaller »

Rebonack wrote: Jan 23, 2023 5:23 am [Petrified Forest]

"...I think Old God servants get compensated?" Glycon replies, though he does sound very certain. "The payment is probably bad, though. 'Join the Hungering Hart and you get to be a horrible monster that eats people instead of getting eaten by a horrible monster!' Bet they don't even get vacation time."

The zombies should unionize or something.

"The snake?" he replies, as if he had already forgotten it was there. "Oh right, that."

It's busy crushing the zombie to bits.

"I stole some power from the Old God Typhon. Mugged the guy, really. So I can use that to do some really useful things like conjuring up metal snakes."

It's a really practical ability with a wide variety of applications.

"...you know I was expecting whatever hatched out of that statue to have attacked us by now."

A loud hiss is all the warning our heroes get before something horrible leaps out of a nearby tree and tries to tackle Raheeda. REALLY horrible. An eel-like mouth with seven smaller snakish necks and heads squirming out of it. An awful frog-like body with six arms ending in disquietingly human hands. A long tail ending in a hook-ringed sucker. All slick and slimy and dripping blue goop.

"Oh there it is."
[Petrified Forest]

"You mugged a god? Awesome! Wish I could do that."

She took a brief moment to consider how one did just that when he asks about the creature hatched from the statue.
"Huh-"
Though before she has a chance to finish that sentence she turns to that all-too-familiar hissing sound and-

Oh.

It does manage to tackle her to the ground but it might just have impaled itself on her spear on the way there. Since that was the practical thing about pointed sticks, they let gravity and stuff do most of the work for them. There was a reason they were often used against cavalry especially, the faster the foe the harder it was to stop before they ran into a pointy stick.
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Rebonack
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Rebonack »

[Petrified Forest]

"You probably could, just need the opportunity," Glycon replies but then there are, sadly, some complications.

The complication, in this case, is the horrible monster impaled on the warrior's spear. It's flailing and snapping and generally being very unpleasant at her. Just... all sorts of awful blue goop going everywhere.

"Ah, there it is," Glycon says before hauling back and swatting the monster with his bardiche pretty darn hard. Hard enough to dislodge it from the spear and send it tumbling away. In spite of all these grevious wounds the monster doesn't appear to be dying. It just bounces a few times before rolling into a weird crouch, hissing menacingly.

Those gashes and stab wounds are scabbing over with stone.

Very annoying.

Also annoying when it leaps at Raheeda again.

What's this thing's problem, anyway?


[Ruined Motorway]

And lo, the unconscious guy gets draped over Mist's back!

Said guy smells really bad.

Like...

Gross low tide ocean smells.

Yuck.

Our heroes now have a little bit of an issue. Tristan is still dealing with all those zombies and it looks like MORE are coming from downwind, follow the scent trail that's being created by their starfish friends. Tristan will... probably be fine? But getting surrounded by zombies is never great and the people Mist has retrieved are probably vulnerable to getting gooped.

What do?
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Petrified Forest]

"Like when they're taking a bath or something?" Raheeda inquires as she's getting up from the ground.

Since she very much doubted gods took baths. Come to think of it, they probably smelled awful behind all that holy energy or whatnot.
But once the monster-frog-zombie-thing leaps at her again she tumbles away and attempts to stab the creature in the side before she continues stumbling away from it.

She's somehow managing to come off as clumsy and agile at the same time, like she's just doing all this on accident.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Keeper »

Ruined Motorway

Mist looks around, assessing the situation.
”Okay so here’s my idea. We get you to Tristan’s bike. We wave him over, he can run for it back to it and hop on with you and we all get the hell out of here.”
Tristan can probably run pretty fast, right? Surely fast enough to get to the bike on short notice.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Rebonack »

[Petrified forest]

"More like little bits of them are dangling from their pockets and you just grab it while they aren't looking," Glycon says as he makes a wide sweep with his bardiche at the frogsnake thing, lobbing a crecent of scything force at it.

The iron snake appears to be done hugging the first zombie and moves on to the second one that's still pinned.

As for the monster, it gets stabbed pretty well shortly before the wind cutter blows straight through it. The attack doesn't just chop it in two, rather it begins gasping as the breath is drawn from its body and wounds begin randomly slashing across it. That stony armor its scabs were making begins eroding as well.

Not a great time for it. In spite of this it lashes at the spear wielder with its numerous tiny tongue mouths.

It seems off balance. The wanderer can land a killing blow.


[Ruined Motorway]

Sure! Tristan can run plenty fast! Just have to get his attention. And his bike is right over there.

The woman yells to get his attention.

The starfish zombies can't hear so who cares, right?

Tristan waves back. He seems to get the idea.

As our heroes are approaching the bike trouble arises. In this case a zombie totally covered in starfish flesh and weird... flowery looking things? leaps out from behind a burned out car!

Judging from the way the woman cries out in horror this is probably bad.

Several of the flowers things lash out and aim to snap shut on our heroes! Turns out that they are full of fast acting paralytic venom! Yay!
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