Occasionally mods will be allowing a set number of characters to schedule an involved conversation with a mod regarding the discovery of something in game, as announced on the OOC community or on a mod log. Characters who have signed up for the option will be selected via RNG (with preference given to characters who have not yet had a thread like this), and the thread will be conducted on this page.
You can see a sample thread in the comments below, but in essence, this thread is meant to mimic the conversation a tabletop player might have with their DM. The mod will establish the setting, and you may describe your character's actions and decisions. The mod will respond with reactions and any particular consequences, and the mod and player will move throughout the scenario together, until all questions are satisfied and all actions are taken.
After this informational thread is complete, it's assumed that anything learned within is now common knowledge for the rest of the game. You're still welcome to thread out discussion or discovery of this ICly, but if you'd like to skip ahead to any fallout or follow-up action, that's also fine.
As a note, these threads do not have to be limited to one character in the scene. For the ease of moving threads along quickly, we ask that one player take the reins in terms of writing out the actions of all characters involved in the scene. We have a channel reserved in the Discord channel limited to current thread participants to facilitate OOC discussion of who's doing what for this purpose.
Having smothered those screeches to Alice-levels by word of mod, Plas proceeds to (quietly) complain about being covered in ichor while he tries to wipe it off (while worrying he just helped kill Marti). 9S feels triumphant, because it's a monster, and also an alien. Caleb fumes about the fact that they killed it when Jester cried about it (maybe, since it might not have been Marti!)
Mary, unfortunately the voice of reason, suggests they make sure they not get flanked down the Frumpkin-tunnels and Caleb demands that Plas stick his head down the downwards right-side tunnel(s) to check for goop. Plas complains about doing everything but will do this anyway, same procedure as before. 9S continues to enjoy his job well done.
Down the other tunnel, and the righthand branch, Plas will find that here and there small cracks do spit up black ichor, but it’s nothing that can’t be carefully sidestepped. The tunnel seems otherwise silent and still, aside from the ever present rumbles — which do seem a little louder at this depth.
Caleb wants Plas to keep stretching to see how far he can go, but Caleb is an asshole and Plas is tired of sticking his neck out this far for them all by himself. The rest of the party will catch up to his...head...and then they'll all proceed down the tunnel.
The way is fairly straight, and largely uneventful, but at least 20 minutes of walking. They sink further and further into the mountain, and the rumbling increases noticably. Eventually a faint sound joins it: a rhythmic thudding, as of metal on metal. The ichor that they step around, previously oozing very slowly from the tunnel walls and floor, seems to jump ever so slightly in time with the thudding.
There’s one last bend in the tunnel, and the noises all are loud enough as to potentially be from something just around the corner.
Around the corner is a fairly circular room, what looks like it may once have been a work room. Shelves and cabinets line the edges, and discarded tools are more prevalent here. At the center is the cause of the thudding: a machine that looks to be some kind of drill, with complex parts ramming the head of it repeatedly into the ground at its base. It’s made almost entirely of metal, but seems untouched by the usual ravages of the rest of the city. Various puddles and streams of ichor in the room jump in time with each thud, as it had outside.
The group is gonna very carefully look for a control console! Plas will take a dive if he absolutely needs to but everyone seems to feel very weird about stepping on him so they'll try...not to need him...to do that...
There is a bank of what looks like controls at one side of the room, with various flashing lights. Caleb should be able to understand OPERATION written above it, although the finer points of its labels will be lost on him.
Okay, 9S and Caleb are going to stay with the control panel and start looking for a plug or a power source they can possibly disconnect. Mary and Plas will start searching the work stations for blueprints or plans, especially if they can find one that looks like it belongs to the foreman.
There are an array of buttons below a non-functional screen at the control panel, and what looks like it may once have been a plug on the machine itself — but the metal has twisted and warped, as it does on the limbs of those who encounter the ichor, and what 9S can guess may once have powered the machine is now ruined. It seems it’s being powered some way other than the way it was originally designed to be.
Neither Mary or Plas find blueprints, but Mary uncovers, amid a cluster of partially eaten away papers, what looks to be a hand drawn map. Caleb will be able to read two words on it: BASTION, next to the vague shape of the city, with no real details drawn on, and: HERE? The latter is joined by an X and placed some distance from the city-shape, with what can be identified as the shape of the ravine outside the wall and several other less easily identified shapes between them. Incomprehensible notes have been scrawled across the rest of the page.
The control panel doesn’t seem to be behaving as it usually should. Commands are blocked or only partially received, or never even register as being input at all. 9S does, however, activate a recording from its message center. Loud static crackles suddenly into the room, and a harried voice sounds over the thudding:
“ —Team in Creation says — sent it, but they— “ More static eats whatever words were there, going on for several seconds. “ —down the damn mountain! We have to get that— —nd a team? I don’t care wh— —this pump— —ly going to hold it off so long. It— “
The rest of the recording is lost to static, and the panel finally stops responding to input altogether.
Caleb's going to go stand back at the entrance of the room. Frumpkin will go in his place, along with Mary, 9S, and Plas, to get a look at what's in the hole the drill keeps pounding.
In the hole is, perhaps unsurprisingly, black ichor. Every time the pounding head hits it and withdraws a little more is pulled upwards, along with all the rest of it in the room. The pressure of the drill seems to be forcing it all upward, little by little.
Caleb, 9S and Mary are going to go back to the corner juncture between the tunnel and the room itself. Caleb will cast Leomund's Tiny Hut around the three of them, ideally trying to make sure they can watch Plas and Plas can see them, for moral support. Mary will take the map with her! (Just as an fyi.)
Plas is going to find a gap in the parts of the drill near the top and go inside the drill. He's looking for either, 1) the power source to the drill, so he can disable it, or 2) the machinery controlling the pounding/thudding of the drill into the ground, to stop that. His goal is hopefully to leave enough of it intact to use it to plug the hole as much as possible as soon as he's broken it.
If that can't be done, then he's just going to expand himself inside it until it explodes and then they (he?) will figure out how to plug that hole.
It is agreed upon that if blowing the drill makes the goop start pouring out more, or worse, Mary is to cause a cave-in in this room and she, Caleb and 9S will evacuate. Plas will make his own way to surface...somehow.
When Caleb casts his spell, one of the puddles of ichor on the ground within the hut suddenly leaps, as if with a life of its own, to splatter against the wall outside the hut. The rest of them stay inert, save for the gentle bobbing in time with the machine.
A power source can’t be found within the drill, but Plas can indeed muck up the machinery itself. A few pieces misaligned will prove enough for the machine to slowly tear itself apart, and with several loud, discordant cracks it finally ceases its movements. The hole in the floor remains stilled, the ichor sinking back down around the head of the pump, no longer propelled by it.
Plas is going to get out of the pump and push it down into the hole, trying to plug it up as much as possible. Once he's done with that he'll rejoin the others in the bubble and then they're gonna splitsies ASAP.
While Plas works with the pump, all isn’t still in the hallway beyond. The puddle that Caleb displaced with his spell slides over the floor, skirting the edge of the hut, and into the room with Plas. It stops between him and the group in the hut, and there it gains a bit of volume. A small, shapeless form rises from the puddle, seemingly made of the same substance, about three feet tall.
As Plas arches over the form, the form moves. It arches in the same way, as if tiptoeing (sans any defined legs) over something also in its path, perhaps a little smaller than Plas’s obstacle.
Okay once he's on the other side of it Plas is going to stop shapeshifting and beat a very swift retreat on two feet, in normal human shape, to the bubble.
Caleb has Hold Person on hold in case the goop does something else sketchy.
The form returns to its little mounded shape when it finishes its arch, pauses for a moment, then bobs after Plas. It sprouts first one leg to do so, then another, both of them a fair imitation (if smaller) of bare human legs, save of course for the texture and consistency. It will attempt to make it straight to the edge of the hut and then pause there, its two legs collapsing back into the general shapelessness.
Caleb's gonna get out the phosphorus and cast Wall of Fire, flame side out towards the goop-boy. He's going to make it stretch directly across the room to cut it off at the corner, block off the room entirely. Then Caleb is gonna start power-walking away from this as fast as possible.
It's possible Plas has never been more spooked in his whole goddamn life. He's totally freaked out. He's gotta get as much space between this thing and him. Sorry, goop, but he's abandoned one son already and it's always easier the second time around. Embrace the deadbeat, don't look him up, Luke 2.0. If he can bypass Caleb without disturbing his concentration, he'll even get out ahead of all of them. I cannot understate how badly this has gotten under his skin. He's never wanted to be ordinary more than he does right in this moment. You monsters. 9S is somewhere in this mix of extremely-agitated-let's-get-far-away pack.
Mary's going to be last one out. She's going to continue power-walking with the rest, charging up her powers. As soon as she's ready she's gonna shoot, and they're going to bolt out of here like bats out of hell. She's going to bring it all down and block the path off behind them.
The shape jerks away from the fire, although, if anyone looks back before Mary brings the house down, there’s a little shape outlined in the fire, bobbing and weaving, wearing a pale face with two dark spots where eyes might be. Then the roof collapses with Mary’s assistance, and the shape disappears.
The rest of their trip is unimpeded. The rumbling has ceased with the destruction of the drill, and only leftover ichor remains in the shaft, nothing new has been pushed from underground.
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Having smothered those screeches to Alice-levels by word of mod, Plas proceeds to (quietly) complain about being covered in ichor while he tries to wipe it off (while worrying he just helped kill Marti). 9S feels triumphant, because it's a monster, and also an alien. Caleb fumes about the fact that they killed it when Jester cried about it (maybe, since it might not have been Marti!)
Mary, unfortunately the voice of reason, suggests they make sure they not get flanked down the Frumpkin-tunnels and Caleb demands that Plas stick his head down the downwards right-side tunnel(s) to check for goop. Plas complains about doing everything but will do this anyway, same procedure as before. 9S continues to enjoy his job well done.
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There’s one last bend in the tunnel, and the noises all are loud enough as to potentially be from something just around the corner.
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Neither Mary or Plas find blueprints, but Mary uncovers, amid a cluster of partially eaten away papers, what looks to be a hand drawn map. Caleb will be able to read two words on it: BASTION, next to the vague shape of the city, with no real details drawn on, and: HERE? The latter is joined by an X and placed some distance from the city-shape, with what can be identified as the shape of the ravine outside the wall and several other less easily identified shapes between them. Incomprehensible notes have been scrawled across the rest of the page.
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“ —Team in Creation says — sent it, but they— “ More static eats whatever words were there, going on for several seconds. “ —down the damn mountain! We have to get that— —nd a team? I don’t care wh— —this pump— —ly going to hold it off so long. It— “
The rest of the recording is lost to static, and the panel finally stops responding to input altogether.
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Plas is going to find a gap in the parts of the drill near the top and go inside the drill. He's looking for either, 1) the power source to the drill, so he can disable it, or 2) the machinery controlling the pounding/thudding of the drill into the ground, to stop that. His goal is hopefully to leave enough of it intact to use it to plug the hole as much as possible as soon as he's broken it.
If that can't be done, then he's just going to expand himself inside it until it explodes and then they (he?) will figure out how to plug that hole.
It is agreed upon that if blowing the drill makes the goop start pouring out more, or worse, Mary is to cause a cave-in in this room and she, Caleb and 9S will evacuate. Plas will make his own way to surface...somehow.
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A power source can’t be found within the drill, but Plas can indeed muck up the machinery itself. A few pieces misaligned will prove enough for the machine to slowly tear itself apart, and with several loud, discordant cracks it finally ceases its movements. The hole in the floor remains stilled, the ichor sinking back down around the head of the pump, no longer propelled by it.
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Plas is going to get out of the pump and push it down into the hole, trying to plug it up as much as possible. Once he's done with that he'll rejoin the others in the bubble and then they're gonna splitsies ASAP.
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It's teeny, so Plas will try to go around it, or over it, or in some way bypass it to rejoin the rest of them.
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Okay once he's on the other side of it Plas is going to stop shapeshifting and beat a very swift retreat on two feet, in normal human shape, to the bubble.
Caleb has Hold Person on hold in case the goop does something else sketchy.
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Caleb's gonna get out the phosphorus and cast Wall of Fire, flame side out towards the goop-boy. He's going to make it stretch directly across the room to cut it off at the corner, block off the room entirely. Then Caleb is gonna start power-walking away from this as fast as possible.
It's possible Plas has never been more spooked in his whole goddamn life. He's totally freaked out. He's gotta get as much space between this thing and him. Sorry, goop, but he's abandoned one son already and it's always easier the second time around. Embrace the deadbeat, don't look him up, Luke 2.0. If he can bypass Caleb without disturbing his concentration, he'll even get out ahead of all of them. I cannot understate how badly this has gotten under his skin. He's never wanted to be ordinary more than he does right in this moment. You monsters. 9S is somewhere in this mix of extremely-agitated-let's-get-far-away pack.
Mary's going to be last one out. She's going to continue power-walking with the rest, charging up her powers. As soon as she's ready she's gonna shoot, and they're going to bolt out of here like bats out of hell. She's going to bring it all down and block the path off behind them.
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The rest of their trip is unimpeded. The rumbling has ceased with the destruction of the drill, and only leftover ichor remains in the shaft, nothing new has been pushed from underground.