You see the Doctor. And then all the other Doctors, one at a time. Each promendading down the runway of an International Airport, showcasing various length scarves. Somehow the Jumbo Jets, the mechas, the hovercars, and the At-at walker all miss each of them.
Its mighty cold and foggy and brisk out here on the runway.
And it is.
Its in the high thirties Fahrenheit, and you can see about forty feet over slick gray rock piles with the occasional bit of scraggly bush. It might be day. If there is day here.
I stand up and look around.
I'll try to gather some chi and use it to help me stay warm.
Rolling gray stone hills descend in fits and starts down to a rocky beach above a near black, wave-tossed sea with the wavecrests hitting twenty feet.
Chi does not seem to flow like that.
I will walk away from the sea and try to find some high ground to look around.
Is the chi flowing? how strong does it feel?
I'll let the chi I gathered dissipate.
Bump?
It wasn't showing me as the last post, but this fixed it.
The chi is very faint, and more dribbles than flows.
You don't have chi from your last world.
You hike for nearly an hour over rough terrain seeking higher ground. Finally, you find a wooded ridge as the land changes. Ascending upward, you notice that the fog is dissipating as you climb, and as the day wears on, and the heat rises to the mid forties.
I continue to walk to the top of the ridge and take a look around.
That was odd with the green mana. in the game the mage didn't need to be presint in the terrain to draw mana...ah, I remember now. The mage need to forge a mana connection with the land before he can do that.
OOC: Well, you were literally lightyears from any significant source of greenery other than some garden spaces in the asteroid. The Casino is at the junction of two hyperspace waves which serve as faster transport....and the nearest star is over thirty lightyears away. The nearest 'class M' planet is even further.
You walk along the ridge, and find a path. It zags through the woods with you stopping as you see a dead rabbit in a trap of wood and leather.
A trap. Well at lest I know there's intelligent beings here. I think the they would check the trap soon.
I'll wait here and I'll leave the trap alone.
Four hours later, as the sun begins to gild the sky with colors, a short man in a mix of leathers, furs, and rough fabric walks swiftly down the trail. He doesn't look like he's making any particular ccare to avoid noise, still, you don't hear him until well after you see him.
He's armed with a crude longbow, and a short knife.
He stops at the trap, then pauses, and starts to sniff.
"Hello, May I come with you to your village?"
I raise my hands up to show I am unarmed.
His hand goes to his hip, and then he stops, and gives you a gap-toothed smile.
"You frightened me, friend. You can come to our hunting cabin, and then you can tell us teh story of how so richly dressed a man as you found his way into the outer edge of the Wastelands. That is, if you don't mind rabbit stew."
He makes some sort of hand gesture and speaks again.
"I am Brion of High Wood, a trapper and lumberjack. You are?"
"I don't mind rabbit stew.
I don't remeber much. I woke up near the shore line that way. I wandered up here, found the trail and your trap.
My name is Eli. What is that hand gesture?"
I'll follow him to his cabin
What kind of forest are we in? evergreen? deciduous?
What season do we appear to be in?
"Hunh." He scratches his beard. "Oh, that." He does it again. "Oh, a prayer to the Lord of Trade. That our meeting will be good for both of us."
Its mixed, predominantly evergreen.
His cabin is about seven hundred square feet, of roughly squared logs, with an earthen floor. A couple other guys are already there.
Over the next hour, everyone arrives.
They are Brion, Carl, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Allan. All of them are hunters, although some fish, or lumberjack, or mill, in the off season. All come from High Wood. They're glad to see you, if only to have something new to talk about.
The food is cooked by Allan, over the campfire. He's the best cook so everyone gives him a little of their catch so he will cook for them when he's not trapping.
There's no shortage of food. Guts and the less desirable parts are fed to the watch/bearhounds who decide they like you after a worrisome thirty seconds as you contemplate the sort of jaw and teeth structure that would make a brown bear think twice of taking on a dog....at very close range you can see down Tinker's throat. And Mack is behind you at the time. But they decide you're okay.
Ethnically, they seem Northern European, except they all have epicanthic folds, and several have purple eyes.
As the sun sets, the moons, one white and half the size of ours, one green and a hundred times ours in size, rise, one after the other.
During our conversation,(I'm assuming we're talking to pass the time) I mention that I would like to learn how to fish, hunt and cut lumber.
"We're not really hunters. We're trappers." Brion says. "And you can start tommorrow morning with Carl who is on wood gathering that day."
A burst of laughter attends this.
" Fishing, well, may be someone in the village can take you on next spring."
A couple guys shrug. They're not saying yes, but not no either.
The next morning, while Allan is making tea, and the rest are sleeping, Carl takes you out with an axe.
"Dry wood is best. Also, we want to keep the main trails clear. Its not bad if you can knock down a dead tree so long as you can do it without hurting yourself. We have no herb woman up here." Carl says shortly in the chill fog of morning.
I'll follow Carl's instructions to the best of my ability.
How skilled are you with an axe?
Carl has you chopping down small limbs, and holding bundles of wood. By the time you're done, you're ready for tea and rabbit hash.
During the day, you learn how to find animal paths, and make simple traps. And you learn about the importance of being clean when you get to wash with the rest in a chill mountain stream (animals can smell human, so staying clean helps out a lot).
Over the next week...
I've used an ax before but not enough to develop much skill with it.
I'll continue working with them.
1@1 Ax-use then.
You're working on a mini-ridge sloping off from the main ridge with your partner Carl on the next slope when you hear a rustle. You step back, and then you're yanked off your feet, coils of greenroot lash themselves around you, and back-hooking crescent thorns about an inch long jab into you all over your body.
I try to draw in chi as fast as I can and use my skin hardening technique and the strength boosting technique.
I'm going to try to break the greenroot, even if the chi techiques don't work
You don't draw in too much chi at all. And then as you try to rip free, and the plant allows that, but fitfully, and then you find yourself rolling down the hill still entangled. The plant tries to use your outward movement, which tends to follow with an inward movement to tighten up on you, but it fails as well, leaving both of you a tumbled mass heading down hill.
00c: Bad dice rolls for you both.
I will try to ripe up the plant as we roll down the hill.
You fight the plant, breaking it in small places, and it seems to coil in closer, you slide down a suddenly steeper embankment. It tightens and you fight back, your legs are fully bound, but your arms are bloodied and somewhat free. Another bounce in the slide, and the loose vine whaps back across your chest, threatening to entangle you all over again.
And then slam.
You wake up.
You're head and shoulders up to your forearms, upside down, in a wet, muddy hole that smells of wet animal. You're still wrapped in the plant, but it seems to be dead. Your feet are up in the air, entangled.
I'll try to untangle myself from the plant and look for a way out.
I'm going to be gathering chi while I do that.
You can't untangle yourself that well from the plant as your arms move little and your legs also move little.
You do gather tiny bits of chi.
I'm going to need a bit more than "I try to solve th eproblem." Details, strategies...
I spend ten minutes trying to gather chi.
I'll use a bit to harden my skin.
I'm going to use the rest to boost my strength and try to burst out of the plant.
I'm going for a large effect that only lasts about 30 seconds.
There is no space to burst out around your shoulders, in the pit, but your vined legs are ample to the task. You brake them free, and then push yourself out with one hand, two now free legs help get you out, so that finally, muddy, sore, bleednin, you lay down in the forrest leaves.
I stand up and examine my injuries.
I will also examine the plant. What can I see? Do I feel anything odd about the chi around it?
Throughout the process I'll gather chi.
I should have kept a reserve gathered for emergencies.
I won't repeat that mistake.
Its energy patterns do not allow you to absorb them. It is truly alien, but non-sentient. Something like a Venus fly trapplant.
You feel dizzy, and after glancing at the thorns which have a sweet sap on them, you're sure why. It feels like a mild sedative. It keeps the prey from struggling too much, from hurting too much, from caring, but alive as the greenroot digests.
You also see that your various thorn caused wounds are still not closing. You're not bleeding badly, but its not scabbing over either. After all, blood makes a great fertilizer...
You find yourself giggling as you realize that.
I wasn't trying it gather it's chi. But, that's interesting.
I'm going to try to gather chi for two minutes and use it to convert the poison to water.
I'm going to spend two more minutes pulling the thorns out and try my chi healing
After you're done healing, you're only muddy and cold and tired. You head back, and find your partner.
About two weeks later, toward the end of the trapping season, you look up and see a new, bright star to the left of another star in the sky.
When I get back to the hut I ask them about the plant.
When I notice the star I ask the trappers
"What do you know about that star?"
They curse it, and demand you take them back to where you found it. Once there, they show you how to pour a specialized chemical concoction out on it root. Its ground up yellow rock, black root from a fungi laden fallen tree, some handfuls of leaves from a red pinstripe flower plant (good for making you puke if you chew one, kill you if you chew three), and the liver of a large animal (can be rotted). Heat this all up at a fire far from the camp, with stirring it with a ten or longer foot pole (the longer the better)....cover concoction, an dpour it steaming over plant.
The plant thrashes, there's some jerking in nearby bushes, and then it goes still. The other hunters check for 'junior nodes' and find one, so they let you pour gunk on it, and same result. No more nodes.
They discard the cheap clay pot, and the rest of the gunk.
1@1 Make Primitive Toxic Herbicide
================
They're frightened a bit when they see it.
"Star to the West
Of Bright, blue Oerest
Brings not Peace or Rest
Brings change and the Blest"
"At least its not a Coming Star like the one near Bollifer. That's always bad." Carl says. The others make a sign against evil.
Second post...
If you object to the herbiciding, or anything I say, just speak up, and we can walk it back....in other words, feel free to interject your actions, and we'll work it out.
No problem killing the plant.
I would have mention that I fought it and that there is probably chunks of it up the hill.
And ask them "Do you have some one around here that eliminates dangerous plants and animals?"
============
"When I woke up on the shore, I couldn't remember anything important.
can you explain what that means? What is a Coming Star?"
"No, not really." They tell you.
"Oh, a Coming Star. In the Heavens are many Angels and Demons and the Blessed Dead. But sometimes they come back to Coronalallend on a star they ride. And when they come, they change the world. Twelve hundred years ago, the first of the great stone castles was built, and the road, and we humans were given the wastelands for our possession." Carl says. "Before then, we lived only in the river valleys where the devils of Bollifer had driven us with their demonic evils, their exhalations of breath. The World That Was, the World of Mud, we know it began at some time, but we know not when."
"That's interesting."
I'll wait to see what happens.
While I'm out in the woods, I'll try to keep a large charge of chi in me all the time.
When I have a spare moment alone in the woods, I'll try to draw green mana.
Its a lot of work, almost as if there is something draining it from you.
You're able to draw green mana, but you most distinctly get a mental image of the greenroot, fighting back against you.
Trapping season is over, and they show you how to close up the cabin for winter so bears won't get in to it. They pray over the site, and all of them trek down the mountainside with a backpack overflowing with furs.
You're given a wooden frame backpack they show you how to make as well. And they give you not as much to carry, but more than enough for you to handle. These guys can tote sixty pounds of fur and supplies easily. You're left with about thirty-five pounds, and its making you sweat.
"Two days, and we should be in the village. Keep an eye out for bandits. The scumsuckers would want to rob us at this time cause we're loaded down with furs." Carl says.
It looks like I earned the enmity of the greenroot
I'm going to scan myself with chi and try to find where the greenroot is draining me.
===============
I'll try to keep up with them.