So, Matt is running an in-person game for me and three of our friends, Rob, Erin, and Shawn. (Erin is Rob's wife; Rob and Shawn are brothers and coworkers and both work with Matt.) This is our third adventure as a gaming group, having played an ill-fated D&D game (whose GM got bored with it, then took a new job and moved), and having just finished a homebrew campaign set in a world Rob created.
The four of us got killed off while playing the Wii--Rob got ticked at the game and tossed the controller at it. There was an explosion and the telltale gold stuff oozing out of the console, then we woke up on a citrus-scented grassy field. Matt was apparently picking up pizza, so he didn't get killed off with the rest of us.
We arrived at night and found Michael's foxhole pretty quickly. We also discovered that my two cats had versed along with me, and while I had food, dishes, cat toys, and catnip among my possessions, I did *not* have the kitty carriers. So, I sacrificed my one and only pair of blue jeans to make cat harnesses. Not that the cats will necessarily walk where I want them to on harnesses, but if I'm carrying one and they jump out of my arms, they at least can't get far. I also have my bike, and a wagon.
The ten-mile trek to Umak Tek was not fun. I have tendinitis in my right ankle, so walking and biking gets painful. But, having the bike, I could move faster than the rest of the group, so I'd bike for a bit, wait for them to catch up, then continue. Fortunately, we found out about naga-juice from Paul and Annie once we got to Umak Tek, and the ankle is completely fixed now. (Ah, if only it worked that way in real life!)
During the first session, we got ourselves settled in Umak Tek, learned to use the psi blasters and levitators, and played a bit with making things from plastic-steel. I built a couple cat carriers, and a pen/crate--basically a large enclosure that I can put up to give the cats room to move a little but not go too far. It also comes apart and can be packed flat.
Rob and Shawn are fascinated by the glass city and want to make a run out there. But, they decided we need a faster mode of transport--something that will cover that sixty miles quick enough for them to set out at sunset and return by dawn. They've talked about a lot of ideas, anything from a nagahol powered cart to some sort of bike, but the plan they're going with now is...interesting.
They couldn't figure out how to do shock absorbers for a bike or cart, so they decided to make a platform that would float with the use of the levitation rod and move by means of a pedal-powered propeller. Yeah, say that three times fast. They have my bike as a model for the gears and pedals, so that shouldn't be too tough, but the propeller will be trickier. But, they're having fun designing the thing. And why engineer when you can *over-engineer*?
Erin, meanwhile, has been researching the artifacts brought back from the glass city. She's an archeologist, so I expect her to learn a lot about that civilization. She's checked out the data cubes, so next week Matt will tell her what she finds besides the old map.
I'm treading carefully because I'm trying to keep OOC knowledge separate. I've read the world book, so I know *all* the secrets of NagaWorld. Therefore, I'm not really getting involved with Erin's research to avoid giving her ideas that I shouldn't know about.
Instead, I have my own projects to play with. I thought it would be neat to create a printing press, something fairly simple with movable block letters. Currently, I have no idea how to make ink, so I'm going to experiment with whatever dark-colored substances I can get my hands on. Grinding up a bit of the coral bushes seems promising, and I'll also see if blood from the giant clams will work.
Whether I get ink made or not, I plan to start working on a block printing set-up that could make the plastic-steel plaques that are around Umak Tek--pressing the letters into a plaque while it's soft. I figure the same set-up could be used to print on paper if I ever get ink worked out.
I also want to learn how to spin (I can use a drop spindle, but not a spinning wheel) and play a little with textile creation. I'm wondering if various ways of manipulating grass or creeper fiber will produce different kinds of fabric. I know that, to make linen, you have to soak the flax fibers for a while. I'm iffy on the details, but I know that they rot a little bit. I'm not sure if that makes an outer coating fall off, or just softens the fibers, or what, but I plan on soaking creeper fibers to see how that affects the finished textile. I also wonder if you can make some kind of blend of the grass and creeper fibers to get a fabric with the qualities of both. I also wonder what result you might get if you knitted the grass-cloth instead of weaving it, especially using a looser knit.
So much to play with. And now that my various annoying injuries are fixed, almost miraculously, I'll have to squeeze all that experimentation in around a workout routine.
Paul and Annie weren't willing to teach anyone telepathy, but Rob has the idea of experimenting on his own, so I'm wondering how long we'll actually *have* in this world. (Matt's easing into the concept of having four different people go off in four different directions, so we may verse as a group for a world or two.)
Sounds fun! I like reading 'actual play' reports. The hover thing looks fun, the textiles look very interresting and archeology is cool, since it involves culture, and I like culture! And printing presses! Cool! But what would you use it for? (more than a general 'Um ... printing?' :P)
The Ladyfaire wondered why not put the levitation rod on your bike, and a propeller on it that could be dismounted when you land. Stick one guy on the pedals and the other on the handlebars and you're good to go. She wondered if it was because your team wanted to have space to haul their loot in.
Thanks! I'm glad you guys are enjoying that.
I can think of two main uses for the printing press. One is if we end up accomplishing anything notable and therefore making more of the plaques. ("This is where Rob and Shawn built their successful flying machine (after their early prototypes exploded)." "This is where Erin discovered xyz about the Kraal.") Much easier to lay that out with movable type as a mold than to carve it into the plastic steel by hand, or to make specific molds for specific plaques.
The other is that another verser was working on translating the Bible into Dar Koni. Someday, when he gets it all done, it would be useful for him to be able to reproduce it multiple copies at once. Granted, he's not here at the moment and that work has barely been started, but I got the impression from Paul and Annie that people tend to visit this world repeatedly on their trips through the multiverse, so I expect he'll be back eventually and want to continue.
Tad, the Ladyfaire is right that that's a much simpler and more elegant solution than what the guys have come up with. They might be thinking of loot-carrying, or carrying more people than just the two of them. They might also just be letting themselves go crazy with wild ideas because, well, they can.
Oh yeah, that's right! Movable type! If there would ever come a verser named Nikolaj over there he would probably be frustrated or motivated enough to try and properly design the typeface, typographics wise. It's really a big job to do that. That's why he's not yet attempting that in the world where he's now. That and not knowing if the letters are the same and the fact that most people are illiterate. :)
So plaque making is the purpose. Nice. The letters should be big enough then. And if you ever wanted to make a book you'd need to cast a new alphabet (and punctuation ...) in smaller size. Really! It's a big job :)
I take it that's something you have professional experience with? :) You sound like someone who knows what they're talking about.
It occurs to me that Dar Koni will have a totally different alphabet, so recasting letters would be necessary for a DK Bible anyway, regardless of size. But, getting the concept down and practicing letter making is always good.
For the most part, the real purpose is to have something to learn and do and play with while the engineers in the group are trying to build their flying thing and go to the glass city.
Maybe you'll end up there after I've finished and you can do the typeface properly. :)
Who knows, though I doubt I'm good enough to actually make a decent typeface. My character would, on the other hand, have some books to assist him in the process. Yet he has little patience for such things. But when the motivation would be to make it possible for a bible to be printed, he might go for it. Whether he has the discipline to keep at it is an other question altogether. :)
I am glad to hear that Matt is running the game.
It strikes me that the NagaJuice that was squeezed onto your ankle is dark purple and would have left a stain for a few days. I have never attempted to use it as ink, so I cannot guess as to its properties, but if you found a way to thicken it a bit it might soak into the creeperpaper sufficiently to work as ink.
I wish your archaeologist luck. The study of the artifacts of a culture that produced everything by psionics and never developed a technology as complex as stairs (they did use ramps, wedges, and I think levers, but not in combination) is going to be very tricky, as most of the usual assumptions would be misleading. After all, the Architect managed to make something very like their psionic glass, but they did not make glass that way--they created and shaped it by thought. It took me a very long time to realize that.
The levitating platform will be tricky, but that's Matt's problem, so unless he asks my advice it will work however he decides.
--M. J. Young
It strikes me that the NagaJuice that was squeezed onto your ankle is dark purple and would have left a stain for a few days. I have never attempted to use it as ink, so I cannot guess as to its properties, but if you found a way to thicken it a bit it might soak into the creeperpaper sufficiently to work as ink.
Ooh, I didn't think of that. The nagajuice wasn't described, so for some reason I was picturing it as a light-colored liquid. (I also may have written it off as dangerous to mess around with, since I know you can pass out from having it on your skin too long, or quickly become addicted if it's taken internally.)
I wish your archaeologist luck. The study of the artifacts of a culture that produced everything by psionics and never developed a technology as complex as stairs (they did use ramps, wedges, and I think levers, but not in combination) is going to be very tricky, as most of the usual assumptions would be misleading.
Yeah, they will, won't they? Especially since we're all too new in the multiverse to even have wrapped our heads around a tiny fraction of what's possible with psionics. At the moment, we know how to use a couple psionic tools, and we know telepathy exists, but that's about it.
The levitating platform will be tricky, but that's Matt's problem, so unless he asks my advice it will work however he decides.
That'll depend a lot on the skill checks, I think. Trying to build things they've never built before, using a jury-rigged combination of psi technology and mechanical parts...should be interesting. I think I'm going to steer clear when they're testing the thing.
I think I'm going to steer clear when they're testing the thing.
Very wise. It was attempting to build his own psionic device which killed the Architect. I wonder if it left a crater....
--M. J. Young
So, we had another gaming session this week, and our first casualty. Rob and Shawn got their flying machine all built, then discovered that they could get it to levitate simply enough by standing on it and using the levitation rod, but that the levitation rod held it in place, so it wouldn't actually *go* anywhere.
Erin, meanwhile, has gone through all the colored octagons and identified what types of info each contains. She didn't find much of interest in the data cubes other than the map one--lots of them were reports of battles, including casualties, equipment losses, and the like. The white octagon had some neat stuff, a couple different games, including a first-person shooting game, a real-time strategy game, and a chess-like board game with varying levels of difficulty and complexity (everything from a simple, checkers-like game to a convoluted game with a bunch of different pieces with different moves and abilities, all of which can be promoted and gain different abilities, played on a multi-level board--oh, and certain moves allow the player to turn one of the levels of the board.)
While they were working on this, I made ink. I was able to thin down the naga juice by heating it, and it created a nice purple ink. I also made a black paint using finely ground coral from the bushes, water, and clam-glue. (To make paints from crushed minerals, you need a binder of some sort. Egg and gum arabic are common, but not things I had. So, I thought, hm...eggs are mainly protein, what here is a source of protein? And then cooked down clam meat to basically create a glue, which then worked as a binder for the coral-ink.
I was able to get a softer creeper-cloth by soaking the fibers for a couple weeks first, and something roughly like a cotton-poly blend from spinning creeper and grass fiber together. (And, needless to say, learned how to use the spinning wheel.)
I also made plastic steel armor and shields for everyone in the group, while Rob and Shawn worked on their next transportation plan. Using my bike as a model, they built 3 more. So, we all donned our armor and headed for the glass city. Yep, armored. On bikes. I should've remembered to get a picture of that. We made the trek at night, so we didn't have problems with coral bushes, and we even had enough time to explore around the edges of the glass city. We picked up a bunch of artifcats, including various blasters, data cubes, and octagons.
Erin also tried to control one of the spiders, using the same skills she's developed to operate the other Kraal devices. Despite a very high roll, no success. She got the impression that something was fighting her, resisting her attempt to control the spider.
Once we got back from the city, Rob started trying to reverse-engineer the psi levitation rod he picked up. He managed to take it apart, which just resulted in it not working anymore, and told him absolutely nothing about its functions. He then broke one of the blasters and found the same thing happened. So, he tried to mentally re-encode it, so that it would work again. Yep, he basically tried to build a psionic device (a 9@ skill) in a botch-happy world, when his only psi skills are 1@ operate device skills. Not that you could blame him (yet)--he wouldn't know how hard or how dangerous what he was trying to do was.
Unsurprisingly, he botched, giving himself a severe case of brain-burn. A headache so bad that all he could do was curl up in a ball and whimper. For ten whole days. Erin and I found him like that outside Umak Tek and the two of us carried him back in before the sun came up. Paul and Annie explained what he'd done to himself, and told us that it could've been a lot worse.
After he recovered, he went right back to trying to play with psionics. (He did ask for a high will stat during character creation--by now, nobody doubts that that's justified.) After no success trying a basic TK pulse (to move a penny), he went back to trying to re-encode the psi blaster. And died.
Around this time, I got a basic printing set-up built and made a couple plaques. I need to actually define the wording with Matt later, but I did one to replace the note in the foxhole, which is getting a little yellowed, one for the non-working flying machine, and one for Rob blowing himself up.
Shawn, Erin, and I took a trip down to the southern hills, got shot at, and met one of the Dar Koni. Shawn mentioned to them that he wanted to build a flying machine, and they had been going to give us a transponder so that they could identify it as something not to shoot, but he asked what would happen if the Kreelak got a hold of it, and they decided, on second thought, that it wasn't a good idea. We learned a little bit about the conflict between the Dar Koni and the Kraal, namely that it's been going on for generation after generation. I found that a bit depressing.
This time, he built basically a blimp. He used one of the batteries pulled from the battlefield for electrolysis to get his hydrogen, with balloons made of grass-fabric. He would've preferred helium, but even going through all the Kraal stuff on chemistry, he couldn't figure out a way to get any with what we had available. He labeled it as "human ship" in Dar Koni to make it less likely to be shot down.
Our group still isn't aware of the existence of the wedge birds, because we got up higher than 12 feet before moving horizontally. We actually flew over the glass city and landed in the center square. Erin connected with the pavilion and got its speech about the rightness of the Kraal's cause and how they were destined to conquer everything in sight. She dubbed it the Propaganda Squid. We also explored the Hall of Heroes and Erin took the little black box from the top floor home.
Back at Umak Tek, she sprung the psionic trap and spent a couple hours trapped in nightmares before she could fight her way out of it.
And, that was pretty much it. We mocked Rob pretty mercilessly for being the first to verse himself out, while he in turn gave Shawn grief for missing things about the flying machine that Rob would've known. Not sure what we'll end up doing next.