by Kris Schnee
"Of course. You couldn't make it easy, could you? When does this new wound go away?"
"At the end of a scenario, which represents the end of a significant quest such as the Wind Shrine."
Until then, he was at a major disadvantage, at least in terms of having a 6-point consequence slot that was full and unable to soak up more damage. "So I need to find her to get healed."
"You don't need to do anything."
Miles hurt, and he'd nearly died from this place's traps. "If I have to fight for your amusement, tell me why!"
"We may not, at this time. You'll find that the way back out is easier." The Vizier gestured and a new door opened, revealing a staircase leading upward.
"Is that really all you're willing to do, Vizier? Walk me through the menus and point the way to the next obvious quest?"
"We are taking other actions you don't see. We work within the limitations of the Hosts."
Miles faced the creature down. "And once I've rescued Eva, what then? Will you tell me to find the Steam Shrine, the Cheese Shrine, and then the nine elemental spoons, to see how many quests I can do before I get killed? We enjoy games like this, but to be trapped in one until death is a different experience."
"We would like to tell you more," said the Vizier.
There was little point in berating the aliens. Miles would have threatened them, saying that one day humanity would eventually come back with weaponry, but he preferred to leave that as a surprise for them. Besides, he wasn't sure any technology humans had could threaten people capable of such things.
He walked upstairs and out of the temple without another word. He jammed the doors open with rugs in case anybody else found this entrance.
6. Monster Lair
He found himself on a hillside overlooking his previous camp at the Shrine's main entrance. He made his way down a relatively shallow grassy slope to get back to the pass. He'd hindered himself by coming here alone instead of bringing somebody like Samatra, who'd been sympathetic about retrieving the Star. Even two people in that dungeon would have been helpful. He sighed. At this point Captain Thorn might literally want him dead, and the lizard villagers had probably been robbed again. Without a stealthy way to recruit allies from the crew, his best option was to stay solo long enough to grab Eva and then make longer-term plans.
He started to make camp on the hill, but there was no water source. His Notice attempts continued to be useless, so he kept hiking downhill and keeping his eyes out for a stream. For all he knew, this world might not follow realistic geology.
He did eventually find water, an hour's walk downhill. By afternoon it merged with a larger trickle from the east to become a narrow river. This spot seemed like a good place to camp. Miles set up a giant rug wall again, then grinned. He had a second advantage now. He stepped next to his wall and called up his interface, which let him activate the Stately Pleasure Dome power.
It was a circular tent maybe ten meters across and three high, a bit taller toward the middle. It appeared in the form of a roughly dome-shaped green outline that moved and spun at his command so that he could position it wherever he wanted. It turned red when it would overlap the existing wall or the stream, or hang unsupported. Before placing it, though, he made a few more seemingly random rolled-up rugs along the hillside, then started to re-summon the tent in various spots. To his amusement, the placement system only seemed to care whether the dome was both supported, and not overlapping something like water or a wall. He tried summoning it onto an artificial ledge and saw it tip over, but it hung there properly when there was just a roll of carpet along two opposite edges.
The Hosts had unwittingly granted him a portable bridge, wall, and unwieldy distraction!
Miles finished making a rug-stockade and placed the dome within it, then got to work at planting his remaining potatoes and berries. He did poorly on the Survival roll and had no real way to enhance that, so he got the notice, [These crops will take 48 hours to grow.]
He was stuck here for two days instead of one, then. He could live with that. Miles finally entered the Stately Pleasure Dome.
As promised, it contained built-in camping gear. The basic material was just thick canvas in mottled purple that matched the alien grass. The air inside was comfortably cool, lacquered wooden poles held it up, and there were three fine sleeping mats interspersed with cookware, a firepit, and storage baskets. He shucked his backpack, thinking he might not need to carry much on his back anymore, and lay down to rest.
When he woke, he searched the baskets and discovered that one contained old-fashioned scrolls and quills that wrote without ink. A built-in extra feature of the tent. Miles had time to kill, so he gave into addressing one of the less obvious problems that anyone faced in a survival situation: Boredom. Being left alone in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere immediately to go, was a mental threat nearly as bad as having to hide from wolves. The aliens who captured Silver Hart would have seen its large library of entertainment and education, not even counting anything they grabbed from individual crewmembers' files.
Miles had nothing to read, so he murmured a prayer to the Maker and wrote instead. He kept a journal of his adventure so far, including his current character sheet:
Miles
Fate Points: 3 (Refresh 3)
Master Artificer
Pledged To the Light
Need To Learn Why I'm Here
Fateweaver
Skills:
3: Magic
2: Craft, Survival, Mind
1: Shoot, Athletics, Toughness
Stunts: Magic Bolt (cloth telekinesis), Workshop Tent (+2 magic defense in home tent), Got You Covered (81 sq.m. creation), Stately Pleasure Dome (summon tent)
Stress: Body [][][], Mind [][][]
Consequences:
2:
4:
6: Healing Chest Wound
He was probably right to imagine that the aliens were reading over his shoulder, so he wrote them a letter expressing his frustration and repeating humans' desire to meet them openly for peaceful trade. He chucked the letter outside of the tent, calling out, "Read this one," and went back inside. He made himself a better suit of clothes that included belts for his sling and a wooden club; padded shoulders for a backpack; a tough protective jacket and leggings; and an overall look combining his old space uniform with one of Eva's fantasy adventurer pictures. He wondered whether she'd taken up magic herself, or what.
"Hey, GMs. How much gear can I store in this tent and re-summon?"
[Up to 27 kilograms of items such as food and tools beyond what was built in.] So, no giant canvas rolls. Good enough to haul most items without his pack, though.
He was as well equipped as he could be, when the crops were done. He harvested them and ate his fill, slept, packed up, and set out in the morning. The tent vanished at his command. As he hiked down to the plains the land grew chilly at times, depending on the wind. By noon he'd made it to a lizardfolk village where he made another offering of fine cloth.
They were wary of him, but traded cloth and berries for a new kind of vegetable he decided to call bacon-root. "Beware," they told him. "Patrols catch people."
"You're in danger here?"
"Farther north is. Get caught, get smashed."
"Thanks. I'll be careful. What do they look like?"
"Ice men."
When he camped that night he was less showy about his instant fortress. He picked a forest grove for it that had a river running through a clearing. His tent ended up bridging the little canyon the river had formed. Because the weather had gotten noticeably colder just today, he planted his crops again and resolved to spend the next day and night growing them before proceeding.
That plan worked fine until the second night, when he was pulling up the latest harvest and preparing to break camp. Something thumped in the distance, slowly growing louder. Then it stopped without fading. Miles peeked out from his tent, and saw a headless statue made of ice that shined pale blue. It
was facing him.
Miles couldn't let this thing escape to report. He gestured to bring up the combat interface and its timer. Then he cast a spell to conjure a big roll of canvas to fall on the statue.
He took 2 stress from the spell. The ice-statue started marching up the hill to flee, but got squashed under the sudden weight. [Attack 4, defense 3, but spending a fate point for "Hard As Ice". No damage.]
"Nope. I spend a point as a Fateweaver to make it 6 versus 5."
There was a crunch of ice as the attack resolved. The next round began with the statue throwing off the canvas to flee.
The GMs explained, [Ice Golem is trying to escape by using its action to move an extra zone!]
Miles hurried out from the tent to run uphill after it and repeat his spell to drop more weights on the enemy. The moves resolved, he dinged it for 2 more damage, and it snapped in half. That was good, but he'd need to be more careful if these things were going to run and report.
He went back to finish packing and to sleep.
* * *
The next day, the weather grew rapidly colder. He summoned himself a good fluffy blanket and noticed that he was now walking on crunchy snow, leaving footprints. "No Stealth skill," he muttered. He adjusted his new cloak to sweep the ground behind him, at least obscuring the prints, but the GMs just declared that he had a [Swept Trail] aspect and wouldn't say if it really helped.
He continued north until he caught sight of a pair of ice golems marching. Miles ducked behind the nearest snowdrift. The scouts moved on, but he spent the rest of the day being paranoid and trying to obscure his trail with little success.
The sun set and the long dark set in. He found his big tent was a liability. He had no smaller, less showy version of it now, and in the bitter wind he couldn't do without it. The ground was rocky and slightly hilly, making it hard to find a usable spot yet providing no cover. He ended up pitching the tent downwind of a low slope and tossing big rolls of white cotton over its purple surface to match the falling snow.
He went inside and burned more cotton for fire. What kind of monster was he dealing with, anyway, that was organized enough to have patrols? It lived in the cold, probably had ice magic, and was intelligent.
Something crunched in the darkness outside. Again? Miles stayed hidden this time, counting on the camo to make his presence less obvious. The unseen enemy moved on, but he thought that it stopped for a moment nearby.
A blizzard greeted him in the morning. The sky was so dim he couldn't tell which way was north, even assuming the monster lair was straight in that direction. "I guess I need a Survival roll," he said. "I want to find this place based on the sun position and the wind."
[Today is a challenge: Find the Lair. You'll need to make hidden rolls for Survival, Toughness, Notice, and Stealth to see what happens. Your actions will affect the difficulty.]
"I don't even have Notice or Stealth."
[You do, at level 0.]
In a normal, sane world, Miles could wander for days through this tundra and get utterly lost. In this game, the GMs wanted him to move on with whatever plot they had in mind, so he was pretty much bound to succeed eventually. Geography itself would probably bend in his favor. The question was how close they'd get to killing him along the way.
He started off by making a heavy coat, with Craft as well as Magic. That counted as an advantage for Toughness against cold. For Survival he tried an old trick he'd read about: launching a colorful ribbon dead ahead, then throwing another one before he reached the first, to help him move in a straight line. The GMs weren't showing him the actual die rolls. For Stealth he kept trying to smooth down his footprints, for what little that was worth, and for Notice he didn't see a better option than to keep looking around for pursuers.
He took a point of physical stress from the cold, and by afternoon he had company. He reached a chasm where a trio of the ice golems stood guard. He was just plotting how to bridge the gap and attack, when he heard more behind him.
Miles doubled back to ambush the second group out of sight of the chasm guards. There were two of them on his trail. He started off by conjuring a big net to drop on them both. [Tangled!*] appeared above both. One golem used its action to break loose and the other struggled and failed. Miles came out ahead in that exchange.
This time he dropped a heavy rug to try damaging both golems at once. It was a new spell, forcing a new backlash roll, and he did great on the Magic and abysmal on the Mind defense, for 5 self-damage. He cursed. He needed his fate points here, and he could survive a minor magic injury. "Block 3 with stress; accept a 2-point consequence."
His thick winter clothing shifted. Already pure white and trailing in the back, it grew longer all around but his sleeves grew short and gauzy. A veil dropped in front of his eyes and the remains of his sleeves became a long pair of gloves. He looked down at his outfit and saw it now bared much of his chest and back to the cold wind; he was wearing a wedding dress.
Miles had only a moment to curse his fate, because a slightly cracked golem came after him and punched him in the gut. [Base damage of 0, but they're Tough as Ice], the GMs added. [2 damage, plus exploiting Wedding Dress for 2 more because it's useless as armor.]
Miles doubled over in pain, with no good counter to that. 4 damage and he couldn't use his minor injury slot again. The game announced: [Medium injury: Hypothermia. Warning; all consequence slots are full!]
Stress: Body [][][X], Mind [][][X]
Consequences:
2: Wedding Dress
4: Hypothermia*
6: Healing Chest Wound
He'd miscalculated. Miles had to try something different, but the GMs could now hurt him with a free use of the new medium wound. It was hard to think about the dice when a spreading chill in his guts made him shiver and his teeth chatter. He needed warmth just as much as escape.
Maybe he could do both. He summoned his tent and dived into it, sealing the flap. He summoned a wad of cotton (taking 2 more mental stress) and tried to light it with his tent's built-in firestarting tools.
While he was working, the ice golems thumped against the walls. It was an Overcome Obstacle roll of difficulty 3 to break in, he'd been told, but that wouldn't protect him for long. "Come on; light!"
In his shaking hands the cotton refused to burn. The ice troops outside banged on the walls but rebounded, for now. Miles tried again and this time he got a flame. He yanked the wad of burning cloth up like a torch, just in time for a wall to tear open and two golems to stomp inside with him. Snowflakes blew in, but Miles already felt ice along his spine. The battle timer reset, giving him seconds to decide his next move.
In his condition he knew no way to survive a stronger hit than 2. He also had that Hypothermia on him that the GMs could use to boost either golem's attack. In short, he was screwed. "Wait, let me think! Point of order!"
[Yes?] wrote the GMs. The monsters waited politely for his question.
"I can... concede, right? Is that the term?"
Concession was an unusual Fate rule. In character, a superhero might never surrender to his nemesis, but his player could negotiate with the GM to make defeat mean something besides death. So long as it happened before the dice rolled for that last, lethal attack.
The GMs for this game sent, [Offer: You are robbed and captured, waking up in danger with your wounds in treated status. Note that you gain a fate point for conceding plus one per injury taken this scene.]
A timer appeared. Miles sweated. "That happens, but my food supply is somewhere nearby!" he said.
[Accepted.] The golems advanced into the tent, and everything faded out.
* * *
He woke up in a chilly, dank stone room, wearing a wedding dress. He had a headache, but it was fading. He hadn't actually been knocked out, he thought. He tried to yank the dress off, then one of his gloves, but they stayed put. Right; it was stuck for a whole scene.
There was no window, but the iron door had a tiny barred opening. He stood tipt
oe to look through it into a steeply sloping hall covered in ice.
Someone was standing there with an arm outstretched... but the figure was encased in thick ice, a frozen statue.
Miles shivered, still chilled by that hypothermia punch as well as his silky outfit. He needed a fire, but the GMs had said he'd wake up in danger. Did that just mean the prison cell or something worse?
Something overhead roared, creating an echo as though from inside a well. Miles glimpsed a dark blur that swept down, coiled around the frozen man, and took off with it. A gust of cold wind pushed into the cell and made Miles stagger.
That was a set of claws, thought Miles. He stood there for a long time making no sound.
When he was willing to move again, he looked along the narrow wedge visible outside. Far to his right, there was another cell door. He called out, "Anyone there?"
Eva's voice echoed from far away. "Miles! Is that you? How did you get here?"
"Eva! I lost a fight. Are you in a cell, too?"
"Yeah. Got a way out?"
"Let me see." He had a stack of 6 fate points, 3 unused and 3 more from conceding, so he was in a comeback position. "What is that thing outside?"
"Dragon."
Miles wasn't so sure he wanted to leave the room, now. Still, he checked the door. Focusing his attention on the lock told him, [Stealth 5 obstacle.]
"Stealth?" he said quietly. "How about Craft or Mind?"
[Either is usable at difficulty 6, but not Magic.]
His only available tools were whatever cloth he summoned. Not ideal for lockpicking. There was no room to summon the tent either, for what that was worth. "Uh... Is there any ice in this room?" He looked around again and saw a snowdrift in the corner. He summoned a thin blanket easily, wrapped it around his shoulders, then made another one. He used his hands to melt some snow and let the water drip onto the second blanket, then shoved it through the edge of the door. "It'll freeze," he said, "and expand, which damages the door. Right?"
[Allowed. Skill 2, dice -1.]
