Next chapter of the D&D storyline; enjoy!
Thankfully there were no turrets on the floor we landed on, also thankfully we somehow landed on soft ground.
“Whew, at least there's enough concrete here for me to use.” Odin said, getting up. I looked at the ground, it looked like soft sand.
“So you use earth magic then?” Iona asked, brushing the excess out of her hair.
“Short version, yes. Let's leave it at that.” He said, dusting his armor. “Now, we better figure out how to get out of here.”
“Considering we have no idea where we are, why we're here, or how to even get out?” Riley said as he tried to empty his guns of sand. Odin pulled something out of his pocket and checked it.
“Well damn. My way out won't work...” He said, replacing it.
“I might have an answer.” Marcus piped up; holding the notepad he had found. “Look at this.” He pulled a page out and handed it to Iona. “The whole thing is a schematic on this gun. It supposedly makes a sort of portal, you know, put one end one place the other end somewhere else, and you can pop in between the two spots. Well this has some extra modifications.” He pointed to the bottom of the page. “Apparently there's a prototype somewhere here that not only creates the portals between two places, but can also create a portal between dimensions. Short of digging our way out of here, I think this is our best bet.”
“So we're going to go looking for this portal gun thing then?” Aiden said.
“Sounds like our best option. I was supposed to figure out why the Solarus are here, but I don't think I'm going to be figuring that out now.” Odin said. “Let's get the heck outta here.”
We had ended up in some sort of office complex, every now and again we passed an area with windows that over looked what looked like an obstacle course. There was not as much resistance, every now and again we spotted some Solarus fighting turrets, we would either clean up the remains or just slip away.
Eventually we entered what looked like a storage facility. There was a handful of Solarus lurking around, one even managed to nail Jase in the side. Looked like another kidney blow, but Cassandra was already healing him before he even hit the ground. Iona, however, found a sword hidden in one of the rooms, along with a weird fruit. The fruit looked inedible, but considering the equipment attached to it that seemed to be taking readings, it looked important. Iona kept the blade, and we found an elevator to a lower floor.
“You know, I can see you down there. And there is nothing down there, well... Nothing you would care about. Just death. Leave before I have to turn the defense systems on. Oh, too late.” That damn voice again.
The room we entered had a lot of pillars, and a small circle looking object in the center. A red beam came from its “eye” as it scanned the room. It hooked onto Odin and made a chirruping noise. The beam turned blue and a rocket fired. Odin barely blocked it with a wall of rock.
“Most of the room is concrete, might be safer if we tunnel.” He said, hiding behind his wall. Most of us had adopted a safe position from behind various pillars. He smashed his fist into the ground, and the floor began shifting. It bulged outwards as a tunnel was crafted under our feet.
“Careful, don't let it see you too long.” Iona said quickly, as she behind a nearby pillar, then into the new hole. Slowly we all made our way to safety; Odin watched carefully from above so as to direct the tunnel to the only door out. For better or for worse we left the tunnel into a small room.
Once Odin entered we closed the door. There was only one table in the room and a lot of machines on the sides; all of them taking readings.
“That's it!” Marcus said, picking something up off the table. It looked vaguely like a gun. As soon as he did the sound of alarms filled the room and the voice came back on.
“Warning! Expensive materials endangered, morality core override. Neuro-toxin emitters online.” A green gas began to fill the room. We turned to Marcus who was already shakily looking the gun at a rapid pace.
“God I hope this works!” He said, pulling one of the triggers. A hole opened in midair, much like the one was had found before coming here. We didn't have much time to think though, so we piled through; into night air.
And so ends the groups first trip into the Portal world, which is technically the same world as Half-Life. Which we currently are in the middle of what is technically our second trip, following Freeman.
ReplyDeleteStill, we were all very new to this, so sometimes things did not go as I expected. The turrets for example were far too weak on our first play sessions. I buffed them several times later but the group still figured out how to get around them easily.
Also around this time the Solarus were being outclassed, but they're intentioned to be a swarm enemy; so they should be fairly easy to kill.
I would also like to point out, we began developing some D&D stereotypes around now, the guy who plays Aiden/Ceric was a World of Warcraft min/maxer for those who know what that means they'll understand. For the rest, he loves to balance numbers and get an noticeable edge. He can also be a bit pushy, so early on I caved to his wants a little too easily. I'm still trying to reign him in from the early advances.
The other character of note here is Marcus. Supposedly a magic user from the El Goonish Shive world, that has no relation or connection to the stories taking place there. It wouldn't be impossible for there to be various people all over that world that could use magic. Though I do apologize to Dan if he should take offense. Anyway, Marcus has always been a depressing character to me, since the concept and the toys he gets would make for a very interesting character to play, but the guy who plays Marcus just spends most sessions sitting away from the group playing flash games on his computer.
Now Odin and Cassandra are interesting characters, both will appear in the main story eventually. But I can talk a little bit here.
Odin is obviously the new Earth God. He is one of the last characters to survive from the time I spent on Mediaminer, and he's entirely based on my closest friend at the time, Thirteen. He was a good and close friend, but even on the internet I guess people can sort of float away. After I left Mediaminer, since it was dying at the time, I lost contact with him. I kept the character concept and modified it a bit.
Out of all the Gods he's the only one that starts with armor; as well the large sword is something that carried over from 13. The Ax I added mostly to diversify the weapons within the God group. This plan has since gone to shit, and I may phase out the ax over time.
Cassandra is a creation of mine, Goddess of Immortality. She is a key in future plots and story lines, so just telling that much is a fairly large spoiler.