by Kris Schnee
"Try telling him that."
Soon, the entire crew was likely to be wearing clothes made from Miles' material. He'd have good cause to call for a vote of no confidence, or something. But he needed to act tonight or face unspecified penalties from creatures that literally had control over physics.
Miles nodded. "Well. We need to get this roof done. Let me finish cranking out material, and then I'll try to help with the sewing."
* * *
He did that, but in the process he also made himself a padded cloth coat and leg-guards, a backpack and a sort of tough rolled-up canvas club he could levitate. He wasn't sure if any of it could really help him in combat, but he now couldn't be slapped with an aspect like "Unarmored". He really needed a few more stunts to shore up his combat ability.
He ate at the mess hall, took another of the spuds home to his tent, filled his canteen, did some careful observation around the fort, then slept very early.
As planned, he woke up at night. His fate points had reset to 3. He quietly packed up his tent and carried it along. Now for the Star. He crept through the fort and saw that hardly anyone was up at this hour. The central tower stood only three meters high, with handholds on the side. He couldn't see the artifact itself, but he spotted the moonlit silhouette of a guard sitting beside it. Miles didn't envy the guy, if the thing started firing before he could hop down. Unfortunately, the roof Miles had been trying to make was incomplete. It currently stretched only over the quarter of the fort that connected the tower to the northern wall. It was a patchwork, double-thick in places, but would hopefully fend off the stabbing legs and mouthparts of the bug monsters.
Miles crept over to the fort's east wall and tossed a rope over the side. The game noted this as creating an advantage for an upcoming Athletics roll. Then he returned to the tower. Hesitating to ambush the guard, he climbed up quietly and found the guy wide awake. "What is it, Miles?"
"Here to relieve you."
"Already? Thanks." The guard yawned and brushed past Miles to climb down.
Miles looked at the Star, getting his closest view yet. It was a small thing, a metal rod with a nine-pointed spike at the tip. Too fragile-looking to be a sword or spear, and he doubted he could make it shoot lighting on command. Once the guard was gone he tugged it out from its wooden holder, wedged it into his backpack, and started toward his escape rope.
A medic named Mike was trudging toward the latrines. "What are you doing up at this hour?" he asked Miles.
"Same as you, but I'll wait my turn."
Miles nodded, then looked at Miles' pack and saw the Star sticking out. "Hey, why --"
Miles cued the combat system. Mike stared at him. "Why?"
"It's got to be returned tonight. We can make do with the roof. Now don't resist."
"Resist? What the hell, Miles!"
The timer was running out. Miles held up some thick strips of cloth by magic (taking 1 point of backlash) and tried to bind and gag the man. He rolled well. But as he feared, the medic's turn resolved before he could get silenced, and he used it to shout, "Help!"
Miles gave up trying to be stealthy, and ran. There was a commotion to the east as somebody heard the alarm. Instead, Miles turned toward the north where the canopy was in place, and dashed like a squirrel up the tower. He should have done that first! He tested his own work by running along the canvas toward the wall. His feet wobbled and sank alarmingly but the improvised floor held. That got him to the stockade itself, with no way down but to jump onto hard ground.
Miles cursed. Behind him, a dozen people were scurrying toward him in the dark. He briefly wondered when they'd gotten torches, then recalled that he'd given them plenty of rags to burn. He looked down at the drop, then summoned the magic menu, tapping at it and speaking to it. "I want a big simple bag shape full of air! Can I do that?"
[Difficulty 4.]
"Fine!"
[Magic skill 3; dice 0.]
"I'm a Master Artificer. I can do this. Spend a point; get +2."
A big improvised cushion of white cotton appeared below. Miles belly-flopped onto it. It collapsed under him, which was perfect, and dropped him to the ground without injury. He staggered up from the mass of cloth and skedaddled to the east, toward the lizards' village.
He ran until he was out of breath. He took cover behind some trees. The village was hours away, if he recalled, and he'd done nothing to hide his tracks or his intentions. Why wasn't a search party already on his heels?
A growl behind him answered the question, and he muttered, "Monsters Roam the Land."
He tried to climb the nearest tree. His muscles slackened in mid-climb and time froze to show him a die roll: [1/-++0. Difficulty 3 due to darkness. Fail.]
"Wait! Pledged To the Light, remember? Spend a point; I'm specifically trying to finish this quest."
Suddenly the tree's bark shifted, growing full of "natural" handholds and divots. Miles climbed easily to a broad crook of branches that might not have been there before. Only then did he look down. It was too dark to see more than a mass of rattling spines along the hide of a beast with glinting eyes.
For all he knew, it could climb. He watched it while reaching for the hard cloth "club" he'd made. One of his weaknesses was that he'd never have a proper weapon so long as he relied on the Magic skill for combat instead of Shoot or Melee. "Okay, uh, Survival roll. Can I tell anything about this critter?"
[Skill 2, dice +1. Tie. Looks bulky.]
Bulky was a marginal hint that it probably couldn't climb. He watched it growl and pace for a while, then wander off. He kept looking around; he'd still not gotten a good look and maybe it was even now preparing to leap or shoot quills at him or something; who knew what an alien beast could do? Still, nothing happened except that he'd treed himself, burned through the second of his points for the "session", and lost ground on anyone bold enough to be chasing him.
He cursed, realizing that he'd said "tonight" for delivering the Star. He couldn't do the sensible thing and wait until morning.
He looked around again for the creature. No sight or sound of it. He carefully made his way back down the trunk, ready to bolt back up. Nothing. He got his bearings, picked up a fallen stick in case he needed to use Melee, and started creeping along toward the village.
His trek was quiet after that. He headed across nearly the same ground he'd covered before, tried another Survival roll, and got a glowing arrow that pointed the way. He arrived at the outskirts of the lizards' village sometime after midnight.
Nobody was on guard. "Hello?" He called out, twice.
Kanak the drummer emerged from one of the sod huts. "You!"
Miles drew the Star out from his backpack. "Here. I hope it's worth it."
"Good, good! Thank you, human." The lizard took it and marched toward a mound in the village center, much like the fort's little tower. The Star went right into its roof, ready to blast flying bugs. "Now safe again."
Miles looked back the way he'd come. It was possible Thorn and company would return to steal the thing right back. What he needed right now was rest, both for his actual fatigue and to recover his fate points should he need them. "Can I please sleep and eat here?"
"Yes, follow." Kanak led the way back to the hut he'd been in before, where there was food, water and a sleeping mat.
5. Wind Shrine
At dawn, the village elder poked him with a stick. "You bring the Star! Good, human. But now what?"
Miles sat up, groggy. "I need to find the magic canyon, and the Wind Shrine."
"The other humans will come. Can you stop them?"
"I can make some walls, maybe, but I can't hold them all off forever. You'll have to defend yourselves."
"Help, in the name of the Light!"
Damn it. Now he had to help... or what? Lose a fate point? Now that he'd finished the quest, he had higher priorities! He had to get going and regroup with Eva, so they could figure out what to do. He couldn't let these guys pin him to one spot using the game
rules. Worse yet, staying here would mean fighting his own people. He sighed. "I'm sorry, but I have to go. I can provide you with more cloth, if that will help you defend yourselves."
"How much more?"
Miles generated great big rolls of canvas, explaining the idea of covering their village if necessary... and of taking cover behind sheets of material or fences. That was as far as he was willing to go. In return he talked the lizards into giving him a few more of the "potatoes" and letting him walk away. The GMs taunted him by docking him a fate point, bringing him down to two, for refusing the call.
As he walked north toward the Wind Shrine, the nearer of the two mystery locations, a notice told him, [You can change an aspect after a session.]
He might have to do that, if he was going to avoid being pulled into fighting his crew. For now, though, he kept walking.
It became obvious by afternoon that his food supply wasn't going to last. He found a river to drink from and began following it north to a grove of trees, according to the directions Samatra had given him, but he didn't go far. Instead, he made camp early. He chopped up most of his spuds with his knife and began planting the pieces in a row. He'd been told they only took a day or so to grow, so a short-term farm was practical. He crafted a crude bucket from local wood, poured it on the plants, and made a Survival roll that turned out okay.
Then he set up a fort. He pitched his tent, went in, and cast a spell to create the biggest, sturdiest canvas roll he could. The self-damage roll was terrible, but he'd brought the tent along for exactly that reason: the two free uses of an aspect the Vizier had granted him. One of those knocked the damage down to 3, so that his stress track could absorb it without lasting harm. Soon he had a ridiculously huge pile of canvas rolled up all around him to create a five-meter-high set of walls like a bunch of sloping pyramids. He'd have made it even higher, just for fun, but was starting to worry it'd all collapse and squash both him and the crops. It occurred to him that he should've done this for the lizards, too, but it was too late. He tarped over half of his fort to protect himself from above.
Making a fire took him several tries and actually set one of the walls alight for a minute, forcing him to scramble to put it out. The Survival skill was paying off, though, so that all he needed were sticks, twigs, bits of torn cloth and a good die roll to make a fire.
He spent the day resting and thinking, but he didn't have enough information to make much of a plan. The plants were growing with hugely exaggerated speed, nearly enough to watch them sprouting. He heard something prowling around outside for a while, but nothing horrible broke in to spoil his vacation. He made two fire-hardened wooden spears to stab with or throw.
There was the possibility of going back to the fort, but he had a more urgent mission right now and was probably not very welcome. If he ever got out of this game, he figured, Thorn would accuse him of sabotaging their space mission by stealing a magic bug-zapper from lizard people.
* * *
The potatoes were fully grown by the next afternoon. Miles was getting tired of eating them already. He dug one up, inspected it, then harvested the rest and packed them up in a sack. Concealing this campsite wasn't at all practical, what with the big walls, so he shrugged and walked onward.
He came to another village he hadn't heard of. "Scattered Settlements," said the world's main aspects. He was wary of being pulled into another quest, but he needed something different to eat. He had no idea what this diet was doing to him in terms of nutrition. Had the GMs engineered these vegetables to be human-edible or what?
Warily, he hailed the village. A group of red-scaled lizards shouted and ran toward him, but when he started to flee they said, "Not hurt! Listen!"
He had a hand on one of the spears behind him, but he obeyed. "I come in peace. Have you seen anyone like me before?"
"No. You friend?" said one of them, holding a spiky spear of its own.
"Yes...? I'm looking for food, and the Wind Shrine."
"You help us hunt, then!"
That didn't seem so bad. "All right."
He followed the hunting party in a wandering eastward loop, until one of them spotted a shaggy buffalo-like creature with rows of spikes all along its back and tail. The leader had everyone crouch and stalk. With no Stealth skill, Miles kept to the back. A few lizards went around to the side, and then a battle interface popped up. Miles waited for a signal, then hurled his spear.
It landed just in front of the beast, startling it. He even saw the result in rules terms: [Tie. Boost "Startled" applied.] Then one of the other hunters used his boost to get +2 to their own roll, scoring one of several hits. The animal bellowed and dropped to the ground in a single round.
There was a feast after that in the village. Miles was treated to roast "armox", which tasted like leather but was a welcome change from the spuds, and to salt and some tangy red berries. Feeling full, he retreated to his tent on the village outskirts to rest. By way of payment he made several big rolls of canvas, using them as temporary walls too. He traded some woodwork and cloth for sewing tools, finally, and burned the second free use of the protective aspect on his shoddy tent. Doing that kept him safe while crafting a better, sturdy tent that was easy to carry.
He was racking his brains for a proper cloth-based weapon. He asked the GMs about making a crossbow, but they classified it as using the Shoot skill. "How about a sling?" he said. "That's potentially nothing but string and a pouch."
[That would be an acceptable use of the Magic skill for ranged attacks.]
All right! With that as permission, he only needed Magic for combat power now, since he could credibly throw rocks with it. He crafted a sling and practiced with it, trying a sort of telekinetic throw that combined actually holding the string with whirling it by magic force.
The rock flew up at a weird angle and struck him in the arm, doing 2 stress. "Ow!" Meanwhile he took 3 mental stress from an awful roll on the Magic versus Mind defense. He staggered and sat down on a log to catch his breath.
Weapon design, if intimidation failed and the user was willing to shed blood, was all about applying force. Miles was in a bizarre position here: he had access to a magic form of force to push objects, yet the exact physics didn't matter. Instead what counted was whether the rules treated his inventions as being operable with the Magic skill and without any arbitrary "bad weapon" penalty. He imagined swarms of magic-operated darts, torsion-powered catapults and ballistae with coiled cords for power, and some kind of magic railgun. He felt kind of cheated by being handed a whole new physical rule to play with, then being told to conform it to the rules of dice.
So, he kept practicing with his sling. He managed to avoid hurting himself worse, but only by burning a fate point for the "Fateweaver" thing. "Does this count as enough training?" he asked the listening empty air. "If you're not going to let me make magic railguns, I don't see why you should hold me to actual training difficulty either."
[The practice you've done is acceptable. Further attacks will count as normal Magic attacks, with the understanding that the first one per scene counts as casting the Magic Bolt spell and risking damage.]
"Fair enough."
Miles adjusted his armor and clothes for comfort, since they didn't seem to matter in more than a symbolic way as actual protection. "Any way to start getting weapon and armor bonuses, or are we not doing that at all?"
[There may be. No method is available to you at this time.]
That was cryptic. Miles grunted, and went to sleep.
* * *
The next day he hiked further, carrying dried meat along with berries and their seeds. This Wind Shrine was supposedly nearby. There was a long line of hills north of him, running east and west. By afternoon he spotted a pass through them, and pushed himself to keep going.
Around sunset, when the shadows of the western hills loomed across him, he spotted the Wind Shrine. It was a temple of shiny black marble streaked with blue, built into a hillside, whose columns bent and
curled like tree trunks or weather diagrams. A hexagonal door flanked by triangles loomed atop an entry ramp.
Miles approached, then decided to tackle the place tomorrow morning. He pitched his new, improved tent and walled himself off with canvas, with the temple's outer surface on one side.
He woke up refreshed and ready. He touched the door and it ground slowly open, revealing a long hallway that sloped downward into the ground. Dim light streamed in from sources hidden somewhere in the vaulted ceiling.
What was he supposed to do here? All he'd heard was that this place was a "source of power". From what he saw so far it was only a big room, giving him few clues.
He reached the bottom of the hall, and found a gate with three obvious floor switches in front of it. He stood on one and it dropped, clicking. But when he moved to touch the second one, the first rose. Oh, it was one of those puzzles requiring heavy objects -- or multiple people. He cast a spell to generate some heavy rolled-up rugs that held town two switches while he stood on the center one. Sure enough, the gate rumbled open, revealing a square room with spider-like statues on two platforms.
"A dungeon!" he said. Eva had ranted, once, about vast underground mazes that seemed to have no purpose but to be places for adventurers to explore. In the hexagonal room ahead, he was sure he'd be battling those statues. Why not do something in advance? Since he'd already started producing heavy rugs, he summoned several more to smother the statues, creating an advantage with stacked free uses on it.
They rumbled to life. All he could see of the things were their rug-draped forms as they shambled out and fumbled in the doorway. Zone boundary markers showed their room as one zone and the sloping hall as several more.
