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By popular demand posted:Broken image tags in the Email section... Sorted
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Jan 15, 2023 13:34
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Chapter 16 - The Mines of Hathor We head back to the battery plant and continue east. Always to the east.  We find a sign pointing us to Camp Hathor. They've got the meat.  We arrive at the Camp, there's a guard posted in front of us.   We carefully navigate the large mushroom field that the hunters seem to be growing. There's enough of them around that it's easy to accidentally click on one and send then whole camp hostile against you. It's a social minefield.  There's a named guy here tending to the fields, he doesn't have anything to say and I forget his name.  North of the fields is the main part of Camp Hathor.  It features comfy sleeping facilities.  At this point I remember that Zone Control exists so here's a run down. Every area in this game can be broken into three different control zones. Controlled Zones, Partially Controlled Zones, and Uncontrolled Zones. If you're in a Controlled Zone, like we are now, we will provoke attacks from friendly or neutral characters if we: set traps or explosives, characters take damage from your traps or explosives, or if you plant a trap or explosive and it is discovered by someone. If we were in a Partially Controlled Zone, the trap discovery condition no longer applies. If we are in an Uncontrolled Zone, setting traps or explosives in sight of friendlies may still provoke them, but any trap set out of sight cannot be traced back to you if discovered. That's essentially it, although there are three other potential additional Control Zone conditions that can crop up. One is called Security Camera Footage, which means that while you are in that zone, if you are spotted by a camera and you don't in some way erase the footage, certain people may become hostile to you later on. You have Leave no Witnesses, which is pretty self explanatory. Lastly there is a Saving Disabled zone, which prevents you from saving while in that area. Zones that do this are incredibly rare.  Anyway, a fenced off area in the north of the camp seems to have a lot of green blood and dead burrowers scattered around it.  We find somebodies pet cave hopper, Hopsy.  My own pet cave hopper, Moxie, occasionally steals my chair.  In the center of the camp is a collection of merchants with some hunters butchering their recent catches down by the riverside. We strike up a conversation with the merchant Fred.   "What can you tell me about Camp Hathor?" "Well, well, Camp Hathor is a hunting camp, you dig. We hunt all sorts of animals around these caves and then export large amounts of meat to stations and other settlements. From SGS to Foundry to Core City. The dormant caves just across the river are amazingly rich in animal life, you dig, so rich you could shoot a bolt from here and are likely to hear something squeal in pain." "Just look around here, I'm sure you'll see we mean business." "Show me what you have for sale."  Fred is the camps medical merchant. He is selling a psi mentor for a temporal manipulation ability called Entropic Recurrence. This will allow us to have any damage done to an enemy be revisited upon them in subsequent turns. I've never used it before so I'm not sure how effective it is. We don't buy it a this juncture. We talk to the next merchant Freddy.   "I'm Freddy. I sell food." "Can you tell me anything interesting about this place?" He shakes his head. "Nope." "You don't talk much do you?" He shakes his head. "Nope." "Can I see what you have to offer?". Freddy is the camps food supplier. We talk to the last merchant in town, Fredd.  "What can you tell me about Camp Hathor?" His eyes light up like a pair of torches. "Ah, you asked the right man, miss. What can't I tell you about Camp Hathor is the right question here. I've been around for a long time and I can tell you many stories about this here beautiful huntin' camp, you know. Let's begin..." Keep on listening. "Ah, yes... Many, many years ago, an expedition came from the west, led by a man called Isaac Hathor. You know, later known as Hathor the Coalbringer. As they were makin' their way here, they ran into deadly beasts of different kinds: burrowers, crawlers, even Tunnelers, hm. And as they bravely fought their way through, they found this place, and with that - they discovered the richest coal deposits they'd ever seen! So, Camp Hathor was constructed, constructed by his holy hands, black from all the coal..."Oh god... "What have I gotten myself into? He won't stop talking. I'll take a short standing nap." You snap out of your vertical slumber to hear yelling. "And so, Jezebel told him: "These people need you, Isaac!" But Isaac knew somethin' she ain't, I mean didn't. He knew the secret of the mine, he knew about the hidden knowledge one could unlock just by touchint the mysterious crystals. They summoned him, and so he went into the darkness, never to be seen again..." "Is it over yet? I have to go somewhere else, and do some stuff." "No, miss, this is just the first part of the story, yeah. You still need to hear about the closin' of the mine and how this became a huntin' camp. Now, where was I..."Make it stop. Your eyelids feel heavy. "...And now, this is a huntin' camp. The end. Interestin', hm? I came to Hathor some years after the mine was closed, but, you know, I feel like I was born here." "That was the best story ever. Please continue telling it to random people that just wanted to buy something and accidentally asked you a question that could have been answered in just a couple of sentences."Yeah this part of the game is a bit more wacky than what we've seen so far. He laughs. "Thanks, I will. Hm, I need some water, me throat has gone dry, you know." "I've noticed that you and the other two merchants here are named Fred, Fredd and Freddy. Is that a coincidence?" "Folks often ask us that. It's just a coincidence, nothing else. It can be amusing though at certain times. For example, Fred, who's the regular jokester, sometimes intentionally tells people that we're brothers or whatever he thinks of at that particular time. And some people believe it, so he keeps on pullin' their leg and it leads to a lot of funny situations." "All in all, would you like to buy somethin'?" "I would like to see your wares." So Fredd is the camps hunting supplies merchant. Not much here for us unless he's selling very high quality leather hides.  Although he does have a really good pair of knife throwers gloves, these are good to have in our off hand, so we can switch to them whenever we need to throw knives about, which does play into our build somewhat. They will allow us to throw knives more accurately and more often.  Along the shore line we find a couple chatting.   After taking a breath of fresh air, the woman addresses the man. "Can't you stay just a bit longer?" "I'm sorry, darlin', but I gotta go. When I return... I'm taking you with me, away from all this. You know how I feel about this place. and the sole reason I come back here is because of you, Sarine. I gotta do this. I need to prepare everything for us to settle down in the North." He wipes the tears off her face. "Don't cry..." "She pushes him away. I'm not cryin' because you're leavin', I'm cryin' because that drat reek burned my eyes! What kinda emotional pansy do you take me for, huh?" She smiles and wipes her tears off with her hand. "What about the Tunnelers? How're you gonna get past them bloody freaks?" "I know a way. You didn't marry no incompetent quaker." She shrugs her shoulders. He laughs. "Oh, really...?" "Look, I gotta go. You take care of yourself for me, okay?" "Oh, cut the crap and gimme that sloppy kiss already." Beck and Sarine kiss each other one more time, after which Beck whispers something into her ear and walks away, leaving Camp Hathor. She stands there and watches him and in that moment notices you. As soon as your stares meet, you turn toward the river, pretending to enjoy the gloomy view.How romantic.  This toilet is a real toilet!  Near the only solid building in the camp is I think the only Oddity we can find here, an Old Train Schedule.  We step into the camp leaders office.   "Greetings, traveler. Edgar Garnham's the name, and I'm the leader of Camp Hathor. We're in a bit of an emergency, so state your business quickly." "What sort of emergency? Maybe I can help." "Now, why would I tell you, a complete stranger, something like that?" "I came from SGS. Bret sent me here to see what's happening with you guys." "Big Bret sent you here? Then you ain't a problem. We're good with SGS. As for the problems we've had, I ain't sure if you've noticed a pile of dead bugs at the north gate, but we have had those things coming out from the mine and converging on our camp. It started right after the earthquake, so I presume some wall there must've collapsed and made an opening for them to come through." Mine? "Yes, Hathor coal mine." He pauses, giving off an impression of being unsure whether you know what he is talking about. "This camp used to house miners that worked there. It was a pretty big mine. Not Foundry big, though, but the business was lucrative. Unfortunately, the miners dug into an underground river. The mine was mostly flooded and was abandoned consequently." "Luckily, the vicinity of this camp turned out to be rich in animal life. Those who didn't wanna leave after the flooding stayed here and began hunting and, eventually, started exporting meat to nearby settlements and stations." "You guys seem well armed, so how come you can't deal with a few burrowers?" "A few? When those things emerged for the first time, there were so many of them we had trouble even counting them all. All we could do was stand behind the gate and gun them bugs down as they approached. Later we sent some men to scout out the mine, but none returned. I reckon the bugs still greatly outnumber us." "For the time being, I'm not risking any more men. We'll defend and later, when their numbers diminish, we'll see what we can do." "I'm willing to go there and take care of your problem, but my services cost." "I like your confidence, even though I cannot see what you can possibly do that we are unable to. I guess material gain gives men, or women in you case, strength. I'll tell the guards to let you pass. As far as your reward is concerned, come see me whe-- if the job is done" "It's a deal."If we conceal the fact that we're from SGS and have good mercantile we could squeeze a better reward out of him. But alas. "Good luck." Off we go to deal with yet another Burrower nest. At least we've proven that we can take on a few Burrowers before, so this shouldn't be too big of a hassle.  The outskirts of the mine are covered in eggs and green, a sure sign of burrowers yup.  There's a few of the big ones that patrol around the perimeter of this central shack.  Off to the west is small, easily defensible shed, we got discovered by a spawn whilst entering.  We were close enough to one of the patrolling burrowers that we've been fully discovered.  Thankfully we can employ our old method of hiding behind doors to deal with them.  The shed contains more propaganda, and a plasma mine case.  At the far end of the shed is a chain link fence that we could hop over to have an easy way to sneak around the burrowers, and access the mine proper if we were agile enough.  Since we're not, its back to fighting burrowers for us.  We're a little tougher than the last time we did this. Our gloves are the same, so we're not that much better, but we do have better grenades.  Lone Burrowers are plenty easy, and packs of them are more of a mildly difficult nuisance for us at this point.  The new grenades are pretty lethal against them at least.  The central shack has a small nest of the things.  A neat little touch is that the light switches don't work in here, because why would they?  With all of that taken care of, we enter the mine itself.  It's all dark and eggy.  We decide to just avoid openly fighting the burrowers, we don't get much out of them at this point that we really need.  We find our last Old Divers Helmet in a nearby barrel.  In the north end of the mine is a ladder going up, but we carefully sneak our way west of it first.  In a small pit is a whole mess of eggs and burrowers. There are a few bodies to loot in here if you can deal with all of them, but its too much of a hassle for us at this stage so we abandon it to the burrowers.  And head up the ladder instead.  Up the ladder is a few more burrowers, and some red dream mushrooms.  Kaboom.  After dealing with the burrowers on this floor, there's some rocks on the back wall we will need to deal with.  There's a trilobite in the rubble.  And the unique oddity that can be found in the mine, an old bird cage. There's also some toxic sludge, you can use in a number of horrible recipes.  The poison from the last burrowers drat near kills us, we really should have brought some antidotes with us. Oh well, our medical supplies are holding mostly steady.  We plant some explosives on the nearby rocks.   We've struck into a river, which floods through the nearby hole, drowning all of the burrowers in that giant egg pit. This is all you have to do to complete the mission.  We clear out the remaining burrowers left alive.  And make our way back to camp.  We accidentally talk to Boyd instead of Edgar, sorry Boyd.  "I've dealt with the burrowers." His eyebrows rise. "Well done. I underestimated you, I have to be honest. How did you manage to do it." "It was easy, I went to the mines, punching burrowers with my bare fists on my way in. Then, I saw water leaking through some rocks. Punched them into oblivion, and water started rushing through and washed the vermin away. Then I roared like an angry animal as I watched them flail their inadequate legs, trying to save their lives. And now you're safe."Not that far from the truth. Edgar's face solidifies to display an expression of awe. Yet, not at your feat, as you soon realize, but rather at the extremeness and implausibility of your tale. Then, he shrugs. "You did it. Thank you very much." "As a thank you, I offer you a monetary reward, about two hundred coins, and on top of that, since I am very pleased by your work, one of the following: a crossbow, a sniper rifle, an assault rifle, a shotgun, a knife, a machete or a spear. All top quality. What would you like?"We don't really want any of these rewards, but the sniper rifle's probably worth the most, so we go with that. Sniper Rifles are amazing in this game, they don't hold a lot of ammo and they're incredibly slow weapons. But if you spec for them, anything you shoot will likely die in one shot. They aren't great against crowds of enemies, but a few traps between you and them and a lot of stealth will let you pick guys off one at time no problem. This is also true for snipers that go after us too, if you ever suddenly just drop dead in a fight for no reason, it's because there's a sniper about. "I'd love to get my hands on a sniper rifle."It's a tad heavy though. "Excellent choice. You've earned it. Now that this bug infestation is over, the Rathound King is the only thing we have to worry about again." "About the Rathound King..." "Haven't I mentioned him before? I suppose I was too focused on the burrower issue." "Who is he actually?" "The self proclaimed Rathound King is a savage man that lives with his filthy rathounds. He appears to have absolute control over them, as they behave much like a small army. It is almost unreal. I don't know where he resides or how he manages to control these rathounds, but one thing is certain: He's one very dangerous individual."This place continues to be wacky. "If you run into him by any chance, you better run for your life, because he ain't gonna show you mercy and I think no man or woman can defeat him alone. He's intelligent, and he's as large as a boulder. He's the master of setting deadly traps and covering his tracks so well that, for most of us, he might as well be floating through these caves. And I'm not even going to mention the deadly poisons he uses with his weapons... He's killed many of our own, and I don't think he's bound to stop." "But why are you guys fighting?" "It all started four years ago, even though it seems like a century. Back then, late Gideon Sud was the leader of Camp Hathor. One day he came before us all and told us that someone calling himself "Rathound King" was invading our hunting grounds. At one point Gideon said he had even managed to speak to this man, but it turned out he wasn't nothing but a filthy savage who had no interest in discussing anything with anyone." "The man claimed these lands belonged to him, and wouldn't accept anyone telling him otherwise. His stubborn attitude and Gideon's refusal to give in to this man's demands marked the start of our conflict. Since then, he's been attacking our hunters, either directly or by trapping the hunting grounds, and on a few occasions has even sent packs of rathounds to invade our camp. All in all, he's caused a lot of trouble and lot of death around here. But we'll get rid of him, eventually. We will get rid of him." "What if I can take him down?" "In that case, I'll say one thing: Good luck with that! You need to find him first; so far, we've had no luck in tracking him down. Even if you do somehow manage to find him, know that he's most likely surrounded by his rathounds. Even if he's alone, he's dangerous enough." "I can do it."We really shouldn't attempt this at this stage, the rathound king can be very tough. But I'm feeling bold. "I sure hope so. You proved your worth once, let's see If you'll be able to do it again. I wanna see his severed head as proof and then... In any case, good luck."We make a stop by Fred's shop.  "Sure, I love jokes." "Great. Here goes: A rathound walks into a bar." He pauses briefly, appearing as if he's going to explode from laughter. "Oh, it walks in... and the barkeeper shoots it!" And then he erupts, startling everyone in the vicinity. It takes but a moment before tears begin rolling down his face - a shroomberry on the cake of visceral amusement. "You dig? Because no one likes those dirty rathounds. That's why he shot it. You dig?" Laugh. "That's a good one! You're one funny man, Fred."Ultra. Wacky. "Thanks, sister. I worked hard on that one. Took me a while. Whooh. One day I'm gonna make a joke so funny the earth's gonna crack... up!" He laughs. "What can you tell me about the Rathound King?" "Imagine that you're a mindshroom. Can you imagine it? Good... Well, you're minding your own business, living in a cave, peacefully. No one's nibbling you or trying to tug you outta the ground. Peace. Then a freakin' Rathound King comes out of nowhere with an army of stinkin' rats and starts killing everything around you. And it goes on and on and on for years. He's mean as he's ugly, but he is strong and got enough mass in his head to cause us a lot of trouble, you dig." "But you fight back! You're a strong mindshroom that will eventually find that barbarian's lair and end his evildoing." He laughs. "This is actually a play I'm writing based on real events concerning the Rathound King. It's a comedy, you dig. Maybe one day I'll be able to direct a violent re-enactment in the Arena. Core City will have to wait, though." "See ya later." Next time we will attempt to go after the rathound king whilst being dangerously underleveled.
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Jan 16, 2023 00:48
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Incidentally, I decided to start a DOMINATING run of the game yesterday just for my own amusement. Despite not being able to rescue Newton from the legion of psi beetles the last time I attempted it, I have successfully made it past Depot A, and holy hell is this game much harder. Everything is extortionately more expensive, that money is so much more precious, especially early on when you need to be very careful about what equipment you bring to a situation. You also tend to encounter far more enemies, with smarter AI, and much more dangerous varieties of them at that. Like running into a giant swarm of psi beetles on Silent Isle, two of which were Goliath's. But it's been fun and I've picked up a few techniques that might help me out as I carry on with my current playthrough.
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Jan 16, 2023 04:47
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King Doom posted:Do they even say if the game specifically takes place on Earth? There's at least one, very, very minor reference that confirms that game takes place on our Earth - in very spoiler location we can learn that one minor character has two kids, Magnus and Aida, both specifically mentioned to be named after Old World chessmaster and Old World musical respectively.
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Jan 16, 2023 22:36
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Chapter 17 - If You Come at the Rathound King, Best Use Mines Today we hunt the deadliest game of all, Rathound Royalty.  The best way to get there is to make your way south of Camp Hathor.  The way is perilous and we're not really ready to be doing this yet.  But Henrietta lives up to her reckless feat.  The way forwards is blocked by a small river, high perception would gives us a means to cross. Instead we are forced to proceed along an alternative branch path east of here but on the same map.  That way is loaded with rathounds, nothing we're not able to deal with at least.  We keep our carrying capacity down by processing our many organs into their much lighter products, blood from hearts.  Insectoid saliva from Insectoid Salivarum.  And burrower poison from burrower poison glands.  The rathounds were at least guarding another piece of obsidian for our collection.  Swinging back westward, we find ourselves on the other side of the stream. We also find some Red Dream Mushrooms we can gather.  You need a whopping 55 Biology to be able to refine it into Gyromitrin, a toxic substance needed to make a number of very powerful drugs, recreational ones included. So we will have to wait before we can make use of these.  Heading south we find the area that demonstrates we're biting off more than we can chew.  This map is populated by a very large number of Rathound Alphas, and only Rathound Alphas, no younger. Now there are indeed a lot of them, but we could still deal with them in principle. Grenades, nets and careful maneuvering have never steered us wrong.  Except this map is also home to a crawler. And not just any crawler either, the bigger, meaner version of cave crawlers, the death stalker. Death Stalkers are exactly the same as their cave crawler cousins but tougher, hit harder, and are even more difficult to spot when in stealth.  Oh and their poisons are far worse, they infect you with a poison that causes you to take 78 bio damage and dazes you for 3 turns if you attempt to treat it, or use any combat drugs, or indeed heal at all. Death Stalkers are fairly rare and tend to be found in dark, far off, forgotten places. But they also to tend to live in nests too. At any rate, we're probably not equipped to fight this thing properly and we can barely hit it even if we get a chance to.  So this means, we can't use explosives to solve our problems here, because the blast would attract the death stalker. It would be possible to lure the death stalker into the rat hounds and have it attack them instead. But they are not easy to sneak by.  So that leaves us with attempting to fight a very large pack of rathound alphas in a less efficient manner. This picture doesn't even show all of them. This turned out to be nigh impossible at this point for me. Either I would get torn to shreds, or I would finish the fight with so many bleeding wounds that I couldn't stop myself from bleeding to death before my healing items finished their cool downs, Limited Temporal Increment included.  But after many a reload, I managed to sneak down the western side of the cavern relatively successfully.  Down into this small ruin.  We were then able to fight a smaller band of alphas, utilizing a bottle neck, and without drawing the ire of the main pack.  Inside the ruin was a locker that contained the Old Lamp oddity.  There was also a fire proximity suit that provides an insane amount of fire protection and burning immunity. It is much too bulky and slow for us to ever consider wearing.  There was also a psi mentor for Entropic Recurrence that was being sold by Fred back in Camp Hathor, saving us the cost of purchasing it.  The way further south was now clear for us.  The next area was a brief reprieve, just some nice water scenery and mindshrooms.  The narrow tunnel is replete with red dream shrooms and some rubble.  Containing yet more obsidian.  We head further south still.  It starts to get prohibitively dark. This is usually bad sign. It's often an indicator that we're about to run into a crawler nest or something else horrible. It's well worth it to carry some night vision goggles or some other means of illumination to deal with areas like this.  Up ahead is an already lit flare showing a freshly killed corpse. This area is actually very trapped, a lot of mines and bear traps are littered all over.  We got very lucky and made it through to the other side without stepping on a single one, first try.  The nearby lockers hold a Warehouse Inventory List Oddity and with that we take the stairs heading west into this strange building.  Which puts us inside of something of a maze.  I won't show much of this place, because its long and confusing visually. But it's basically a giant maze of tunnels, sometimes parts of the maze are cut off by fences, and there are occasional ladders and trap doors giving it some small amount of verticality too.  The maze is riddled with all manner of traps, mostly the acid blob variety.  It's not terribly hard to intuit your way to the very end of this place, but we decided to explore a little bit of it, just in case there was something to miss. We stumble upon a a few bodies past a gate surrounded by rocks.  Getting too close to the bodies make the door behind shut and the rocks disappear to reveal a pack of rathounds. Easy targets.  On one of the dead bodies we find a unique Bone Fetish oddity. Kind of looks like something from Dishonored but I don't think it is.  The door behind us was actually locked, but with an absurdly flimsy lock. The was a lockpick mk II on the body to keep non-pickers from getting stuck in here.  Besides dead ends full of more traps, there is nothing else of note in this maze. We scramble our way through the rest of the place and find an exit to the west.  The next location has an almost courtly appearance.  Past some double doors we find the throne room of the Rathound King, flanked by an Alpha and an even more deadly rathound variety, an Ancient Rathound. Against my better judgement I strike up a conversation.   "Who dares disturb the Rathound King? Tell me your name, or I'll have my rathounds tear you apart. Speak!"It is possible to parlay with him, it can lead you to getting a mission where you return to Camp Hathor, where you can kidnap the hunter Sarine, who we saw saying goodbye to her partner. The rathound king wants her to be his wife. As well this being morally repugnant, it would also make Camp Hathor into a very hostile place. Plus he's a bloody monarchist, gently caress monarchists, death to the rathound court! "I am Henrietta, and that's going to be the last name you'll ever hear. Time to hang that deluded head of yours on a wall. " The king is much faster than us and opens by pinning us in place with a net.  Then in a single hit he drains almost our entire health bar. The rathound king is tough, he has about 400HP and our punches will barely graze him. On top of this, his Ancient Rathound pet is even tougher, with about 650 HP. We are really not leveled for this place. But we're a sneaky, weasely sort of people so we've a few tricks up our sleeves.  We plant a few bear traps and landmines in the entry way of the throne room.  We open the door in stealth, and stick another mine in front of the doorway. The king is too wily for our tricks and immediate heads over to try to disarm the newly placed landmine.  So now, whilst he's distracted and surrounded by mines, we hit him with a mk IV frag.  Now we're in a much nicer position to deal with his god awful crossbow attacks. We hit him with a slow, and duck around to the side.  The king tries to follow and waltzes right into one of the beartraps. The rest of his court comes down to help out.  We rush up and start pummeling him with all our might.  Our criticals finish the job.  Now we just have to deal with his bodyguards, we pin the alpha in place with a net and the ancient wanders into the other bear trap.  Ancient Rathounds have 15%/5 mechanical resistance so our hits are not hurting it all that much.  We remember we have Limited Temporal Increment and start dropping the cool downs on our equipment.  This lets us whip out another grenade, killing the remaining rathounds and seriously injuring the ancient.  Now it's just us and old one. Our adrenaline wore off so we're running out of AP here  We hit it with a slow, preventing it from getting anywhere near us.  We try tasing it to allow us to use more opportunistic attacks, but it turns out they're immune to stuns.  Thankfully our tabi boots give us a lot of movement points and we can basically keep outrunning it.  Giving us time to trap it in net.  And the move in for the coup de gras. The king and his court are toast.  We find the ancient rathound tooth oddity, note that there are two to be collected, meaning this was not a unique enemy, although they are exceptionally rare on normal difficulty.  The hide of an ancient rathound is often found to be of extremely high quality and can be turned into a pretty decent set of leather armor. It would be too bulky for us, so I'm thinking this will eventually make us a nice set of combat gloves. Armor wise, what we ultimately want to find is a really high quality piece of ordinary rathound leather. With the right materials we can do wonders with something like that.  Collecting that tooth sets us up to level 12. We take another point of dexterity, meaning more hits and more crits.  Our next feat is Combo. Now every third consecutive hit of ours will deal 100% more damage and stun one fifth of the time. We're just piling on the damage potential.  We keep on upping our technology skills, we're really lagging on our electronics, we will definitely want to get that higher before it becomes a problem.  The rathound kings another of interesting items on him. His regalia is a very good piece of armor, absolutely critical for some builds. If we were running unarmed instead of fists, we'd probably be wearing it. It's one of the few items that can boost your strength, and you're a lot faster whilst wearing it and immune to fear. It does have the draw back of making you way more immune to fire damage though. A few hidden tidbits with this armor is that it actually makes rathounds friendly towards you while you are wearing it. You should also never try to wearing it whilst in the vicinity of Camp Hathor as they will attack you on sight.  The rathound kings crossbow, Jawbone is unique and very impressive, compared to other average quality crossbows anyway. It's main feature is that it does significantly greater criticals, although it does them less often than other crossbows. It can also be fired at a reduced AP cost if you wield it with a strength score of 7. Besides that it does a great amount of damage too.  We came for his head, so his head we will take.  Besides all that, the rathound king doesn't own all that much, a punching bag, and some cages.  The waterside view is nice touch too, and a broken vending machine.  There is a shortcut around the maze that's along this wall somewhere, but we aren't perceptive enough to see it and the king wasn't all that forthcoming with us. So it's back through the trap filled maze with us.  A brisk walk, and a short sneak later and we're back in Camp Hathor.  "The Rathound King is dead." "I can't believe my ears. How did you do it? Where was he hiding?" "He was hiding in his lair, south of Camp Hathor. I went past some caves filled with rathounds, then found an abandoned building that turned out to be the entrance to his lair. Once I got past the traps, it was a fairly easy battle." "Amazing! Henrietta, there's only one thing left for me to do: You did so much for us, helped us get rid of the bugs and the Rathound King as well, therefore making our lives much easier. First, take this." He hands you 300 charons. "This is not your only reward, of course. You are one of us now. Come see me when you have the time and I'll teach you a few things that a hunter like you might find useful. Not many get the opportunity." "Big Bret from SGS told me to come here and see what's happening with you guys. He said they've lost contact with Camp Hathor after the earthquake." "Ah, good old Bret. This earthquake caused nothing more than a bit of panic and a problem or two, one of which is with our communication equipment. We'll get that fixed in no time. Everything else is running as usual; we're hunting and exporting meat at the same capacity, and now that the bugs are gone, we've got but a few things to worry about." "Tell that to Bret and that we send our sincerest greetings." "You wanted to teach me how to be a better hunter."You have to make sure to re-talk with Edgar if you want him to teach you how to hunt. "Yes. You improved our lives, to put it mildly, so the least I could do to thank you is sharing some of our hunting techniques with you. Although, you are one capable hunter already. I'm sure you'll get the hang of this quickly. You ready?" Let him teach you.   This free feat gives you a 20% increase to all damage done by crossbows, knives, and spears to any and all critters. Definitely worth grabbing this if you focus on any of those weapons and this would seem to be pretty useless to us but that bonus probably includes throwing knives, so we may benefit from it a little bit.  We pick up a few anticoagulants from Fred and combine them with our blood and saliva to make some more health hypos. These are quickly becoming a bit obsolete for us at this point though, we may need to start to switch to advanced hypos instead. before we are crushed under the weight of a hundred health hypos.  With that task out of the way, we do a little exploring on the way back to SGS, heading west from the main camp area this time.  This area holds a unique enemy.  Hiding in the shadows near here.  It's Ol' Chopper! You probably don't remember, but back in Chapter 1, one of the rumors we picked up from Arlene talked about was referring to him. He's supposed to be a serial killer who was terrorizing Junk Yard.  His choppin' days are now over.  The only thing on him worth mentioning is his unique knife, a Kukri, he must have been friends with Knock Knock. It's unique feature is that it has a 30% chance to inflict the crippled debuff every hit, rather than needing to use the crippling strike feat.  Ol' Chopper also has a Brain in a jar in his stash, Human Brain's are one of the few items in Underrail that are entirely useless. Much like in real life.  There was several cave ears growing in his cave too.  We work our way back west, past the recycling plant and to the area just east of the crossroads cave. There's a narrow path going south from here.  This area is probably pretty safe, but we stay in stealth just in case.  It has a nice relaxing waterfall we can admire, and a cave poppy to harvest too. There might be siphoners lurking in the waters, but none saw through my stealth if there were.  We refine the cave poppy into delicious morphine.  South of here is a fairly short narrow cave with nothing in it.   There wasn't even any branching paths.  The next cave is circular in shape and full of pigs.  They manage to drop the final Fluorescent snout oddity. Although still haven't found any of the warthog oddity yet.  We proceed one more screen south.  And we've arrived at a dead end.  There's a number of old shipping containers down here, and a marked card deck oddity.  The only major feature in this area is one of the elevators that will take us down into the deep caverns.  This one is out of power though, so no suicide mission for us. We really don't want to go down there any time soon. We won't want to go down there even if when we need to. That's all the exploration of the lower caverns for now, too many crawler nests to accidentally stumble into, so it's back to SGS with us.  Home Sweet Home.  We go to update Bret on Camp Hathor.  "I went to Camp Hathor." "Ah, good. And? What's happening there?" "Everything is alright. The camp wasn't damaged in the earthquake, and they'll fix the communication lines soon. They also had some burrower issues, but now that it's all sorted, the camp is functioning as usual." "Great, glad to hear everything is alright. It's all set then. You've done your part." We pick up a ton more nets, can never have enough of them.  And more explosives from Lucas.  And a nice piece of black cloth from Harold.  That we use to make a slightly better balaclava, to keep up our stealth.  We also finally make an energy shield. These come in three types, low, medium, and high frequency. Basically every weapon in the game has an impact velocity, melee weapons have low impact velocity, pisols and the like have medium and sniper rifles and energy weapons have very high impact velocities. Low frequency shields are better at resisting low impact velocities, medium frequency against medium velocity and so on. Once activated, your shield will absorb some, if not all, of the damage inflicted upon you draining the shield in the process. The more damage the shield absorbs the more energy is drained. Active shields will also just lose energy over time, so its important to keep some batteries handy to keep them nice and topped up. Against most bullets, a shield will likely absorb the entirety of the damage. Typically slower moving weapons like melee attacks are harder to resist with a shield. Gloveless unarmed attacks will circumvent a shield entirely. If we get hit by an electrical charge, like that from an EMP weapon, it will completely drain our shield. On the whole, shields are fantastic and in many ways a real game changer. They dramatically improve your survivability in heavy firefights and they're the best way to survive a bullet from a sniper rifle too. Even if they don't completely absorb the damage, they will reduce the amount you take and are very easy to recharge and maintain. My only real problem with energy shields is that I always initially forget that I have one and don't activate it when it help out the most.  Next time, we'll go on holiday to the big city.
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Jan 17, 2023 08:11
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The important thing about shields is that you can't recharge them in combat. The energy you have in the tank is the energy you have, which is why efficiency (energy drained per hitpoint of damage prevented) is important. You can get a shield before you retrieve the drill circuit board if you explore the Burrower cave in the Omega building, but of course it doesn't help a lot against the acid attacks in Depot A. The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 17, 2023 |
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Jan 17, 2023 11:36
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You can also get one if you manage to stealth kill one of the guards in the casino in Junk Yard too.
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Jan 17, 2023 12:04
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Chapter 18 - Core City Tour In the interest of gaining a few more levels, we are going to head for Core City where oddities abound. We'll go see Essie to get a rundown of our transport options now that the damage from the earthquakes have been dealt with.  "What do you think of the Faceless invasion?" "I don't know what they want, but it's got something to do with cutting off the only tracks that connect North and South Underrail, as that's where the blockade is. Underrail Express trains are still going to Core City, but I don't know what the current situation is and if it's a good idea to go there by train right now." "I've talked to some train operators who stopped by SGS, and they told me they haven't had any trouble. Still..." "What can you tell me about Underrail Express?" "You mean, besides the obvious, that they control the railway traffic of the entire Underrail?" "Yes, besides the obvious." "Well, how a company like that has managed to maintain such a uniquely independent status, if that's what you had in mind... now that's not obvious. Yes, yes, all stations need railway traffic, and one can say they've all reached some kind of a mutual agreement on allowing Underrail Express to run the whole show. But they've been around since Biocorp times, and the fact that they haven't been taken over by the Underrail Protectorate or whomever tells me that their influence goes, um... goes beyond what us commoners hope to understand." "I've talked to a lot of train personnel over the years, believe me, but their guess is as good as mine, Henrietta."Train's are one of the ways we can quickly travel between populated stations. If I remember correctly we can pickpocket a ticket off of Essie that will let us take one train trip for free. "Yes, I was hoping you could tell me how to get somewhere." "Sure. Where are you headed?" "How do I get to Rail Crossing?" "The easiest way would be to take the train there." "But if you really want to stretch your legs, then exit the station to the north and from there try to head mostly to the west northwest. Eventually you'll reach the area where the rails emerge from the tunnels again and the Rail Crossing depot won't be far off."We'll be making this hike ourselves once we're done with our tour of Core City. "How do I get to Camp Hathor?" "Camp Hathor is not too far from here. Take the elevator down to the caves and just head east. You should expect rathounds along the way, but I'm sure you've gotten used to dealing with them by now." "Or, you could take the boat, which should've probably beenmy first recommendation." "How do I get to Foundry?" "Train is the safest way as usual. If you want to walk, you'll have to walk north from here, and way past GMS. ButI wouldn't recommend it since you would be going through Ironheads territory; they're especially concentrated around Warehouse Block Beta, which is along the way." "I mean, you could take the train to Rail Crossing and then head northeast from there and reach Foundry that way, but if you're already boarding the train, then you should just go straight there. It's all your choice." "How do I get to Core City?" "So, to Core City it is, then? For that you have two options: You could take the train, or you could take the boat. Since the Faceless cut off the rail to North Underrail, it might not be the safest route at the moment, you never know what could happen."I'm not sure how exactly we manage to take the train from SGS to Core City or Foundry, the railway doesn't seem to connect up to Core City at all. Kind of a weird oversight. "Therefore, a boat is a safe alternative. Now, if you want to walk, head north from Rail Crossing and you'll get there. Know that the area in between is full of gangs and who knows what." "Thanks." "Take care." So now we have a train parked outside of SGS, we just interact with it, pay a fee, and we can travel to any station we want for a fairly small fee.  But we won't taking the train to Core City, we won't even be taking any of Essie's directions either, there's a much quicker way to get there. By taking the lower passages.  If I pull up the map of the Lower Passages, we can see that the map itself is a pretty tiny area, we can use it to travel vast distances of the lower underrail map in only a few screens.  We make our way north.   Blowing open the rubble, leads to a few Lurkers coming round to see what the fuss was about.   Putting them down, the rest of this area is pretty empty.  We find a Waist Pack, which is a pretty decent belt that lets you carry more and improves your mercantile. You can occasionally find a larger version of this as well.  The passage can be pretty dark and are full of lurkers just hiding about waiting to ambush you, and other worse things too.  The route straight north is a fairly safe journey at least.    I got startled in this section, thinking I was under attack, so I threw a flare to flush out a lurker. But I think I just accidentally hit enter to start combat by mistake. There's a locked gate in front of us with a hatch behind it, you can't pick it though.   The next section is even darker, although I don't think there are any enemies in this area.   This pipe holds treasure.  A unique Human Scalp oddity. I.. don't know why, lurkers I guess.  It's now so dark we literally can't see the path in front of us.  Thankfully the area transition provides us with a guiding beacon.  And we've arrived at the outskirts of Core City. Quick and simple.  There's a barricade of Praetorian Security guys up ahead, but we will check out the door off to the side first.   "I don't understand. What do you mean?" "The door! You opened the door! I've spent years... maybe not YEARS but definitely a lot of time trying to figure out the door system. Whoa, like, whoa! And you just came in here and... did magic or like..." "Whoa!" "Was there something wrong with the door?" "Wow, weren't you listening? The door system is broken, girl! I couldn't open the door! I just, like, whoa, and then I whoa! The door remained closed. Stupid broken door! But you - YOU fixed it. Life is good now..." He continues after a short pause. "Are you a...?" "What?" "A hero?" "Yes, I am. Goodbye." A single tear appears in his eye and rolls down his pockmarked face. He swiftly wipes it off and waves at you. "Stay safe... hero..."So Core City seems to have a bit of a drug problem.  I this room we an "ArenaNow" Broadcasting Schedule oddity. One of the many different oddities scattered all over Core City. Much of what we will be doing in Core City is talking to random people and collecting these things. We approach the barricade.   "All clear. You're good to go. We're worried about Lurkers so we have to be careful with any poor soul that comes to Core City through these passages. Welcome to Core City, and have a nice stay." "Who are these Lurkers you're talking about?" "You want to tell me you traveled through the under-passages and you don't know about Lurkers!? You're pretty drat lucky you didn't find out the hard way. They are a large, extremely brutal gang that lives in these passages." "They capture people, mutilate them... all sorts of horrible stuff. Supposedly they even eat their prisoners. Just... sick... Avoid them at all costs if you value the flesh on your bones." "Thanks for the warning. I'll get going now."  Up the stairs we find another 'motioner'.  Music - Corecity Welcome to Core City, it's a gigantic labyrinth of a place. Which is made even more confusing by the lack of a functioning map while we're here. It gives you a fantastic feeling of getting extremely lost.  We're currently in the lower passages section, mostly it's full of junkies, some gangsters, and a few homeless people all living in tents.  Oh and the odd mugger, lying in wait for us. There a few of these guys hanging out in various places throughout Core City. Like all human enemies, they will not respawn once they're dealt with.   The muggers here are equipped with some pretty solid tools of the trade. Core City is a place where even the homeless live like kings.  The main area of the lower passages has various homeless huddling around television screens watching Core City's favorite pastime, gladiatorial combat in the Arena.  This barrel has an Old World Booze Bottle oddity, it's something called 'Deer Beer'. I'm not a beer drinker, and unfamiliar with a lot of beers, so I'm not sure if this is a reference to something in the real world or not.   We make our way west.  This place sort of looks like an Nuclear Reactor pool.  There's an elevator back here that is has no power. I'm not sure if I've ever found a way to power it before so I've no idea where it goes.  There's not much back here, a locked fence with some random crap not worth mention inside it.  There is one secret back here, it's inside these pipes. It requires a very high perception to located, although there is a few other ways to find this secret too. We will definitely want to do this at some point, but not just yet.  Back in the lower passages, we head south.   Inside we finally meet someone who can teach us magic. This is going to be a game changer.   Then, an unexpected word comes out of his mouth. "Meow!" "Excuse me?" "Greetings, cat, my name is Sergio. Do you want to get in Motion, huh? Do you?" "What do you mean by 'getting in Motion'?" "Never heard of Motion? Cat, you're so silly! It's obvious you are not from Core City!" "Let's put it this way - life in Core City is boring and depressing. Fact! Everywhere you look, you see death, misery, pain and death. Fact! Yes, the Arena might be the best thing since cats, but it definitely doesn't help the death part. Yeah, agree?" "Is there an alternative? Cat, you betcha! You need to get yourself in Motion! It'll take you on an exciting journeyunimaginable by most people! Fantastic, vivid, sensational, extraordinary. Something you'll never forget." "It truly is as fun as it sounds!" "Meow!" "Wait, wait... Is this some sort of drug?" "Y-- No. Drug, that's an awful word. I prefer the term "Motion." Listen cat, all you need to do is smoke from this shisha here and enjoy the Motion. It's safe, trust me, lots of people do this. It comes at a price, of course."Naturally, wizards are pretty busy people, so we'll need to pay for him to learn some basic cantrips, and scribe scrolls. "How much?" "I usually charge ninety charons per session. But you I'll charge..." "Ninety charons! I think that's fair." "Meow!" "Why is the price so high?" "Partially because of the ingredients that go into making Motion, partially due to the maintenance of the shisha, plus some other things. It's a perfectly reasonable price, trust me. In the end, it's up to you, cat."Too rich for our blood, but we may come back here to pick up some of 'the art' in the future, it can lead us to wonders. "I gotta go. See you around." The dog is this room, is actually just walking around in circles around that motioner.  There's a small railing to the south of Sergio, leading to a ladder, we climb up.  We find ourselves in Core City proper.  South of here is the main entrance to the cities lower Underrail train station. In a nearby bin is the Core City Plans oddity.  As soon as we leave the main gates, we are accosted by an Old Jonas lookalike.  "Sure. What's this about?" "A security company from North Underrail's hirin' folks fer an expedition to the Black Sea. They're lookin' fer laborers, technicians 'n' most importantly skilled fighters yknow, they need some extra security over there." "Whatever field work yer int'rested in, ya gotta be one tough pipeworker, 'cause the work's real hardcore - but so's the money, heeee." He flashes a toothless grin. "You'll find 'em over at the eastern docks if yer int'rested. Down the main elevator, then east along the platform. Can't miss 'em."Why its a tout for the main DLC content! Ask him about Loom! "When you say hardcore money, how hardcore do you mean?" "I wasn't told exactly how hardcore it is, ya dig, but by Southern standards it's gotta be pretty hardcore. I reckon, if the job's only fer the toughest, right, then the toughest ain't gonna do it cheap. Right, heee?" "I'd apply myself, but the ol' legs ain't what they used to be. Nah, they ain't. Rusty pipes they've become, eh." "So, you're just standing here and directing people down to the docks?" "Yup. That's my job." He leans closer. "That position's taken. Dig?" "What can you tell me about the Black Sea?" "Dammit, woman, ya ain't from around, are ya? Never heard of the dreaded Black Sea the Hell's Gut? Spooky legends? Pirates? Y know, them folks int'rceptin' vessels, zonin' out, kidnappin' plunderin', then takin' their loot to waters few are willin' to chase 'em to?" "Don't ring a bell?" "Then, well, maybe this sort of work ain't fer ya, kiddo. Just sayin'." "Who are these people and what is the expedition about?" "Don't know exactly what they lookin' fer over there. I was just told to direct folks to the docks. He shrugs. Frankly, I reckon they gotta be diggin' for some old world ap to show off in a museum in Dis. Who cares, long as the pay's good." "As for the company, it's called Aegis Incorporated, 'n' it's from the North. Security contractors - serious business. These guys're packin' a lotta heat, 'n' they look mighty hardcore in 'em full-body armor suits. Oh, yes, siree. Makes ya... wanna join them straight away, right? Right?" "Got it. I'll check them out."We REALLY don't want to go check out the Black Sea any time soon. That would complete suicide. We won't be attempting to do that until we are at least level 25. You have been warned. "Hey, got a coin or two?" He puts his hand out. "Eh?" "Here's a fiver." Give him 5 stygian coins. "Cheers!" He turns away and scans for his next target. Near the Core City train, is a small shack.  It's not a crime to break into this place of apparently.  You can find more Core City plans inside this locker.  Nothing interesting in the locker near the train.  We head north up this back alley.  Music - Dropzone We find ourselves entering the slums of Core City, known colloquially as the Drop Zone.  More ArenaNow broadcasting oddity in one of the barrels as we head deeper into the drop zone.  There's some sort of robed figure doing something suspicious near a door.   There's a haxxor in his hands, its screen casting light inside his hood, illuminating his confusion or maybe irritation - or most likely a bit of both. But he then senses your presence: He calmly conceals his hacking device, and walks away as if nothing unusual is happening. "What's behind the door?" He ignores you and walks away.Hmm portentous.  There's a small house with a guy called Blanket living in there. You can shut off power to his house using the power box on the east wall on the outside of here. He will then rush out to flip it back on, you can then use that time to burgle him.  We wander east and it takes us to a dead end, with a graffiti artist in it.  "Khm. Excuse me." The man stops working, instead focusing his eyes on surveying you from tip to toe. His eyes go up and down for a short moment before he decides to speak. "Hey, babe, how's it going? At first I though it was some ugly zoner chick bothering me again, but luckily it's not. What can Mac do for ya?" "What are you working on there?" "Graffiti, babe, graffiti. Say, do you like what you see?" "It's nice. I like it." "Well, thanks. You do have eyes for real art. Beautiful eyes, I gotta add. I did most of the graffiti in Core City. Actually, all of them. I'm the only writer around here. Oh, and I'm not counting what the Free Drones have been scribbling on the walls - that's amateur work!"I have noticed that playing as a woman makes some people a lot more forthcoming with information in this game. "Once I finish this one, I'm gonna do a throw up." "You want to throw up? Are you feeling sick?" Mac smiles. "I expected that reaction. A throw up is a type of graffiti. It's a, a..." He looks around the area. "There's one above me, that big white one. Simple outline with one color fill - a throw up." "There's so much of that stuff to talk about, but I gotta finish this piece. Then I'll have more time for chatting... and other stuff." "You know, there's a lot of graffiti in Underrail..." "The good ones were done by me." "What? It's the truth." "What can you tell me about Core City?" "Core City? Hmm, you know what, babe? There's this place called Hardcore City Bar, it looks pretty cool. Pleasant on the eyes - not as much as you are - but still... very pleasant." "I go there from time to time. You should too." "What can you tell me about the Arena?" "I don't know. Probably nothing you haven't heard already. It's the big thing in Core City. I liked it for a while, but the visuals kinda became boring. Just a... concrete room with gladiators killing each other." "But, you know, babe, there's something hardcore for ya: I made the graffiti they used in the Gauntlet ad. Seen that one? It was colorful at first, but those dopes made it all green. It makes no sense." "What can you tell me about Drop Zone?" "The Zone... Well, it's pretty bad in here, babe. I think my graffiti add some beauty to this death z... Drop Zone." "Just look around: Use your eyes and you're bound to see more than I can ever explain with words." Winks. "How do you feel about the Faceless invasion?" "Couldn't care less." "Maybe they should destroy Core City, you know. It would mean a change of scenery, which would be hardcore. Plus,it's not like I can't find better places to work, and I got tired of this place anyway. Time to move on to something new. Hmm, maybe I should move to North Underrail next... I'll think about it." "Actually, I'll be going now."  In the back here is a Rat Head Amulet Oddity, it's the symbol the game uses for the oddity menu in the top right corner of the screen.  Back towards Blankets house, we make our way north.  There's a few Praetorian guards blocking off an area to the north. They aren't actually stopping anyone from going up there. They're keeping the mutants that live up there from coming down.  Back to Blankets we head west.   Behind a locked gate is a locked locker, that was empty.  We spy a nearby ladder.  With an easy house to break into.   Nobodies home either, so plenty of things to burgle.  Including a unique SMG, the Mini-Izu, named after the famous real world tactical assault weapon, The Life Aquatic with Steve Izu.  There is also a Cloaking Device up here. If you're really struggling with sneaking about you can strap one of these to your belt and turn it on for a nice stealth boost. Their batteries tend to drain very quickly though, so you need to make sure you only use it when running from cover to cover.  Further west we spot some gangsters. You can find these guys throughout Core City. they often stand around dead ends in various place. They're completely neutral, unless you get too close to them, then they will attack. Some of the fights with them can be fairly tough at this point in the game, they often aren't guarding anything either, so it's not strictly necessary to fight them either.  Near them is a unique NPC called Dolt Jr. He's a random event that can show up in various locations to give you useless pieces of advice.  South of here we spot an old beggar.  "Go and get something good to eat." Give him twenty stygian coins. "Oh, thank you - thank you! There are still kind people in Underrail after all. May good fortune always be with you!"Beggars are also random events that you can find in various places. Sometimes, like now, they're just downtrodden people needing some coins. Occasionally they can be a mugger in disguise. Giving the beggar money will boost our karma score by a couple of points giving us access to join the good faction later on. "Take care, old man. So long." West of the beggar is the entrance to a warehouse that will play an important role in a series of radiant quests.  We can't enter it just yet, but we can walk along the south wall of the building and we can see into it.  There's a barrel at the end of this walkway with another Old Booze Bottle oddity inside of it.  South of the warehouse is another small building.  It's full of gangsters. I wouldn't normally consider picking a fight with them, but Henrietta's just too darn reckless to just stand there and not drop some pipe workers.   After the initial grenade carnage, we notice that there was actually another gangster stealthed in the back. He was a mind control psionic by the way.  We take out the right most survivor with a few throwing knives.  The last guy heals and hit us with an aimed shot, a feat that on a successful hit gives him a guaranteed critical. Naturally our energy shield would have been pretty useful here if I had remembered that we had one.  But one gangster is not a threat to us at this point.  We can now make Advanced Patching Kits, so we make a few to keep our clothes in good nick.  After looting the bandits we swing east along the bridge.  This brings us back to the main entrance of Core City. Walking into the center, we are approached by Jon the Beautiful.  "Can I help you?" "Hey, pal, let's not lie to each other. The real question is, can I help you?" "Can you?" "Hey, that's what I'm talking about! But first, let me properly introduce myself: I'm Jon the Beautiful. Am I not? Eh Eh?" "Now that we're done with that, listen here: I've been living in Core City for quite some time now and have learnedmany of its secrets. Even some of the most hardcore ones! And... I happen to be hungry all the time. Understand, pal? I can tell you interesting and one-hundred-percent useful things in exchange for... what?" "Food?" "You get it! That's what I'm talking about, pal! You're not as dumb as you loo-- Okay, okay, so here's the deal: You can find me near the back entrance to the Hardcore City Bar. That's where I usually hang out. If you don't know where that is, find me first and then I'll explain it. So, bring that delicious food of yours and then we'll discuss things further, pal." "Alright, I'll find you if I need something."Jon is a fantastic source of information. If you're ever stuck on what to do or where to go to find someone or something, it's always a good idea to ask Jon. He will charge you a certain piece of food for his info, but it usually leads you to exactly what you're looking for. Be careful though, his extra rare info costs extra rare food. Extra spicy too. "Hey, pal, that's what I'm talking about. See you later!" Throughout core city are missionary's for something called The Institute of Tchort. They seem to be the only faction who concerns themselves with one day returning to the surface world somehow.  There's also a guy here who's name I forget who goes on about this couch. I believe he is also a random encounter that you can find in various places.  East is a food vendor called Moe. He's not a nice kebab spit turning next to him.  "Do you know anything about Jon the Beautiful?" "Do I? If he continues with his food for information thing going, I'll be rolling in charons with the rest of the fat rats in Core City! Bless him, I want him to live forever."Moe is the guy you'll likely go to if you need certain foods for Jon. Naturally Moe is quite pleased with this arrangement. "No, really. Bless him!" "What can you tell me about the Arena?" "Hey, you have to go and experience the bloodbath live. I mean, you can watch it on JKK's ArenaNow, but it's just not the same." "Take my advice, buy a ticket and enjoy the carnage. Folks from all over Underrail come here just for the Arena." "Can I ask for some directions?" "I don't see why not." "Who runs this place?" "Core City is run by the Oligarchs; Two of them used to work for Biocorp before it got zoned out, while the thirdone is a businessman from afar. They own nearly everything in Core City. Well, you could say they don't exactly own Drop Zone, which is sort of... how should I say..." "Ignored not just by the Oligarchs, but by pretty much everyone else. I don't think even the Faceless would wanna go there." He laughs.The three Oligarch factions we will find are Praetorian Security, the sort of paramilitary cops of the city and former security forces for Biocorp; Coretech, the former electronics technology research arm of Biocorp; and JKK, the entertainment group which runs all of the broadcasts of the Arena and other shows in Core City. We will need to join one of these factions to finish the game, although there now exists an alternative way around this. At any rate all four pathways are mutually exclusive. "Is there a doctor around here?" "Sure, take the elevator to the level above this one and in the main square you'll find Dr. Gratz's office." "Now, listen, she might seem... strange, even scary at times, but she's the best doctor I've ever seen. Trust me." "Should I avoid anything or anyone?" "Avoid Drop Zone. Lowlifes, gangsters and who knows what else lives there. Sewers too are a no-no, but why anyone would go there in the first place is beyond me." He laughs. "Last but not least, have you seen those robed guys? They call themselves Tchortists, and I don't exactly buy into their fairy-tales. I'd avoid them if I were you."We will not be avoiding the Tchortists. We cannot do that. "I'm looking for some work." "Work, you say? I'm not offering any jobs here at my stall, if that's what you're asking." He laughs. "But no, seriously, maybe JKK, Coretech or Praetorian Security are looking for someone." "Take the elevator to the upper level and you'll be right outside Coretech; JKK is to the west from the elevator, and Praetorian Security to the east." "Can we talk about something else?" "May I recommend a topic?" "Food." "I wanna try something..." Moe is of course a food vendor. Two of the new foodstuffs he sells are Core City chips and extra spicy Hard Core City chips. The spicy ones actually improve critical hits for melee attacks a fair bit so they might be worth buying on occasion.  In a nearby barrel is another new Oddity, the Biocorp Technology Catalog Fragment.  We will continue our tour of Core City next time. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 05:32
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Oh yes, I am sure this Tchort guys are perfectly reasonable fellas.
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Jan 18, 2023 08:21
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Life would be so much more beautiful if everyone would just accept food as currency
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Jan 18, 2023 08:58
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Slaan posted:Life would be so much more beautiful if everyone would just accept food as currency Excellent post/av combo
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Jan 19, 2023 02:21
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Chapter 19 - More of the Core Last time we were standing near Moe, Today we head down the stairs near Moe's.  And we're back in the lower passages. We saw these gangsters earlier. Let's go introduce ourselves properly.       I'm not sure you are, dead body.   We just steam roll them all.  Their leader had a bottle of Mushroom brew on his person. It makes you stronger and tougher but at the expense of dexterity and psi abilities, so it's pretty rubbish for us. It's a very common alcoholic beverage in Underrail.  We make our way to the elevator and we get a run down of the different locations we can go in Core City. We've barely scratched the surface of this place. We'll explore a bit of everywhere except the Upper Metro Station, that's where Upper Underrail is located.  We arrive at the Merchant floor, some guy called Mitchell blabbers at us.   We head west and see some of the Core Tech faction members activating their armors Wireless Charging Aura. This lets them transfer energy from their suit to any and all of their electronic equipment over time, energy weapons included. That seems pretty handy if you have a lot of electronic gadgets on your person and use an energy weapons build. From my own research, Coretech is probably the most popular faction choice amongst many players of this game for a whole number of reasons.  We make our way west.   Oh look more Gangsters who need to be put in their place. Old Gangsters are very powerful thought control psionics.  They blow up real good though.     Again, this is another fight that would have been a lot easier if I could just remember to turn on my bloody shield, the day is coming I swear.     With that last guy over with, we actually find an old Biocorp Catalogue fragment oddity in one of the barrels near them, so it seems they do sometimes guard the occasional oddity. There is also a secret passage that you can find in this area, but I think you need something like 12 perception to spot it, or something crazy like that. That's okay, there are other ways into that area.  Following the narrow railing walkway north of the gangsters, leads to a cave system. We will not be exploring in here any time soon, I don't quite know what's back there actually but I do know there are a lot of Faceless, so we'll hold off until we feel stealthy enough to try.  Back east and then north to the market place proper, we have a number of shops we can enter.  We enter the shop of a guy called Mykola.  "Are you okay? Is there something I can do to help you?" With red face and eyes full of tears, he finally responds. "It is not as bad as it sounds. Just lovely." Coughs. "Don't mind me, I'll be fine. I guess. Anyway, the, the store is closed, I'm just going through some junk here." Coughs. "Drats!" "What do you sell here, and when will you be open?" "This used to--" Coughs violently. "Just lovely. Anyway, this used to be a mechanical store. Here you could buy components, get your devices and other machinery fixed and--" Coughs. "Again... You get the idea." "When will it be open? The way things currently are, probably never. Which is a shame, if you ask-- if you ask--"Coughs. "If you ask me." "I had more questions if you don't mind. Henrietta is the name." "I don't mind. I'm Mykola, Mykola Young." "Twenty years. That's how long this store had been open." Coughs. "Seems like yesterday." "But, why are you closed for good?" "One word - Oli--" Coughs violently. "Well, just lovely. One word - Oligarchy. Those fat rats have destroyed all my hard and honest work. My business was flourishing before they turned their sights on me." Coughs. "See, they even got me sick!"Surprise, surprise the oligarchs are sinister and corrupt. "How and why did they destroy your business?" "They are control freaks, that's why, and they're paranoid. All three of them." Coughs. "Everything that ever came out of their filthy mouths is pure gibberish! Like, for example, they tell us they care about us, us citizens, that they will protect us. And then you see the zoners rotting away and not one of them blinks. The new laws, taxes? Yeah, all for our well-being. And the Faceless...no comment on how that was handled!" "As for me, I never 'belonged' to them. They couldn't 'own' me. That's what doomed me: If I'm not with them, I'm--" Coughs. "I'm against them. And it doesn't matter if you're in their way now or not, or if you'll ever even be, they want to make sure they've got everything under control." Coughs violently. "What a load of gibberish..." "You can imagine the rest of the story. But I'm tired of talking about this. And it makes me si--" Coughs. "What can you tell me about the Oligarchy?" A violent cough overcomes him again, forcing sounds out of him that feel like he's about to turn inside out. It last for a whole minute, then he continues. "Please do not..." Coughs. "Please don't ask me about those... those..." He continues coughing and waves a few times, signaling he'd rather not answer the question. "I'll be leaving you, take care."Mykola also happens to have the same last name as the head of JKK. Although that may actually just be a coincidence.  Next door is the electronics merchant Halim.   "I welcome you to my store, traveler. Halim is my name, and I am at your service."At this point I notice that we can ask most of the people on this floor an insane amount of questions, but it's about stuff we've already asked about. So in this interest of time and my own sanity, I'll stick with key questions. Like asking around about our missing South Gaters. "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker. They are merchants from South Gate Station. Have you seen them perhaps?" "My memory is clear. Terry and Lora Baker. Southgaters, harmonious people. They often visit my store. Whenever they are in Core City, that is. He smiles. They were here around the time the big earthquake struck. They bought some components, then they left. If memory serves me well, among other things they needed two TriEnergy 1400w power supply units. I did not have those at the time." Halim is indeed the Core Cities electronics dealer. He's got a got variety of fairly decent quality stuff but nothing we can do much with at present though.  We make our way to the north end of the plaza.   We head into the general store to talk to Derica.  "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker. They are merchants from South Gate Station. Have you seen them perhaps?" "Husband and wife? Yeah, I remember them being here recently. Well, relatively recently. Just before the big earthquake. Yeah, that's when it was. They often visit my little store to pick up some items for your station. I like them, they are nice people." "I don't know what happened to them after they left, though. I think I saw them around the city a few times 'cause the trains stopped for some time. But after that, no, haven't seen them again. That's all I can tell you. Sorry."Hmm so we know that Terry and Lora were supposed to be going to Core City after a trip to Rail Crossing, maybe they never made it here, we'll have to ask around Rail Crossing when we get the chance or see if they're still there. "Let's see what you got." Derica is one of the few merchants that buys Luxury items. These are very rare items, that you tend to find whilst burgling, that basically just sell for a lot of money. We haven't found any of those yet.  We pick up a Mk III Haxxor to keep us in the hacking game. And I immediately forget that I bought it for many updates into the future.  Next up is Oskar.  He's kind of an idiot. But a lovable one.  "Then you've come to the right place! Welcome to Oskar's Armory." "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker. They are merchants from South Gate Station. Have you seen them perhaps?" "Never heard of them. And if I never heard of them, then they aren't hardcore. Fact! Hence, I can't help you."Can't argue with that. "The only way I can help is by offering some dominating firepower! Interested?" "Show me what you have." Oskar will be our arms merchant for Core City.  He is most definitely a great source of heavy ordinance.  A barrel outside of Oskars store is nice place to start our Core City trade stash.  There are more oddities in this area too.  Now it's Dr Heidi's turn to give us the spiel.  "Excuse me, um, are you a doctor?" She snaps out of her focused state and tums to you. Her expression turns neutral, then she smiles. Soon after, she give you a response, carried by a rich, high-pitched voice. "Why, yes I am! I have a coat, that makes me a doctor, doesn't it? Does it not!?" Cackles. "My name is Doctor Gratz. Now, allow me to diagnose your illness straight away. That's why you're here, right? Right!? Hm..." "Ruptured spleen?"Heidi is a little loopy, but she's a good doctor. Jon the Beautiful can tell you why she is the way she is. "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker. They are merchants from South Gate Station. Have you seen them perhaps?" "Don't know... Don't know..." "...anyone named like that! Like that! I'm sorry, but I really can't help you. Nope. No." "Why do you think the Faceless invaded Core City?" "The Faceless are invading?" She cackles. "I'm fooling around! Around! The Faceless - there is more to them than meets the eye. What exactly? I don't know. But, do you see me worried about the invasion? No. Nope. My intuition tells me that the blockade will be gone soon, allowing the Arena to be the center of Core City bloodshed once more." "Do you have anything to trade?"  Heidi's the resident pharmacist. She's also got some nice recipes for a few new drugs. Trance will boost psi critical damage by 100% but also raise the cost to cast them by 20%. Not particularly useful to us since we're all about the buffs and debuffs.  She also sells the recipe for Focus Stim, a drug that boosts your critical chance by 15%, with no downsides. I've never particularly thought to use them in the past by they would definitely be worth using for this build to keep the crit party going. They require blood, adrenaline, taurine and a syringe to make and a Biology skill of 45. We should definitely be able to make some of these soon if not already.  At the north end of the plaza is the Hardcore city bar, which is where we are supposed to meet Gorsky. But we'll hold off on that for the time being.  Jack is also here, although he doesn't have anything to say to us quite yet. As soon as we're done speaking to him we get accosted by a Tchortist Missionary.   His voice reveals more and more excitement as he speaks further. "Why is it magnificent, you wonder? Well, it is a primordial creature that has the ability to regenerate itself and adapt to new environments with each regenerative cycle, and can technically tailor itself to survive in any environment, potentially living forever! I know it sounds impossible to you, but it is true: At this very moment we are trying to utilize that remarkable ability - direct the human evolution to a point where we too can walk the Surface and leave this constricting, underground world." "To quote our founder, Eidein, 'We can and we must!'." "I won't take even one more second of your time. If you find what I told you fascinating, which I hope you do, sister, you can seek Minister Percival on the upper level of Core City, just next to the JKK headquarters, and listen to his lecture on Tchortism. It explains our ideology in greater detail. Thank you, and Tchort guide you."If you're starting to think there might be some parallels between the Tchortists and the Children of the Cathedral from Fallout 1, then you aren't alone in that thinking. "Thank you for the information, I will talk to this Minister Percival when I am able to."We will definitely want to learn more about this exciting new, totally-not-a-cult, organisation.  In the bar proper there's a few people we can talk to, I was starting to get sick of chatting to literally everyone by this point, so we'll come back to Gene and Harriette when we go looking for Gorsky. We will have a brief talk with Gorge though.  "Who are you?" "Who are you?" "My name is Henrietta and I had some questions." "Questions, questions... a man gets tired of those after a while, especially if they are being asked by random strangers."Who are you, Tom Wilson? Just answer the drat questions! "Well, I told you my name - so I'm not a complete stranger." He chuckles. "No, you said a name. I don't know if it's really yours, sugar. You could be anyone for all I know." "Still, can I just ask you few questions?" He inspects you for a few seconds too long. "I'll bite - ask your questions. Now whether you'll get an answer, that's a whole different matter." He returns to his drink. "What can you tell me about your tattooed scar?" He takes a look at his scar, staring at it for a few moments, taking a sip of his drink in the process. "The scar is from an accident. The tattoo is from a tattoo shop." "Can you tell me a bit more about it?" "Nope." He takes a sip of his drink. "Why not?" "Why should I?" "Because I asked you nicely."This scar is a lead to some useful info, but we'll need to find out more about Gorge before he'll open up to us. "Well, tough luck. Any more questions?" "Can you not call me 'sugar'?" He gives you an indifferent look. "Aight, sugar, not a problem."He's not a particularly friendly sort, he'll keep calling you Mac instead if you're a guy. Now I'm wondering what would happen if you called yourself Sugar or Mac.. Nah they probably didn't account for that... "Better?" "I gotta go." We'll head up there stairs of a quick look see.  Up here we find our old buddies Abram and Ethan. Let's, sigh, talk to Abram for a bit...   "Let me begin by saying..." wheeze "I am quite satisfied with your performance so far. I had informed my..." wheeze "associates of your competence and..." wheeze "we've reached a decision..." wheeze "to use your abilities again." Coughs. "Are you still interested?"He's got more highly paid esoteric work for us at least. "Yes I am." "Good. I'm glad you..." wheeze "said yes. You have displayed a certain..." wheeze "potential, Henrietta of SGS, a potential that few possess. I've been informed you..." wheeze "have already met Jack Quicksilver. Good. Him and I are a partof a certain..." wheeze "organization whose name will..." wheeze "remain unrevealed for now." So him and Jack are apart of the same outfit. Not a huge shock there I suppose. "What I want you to..." wheeze "do now is to go and speak to Jack; he is waiting for you outside the bar. He..." wheeze "has work for you. Once you've completed everything..." wheeze "you will receive further instructions." "I'll go speak to Jack. Till next time, Abram."He nods. Jack will then give us a whole bunch of quests to do. But I forgot to talk to him this time round. That's fine, I was getting very sick of talking to people at this point anyway.  Another oddity on the shelf in here.  The top floor has a few rooms we can rob and such, but we'll hold off on poking around here just yet.  East of the are is a ladder you can go down.  Not much down here but a motioner named Rash.   Climbing back up we go north.  Back here is where Jon usually hangs out if you need to find him. The gate with the stairs next to him needs a key to unlock.  East of Jon is another mugger, past him, is the entrance to the upper part of the drop zone.  The mugger was carrying another new oddity the Train Log. Looks a lot like some of the other oddities we've already found.   Next area is the north end of this floor.  There's a guard protecting a suspicious looking house for some reason.  We head west.  Which leads us to the Gauntlet. The second most popular game show in Core City after the Arena. You compete against two other contestants to be the first to make it through a series of traps, monsters, and puzzles. We'll hold off on trying this just yet.  West, past the bar, is the entrance to the Arena.  We can't actually spectate any fights, at least not that I'm aware of, we can only participate. If we go the route of joining one of the oligarchs, you also need to fight in the arena until you've gained some notoriety in order to progress beyond a certain point. The game doesn't really do a good job of telling you this, so you can get a little stuck in what to do next if you never think to sign up for the arena. If you really don't want to though, there is now an alternative way of getting around doing all of this on top of joining the oligarchs but it's fairly new content, and the game seems to actively hide this path well out of sight. At any rate we will definitely want to sign up for the arena eventually, you get paid crazy amounts of money at the very least and it leads to other fringe benefits too.  We make our way to the oligarchs floor.  There's a drunk guy singing near here.  Heading west we pass the entrance to Core Tech building.  We find the small lecture room where the Tchortists have set up shop.  We make our way in to learn more, strap yourselves in, it's lecture time.  "The robes look pretty neat, don't worry about it." "I have nothing to be worried about, but thank you for your... compliment. Even though 'neat' might not be theterm I'd use to... describe our uniforms it's certainly better than "disgusting" or "creepy" as we usually hear." He gives you a slight smile. "On the other hand we have an unmistakable and distinct appearance, something we embraced to symbolize the regenerative cycle of Tchort itself; now it lies in Deep Caverns formless, rebuilding itself. Once ready, it will manifest into a new, improved being, adapted to this world. Our robes honor this alteration, for we too are undergoing change, and once the robes are removed we will reveal our new... improved form." "Sounds interesting... What can you tell me about this Institute of Tchort you belong to?" "The Institute of Tchort is an institution devoted to Tchortism and was founded by Eidein who first discovered Tchort nearly a century ago. Tchortism is an ideology centered around Tchort - a being that possesses and brings us immense knowledge and is the key to advancing... evolving the human race to new heights.. literally. He smiles. "Scientific investigation lies behind everything we do: We study the creature and its complete genetic make-up and learn from it; then we apply the knowledge in... practice." "Tell me more." "Tickled your imagination? Good." "Tchort exists as a physical being - observable, tangible - yet not able to fully communicate with us in its current state. But it gifted us with its flesh, and through scientific investigation, as I've already mentioned, we discovered that what was previously thought to be "junk" DNA actually contained a genetic code that serves as a sort of a... backup for the creature. The explanation is lengthy and requires a bit of time... and will." "That's fascinating!" "Glad you're finding it interesting." He makes a brief pause, then continues. "You know what? We hold lectures about Tchortism here in Core City. If you want to learn more - come and attend one of these lectures. I think that's a more effective way to comprehend the subject. Proven." He smiles. "I'd like to attend the lecture you were talking about." "Very well, or as some of us Tchortists would say - apex. We'll be holding a lecture quite soon, in fact; if you wait just a bit for others to arrive we will be able to begin." Begin Lecture.  "We understand that during hard times it can be very difficult to put trust in something you're not familiar with. Yet amazingly, more often than not dire situations are the cause for people to explore alternative... options. Believe my words: during this lecture you will receive nothing but absolute, undiluted truth regarding the Institute of Tchort, Tchortism and what it can offer... to you." "Let us begin." "First of all, I feel it is important for me to say that we are not a religious cult as we are commonly accused of being. We don't worship imaginary beings, gods, devils or the like. Our robes do not exist so that we may intimidate; they have a symbolic value which will be explained... later. Everything I tell you during this lecture is based on hard evidence, on research... on scientific investigation. Every claim here is backed up by careful and extensive research performed within the Institute of Tchort, under the watchful eye of Eidein, its founder."Totally-not-a-cult! Nothing but science going on here. I mean his isn't lying really, Tchortists do do a lot of scientific research, some pretty cool ones at that. But that doesn't mean they aren't also a cult. "But what is Tchort exactly? Tchort is a single multicellular organism discovered by Eidein almost a century ago in Deep Caverns, and is suspected to be one of the oldest living organisms in existence - a primordial being. It is completely formless; it exists in a state of regeneration which it undergoes whenever the environment it lives in greatly changes, requiring a different form to survive. Eidein discovered it during its current regeneration cycle, and the creature allowed him to... study it." "What he learned during these studies was truly... magnificent. First, I need to discuss the term 'non-coding' DNA, sometimes referred to as 'junk' DNA. Non-coding DNA, in simple terms, are DNA sequences of an organism which do not encode protein sequences and therefore have no direct biological functions. For example: Almost 98% of human DNA is non-coding, with only around 2% of the total genome being responsible for what you are, how you look, how you behave. Tchort - only 0.5 % coding but there is a neat little... secret." "Its non-coding sequences serve as a biological backup for the creature to rebuild its coding DNA - if damaged by radiation, mutations or simply by a large number of replications - and modify and also adapt it for specific needs; in short, it can undergo a process of regeneration and adaptation until it builds itself anew and perfects itself for the world it lives in. Eidein found this remarkable, but even more remarkable is the fact that this knowledge allows us to do the same thing with humans... as well."Surely this formless, self replicating, writhing mass is a being of goodness and hope. "The Institute of Tchort was soon born with a single unified idea: To direct the evolution of the human race. Tchortist ideology reflects just that. We will preserve Tchort and the valuable knowledge it bestowed on us so that we can elevate ourselves... to new heights." "We live in a desolate world, and the environment is not our only enemy; just look at the recent events and you will understand my point perfectly. Institute of Tchort gravitates toward adapting the human race to move beyond these dark caves and reach... the Surface." "Again, everything I just told you can be backed up with solid, proven facts. Tchort is evolution, and evolution is Tchort. One cannot go without the other if we are to stop ourselves from our ultimate... demise." "And with that I will end this... short lecture. I know you have many questions, brothers and sisters, and know that these questions can and will be answered. To get to these answers one would need to travel to the Institute of Tchort in Upper Underrail and become a Tchortist. Only then can you have access to all of the knowledge we possess and help us further understand Tchort; to help not just us Tchortists - but our whole race. Please understand that Tchort is important to us - and so it is to you - and we must propagate this knowledge to all who are willing to listen. As Eidein once stated, 'We can and we must.'" "I hope you've learned some valuable information during this... lecture. That is all for now. Thank you and... Tchort guide you."We actually cannot get access to the institute of Tchort at this stage. We can go there but they won't let us in just yet. At any rate we can ask Percival about some of the things he just spoke about. "Tchort is evolution. How may I help you?" "I wanted to talk to you about the lecture." "I see, sister. Tell me, did you... enjoy it?" "It was rather interesting and really got me thinking." "I am very pleased to hear that. As I have already mentioned during the lecture, if you want to have unlimited access to our knowledge you could visit us in Upper Underrail." "Lines and lines of people stand in the Institute's courtyard, waiting to be accepted as members of our institution. While the competition is strong, those who possess certain... traits will always have an advantage."The gigantic lines are a bit of an exaggeration. "Please consider it... sister." "What can you tell me about the Oligarchy?" "The Oligarchs allowed us to be here under their protection. We are allowed to propagate knowledge uninterrupted. While there are certain matters regarding them which can be commented on, I'd rather... avoid doing so." "It would be rude to our hosts, in my opinion." "Have you perhaps been to Hardcore City Bar?" "I haven't personally been to this place, but some of my brothers and sisters have. It seems very... devolved. They do it mostly to discuss Tchortism with as many people as possible, which is understandable due to the popularity of it." "Devolved?" "Well, degenerate, decadent - something that has passed into a worse state. It is a common expression among us Tchortists." "What I found peculiar though is that the missionaries absorbed several local terms there. For example, I've heard phrases like, 'That's freakin' hardcore!' or, 'Zone out!' being uttered by them on a worrying number of... occasions. If this trend continues, a certain form of intervention might be... necessary."I wholly approve of this new phase of the Tchortist religion. "You understand Core City slang sounds... very unfitting for a Tchortist." "I'll get going." "Tchort guide you on your travels." Anyhow, that's all the Tchortling we can deal with for a good while.  At the south of this area is the entrance to the JKK offices.  Now let's talk to the single most annoying NPC in the game.  "Can ho!" A joyful smile materializes on his face. "Ah, finally someone who is not an uncultured swine. You speak Advatongue, yes? U speakish Advatongue, yay?"We sure loving don't! "Yay." "Keh, final aperson that speakish Advatongue inCore City. Allbody here isusing commtongue, soyay attime bevery mindclonking tolistenin dem speakish primitiv."Uuuurggh... "Yay?" "Gah, truthis, truthis! Realization, whatan ur titlegiven?" "Yay?" A dull expression overcomes his so-far joyful face, and you manage to spot a barely noticeable twitch on the side of his lips. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, right?" "I understand some of it, but not everything." "I don't think you understand me at all. Khm, and for an instant I thought I found someone who comprehends me. No matter, since you're already here I might as well educate you, if only a bit. Hear now..." "The language you witnessed me using is called Advatongue, and it is a contemporary, modernized and improved version of the language most of us use - Con-montongue, as I will refer to it from now on. For, you see, I was feeling indisposed and exhausted of all the inconsistencies and, how do I express myself... unnaturalness of Commontongue. Thus I, Professor Norman Hack of the University of Dis, one day made a conscious decision to liberate some of my time, sit down and do my best to ameliorate this stale mess into one endearing, beautiful language. Muchpretty tongue!"Shut up. "It resembles the Con-montongue, true, but only to a minuscule degree. For instance, Commontongue was a language dominated by exceptions to rules, relying on memorizing phonic patterns in order to maintain proper pronounciation, strict sentence structure... I could go on and on. All this has been evicted in Advatongue, for the whole language has been standardized and tuned toward absolute consistency in every aspect imaginable, creating a clearer, more natural lingual experience free of ambiguity. Muchpretty!"Shut up shut up shut up. "There is so much more to speak of it, but first I'd like for you to tell me why you're here and what do you want from me?" "I noticed the guy outside also speaks Advatongue." "Ah, yay. Rick-gentleman. He's my student, and a bright young man, I nust say. I started teaching him shortly after I had arrived to Core City. I rented this... how to refer to it without making it seem better than it actually is.. space here, and I put up an Advatongue course ad. Rick-gentleman was the first one to respond to the ad; he was the only one to respond to the ad."Stop saying words. "He clearly realized the importance of Advatongue, unlike other denizens of this linguistic cesspit. I mean, even despite my disproval of Commontongue, the things I've heard here made my ears bleed and my mind wail in agony. Being hammered in the head with "hardcore" and 'dominating' every two seconds is only the beginning of the story. Pipeworker!? Atrocity!" "Advatongue as an official language of... well, even a station, let alone a region will have to wait; however, I hope that goal will be achieved one day. If that means teaching one student at a time, then I better persevere." "See you around, Norman."We could ask him more questions but he would just say more words at us. "In Advatongue it's: 'Observant u soclos, Norman-gentleman.' Remember that, please." We somehow resist the urge to beat this pompous windbag to death and make our way back east.   On the east side of this floor is the residential district for the wealthy citizens.  There's a large manor over here.  "What is this place?" "This property belongs to the Talloski family, and access to the general public is strictly prohibited. Unless, of course, you've been invited by one of the family members." "In which case you'd have to give me your name so that I can verify that you're on the list." "Can I come in?" "He pulls out a mobile computer. Your name?" "Henrietta." "He taps the device a few times before speaking again. I'm sorry, but I don't see your name on the list, which means I can't allow you to enter. Not on the list - not getting in." "Do the owners of this place offer any work? I'm looking to earn some coin." "I'm afraid not." "Anything else?" "Sorry to bother you. Goodbye."There is no way to legally enter that place, but you can sneak inside, we may need to at some stage.  We make our way past the Praetorian Security headquarters and down some stairs.  This takes us into a small apartment complex.  Yeesh and I thought our room back in SGS was tiny.  We slowly break into every single one of the apartments, timing it against the people wandering the halls. Most of them just have various pieces of junk and equipment.  This particular room had a wide variety of guns and ammo in it though.  One of the rooms had a rare set of boxing gloves, they aren't considered unique strangely enough, but they basically can be used to both dish out a lot of melee damage and also block some incoming mechanical melee damage too. I'm wondering if they'd actually be worth using. Probably not.  We will leave it here for now, next time we'll finish up our tour of Core City. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Jan 19, 2023 |
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Jan 19, 2023 03:12
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You have a bunch of [img] that aren't properly closed
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Jan 19, 2023 03:43
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my dad posted:You have a bunch of [img] that aren't properly closed Fixed
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Jan 19, 2023 06:27
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I believe you can enter Talloski residence after you meet one of Talloski Jr. (son near arena, daughter in bar) and secude them (or, more accurate, agree to be a fucktoy for tonight).
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Jan 19, 2023 10:18
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Chapter 20 - Bored of the Core When we last left off we were in the middle of robbing the residents of Core City.  The residents get their own communal showers and no toilets.  This particular residence is just full of literal garbage.  Two doors down, somebody own a very nice suit of Galvanic Steel Armor. Full suits of metal armor can give you by far the highest and broadest range of protections. 31%/12 energy protection is insanely high, I doubt we will ever get a single point of energy protection for our character. Naturally you need to be incredibly strong to wear armor of this kind, and it's extremely bulky.  The house also has some United Stations currency, so this place is probably the house of a Protectorate agent. This money will only be useful if we ever join the Protectorate, then it will be very useful.  At the end of the hall is a small rec room. That core tech runner is extremely perceptive, and can easily spot us at our current stealth skill level. There's usually one enemy type in various groups that are very good at spotting you in stealth. Like Ironhead commandos for instance.  That's about there was to see here, so we head back up to the streets again.  There's a small bar up here run by a guy named Dave, you can't buy anything here.  There's a few more nice houses in this area, still no toilets though.   The building south of us is a furniture store. We can buy furniture for our house, if we actually owned one. North of us is a large office building, we will explore that place at a later date, it has interesting things inside it.  Further west is a fairly plane walled residence with a nice balcony. This is a house we may one day be able to own. It is by far the biggest money sink in this game and will bankrupt you if you're not careful.  There's also some sort of warehouse/shop thing that we aren't allowed to enter.  That's about all there is to see up here, we make our way back to the elevator, getting a better view of the Praetorian Security building as we do so.  We will head for the docks this time.  There's a door you have free reign to pick to the east.   Inside is our first Fancy Lighter oddity. There also some more Core City plans in here too. Rounding up all the oddities in core city has finally netted us a new level.  I've probably put too many points into lockpicking, we'll just increase that by boosting our dexterity and getting any synergy from mechanics from now on. We get much higher temporal manipulation and keep slowly boosting our mercantile.  The waters around Core City are a healthy green colour.  At the western end of the docks is a warehouse operated by the protectorate. Naturally, they won't be particularly happy if we try to enter the building.  We can find Captain Rastko at the docks, who is Core Cities ferryman.   East is the port of the Aegis Sec faction.  There was a decent metathermic headband in a nearby crate. Heading further in we are stopped by a Aegis Sec-trooper.  "I was told you are going on an expedition to the Black Sea and needed some extra hands." He nods. "You heard right. Do you have any combat experience?" "Hell yeah. These hands keep getting covered in blood and I can't seem to find a way to get them clean." The guard nods. "We are Aegis Incorporated, a security company from North Underrail. We've been hired to protect scientific personnel during an important expedition to the Black Sea." "We need highly skilled and competent individuals with sufficient combat experience. Background in personal protection, station security or similar is highly desirable but not strictly necessary. If you are capable of effectively operating alone or as part of a small, specialized team, that will greatly improve your chances of being hired. I think it is needless to say that this line of work entails great danger, but in turn know that the monetary compensation we offer will be quite appropriate. How does all of this sound to you? Do you think you meet these requirements?"We definitely don't at this point. "I've spent my life staring down danger until it dragged itself away into the hole it crawled out of." "Good. Proceed down this ramp and talk with Chief Briggs. Do not wander around the dock. If you interfere with anyone's work, you will be promptly removed." Nod and leave. He nods as well.  This entire location is heavily restricted, we can't even check out Ray's Shop, everything here is owned by Aegis Sec, so unless we join them we can't really get around legally.  Down by the ships is Chief Briggs talking with a guy called Ladelman, we aren't talking to these guys until we're good and ready to head out to the Black Sea. We probably wouldn't be able to convince him we're good enough to go anyway. If you're too low a level they won't take you unless you pass a persuasion check. Given how dangerous the Black Sea is, that would be a mighty stupid thing you'd end up talking yourself into doing.  Besides all of this we could head north of here to enter the Core City sewers if we really want to go play in some sewage. But we'll save that for another day.  Well that concludes this tour of Core City. There's still a lot left to explore and do there, but for now we have business to take care of elsewhere.   After a brief stroll back through the service tunnels, we head back to those Lunatic's that were hanging out just south of the GMS warehouse building.   There's only three of them and a few dogs, so we should be alright to take them on.    The third lunatic was hanging out around the corner. He's a brawler so he'll be using Psyhokinesis powers on us. The most common ability of which is telekinetic punch, which just let's you punch things at a distance, and it has a very good chance to stun you if they do. If they were a fully unarmed sort of puncher, this would be a good psi skill for us.  But we're perfectly fine with our time based punching powers instead.  Inside the gate to the south in another old train schedule.  We clear the rubble and continue exploring northwards.   The next location has another entrance to the Upper Caves. We make our way south from here.  Up here is a way onto the train tracks that we will want to follow north.  But we'll swing our way west of here first.  This area does have an ambush for us though.  There are two Lurker Cut-throats hanging about down here, they will sap your strength with their crippling strikes if you aren't careful.    South of here is the entrance to the upper end of the United Stations embassy in Junk yard.  We're allowed to wander around this place freely.  They have their own train up this way, and it's pretty well defended too.  That elevator to the west will take us down to the embassy proper. Just be sure to unequip your weapons before you go down there.  We can have a chat with the Major up here.  "What can you tell me about this place?" "You are currently located in South Railroad Outpost, Underrail Protectorate's southernmost outpost and one of the most strategically significant positions in the region. South Railroad Outpost acts as a connection between Lower Underrail metro and our Junkyard embassy, as the elevator leading to it is under our control. This position allows us to further maintain order and safety of our citizens, as well of stations that are due to become members of United Stations." "That is all." "Do you know anything about the Free Drones." "If you suspect someone to be a member of the Free Drones or otherwise possess any information on them, please inform us."Well I know somebody named Foreman Domai who might fit the bill... "See you around. Bye."  We head east along the tracks. Thankfully we're never at risk of being hit by a train, although that would have been a cool addition to the game.  This branch of the rail system is extremely dark.  There's a Crossbow Super String in a nearby barrel. This is probably a must have for any good crossbow build.    We find another emergency phone.  For some reason all the buttons are painted black.  Pushing the fifth button does this. I don't think this did anything, although in some locations it actually can have an effects.  Next to the phone is a narrow passage way behind a door.  There's a small band of Lurkers waiting in ambush for us. We will get the drop on them instead.  We sneak around and hit the stealthed Lurker Hunter in the back. Hunter enemies tend to carry crossbows, are stealthy, carry a variety of annoying bolts, and sometimes are surrounded by traps. Not a bad character build actually.   The lurker gunslinger in the next room survives our grenade and hits us with an aimed shot, followed by a kneecap shot. Gunslingers will carry pistols and use a variety of painful pistol feats. Kneecap shot is a feat that can be used from a pistol, smg or crossbow and damages you then applies a bleeding wound which inflicts 125% of the original damage over 3 turns. Lastly, it removes all of your movement points while it lasts. It can be very annoying when used against you. Not sure why sniper rifles can't use kneecap shots, but then again you tend to shoot to kill first shot with those.  Notice how little psi points I've actually used since I started using my psi powers, I haven't needed to use a single psi booster inhaler, apart from when I innervated neural overload out of our brains. That's how little having a low will matters when you only care about buffs. I guess they are somewhat weaker abilities than if our will was higher.  I FINALLY remember to turn on my shield.  It absorbs all further damage done to us.  And this Lurker is done for.  With that out of the way, the tunnel bends north and we carry on walking.   West of here the tracks are covered by a roller door, we'll have to wait to go inside later.  I'm still not clear how these tracks connect SGS to anything.  We spot a pile of crates behind a fence.  Inside we find a nice pair of steel boots. The main advantage to steel boots, besides the superior protection, is that they make you immune to walking on caltrops. They also make dirty kicks more deadly, there is an achievement for killing someone with a kick to the groin. They are of course far to bulky for our benefit.  We also find a packet of Hardcore Chips.   The tunnel starts to get incredibly dark and we find the remains of a crawler that was squished by a passing train. The nearby ladder is not somewhere we will want to explore for a good while yet.  It has its very heavy stinger on its person. With enough biology we could extract the poison and then we'd have our own crawler paralysis weapons.  Another length of dark tunnel later and we're back into the light. There is another door in that tunnel you can find that leads to a pack of heavily entrenched lurkers. We'll come back for those guys later.   The railway splits in two and we follow it west.  And we finally arrive in Rail Crossing.  The station building serves as the HQ for their militia.  We introduce ourselves to their leader, Herve.  "We are usually a friendly and welcoming community, but you've chosen a bad day to pay us a visit." "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker, merchants from SGS. Have you seen them recently?" "They come here regularly to trade, usually with Buzzer, but I haven't seen them recently, no." "Why is this a bad day to visit?" "You must have heard the reports of Faceless invading the Core City by now, right? Well, we got our own problems with the Faceless here." "They busted in with one of their tunnelers down the track south and occupied Buzzer's shop. We tried to blitz themback before they'd set up but that ended badly. They killed three of my men and badly wounded one." "Why do you think they occupied Buzzer's shop?" "I can't say for sure. Maybe they want something from him or his shop. Buzzer's known to trade in strange electronics maybe he got hold of something they want." "Or maybe they actually planned to tunnel out somewhere else in the station and just improvised once they realized they missed their target." "What are you going to do about the Faceless?" "There's not much we can do at this point. We barely have enough men to fight them off if they come at us now. If we rush them again and suffer more losses, we're done. We'd have to evacuate the station." "Maybe I could help you with your Faceless situation." He looks at you curiously. "That would almost certainly mean you risking your neck for us. Why would you want to do this?" "I'd expect to be paid, of course." "That I can understand. If you can somehow make the Faceless leave or take them all out I'll pay you three hundred charons. If you can get Buzzer out of there alive, assuming he still is, I'll throw in extra one hundred charons. Sound good?" "Agreed." "We have a deal then." "As I said. Storming the shop is not an option anymore, so you'll have to figure out something else." "Is there another way to get into Buzzer's shop?" "Maybe through the tunnel, but I don't know what state it's in, no one's been using it for a long time. You can access it through the trap door on the south end of the depot. The key is in my locker over there."I forget to pick up the key to this tunnel, but that's okay, we can just pick the lock when the time comes. "How many Faceless are there?" "When we tried to storm the shop I saw three of them, but there could be more inside." "Also, they had at least two plasma walkers patrolling the depot so be careful if you go snooping around there. Myles has some ideas how to disable those when we discussed a possibility of a second attack. You should ask him about what he had in mind. He lives on the north side of the station." "Catch you later."At this point we could probably just sneak past the faceless defenses and get into Buzzers shop, it's not too difficult to do, and you can usually buy enough stealth gear to pull it off pretty easy. But we will find a safer solution to sneaking in, next time.
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Jan 20, 2023 02:48
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Chapter 21 - The Right Side of the Tracks But first, let's chat to some folks about town.  "You seem pretty relaxed considering what is happening right now." "I am aware of what's going on out there, and that anything can happen, but there ain't nothing I can do about it." "Panic ain't gonna do us any good." "My name is Henrietta." "Good for you."Some of the people around here aren't the friendliest sort. "What's with all these broken quads?" "Them? It's just some old junk I've been keeping around forever. None of them are functional, but there are still working parts that can be scrapped from them." "Now, I had an S-750 sitting outside the shop up until a month ago. That was a sight to behold." "What is an S-750?" "S-750k to be exact. Hot as hell. With two hundred kilowatts of unadulterated power under your rear end that beautiful beast can take you anywhere. Well, not that particular one, since one of its cells had caught fire 'n' burned everything under the hood." "Couldn't you repair it?" "Nope. Way outta my league. I just held on to it so I could admire it. 'N' I salvaged some stuff before I sold it to scrap. Junkyard's where it's at now."Sadly no quad biking for us in this game. "Got any more of that stew? Man, that thing smelled like heaven." He stares at you for a moment. "Yup, I got some more in the back."Then he grins. "But I ain't sharing." Jerk. "What can you tell me about Rail Crossing." "We're a small station. Not too small to be completely defenseless from the bandits 'n' stuff, but not big enough to always sleep easily. I don't know, girl, we got the basic stuff: a bar, my shop, doc's office, Myles' store; Buzzer's shop is probably what folks from other stations know us best."Buzzer runs a gigantic electronics shop on the outskirts of town. "Which could change if the Faceless mess him up." "Do you know why the Faceless attacked Rail Crossing?" "Nope. They seem to want something from Buzzer, or just something from his shop."Yeah so the Faceless don't actually seem to be attacking Rail Crossing really. They've simply occupied Buzzers Shop and are killing anyone who interferes with them. "Creepy-looking bastards. I hope we get rid of them soon." "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker, merchants from SGS. Have you seen them recently?" "Nope. I haven't seen those guys in weeks, maybe even months." "Show me what you have for trade." Travis sells an assortment mostly crafting material. Nothing we're all that interested in.  We stumble into Rail Crossings only bar.   "Ay, welcome to Rail Crossing's finest - and only bar." "If you fancy a drink, I've got some tasty mushroom brew." "Is that dude having it? Because he doesn't look so good..."I think we're referring the character called Dude located in the back of the bar. "Ah, he just drank a bit too much. He'll be fine... probably." "I didn't come here to drink. I have a few questions." "Like...?" "Why do you think the Faceless attacked Rail Crossing?" "To turn us into them, friend. Haven't you heard... the stories?" "Of course. But tell me anyway." "You know what they say about the Faceless, that they kidnap people and take them down to Deep Caverns. There, they mutilate them, remove their eyes and facial skin, and install these, like, masks and other prosthetic body parts." "But why attack so openly now?" "They have the numbers, and the time has come for us all to be converted. And yeah, the reason they went for Buzzer's store first is 'cause he's got a mechanical arm himself. Maybe they wanna tum his store into one of these, eh, cybemization-conversion facilities or whatever you wanna call it."Yeah that all sounds pretty unlikely to me. "Or... maybe it's about something else. I don't know, friend, I really don't. This whole world has become derailed." "Let me see what you have."  The barkeeper is the food merchant, we sell off our Hardcore Chips for the time being because I won't ever remember to use them.  In the back of the bar is an arcade machine of Whack-a-Hopper 3: The Final Whacking. We have a small chat with a guy called Jared.  "Why do you think the Faceless attacked Rail Crossing?" "I've no idea. Whatever it is, I hope it ends quickly and without any more bloodshed." "Although, from the stories I heard about Tunnelers..." He shakes his head. "Can I ask you a few questions about this place?" "Sorry man, can't help you right now." "I'm sure you'll find some other people to help you out. Yeah?"Jared isn't very helpful. "Goodbye."We'll refrain from talking with Dude just now. He's kind of, like, a big deal man.  Back and to the east of Rail Crossing is this fine looking cave wall. If we were perceptive at all we could find a secret passage that would take us to a hidden shop. The guy there sells lots of pretty good equipment for the stealthy sort of geezer and a few rare blueprints too. Unfortunately I don't think there is any other way you can find this place so we will have to go without.  In front of a barrel fire is a guy named Mister Shady and his gal Shady Lady. They aren't very friendly or otherwise important.  We enter the other electronics merchant in town, owned by a guy called Myles.  He raises his head and aborts the statement. "You're not from around here, eh? Forget what I said then. I'm just tired of fixing broken weapons for the local yokels so they can run off and blast their own feet off." "If you cannot keep your weapon in good condition you have no business shooting anything, I say, least of all the Faceless." "Anyhow, what do you need?"Myles is the character we can bring unique guns to and he can refurbish them, if you have enough money and a few other items that lets him do that. I think this was added in later update after it was suggested as a cool idea on the Stygian Software forums, at least as far as I can gather. "What sort of firearms do you repair?" "Junk. And I'd rather not." "So don't come to me unless you've got something worth repairing." "I'm looking for Terry and Lora Baker, merchants from SGS. Have you seen them recently?" "Nope, not lately." "Why do you think the Faceless attacked your station?" "Don't tell me you're as stupid as the rest of these yahoos..." "They didn't attack the station. They invaded the store and the only reason anyone died is because of Captain Triggerhappy." "If the Faceless wanted us dead, we'd be dead by now, trust me. They probably just want something from Buzzer's shop. Perhaps he 'scavenged' something of theirs or whatever."Myles is very astute but also kind of a prick. "Captain mentioned you have an idea how to disable the plasma walkers." "In the case they might move to attack. Only in that case. Not to launch another attack." "And no, I don't give a drat about Buzzer! He probably deserves whatever is coming his way. He's constantly bringing trouble to the station. Rail Crossing would be a much safer place without him." "If you help me with the plasma walkers, I'll make it worth your while." "Hmm... Very well, I'll help you for two hundred charons. Up front."We could talk him down for less or use persuasion to make him help us for free but that's okay we're still plenty wealthy. "Alright, here you go." Give him 200 stygian coins. "Alright, listen... take notes or whatever 'cause I'm not going to explain this again." "South of Rail Crossing there's an abandoned warehouse. Follow the eastern platform along the tracks, then turn west into the first fenced area to reach it, just after the tracks begin descending into a dark tunnel. I've been there a couple of times before, scavenging. It's not a terribly dangerous place, but it's also pretty well locked up so I couldn't get that much out of it." "The strange thing about that place is that there was this room in there, and in the center of it was some sort of a pedestal. On top of it, something resembling an energy cell was attached. Bunch of power cables were connected to the pedestal like it was constantly charging the device with power, ya know." "I couldn't tell exactly what it was back then, though it did seem familiar. Later I remembered seeing one of those things, the device that was on the top of the pedestal." "I've read about it in a book about the Old Wars. It's called an active pulse capacitor, and while I don't know its inner workings, I do know it was used in combination with electromagnetic emitters to disable high power devices across a wide area." "Such as enemy's electronic vehicles and energy weaponry. Which is just perfect for us, because I bet if I mounted that thing on my little emitter over there I could send a pulse so strong it would knock those plasma walkers out completely." "All you have to do is go and get that thing."We're smart enough to see something odd about this story. (Intelligence) "Wait a second. If the area is not dangerous as you said, why didn't you go back and get the capacitor yourself?" "Because I have no idea what will happen if I remove it from the pedestal, that's why. And I'm not going to risk getting myself electrocuted." "Okay I'll do it."We're off to go electrocute ourselves. "Very good. Bring it back to me and I'll get the emitter ready." So that abandoned warehouse will be our next stop. But first we will finish up exploring the station.  Next to Myles' shop is the doctors office.  "Hello, traveler. My name is Aliza Boudreau, but you can just call me Doc. Are you hurt?" "You seem rather overwhelmed with work. Is there something I can do to help you?" "Overwhelmed - you betcha. Any extra pair of helping hands is welcome, but..." "But what?" "But... there are some other issues I've been having." It takes a few moments before she continues, but she does it eventually. "Someone's been stealing medical supplies from the supply locker; it's behind that door over there. The door is always locked, and I have the only key, you see. We are extremely low on supplies at this time, so I have to make every hypo, bandage - even needle count." "Have you talked to the captain? I'm sure he could send some men here to guard the door." "Oh my, yes, yes... I turned to the captain on many occasions. Guards have been posted here plenty of times, but the thing is, we live in dangerous territory, and we are short of men; we can't have people stand here day and night when there are so many threats lurking around Rail Crossing that require as many watchful eyes as we can spare." "Sometimes I stay here when everyone else is asleep, but being the only doctor in a small station can leave one... tired. I fall asleep as soon as it gets quiet. When I wake up, I always go and check the supplies, and often I find something is missing. I never heard anything while I was sleeping here. The key is always with me, yet I sometimes find the storage door unlocked. She grabs her head with one hand and shakes it from side to side. I can't believe this is happening..." "Have you checked for a hidden entrance or something, maybe that's how the thief gets in?"It's not like we'd be able to spot it if one existed. "We've searched for one, but haven't found anything. Whoever is doing this is good at it. If you really want to help, then help me with this. Help us all, in fact." "I'll help. I'll stick around and see if I can catch this thief." "Oh, thank you so much. If you can catch him, I promise you free medical attention whenever you need it." "Deal, let's catch this thief." She smiles. "Great! Great." "Do you have anything to trade?" So Doc is someone we've been dying to talk to for a while now. Because she always sells a Psycho-Temporal Contraction mentor. We're not quite skilled enough to use it, but oh boy is this a great psi power.  Anyway, so we climb into the medical cupboard and wait.  After a few minutes, a stealthed individual will open the door. We bump into them and it turns out to be Jared who we met in the bar earlier.  The doc too seems surprised at this unexpected event. "What is going on here? Jared?" "I wasn't sneaking! I just... I..." "So you've been stealing the supplies this whole time. Why, Jared?" Jared answers after a few moments, his face pale, his voice trembling. "I can explain everything: Ever since I had that injury several months ago, from that Ironhead that shot me, I've... I've been addicted to painkillers. I know, it's pathetic. I've been stealing them for some time from the lockers, but I also took other things to eliminate the chance someone would suspect me." "I'm disappointed in you. This Jared before me, that is not the one I know. I should have you arrested right now for what you did. You endangered everyone in this station. Do you know how much damage you did?"You can at this point greatly encourage Jared to be locked up by the stations militia, but that seems like a real dick move. Say nothing. "You should have come to me, you know that?" "I can't explain how sorry I am..." He starts crying. "I still have some of the things I stole, I have it stashed somewhere. I'll give it back, I promise. And I'll pay for everything I took - everything!" "You will pay for everything, definitely. However... I will not call the captain. Instead, you need help, Jared, and I'm willing to offer it. I'll help you with this addiction. But if you give me any single reason to doubt your honesty again - the consequences will be severe." She sighs. "Deal?" He nods. "Henrietta, you've done your part, and I thank you for it. If you ever need free medical assistance, come and see me. As for Jared, we've got some more talking before us."So instead of locking the guy up, he gets a shot at getting clean and we get free medical attention, and another point of xp. Sounds like a great outcome to me.   In the west part of Rail Crossing is a small collection of residences. Around the back end is a roller door that we can hack.  HackRoot command prompt engaged... Attempt to gain level 1 accessHacking successful. Access upgraded to level 1 Security Warehouse GateControl Warehouse Gate Warehouse Gate - Open GateOpening Warehouse Gate... Exit Inside is large pallet of money. We're rich!  Sadly it's just old world money. But it does count as an oddity though. Even though they give you 16 of them, you can only study it once.  The rest of the neighborhood is just a series of houses you can rob. But you can find a loaded dice and strange comm device oddity inside them. One house does have a guard dog in it though, so be careful. Another has a house cat, but they don't mind you robbing the place.  We set off along the east side of the train tracks to the south of Rail Crossing in search of the warehouse.  We stumble on a small encampment of Ironheads hanging around a few explosive barrels.   They pose no challenge.  One of the Ironheads has the titular Iron Head helmet on him. It's extremely bulky but does provide you with some really good melee attack resistances and even some explosion resistance too.  The nearby footlocker hold another Old Train Schedule.  Behind the Ironheads is a small passage north.  That leads to the old warehouse we're looking for.  The place is very quiet.  In a nearby office we find the Large Waist Pack belt, the better version of the regular Waist pack.  In the very back of the floor is the device we came here for. We'll have a quick look around before we try to mess with it.  There's an elevator to the west with no power. There's another elevator near the front entrance somewhere too.  In some lockers we find an extended magazine you can fit to a sniper rifle, and some shaded goggles. You can fit these into a metal helmet and they will make you immune to flashbangs, a pretty handy upgrade if your a tank character as flashbangs can really ruin your day.  The rest of the floor is just some empty offices, and some even emptier vents so we'll just go and grab the device.  Take the power cell out.As you pop the power cell out, the device short-circuits. It doesn't seem like putting it back in will work. You can hear the sounds of warehouse gates lifting from back in the hallway.  Pulling out the device restores power to the warehouse. It also causes some roller doors at the entrance to trap us inside. We can interact with the computer in this room for more info.  HackRoot command prompt engaged... Attempt to gain level 2 accessHacking successful. Access upgraded to level 2 Access Level: 2 Security Front GateControl the front gate Front gate - Change to: OpenOperation completed successfully. If we weren't good at hacking we wouldn't be able to escape this place so easily. In the interest of exploration, we will explore the rest of this place anyway. Security CamerasControl the security cameras Security Cameras - Turn OffOperation completed successfully. ElevatorsControl the elevators Elevators - Turn OnOperation completed successfully. Exit As well as switching on the lights, this place is now crawling with Kamikaze Bots. As you can see by the silver eye, you cannot stealth past them. They are incredibly weak but will explode upon death. Naturally if they manage to reach you in combat they will also explode.  We kill them at a distance by whipping throwing knives at them.  There also a number of sentry bots patrolling the area too. We can thus use the kamikaze bots to our own advantage.   The roller doors that hid the bots occasionally have some oddities inside them.  There was also a key on a dead guy in one of them too.  With the elevators powered back up, we are able to check out the floor below us.  There's several electronically locked doors and the odd landmine. At this point I've realised that our combined dexterity, lockpicking, and mechanics skill have synergised our traps skill high enough that we aren't complete terrible at spotting the occasional trap.  Oh and more kamikaze bots.  The second door from the elevator reveals a tunnel system behind it.  The shelf also contained the unique Sports Almanac oddity.  Inside the cave is some rubble with another trilobite fossil in it.  In the next room is a mentor for Disruptive Field. A psychokinesis ability that lets you surround yourself with a field which reduces the accuracy of ranged attacks. Around this point there is the sound of robots fighting insects happening.  In the next room is a large area where we catch a glimpse of a new enemy, the plasma walker.  We can see that there were apparently some Crawlers running about and they decided to pick a fight with an entity with no blood stream. It didn't end well for them.  At the far end is an elevator that will take us back to the upper floor again.  So, plasma sentries are pretty dangerous opponents, with 260 HP and 50%/20 mechanical, 75%/30 heat, 90%/100 cold and 25%/15 acid resistance, they're tough customers. On top of this they have an energy shield you'll need to crack open if one of them spots you. I think in this instance the crawlers had managed to destroy this ones energy shield. Plasma sentries, if they spot you will shoot at you with a laser cannon doing a about 15-35 energy damage. If they stay stationary for a while they will instead pull out their plasma cannon and turn into a turret that deals 100-150 energy and 100-150 heat damage. A single shot from their plasma cannon will undoubtedly kill us in one hit. We lob a frag grenade with an EMP grenade to follow it.  We then make a mad dash for a room to hide in.  They are mercifully without hands. So we simply wait for it to calm down and leave.  We then sneak up on it and beat it up with our shock gloves.  And a stun with our taser for good measure.  It eventually gets dismantled.  One of the crawlers had the Crawler's Eye oddity, of which we need two. This will save us on needed to hunt too many of them in the future.  There is the body of a dead woman on this floor which has an old train schedule oddity on her.  But more importantly she holds the key card that you will need to escape this place if your hacking sucks.  There's a few other goodies down here as well and more oddities.  With that done, we can safely return to Myles.   "I brought you that pulse capacitor thing." "And it didn't fry you up in the process, I see." "Give it here and I'll attach it to the emitter." Give him the device. He takes the device. "Alright. This might take a while..."  "You have fun now..." Next time, we have our first run in with the Faceless.
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Jan 21, 2023 04:16
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Thanks for the brisk pace of updates, this game really stirs some fallout 1/2 cravings.
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Jan 21, 2023 12:09
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bit of a running theme of people messing with forces they don't understand out of greed. the chort institute, also apparently the most benign perspective on the faceless is that they visit divine retribution on you for messing with their poo poo? The anti-protectorate sabotage ops Henrietta has been helping out would also count here I think. But they are some pretty cool mysteries I want to uncover more of as we go along, so pretty effective writing on that side. Anyway, does the bleakness of this game ever feel excessive? I kinda feel that way, there seems to be little in the way of levity.
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Jan 21, 2023 15:13
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germlin posted:Thanks for the brisk pace of updates, this game really stirs some fallout 1/2 cravings. Glad your enjoying it. At the moment I've managed to automate as much of the work flow as can realistically be done, so I can crank out episodes nice and easy depending on how much NPC dialogue I need to edit. Had to pick up some new techniques and what hard work is left in the design process has been mostly enjoyable that I won't burn myself out any time soon. It's been a while since I've had a nice long form project that I can sink my teeth into and I really love talking about this game. It helps that I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment. This will definitely change come March, so expect my output to slow down significantly round then, but I will still be working on it whenever I get the chance to. I'm also going on holiday next week for two weeks, but I will have my laptop and I expect I'll have a good bit of down time most days so I should still be able to keep at my regular pace. mortons stork posted:
The game has a fairly bleak setting, but besides a few choices where we can commit some pretty serious atrocities it probably won't get all that much bleaker. In an update or so we will be exploring one of the more wackier couple of side quests. So there is that.
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Jan 21, 2023 15:59
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Chapter 22 - The Wrong Side of the Tracks Today we're off to infiltrate a heavily fortified electronics shop.  Buzzer's shop is located in an old train depot.    We spy our first Faceless guarding the entrance to the shop in front of some dead bodies. I honestly don't know if we're strong enough to take them down. We might well be but we absolutely will not be finding out. I've said it once and I'll say it again, do not gently caress with the Faceless. The Faceless are your friends.  The front entrance is too well defended to sneak in, so we'll head a little ways south.  We sneak down through some double doors.  There's a small surveillance room in this area, with a train drivers manual oddity inside of it.  Sneaking out the back we spot a Kamikaze bot.  But the device Myles set up has left it and all other robotic entities as permanently short circuited, which is handy. Note that this doesn't count as a hostile action against the Faceless, that will only occur if we attack a Faceless personally.  The area below is populated with several mines.  There's a small passage way we could use to sneak past some robots patrol if we hadn't disabled them, there is a mine directly in front of that gate however.  We can see a short circuited Plasma sentry up ahead. Taking out the robots makes infiltrating the shop that much easier.  In the very back is a shed with a trap door in it. There is also an encyclopaedia fragment in the nearby locker.  Picking the lock on the hatch, since we forgot to get the key off of the militia captain, we arrive in another crawlers nest.  There aren't a crazy amount of them in this place at least, so they're easy enough to fight if not sneak by entirely.       Another chunk of obsidian is found in a nearby rubble pile.   Inside a nearby shed, is the unique Dragunov Sniper Rifle. It's pretty fast firing for a sniper rifle and has reduced close quarters and move and shoot penalties over other sniper rifle variants. Honestly probably not a bad choice, once you get it refurbished.    Next area of the tunnel is still full of burrowers.      One of the Burrowers we manage to kill drops its carapace, something that we must have just not gotten lucky enough to find at all until now. You can add one of these to a tactical vest or use it as a shield in some riot gear to improve the equipment's Mechanical Damage Threshold and Heat Resistance/Threshold. They aren't much use to us though.  In the west part of this area is a ladder going up.  Which leads us past one of the drilling machines behind a chain link fence into the back of Buzzers shop. I think you can also just hop this fence with enough agility too.  There's another train drivers manual inside the lockers back here. With a screen transition going west.  Inside Buzzers shop are numerous racks of electronics goods. There's an old data medium on one of the shelves in front of us.  Around the corner is a vent system we can break into, best do so quickly if you aren't stealthy as one of the faceless ends theirs patrols sticking into this corridor.   We can see there's faceless crawling all over the shop.   At the top of the ladder in the vents, you can find a small hidden region if you're perceptive enough. Inside is another one of the cybernetically modified burrower spawn, like the one we released in the United Stations embassy. This one is called Hardware Bug. It doesn't seem relevant to anything and is probably just a hidden joke.   We spy buzzer locked behind a chain link fence back here.   Buzzer lets us know of a gun turret we can activate inside here to deal with the faceless. But we will not be taking his advice.   Back in the vents we spy the turret Buzzer mentioned, this is where we will crawl out of.  Once out, we spot the Faceless who is leading this occupation, a Faceless Mindreader.   You hear an echoing voice in the back of your head. The words sound familiar, but you cannot make them out; it's as if it speaks in a language you once knew but had forgotten. As the voice gets louder, it starts making sense. "Sss.. sub-sub-sub...Ssssubmit..." Allow his excursion into your mind to continue. "...Submit... to the questioning..." "...Submit to the questioning or we shall resolve this in combat." The voice speaks fluently now. "What would you like to know?" "Everything..." The mechanical grappling arm protruding from his helmet starts moving. "I will look into your thoughts and extract the answers to my questions. The process is painless and after this we will depart and leave you unharmed."  After a while it stops and the metal hand releases you. For a moment you stand there confused but pull yourself together quickly. "Thank you for cooperating, Henrietta. We will be leaving now. But before we leave, I'm afraid we must deal with our unwilling host." "What will happen to Buzzer?" "I'm afraid he must die." "Why?" "I may not answer that."The faceless are never forthcoming with answers, they are not really interested in revealing much about themselves to us, not yet anyway. "Wait... if I'm not mistaken you came here looking for something but did not find it?" "This is none of your concern." (Persuade) "Perhaps leaving him alive can increase your chances of finding it in the future. Surely you are cutting off one avenue of investigation by killing him." "This is not acceptable."So if our persuade was good enough, we could keep Buzzer alive, which would actually give us a much better lead as to why the Faceless attacked his shop, it would also give us a better reward from the Militia captain and give us another electronics shop to visit, but sadly that will not be happening. Ultimately, we really want to keep in good standing with the faceless so they will get to decide how this encounter ends. "I understand." Let them wrap up their business and be on their way.  Now we're free to loots Buzzers shop.  We find a rare, extremely good quality, Polarizer component that you can use to make energy weapons inflict a polarized effect on enemies, which will make subsequent hits from the energy weapon do much more damage.  RIP Buzzer, you meddled in things you shouldn't have, probably.   That's about all there is to see on the top floor, so let's check out the ground floor.   We find the blueprints for a spying endoscope. Nice.  We can either make an ordinary one that lets you see under doors and such, or you can add a night vision attachment to let you spy in style.   Buzzer also had some pretty nice energy weapons that we will sell for a pretty penny.  The faceless leave behind their malfunctioning robots.   We drop off some stuff in a stash by Miles' place.  Then it's back to Captain Herve to report on our success.  "I got rid of the Faceless for you." "Yeah, I saw some of them retreating. I don't know what you did, but well done. Here's the three hundred charons I promised you. You didn't save Buzzer, though, so no bonus money for you." "Wish I could have. Rest in peace, Buzzer." "May he rest in peace..." "Even though the Faceless are gone, you seem troubled. Are there any other problems?" "I am relieved, believe me, more than it shows. But so many troubles befell Rail Crossing recently, and that is the reason why I'm not exactly jumping with joy. We basically trade one misfortune for another." "Is it something I can help you with? You know you can trust me." "Trust is not the issue, it's just... Alright, I'll explain." "Recently we've had problems with an increasing number of attacks on Rail Crossing. Mostly by bandits, but hell, when you add the Faceless to that, the pressure becomes overwhelming. Regardless, even without these recent events the attacks have become more and more vicious and difficult to repel. So... I... made a deal with the Protectorate some time ago, according to which they were to deliver us military supplies." "Look, I don't know how you feel about the Protectorate, but what I did I did out of necessity. Rail Crossing is a small station - easy pickings - and we need a way to protect ourselves. To do that, we need weapons, ammo, medical supplies.... everything, pretty much. And those things you can't go around and pick like, like mushrooms." "Tell me more about this delivery." "The only thing I had been told was that a train loaded with supplies was due to arrive several days ago. As far as I know, the train was to set off from South Railroad Outpost, which is a small Protectorate base south of here. The train never arrived, and I've received no word from the Protectorate regarding the whole situation since. I do not know what is happening: Maybe it never departed, maybe something happened along the way, maybe... I just don't know." "I will help you. We'll find out what happened." "Great, great! Thank you! You will be rewarded for your assistance, I promise, just find out what happened to that train. Okay, so the best way to reach South Railroad Outpost is by following the tracks south, which is exactly the route the train had to take to reach us. Return to me if you learn anything important, and please, be quick - lives are at stake." "I'll be here, in the office. Take care."So we'll hold off on doing this quest, but this is the point where we need to make a choice as to whether we're going to work alongside the Protectorate or against them.  Completing that mission has gained us another level.  We start boosting our temporal manipulation and electronics skill.  We take the critical power feat, that makes our crits even more effective.  We head back into the bar to gather some rumors on what might have happened with Buzzer.  "Have you noticed anyone unusual going to Buzzer's shop recently? Someone you think could be linked to the Faceless wanting to occupy his store." "All kinds of people visit Buzzer's shop. And this bar. That's the South for ya, friend." He leans the canter and points his eyes in your direction, but he is not actually looking at you his mind is elsewhere. "Hmmm..." He tilts his head back redirecting his vacant stare toward the ceiling. Then, he returns to you. "I remember..." "There was this group of people, scavenger type, who came to the bar. I saw them enter Buzzer's shop before that, just by pure chance. Can't... remember exactly when all this happened, but it was before the Faceless attack. Anyways, they were arguing about something, loudly, which kinda drew my attention, and I remember I overheard Buzzer's name being mentioned a few times. Wait, wait... even Myles was mentioned once, I think, but it was met with some kind of head-shaking, from what I recall." "That sounds interesting. Anything else you know? How did they look? Where did they go afterwards?" "Can't tell you anything specific about their appearance. They looked like scavengers to me. They had some stuff with them, some heavy-looking bags, but other than that I haven't noticed anything. I think there were three of them... or four. Maybe there was a woman with them. Maybe." "I... think one of them had a green mohawk. Yeah." "They paid me after they were done with their drinks, and I heard one of them talk about going to Foundry, just as they were leaving the bar. Said they knew someone there. And that's all I remember about them." "Foundry, you say... Very well, thank you for the information. See you later."Foundry will probably be our next major destination in finding out what is happening. We ask a few other faces in town if they know anything.  "Have you noticed anyone unusual going to Buzzer's shop recently? Someone you think could be linked to the Faceless wanting to occupy his store." He slowly shakes his head. "Nope." "Technically, I've seen so many unusual people that it's become pretty usual to see unusual people visiting Buzzer's shop. So, again, nope." "I need to go."  "Have you noticed anyone unusual going to Buzzer's shop recently? Someone you think could be linked to the Faceless wanting to occupy his store." "His shop's on the other side of the station, and when it comes to customers, I mostly tend to notice the ones that come to me." "Speaking of that, and no disrespect to the derailed old fart, but his death's gonna be good for my business." Asmile escapes him for a moment, after which he turns serious once again. Myles, you are a prick. "Do you know anything about the Free Drones?" "Heard of them, but I've got no comments." "I don't want to turn into Buzzer; he's the one constantly yapping about them. It's 'cause of him I even heard of them in the first place."We'll check if doc knows anything either.  "Have you noticed anyone unusual going to Buzzer's shop recently? Someone you think could be linked to the Faceless wanting to occupy his store." "Don't know, don't know. All live heard is that the Faceless are after some traders." "Got to go."She does not.  Well there is one other person we haven't spoken to in town. I'm sure this won't take long... ... Next time we'll go on a little journey.
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Jan 22, 2023 08:51
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Zeniel posted:I'm sure this won't take long... 
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Jan 22, 2023 14:50
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how long is this game? also what do we know about the choosable factions at this point?
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Jan 22, 2023 15:04
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Edgar Allan Pwned posted:how long is this game? Pretty drat long. I'm no good at giving exact numbers on this, but we've still got a ton left to do. The DLC area, The Black Sea, alone is far longer than anything we've done so far too. As to your second question, we've essentially seen all of the factions we can join excluding the ones we will interact with in the Black Sea. But we have three different sets of mutually exclusive factions so far. There's the Junk Yard gangs: The Scrappers and the The Black Eels. These guys are fairly indistinct from one another, they're both just trying to control the scrap supply in Junk Yard. At this point, given the last poll was a tie, I'll probably just go with the Black Eels, in my opinion they're the more reasonable and more interesting of the two. Plus we'll likely be interacting with them outside of Junk Yard in future, and it'd be nice not to get attacked constantly if that's at all a possibility. We also have the two Political Factions: These are The Protectorate and The Free Drones. Like the gangs, this is not a required choice, but we definitely want to show off one of them, for the XP at the very least. My brief summary is that the Protectorate are the military wing of the United Stations, essentially the main political force that largely exists in North Underrail. The United stations has got all the comforts of modern living, universities, healthcare, and so on, and they're interested in trying to unite all of the independent stations in South Underrail under their one banner. The protectorate are there to basically ensure the UN's hegemony in the region, and will do so by whatever means they deem appropriate. That's as much as I'll say without giving anything away. Basically if we join them we'll get access to a very powerful factions technology and equipment, which is both vast and impressive. We'll also get paid a really nice salary and will be given a military rank that will give us admiration, respect, and responsibility. Oorah army poo poo. As far SGS' viewpoint is concerned, Tanner is neutral, Vera wants SGS to support them more, and Gorsky wants them to die in a fire. On the other hand, The Free Drones are an underground organization that's sole aim is to keep South Underrail independent from the United Stations. They view the UN as self-interested imperialists who use the Protectorate to strong arm their way into a region and consolidate their power ensuring the interests of the united stations dominate any diplomatic interactions. The Free Drones fight back against the Protectorate by way of guerilla warfare tactics, large scale sabotage, and counter propaganda. They're few in number, but operate in a cell like organizational structure. They are short on supplies and aim to keep all stations free of protectorate influence, whether the stations like it or not. In SGS' view, Tanner is neutral, Vera doesn't support them, and Gorsky is unaffiliated but sympathetic for obvious reasons. The next faction choice we have to make are The Oligarchs of Core City: Core Tech, JKK, and Praetorian Security. This is a choice we will have to make in order to finish the game, although we'll only be working for them for a short while before our interests diverge. In a more recent patch to this game there is now way to circumvent joining any of them, although once we've completed that part of the plot we are still welcome to join one of them later on for the xp and prizes if we wish to. I won't go into more detail about this forth option until the quest becomes available, but it involves tracking down a very hard to find person. Anyway, Coretech are essentially a technology corporation, that specializes in electronics and energy weapon systems. All of their people wear cool looking cyan blue glowing armor that can recharge anything that requires power whilst you wear it. They also get access to a pretty good inventory of electronic goods and a really handy gadget for dealing with robots. JKK are the corporation that deal with the cities entertainment industry. Much of their equipment helps you with various espionage type activities and usually gives you a healthy boost to persuasion too. They also give you access to their supplies which are largely espionage based, and a gadget that improves persuasion lets you to hypnotize people. Praetorian Security are the paramilitary cops of Core City. They're all about heavy weapons, and heavy armor. That's pretty much all there is to them really. You get access to special grenades that can lower an enemies effectiveness with their own weapons as well as numerous pieces of tactical explosives. The Mysterious Fourth Option will give us access to one, out of the way, jerk. They will treat us like dirt, and give us some seriously dangerous tasks that might give us access to wide array of unique gadgets that do all sorts of cool things, but only if we're really respectful and say the right things. But those are the major faction choices we will have to make at some point. Not counting the DLC faction choices which we shall get to. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 06:38
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Chapter 23 - Hey, Careful, Man, There's a Beverage Here! This time we'll have a pleasant conversation with, The Dude or just Dude as he is known in this game.   "How's it going, man?" "Hi, I'm Henrietta. Why do people call you Dude?" "Because it's my name, man. Dude." "Do you have a last name or something?" "As far as I can remember - nope! Just Dude. And that's fine with me, man."Dude's got a bit of a memory issue, but he's full of sound advice. "Do you know anything about the Free Drones?" He looks around to see if anyone is eavesdropping. "Look, you shouldn't ask me about them - they have spies everywhere! For example, that wall over there." He gets up and subtly points at the wall to the left of him, then sits down. "That's one of their spies, man. His name is Ebeneezer, and he sometimes speaks to me when I drink mushroom brew. Just be careful, man."Well okay... SOME of his advice is sound. "That's all I'm allowed to say on this subject. Cheers!" He slowly turns to the wall, then turns back to you with a nervous face. "Have you noticed anyone unusual going to Buzzer's shop recently? Someone you think could be linked to the Faceless wanting to occupy his store." "I've seen six." "Six? can you tell me about them?" He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, as if meditating. He speaks, but his pose remains unchanged. "The first and second are twins - two women. Bald. Young, and uglier than a stoneshine hangover. Yeah. The third and fourth are also twins - two guys. Identical. Also young and ugly. The last two are also twins - guys too. Ugly. Don't know whether young or ancient." "Are you sure you weren't seeing double?" Eyes still closed. "No, man. Why would you ask me that?" "And why did those people go to Buzzer's shop?" He opens his eyes. "Twin party, man." He laughs. "I'm joking. No, they went there to purchase some electronic stuff. Why else would they go to Buzzer's, man? Think with your, like..." He grabs his head. "noggin." "I mentioned them to you 'cause I haven't seen more than two pairs of twins since that twin party from several years ago. I was, like, the only one without a twin then. Yeah." He makes a long pause, after which he lifts his bottle. "Cheers, man."Dudes answers are full of half truths. He knows things, but he doesn't have a clear picture on anything either. "What do you do around here?" "Well, I mostly drink mushroom brew, but I also have visions and communicate with higher beings. While we're at it..." He turns toward the barkeeper and yells. "Barkeeper! Another one!" "You see, man, it's not easy having these powers. Nah... it is tough. The immense knowledge makes my head hurt, makes me tired, and also makes my mouth dry for some reason." "Maybe it's just the brew?" He answers you with a drurken delay. "It's not the drat brew! It's the powers, man. I could tell you so many interesting things - beyond your imagination. Whoooo... hold on... I'm having a vision right now." Dude quickly takes another sip of mushroom brew, after which he lowers his head and begins mumbling. After a minute of his incomprehensible ramblings, he slowly raises his head and looks back at you. "How's it going, man?"At this point I asked him a series of unrelated questions to the vision. "Do you perhaps know what happened to the missing train that was supposed to arrive to Rail Crossing?" "You came to the right person, friend, and I'll tell you the whole story. First, because you asked me about the train, you must know that I know what happened to it, and since I know that you know that I know, I am thankful that you came to me to tell you the real truth. Third, what happened to it, you asked? It was taken..." "Taken by darkness!" "Darkness? What are you talking about?" "You aren't paying attention, man. It was taken by darkness - blackness, the absence of light, the factory of horrors. I have seen it in my visions. A Protectorate train full of military supplies approaches Rail Crossing. Then suddenly - darkness falls, and the train is engulfed in it. Cries are heard, souls are lost, the train is taken and the corpses are tossed-- taken!" "That sounded strangely poetic." He smiles. "Thanks. I was reading some old books. Actually, I was just looking at the pictures, but it was inspirational enough. Listen, just stay away from darkness. Cheers!" "Why do you think the Faceless attacked this station?" "Well, the Faceless are, as a matter of fact, a very sophisticated race of ancient half-men, half-gods, half-rocks." He takes another sip of mushroom brew. "You see, they were created a long time ago in the fiery bowels of the earth." "Who or what created them?" "High pressure..." "Anyway, they should have been completely human, but you know, things happened and they turned out different. They have these, like, rocks coming out of their gnarly faces and other, gnarlier body parts. That's why they wear masks and stuff. Which brings us to the reason why they decided to come here..." "They are searching for a diamond - a big shiny diamond that glows in the dark brighter than a mindshroom cocktail set on fire - the only proper way to drink it, if you ask me. Anyway, it's one of a kind, so the Faceless want to find it, put it in their palace and stare at it knowing that they've become... cool. Yes. But some petty folks got it instead and wanted to sell that very diamond to Buzzer. That's why the Faceless came here - to get the diamond." He finishes his mushroom brew. "Wait a second, so the diamond has nothing to do with their disfigurement? No ancient powers to make them fully human or something, like these kinds of stories usually go?" "Aw, no! They're stuck with that. They just want the diamond because it looks nice. Excuse me, cool."Most of this is utter rubbish, but not entirely. "You've had too many mushroom brews, Dude." "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."Anyway, let's get back to asking him about the vision he just had. "What the hell was that? Tell me what you saw?" He seems confused. "What do you mean?" "The vision, Dude, what you saw in the vision." "Oh yeah, the vision. Well, I saw you, actually, and you were... you were going to the east. East of Rail Crossing. Then you, like, came upon a set of double doors, and behind those doors there was a nasty bot!" "You saw me?" "Yeah, listen: Once you went past the robot, you saw a ventilation shaft to the right. Then you went through." "Through the ventilation shaft?" "Yeah, listen. Now, you ended up in some... warehouse. Not just any warehouse, no, this one was full of mines! Mines, man. But - there is a way to avoid death. Listen now, this is important." "Okay, okay, I'm listening." "All right. If you don't want to get blown up, just don't step on them. Not stepping on the mines is the key. If you step, you die. Step and perish." "Hm. That was incredibly helpful." "You're welcome. Now, once you went past the mines you entered a small room to the right. There you found a locker. I... I saw you getting something very important from it, and that's where the vision suddenly ended." "What did I pick up?" "Mmm... No idea. It's all a bit fuzzy, man. But it was important, very important. And, I'd be really grateful if I could get my hands on it. It was in the vision, and the visions don't lie." "I'll see what I can do." "Great, man! I'll wait here. With some more brew." He signals the barkeeper for sane more mushroom brew.At this point you can ask him to tell you something and the Dude will give you some advice. "Could you tell me something interesting?" "Shadow crawlers. Now those things are dangerous. Like, totally dangerous. They mostly hunt alone, stalking their prey from the shadows. As a matter of indisputable fact, they are the shadows - the crawling shadows, as that's what they are - but our brain interprets them as these giant, ugly bugs because, like, getting attacked by an actual shadow is just too drat freaky. And hence we get shadow crawlers instead a- 'cause our brain, like, pansies out, man." "The brain is a strange construct. I should know, I got one. Cheers!" "Actually, wait. There's more: You see, the darker the shadows are, like, the uglier the bugs become to us, to our eyes. There's your proof right there, man, right there! In 'normal' shadows we see shadow crawlers; then, as it gets darker we start seeing death stalkers; and if a dude ventures into a truly dark place, that's where the black crawlers await. He nods. I'm serious." "These are all just shadows, man. Different kinds of shadows. That's why if you think there's a crawling shadow out there to get you, like, cast some light at them or throw a flare. Shadows hate light, man. It really cramps their style."Sometimes Dude will tell you something that's somewhat true, sometimes its just nonsense or technically true but related to something else. What's important is that Dude isn't entirely full of poo poo. Much of what he knows does have relevance though, especially once we hit the Black Sea. "Cheers!" "I'll be going now."We're going to go see if the Dude's vision was real or not.  But we'll come at it from a different approach and take the time to explore more of lower Underrail, it is a big place after all.    North along the train tracks is Rail Crossing's train service, there's also an entrance to the upper caves up here as well. We'll be taking the train this time, back to SGS.  "South Gate Station"  Home Sweet Home.  We'll stop buy Quinton and pick up a few vials of Acid. I started messing around with these on DOMINATING out of necessity and discovered they're a pretty decent weapon to have if you need hit things with a lot of mechanical resistance and little to no acid protection, like robots for instance. They do tend to weigh a bit more than I'd like. We go back to Tanner to report on the Rail Crossing incident.  "I've dealt with Rail Crossing's problem." Explain how Faceless invaded them. Tanner listens to calmly. After you're finished he runs his hand once over his beard before responding. "Hmm... interesting. Did you manage to find out why the Faceless invaded?" "No." "It seems to me they are looking for something. If you manage to find out what, do let me know." "Anyway, it was a job well done. Here's your payment." He hands you 500 SGS credits.Wow. 50 charons worth of credits? Gee, thanks Tanner. "Thanks." From here we will make our way back to the area west of those lunatics we dealt with that one time.     Now instead of following the tracks, we will follow the passages west of here.     After a short spell of walking we arrive an an encampment of Ironheads, just begging to be blown sky high.          They probably would have been easier if I'd remembered to use Psycho-Temporal Contraction. But that's okay.  Iron head's tend to be a good source of adrenaline and advanced health hypos, they also tend to carry morphine too. Morpine reduces your damage by 50% from all sources, but you receive 50% of all missing damage back once it wears off. So morphine can definitely get you killed if you aren't paying attention. A very useful drug if your a tank sort of build and you be getting hit a hell of a lot. There's also an achievement for abusing morphine a whole lot too.  We also got another dog collar off one of the guard dogs.    The next area north of here can be mighty dangerous for the unprepared.  There's a very large open space in the center of the room full of hostile cats and four fairly dangerous lunatics.  We sneak around the south end of the room and come at them from the north.  They're also sort of chanting or waving their hands about or something.   It's at this point do I realize I need more of an edge to make this fight go more smoothly.  So I reload, and sneak north, and finally learning Psycho-temporal contraction.  This is basically a haste spell. It costs no AP to cast, and gives you 15 AP and 30 movement points of 2 turns. The drawback is that once it wears off it has a decent chance of inflicting you with psycho-temporal dilation, slowing you. Your effective temporal manipulation skill can reduce the chance of this happening, although only to about 30% realistically. The risk is well worth it in my opinion. Combine this skill with an adrenaline shot and you drat near double your AP every turn for two turns. This is extremely powerful, any build can be made much more effective with this ability alone. Let's try this fight again.      We can kill about two of them before we run out of AP.  But then we haste and adrenaline.  And that's three down in one turn.   The cats then swarm us. But they're not really a threat, they just make turns last longer and sort of block our way.    And with the last of these dangerous lunatics down, the cats are soon to follow.     Some of the lunatics are carrying some of the lunatic poetry oddities. These are somewhat rare in my experience. But we haven't found the main force of the lunatics yet.  One of them was also carrying a very nice set of pneumatic spiked rathound leather gloves. They do more damage and the pnuematic upgrade means we do 225% more damage with a chance to incapacitate every 3 turns, as long we juice them up. A definitely upgrade to our current gloves.  One of them also had a nice high frequency energy shield that we equip.  With all that taken care of, we make our way west.   Some occasional rathounds scurry about the place.       At long last we stumble across a set of double doors.  And there is indeed a robot on the other side.  We test out our acid vials. They do coat the floor in acid pools which is a little inconvenient and robots don't seem to be harmed by the pools. But Robots don't have any acid resistances typically, so a direct hit will damage them for a lot.   And it dissolves them real good.  We pick up the last Registration Plate from this one.  In the back room is a locked gate with some lockers behind it.  With the last Old train schedule oddity inside.  And a mysterious vent shaft.  That leads to a room full of landmines.  There's a clear path you can use to walk through them all without any serious issues at least.  At the end of the path is a small room with some more lockers in it.  Inside one of them is a psi mentor, Pyschosomatic Predation, a thought control power that makes you do much better melee and unarmed damage against one enemy whilst doing worse ones against any other for a short time. There was also 20 bottles of mushroom brew!  Having got what we came for we head west of the warehouse.   There's a small pack of Ironheads. These guys are both grenade happy variants so watch out.    West of them is the rail crossing train service.  We hurry back to Dude.  "I've opened the locker." His eyes turn to fire. "And, and? What did you find, man?" "Mushroom brew. Freaking mushroom brew. Twenty bottles! Why is it in a warehouse full of traps? And mushroom brew? How did you really know about all this?" "Visions man, visions. I don't know about the mines though... I didn't put them there, if that's what you're implying. Um, can I have the brew now?" "Oh well, just take it." Give him the brew. "Thank you very much, man. Now, if you'd excuse me, I have to test the quality of this beauty. Te-he." He does not get the chance to taste the nectar, however: In an instant he becomes voiceless, his joyful eyes turn vacant, and his smile collapses into utter he then slumps forward with his hair dropping over and concealing his face, thus marking the beginning of another session another vision. Fortunately, this time around his words reach you with more clarity than previously. "Homes... we must find... Caves... we must reach... like, seriously... A lot of walking... Ingredients... she must fetch..." He giggles. "Journey... journey... He shrugs. Journey." He lifts his head. Life settles back into his desolate eyes and a smile reconstructs itself out of a drooling mess. His eyes focus, and so do his thoughts. "But..." "But first we must drink, man." It's as though a spark has ignited his gaze, the life in him, and he snaps out of it: Only now does he appear to be fully himself again. He gawks at you, confused as a hopper in front of a distorted mirror... ...and smiles. "How's it going, man? drat, time sure flies when you're enjoying the brew, man." "Dude, you had another vision. Don't you remember anything? Or does your mind just malfunction every time it happens." "Uh..." He snaps his fingers. "Right! The vision. I..." "You know... I've been getting a lot of visions involving you lately. I mean, before it was, like, twice a year, maybe. But now..."Well this is new. "You've been seeing me in visions before you met me?" "Duh." "I sincerely hope I was fully dressed in all of them." "Don't worry, man, you were as covered as a hazmat technician." His eyebrows bounce. "Actually... there was this one instance... but it was because of siphoners, yeah, so it was." "What?""Eh, short memory you got there. They're like, green and slimy and water-loving. Siphoners. I once saw one eat a cat. Kaplonk - aaaaaaaand it's gone." "I did not hear that. I did not hear that.""Yes, you did." He pauses, confused. "Yes, you did." "Anyway, what about this vision? What did I do in this vision?" He checks himself for some brew, producing it a moment later with an ear-to-ear smile. The table is now littered with bottles of mushroom brew ten for you, ten for him. "The vision... it is difficult to explain this one. It requires a... prepared mind. And to get to that point, you're gonna need some help, man." "Are you ready?"This is the next part of a pretty long form quest. Dude's visions can be dangerous so be prepared. We should be okay in our current state though. "I'm ready." Drink with Dude. You aren't sure how much time has passed, but what you are sure of is that the wretched gravity has now become your new nemesis - the vilest, most evil of all forces of nature simply won't leave you be! Its imperceptible claws are toying with you, prodding you, bullying you into kissing the unwashed floor, and what may be the worst of all, its ultimate objective seems to be to deprive you of your precious liquor by puppeteering your hands into spilling it all over the table. Dude seems to be resisting this force's devious influence - a stoic sieged by terror itself. The passing patrons observe your struggle, but the more you feel their stares the less you give a rat's rear end. Continue drinking.  "Hey" As soon as you speak, a brew appears on the table before you. You feel sudden, overwhelming thirst.  "What's t-hat guy's's probl-em...s?" More bottles ambush you as you glance at the table, seductive, enticing - marvelous (Constitution) "Great! Continue drinking."  He speaks to you: Everything's all jumbled up, slurred-. muddled, garbled... misarticulated, incoherent... senseless, confusing - drat, he's drunk! You do, however, manage to make out the gist of it... "You okay, man?" "Everything's f-ine, man! N-n-no problem-O- s at-at-at... at all." Dude turns to the man while pointing at you with both hands and smiling. The man, still suspicious, stares at both of you before retreating. "What w-was that all... uh, t-that about, Dude?" And just like that, more bottles appear before you. (Drunkenness) "Never m-mind..." Continue drinking.  You find your way from underneath the table and climb up your chair. Then you sit down. "Hey, man. How are you feeling?" Laugh. "Glad to hear it, man." "And that means it's working, man, that means it's working. I was scared for a moment, you know, and not because of the, like, things that happened, but because we ran out of brew. I had two more on me and those tasted odd, man, maybe they were spoiled? - but once we went through that, I had to, like, get some more." "What t-hingsssssss?" "The barkeeper was a little worried, man, so he came to, like, check up on us. A few times. It's okay. Now, man, listen... Hey, listen..." "We're exactly where we wanna be, for we have been elevated to the summit of human consciousness, man! In this state our minds are capable of seeing over the thick mists of our earthly senses and understand that our reality is so much different from how we normally perceive it... and that it is not the only one. New curves, new details - new rules, new worlds. And once our minds finally fathom our reality in its true form, only then will our eyes be able to see the rifts in its very fabric through which we can reach its every corner. Well, maybe not every corner, but at least five. Or even... beyond. This is crucial, man! Look around and tell me how does everything appear to you?" "It's all a bit b-b-blurry and... sh-aky." "THERE! That's what we need. We now perceive the world alike. You asked me what you did in this vision. I will show you! And you will do it again. 'Show, don't tell!', some robed geezer at the station always used to yell. And he was right. He drank battery acid and died a week after that, but he was right." "T-hat sounds... nice. W-what-t-tts the first thing we n-eed to doo-doo-- I mean - do, Dude?" "The thing is, the vision, in it I saw... homes, caves - a lot of walking - ingredients of some kind: A journey. You and me, man. Together on a journey." "What's at the e-nd of this journey? Do we get so-mething good?" "Man... what the hell? Have you learned nothing so far? Why do you live if not for the journey of life itself? Do you stare at a lovely butt so that you can just say that you saw it, or to, like, appreciate the curves and the firmness, man. Do you swear at passers-by just to see them walk away, or to find amusement in their confused and agitated expressions. Do you drink just to get drunk, or to become a better man?" "The end is not what you should care or even think about. And to get something? Get what? Coins? Booze? That'd be good, though, but still... What do you want? Some abstract thing that will make you feel like you've accomplished something? You don't need that - you need to absorb yourself in the journey and enjoy it while it lasts, man. That's life, man." "So relax and let Dude do his thing. Like, trust me, 'cause I too don't have a clue what the point of this journey is and what's gonna happen along the way. Other than a few bits I already spoke about." "W-hat's our first step?" "It's simple - we find homes." "And w-what are we looking for in th-ese homes?" "Look, man, listen: The thing about visions is that some of them can get pretty fuzzy. The longer they are, the fuzzier they get. Mostly. It's like, you know you gotta do something, but you don't know what that is or why. But you always feel you're doing the right thing once you're actually there, and then it all makes sense. It's the intrigue, man, and the unknown which make visions so... intriguing and unknown. You know what I mean, man?" "Therefore, I don't know what exactly we are going to find there, but for sure it's gonna lead us to our next location - our next step in the vision. Probably." "Okay, follow me: We're gonna start with the Core, 'cause that's the only one I can remember right now." Follow Dude.  We've arrived in some dingy residence in Core City. "Here we go..."      "You folks leave this place now, you! Or else Imma open a can of zone-out and show ya how this grandma dominates pipelickers like you. Beat it now, y'all!" "Excuse me, man, but this place used to be mine, you know. So you're actually a-bargin' into my place, you... you... nasty woman. We just need to, like, find something important and we're, like, gone." "Whatcha say, dross-face? Your place? GET OUTTA HERE!" "You too, pipe-scutchin' hooksie."Pipe-scutchin' hooksie?! I resent that, I think. "H-how about we give you a few ch-charons for your trouble? W-would it then be okay for us to take a peek-k-k?" Her eyes flare up. "Charons...? What are ya a-offering exactly?" "One hun-dred charons." She pockets the coins before you even realized you gave it to her.Our lack of persuasion continues to cost us money. "Dominatin'! You're free to do your business." "Just be quick and don't make no mess. Dig? Or else... She threatens you with her ladle." He looks around the room. "Man, this place looks, like, so much different. Now start searching, and if you find anything that looks important - it probably is." "Let's go, man, let's go." Nod slowly as to not fall over. So at this point we can look around the apartments. There's a number of places of we can inspect but nothing we can really find that is of interest to us, I there's a few goodies we could find if we had decent perception maybe.  We're also really drunk, so for the time being, our stats are all lowered by 4, which currently makes us overburdened with our current inventory.  We don't have the perception to notice it, but the panel on the back wall that can be interacted with, we just need to mouse over it to notice otherwise.  Touch it.The panel is loosely secured to the wall and could be removed without too much trouble, judge. And for some strange reason, the thought of riding it down a flight of stairs races through your mind; it provokes a mischievous smile, but you quickly forget what it was you were smiling about. Remove the panel.     Pulling back the panel reveals a safe.  "H-how do I open it then?" "Well, knowing myself, there are two possible options: Either I hid the key somewhere in this room, or I locked the safe with the key inside. Don't ask, but that has happened a few times." "So either look for the key or try picking the lock or something." "I'll t-t-t... t-t-t... drat it! Try."We just pick the lock, rather than hunting around for a key, which you can also do.  Inside is just an ordinary vial of unsaturated psionic catalyst that you normally just make from refining mindshrooms.  "I found an... uns-trubatitated psi-onic catalyst. There was n-othing else inside." "An unsaturated psio--" He snaps his fingers. "That's it!" His eyes turn distant. "It's all coming back to me, man. To enter a reality rift, your mind mustn't only be capable of perceiving the rift, but also of safely traveling through it. Only if the mind knows which reality lies behind the rift will it be able to reach it. Otherwise, your body will pass freely, but the mind will stay behind. You will be split: Your mind will fizzle out since there is no brain to maintain its existence, while your aimless body will roam the world beyond until it rots. In the end, both will be joined again in, like, nothingness." "But even if you're properly prepared, fragments of your mind - memories and emotions - might still stay behind, and you won't be able to get them back. These fragments will be lost forever... I think." "Man, my head hurts from all this remembering. But, what is important is that the unsaturated psionic catalyst is a component - an ingredient, yes - necessary in preparing the mind for rift-walking. Yeah, rift-walking - that's the term. The brew lets you see, the catalyst lets you enter..." "H-how do you k-now all t-these things? And have you b-been r-rift-walking yourself before?" "I'm the Dude, I know things. My head is like this bony bowl of cerebrospinal stew with a large nervous dumpling in the middle. Yet I am rarely nervous. You know what I mean, man? And can't you see I've been working on this for... for who knows how many years. I must've rift-walked too. Like, yeah." "Trust me. And the visions. Always trust the visions." "I dig, I d-d-ig. Sssso, are we d-done here?" "Yeah, man. Just make sure you bring the catalyst with you. We're gonna need it." "What's our next s-stop?" "Eh... Yeah, man." "I thought the answer to that would be here. Oh, well, we'll do some walking until it dawns on me or something." "You ready to go?" "Let's go, D-Dude. I'm r-eady." "Okay. Now, uh... how exactly did we get inside this place?" Follow Dude. I believe we've now relocated to Upper Underrail. Beyond the top of the elevator in Core City. "So, you u-used to live here too?" "Used too... There are many reasons why I leave my homes: People wanting to kill me, robotic ghosts following me around, nightmarish creatures appearing in my house, it being too drat noisy; the usual stuff, man. I can't remember why I left this place in particular, though. Must've been the bandits throwing grenades down at me or something, 'cause I remember... I remember one time waking up to a grenade blast. Yeah."Robotic ghosts you say? "Anyway, let's go in. I can't wait to see my old place again." (Drunkenness) "Got some more b-brew inside?" "I always keep brew stashes around, so... maybe. It's been a while, man." "Okay now. Follow me." Follow Dude. We find ourselves in a disused laboratory of some description.  Some dialogue got cut off by the edge of the screen, but it's mostly just Dude waxing nostalgic about the room, nothing really important.   (Hacking) "Move over... I'm gonna h-hack it.""If you can't find the keycard... I'll let you try it then. Otherwise, yeah - no. I don't remember whether it was in this home or somewhere else that I made a hacking-proof system which zaps you if you try fiddling with it, so I'd rather not risk your life just yet. We need the keycard, man." "W-here do we get the k-keycard?" "Well, take a look around. I'm gonna stand here and figure out how to process all these memories from the past. It's hard work, man, hard work." The journey is far from over yet, but we'll continue along it, next time. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 08:03
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Huh, I had no idea you can avoid attacking Faceless.
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Jan 23, 2023 09:49
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Szarrukin posted:Huh, I had no idea you can avoid attacking Faceless. Indeed you can. I'd highly recommend it too. It will make life a lot easier in the long run.
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Jan 23, 2023 11:49
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Henrietta and Dude's Excellent Adventure
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Jan 23, 2023 14:53
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Violence against cats? This is not acceptable.
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Jan 23, 2023 15:16
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SIGSEGV posted:Violence against cats? This is not acceptable. They're such incredible assholes in that encounter. There's another fight coming up where cats are an even worse threat, actually.
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Jan 23, 2023 15:45
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We've already killed a bunch of dogs. It's only fair. Just wait till you see the cats in the next update! ^^^ what they said
Zeniel fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 15:54
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Chapter 24 - The Occasional Acid Flashback We've been tasked to look around this dusty old lab, trying to find a key card, whilst drunk off our rear end. I believe this place is located in Upper Underrail, an area that we can only access through Core Core that we've yet to visit.   And we find it in the first desk drawer we check.  We also find a proximal neuroscopic filter, an attachment for a psi headband that improves your psi critical damage while lowering your dodge. A pretty good trade off to be honest if that's your sort of thing. Anyway we brings the card back to Dude.  "H-here you go." Give him the keycard. "I remember this... It's one of the old cards I had had on me since forever. Hey, I even remember programming it to work with this lock. I've done a lot of ad hoc stuff during my lifetime. Like, like the time I found myself in a burrower nest with only a lighter and a loaf of rootbread. Man... A dude's gotta think fast in those kinds of situations." "C-an you o-open the door now, Dude?" "Yeah, right. The journey continues..." Watch as he unlocks the door  Well that's just great...  Dude re-locks the door.  His quiet voice nearly gets drowned by the monstrous tantrum coming from the other side. "An earthquake woke me up. Then I heard the mutants." He pauses. "Then I ran away. In my pajamas. No, wait - I was naked. Oh..." "T-time to kick rear end and chew bubble gum. And I'm too d-drunk to k-kick rear end. Yeah, there's gotta be another w-way to deal with those m-mutants."We might be able to take them, but what with our reduced attributes from all that drinking, we'd probably have a hard time of it. "Well, there's this console here, but it ain't working properly, man." He observes it for a few seconds before continuing. "Yeah, yeah. I think a bunch of zappers - zap spiders, coil spiders' tiny cousins - got inside and messed up the electronics. Mini-buggers of annoyance and doom. Now the characters are all jumbled up because of it. I may have even figured out how to use it despite the problem, but... I don't know anymore."We haven't met or talked about coil spiders yet, not a fan of them. "W-what does the console do? Can you r-remember?" "No. Probably something important. But I can't know everything, man. My head can't contain all the knowledge of this world." "Right. I'll t-take a look at it." A steady growl seeps through the cracks in the wall. And it gets louder and louder. "Now that I think about it, it might not be safe to stand here. I think I'll, like, wait outside." "H-how about you give me the k-keycard to the l-lab?" "Oh, yeah. Just don't do anything stupid like open the door before you've figured out a way to take care of the mutants. Don't wanna see you dead - in a vision or otherwise." "Here you go, man." He hands you the keycard. "Good luck." Wait for him to leave. Well, poo poo.  If we poke around the lab some more, we find some more mushroom brew in the fridge, we could actually give this to Dude. But we'll just leave it where it is, we don't really need it.  In the back from is more lab equipment and a disgusting mattress.  If we look at some of the objects in the area, we find three bottles with 79, 55, and 11 written on them. These numbers are important. Make a note of them in your copy book.  There's a few armor piercing 9mm rounds here too.  The meters on the electrical box thingy reads 67, 33, 82. Write that down.  We find another of Dudes comfy panama chairs.  The last important tidbit we need is in the waste basket.  The note reads 76, 89, 25. Now note it yourself. You have been notified. Now we have all we need to deal with the mutants behind the door. We now need to interact with the console by the door.  TBjYKAZBk05Nzm-r1 Gb ABVH1d Ty3wMrmrsD891B 1. 11LtNICKdcH17zuaWcvydSoq4 2. 370AjcRyxCOb40FVhSWXcOQK5 3. 3exrPBqn-UE6GOsRWpbgtYc1 4. 12n-mzCoOVYIOGxKcYcßRZYW11 5. 25SAzYSfeR39c1SsL1xruMWL26 6. 23tdJqPRJfVnc31sXGZoWzMd13 7. 5PpoTkGta03pifbhATimRZ4 8. 46UVQY1wqM29mSxQinAiHnSv25 9. Reset Okay this is all crystal clear but let me explain for anyone not following at home. You can gain a clue to this puzzle by having a high perception, which tells you that each of the options we can pick is garbled gibberish, except there is a number at the start of the word, in the middle, and at the end. So what you need to do is simply add those numbers together, if that number matches the first number in one the sequence of three numbers we found, we choose that option. Then, by the same process, we find the next number in the sequence in the newly given list of choices, and then the third number after that. Then you repeat this for the other two number sequences. It's kind of a bullshit puzzle, there's no reason to assume you need to add the numbers together, and what if your perception isn't high enough to notice the different numbers in the first place? But whatever, this is fairly mild for the kinds of bullshit the puzzles in this game will present you with. Once we've punched in the correct sequence, slowly adding up numbers nine times in a row, the console spits out more gibberish and we can activate something.  The console next to the console has a camera that lets us see inside the mutant room. And we see that the room is now flooded with freezing cold cryogas.  Cryogas will at first inflict a chill effect as well as some cold damage. Chill simply reduces your movement speed out of combat and your number of movement points in combat.  If your chill stacks too high you gain hyptothermia which drops your consitution by 1 per stack, and it will painfully last for 2 minutes.  Continue to hang around in cryogas even longer and you may become frozen solid. You can be shattered to pieces if enough blunt damage is inflicted upon you whilst in this state. Which is a satisfying way to end a combat round.  The cryogas eventually kills all of the mutants with slow and steady cold damage. This is basically how all gas weapons work, but with different sorts of elemental damage. Slow, painful, propagating gas hell. It's a play style I've not experimented much with but it seems like a popular sort of gimmick. We can now switch off the cryogas.  DeactivateThe hissing is the first to stop, then the pipes start to rattle as they did before, until they produce sound no more.  Now we just have to wait for all of the remaining cryogas to dissipate.  After waiting a minute or so on the highest speed, the gas finally disappears and we can explore the room.  We process the mutants acid glands to replenish our acid vials.  In the back locker is a bottle of morphine, a lab coat, and a groin guard.  Never felt that groin guard effects were worth the belt slot to be honest, even less so that we're a woman.  The doctors coat just makes you into a doctor. Useless as the only thing we prescribe is pain.  We report our findings to Dude.  "The m-mutants have been take-n c-care of." "Alright. I knew you'd be able to do it. The vision never lies, man. Never." Now let's go - we gotta check the lab. "I already check-ked the I-lab. A few cryo chambers and a I-locker was all I saw, and inside the locker I found some morphine, a lab c-coat and for some s-s-strange reason - a groin guard." "Hey, man, I know you're not a man, so I never expect you to understand, but a dude's got to keep his man-boulders safe at all times. In this terrible world a rathound could bite them off, a Lurker could chop them off, and a train could run you over - and that includes your sensitives. It's testicular genocide waiting to happen, man, and you gotta be prepared for it. So wherever I go I make sure I got protection." "Now, what else did you say was in that locker?" "Morphine and a lab c-coat." He snaps his fingers. "That's it!" Again, as in his house in Core City, Dude's gaze turns distant. "Once you prepare the mind, you can enter a rift. The mind is safe... but then your body is the one at risk while you're walking through the guts of the Universe, trying to, like, reach the exit rift. Um, that's the scientific name for it - exit rift. Anyways, untold horrors await those who enter: Abrasive winds will tear your flesh away, toxic fumes will incinerate your lungs, and blinding darkness will totally mess up your eyes. Powerful radiation will bombard your very cells, malforming them into these, like... tumor-manufacturing organic machines." "But it's not just that, there are living things there too, hiding in the shadows. You'll be walking this, like, dark, desolate landscape. It surrounds you from all sides, man, 'cause the sky and the ground are one and the same. The air is, like, alive, and out of it claws, teeth, blades, tentacles, and sometimes even wings take shape. Those will cut you, bite you, pierce you, whack you, flap at you and do all kinds of deadly unpleasantries. And you will hear nothing but demonic shrieking and the sound of your flesh being torn apart. If you are not prepared, your body will be destroyed."Kind of sounds like we're going to traversing the warp. We're not going to be traversing the warp, are we? "That's not good, man." "But there is a way to avoid that too: morphine. It relieves the pain, and if you don't feel pain it means the body is not getting hurt. Yeah, yeah. It's logical. And it feels like pulling a decayed tooth after anesthetizing yourself with lotsa brew. You feel something moving in your jaw, cracking and all that - but no pain. You know all that? It's the same once you enter a rift: You feel all these things around you, pushing and nudging, but there is no pain, so you're not getting hurt. Of course, the difference is you don't end up missing a tooth there. Or, like, skin and flesh and bones."I feel like this is a bit of a joke on how morphine works in this game, since it literally just allows you to take less damage from anything. Plasma bolt to the skull? Morphine will help you walk that off no problem. "Seems l-like we're making some good progress-sssss... um, Dude." He largely ignores words. "The brew lets you see, the catalyst lets yo-1 enter, the morphine lets you survive... There's one more, man. It's at the tip my tongue. I can't..." He takes an empty bottle and hits himself in the head. And again. After a further pause, he continues. "Nothing. Well, it worked the last time I tried." "Uh..." He rubs his head. "W-where do we go to now, Dude?" "It hurts, man, why'd I..." He snaps his fingers yet again. "Caves! It's in the caves. Yes." He draws a mep in the air with his finger and mumbles to himself. "...East, north, left..." He continues mumbling. "Dude, what the h-hell? Are you even listening to m-me?" "Yeah, man, sorry, but we gotta figure this all out. We've done a lot, yet we're still in the 'homes' phase of the journey. According to the vision, that is, and if the vision shows it, it must be true." "But we're getting closer and closer to the end, man. I'll give you all the answers once we get to the final home, I promise." "We gotta rush now, as the brew is slowly evaporating from us, and we still need it in. It's, like, the worst thing in the world to lose something when you need it the most. You know what I mean?" "Oh, and don't forget to bring that morphine with you." He looks around with noticeable sadness in his eyes. "Hate to leave this place so quickly. I've done a lot of work here. A lot..." Who... is, or was Dude? He turns to you. "You ready to go?" "I'm ready." "Great! Now, get ready to boost me up so that I can reach those ladders. Then I'll give you a hand. And no - I won't drop you again, man. I promise." Follow Dude.   We come to in cave somewhere.  There's some more incidental dialogue that got cut off by the screen. Basically we just sobered up and we're weren't able to see the secret door that just got revealed in front of us until after the dude asked us to look again.  "I gotta hand it to you, Dude, you live in the oddest of places." "Well, a dude's got to live somewhere, and all the good places have been taken either by people with lots of guns, or creatures with lots of teeth... or psi abilities. Besides, seclusion allows for peace and quiet - but you never want to be too remote. How else are you gonna acquire stuff, eh?" "Anyway, how about you go and take a look inside. I'll wait here." "Oh, what horrors haunt your home this time? I wonder, I wonder..." He laughs. "Yeah." "Wait a minute... You know there's something inside, do you? This time you actually know, right?" "Well, things kinda dawned on me a few moments ago, just as we got close to the entrance. Regardless of that, it's not difficult to, like, suspect such a thing after all we've been through. I attract strange things, living and otherwise. No offense." "And? What's inside?"Oh what indeed? He leans closer. "I can't remember exactly, but do know things have gone terribly wrong inside. If something attacks you - kill it." "Profound!"He laughs. "Yeah, man. I know. Good luck in there. We're getting closer and closer to the bottom of it all, man."  We make our way into Dudes lair.   And it's a filthy squat full of cats. Great. But these aren't just ordinary cats. Oh no.  One thing I didn't realize you can do until doing this LP, that warranted me bringing one extra dog carrier along with us more than usual, is that you can catch one of these cats.  You see, these aren't cats. These are laser cats! With this cat, we can charge it with batteries and we have a means of shooting lasers without having any guns skill. This will come in handy when fighting robots I suspect, I've yet to try it out.  Anyway, the remaining laser cats are a serious problem. Once we walk too far into this place, they will all turn hostile. They will each get several laser shots against us. We have no protection against energy, so we will be in serious trouble if enough of them get their attacks off.  Thus these things need to all die ASAP.   We manage to kill the majority of the laser cats, leaving only small few, who proceed to zap us.   This is how much damage just two of them managed to do, laser cats are no joke.  But with only a few left, we finish them off first. This place, much like the lab, is also full of random garbage we can look at.  There is more mushroom brew here, we will need these in short order.  We find a magnifying neuroscopic filter. These can be added to any psionic headband to boost the damage of whatever ability the filter is built for, Temporal Distortion, in this instance. Useful, but not for us.  We find some vials of Gyromitrin, some Napalm C that you can use to make napalm grenades which are the bigger meaner cousin of magnesium grenades.  There's also some more morphine and psi catalysts back here too, which we will also need.  And a note with a reminder not to overcharge the laser cats. Good advice.   We head back to dude.  "Laser cats."Laser. Cats. Photonic. Meow Meows. He snaps his fingers. "Laser cats, yeah, yeah. Um, you, uh, took care of them, right?" "Yup." "High-energy vermin! So it's, like, safe to go inside?" "Yup." "Well, like, let's go." Follow Dude inside. You help Dude start a fire in the barrel in front of you with the items you've found in his long abandoned home. Now, both stand there, observing the disorderly dance of the flames you've just brought to life; this turbulent interplay is ever-changing, sometimes fierce, sometimes timid, and where some flames rise above the rest, others retreat low and disappear. But as long as there is something to keep it alive, the fire will keep burning. As you absorb the much needed warmth after traversing harsh and cold, all these primal emotions start digging their way up from the abyssal depths of your inner being. You feel safe, feel calm, and feel enthralled. Right now, need nothing more than the warm caress, the music of combustion - and the tranquilizing light display. And if you feed the fire, and take care of the fire, you genuinely feel that it will take care of you as well. "I'm hungry." Dude pulls out a small metal skewer with some hopper meat it and puts it over the flame. "Got some for you too if you want it, man." "Where'd you get the meat?" "Don't remember, it's been a while. Want it?"We'll pass on the mystery meat. "No thanks." He shrugs. "Oh, well." "Now what do we do?" "We'll wait for the meat to roast and then we'll continue with the journey, man. I saw it in the vision: I'm standing here, roasting some hopper while you're standing right there. Everything's, like, according to the vision so far, so don't worry." "And we're through most of the phases: We've been to my homes, caves..." He looks around and nods. "Ingredients - the last one's gotta be here. It's all progressing slowly.[/i] "So it all seems to be revolving around us going through these reality rifts."We must be derailed. Why have we agreed to do this? "Yeah. You see, man, I know some people think I'm a bit on the other side of the rails - I can see it in people, man - but I do everything for a reason. The visions guide me, and not a single one of them has ever let me down. I'm not gonna turn tail if I see something I don't, like, like. Even if we enter a rift and end up in the middle of a war between intergalactic sentient centipedes and crustacean-like fungoid monsters, and end up being blown to tiny charred bits, it's for a reason." "But did you see us after we went through a rift? In the vision." "I mostly remember seeing you, but I don't recall seeing anything too specific. The whole vision was a bit fuzzy, man, but we pulled through. So far. Things just reveal themselves as we go along, and every event becomes, like, crystal clear in my brain once I actually see it. Yeah, everything I had seen in the vision got clear. So far. And it's like..." "Oh, the meat is done!" Dude stares at the sizzling meat for a second before slowly pulling off a piece of it from the skewer and putting it in his mouth. Not even a second passes and he spits it into the fire. "drat, drat, drat, drat it to hell! This is the worst hopper I've ever tasted. I'd rather, like, lick dung-covered rust off a shack in Junkyard than eat this, man." He then throws the skewer with the rest of the meat into the fire.This is why we didn't accept the meat. "Burn!" He then turns to you. "Well, man, we gotta continue the journey. We got some rest, but now's the time to get going." His eyes then scan the place. "Man, it hasn't changed much since I left, except that everything here smells of cat excrement. Used to smell of brew. How things have changed... Well, you know what you gotta do: Go and search the place for the final ingredient we need, man. It's here." "I found some chemicals in your desk: taurine, some napalm C and gyromitrin. Any one of those the last ingredient we need?" "Taurine... that's for the heart. Napalm C... that's for, like, incinerating stuff. Gyromitrin... gyromitrin... Gyromitrin! That's it." And yet again, he answers with a distant gaze. "If you know how it looks, you see it. If you know where you're going, it will be there. If you feel no pain, you cannot get hurt..."That's just science. "Once you reach an exit rift, you will not be able to pass. It's the surface tension of the living air. The living air - you fall into it when you enter, so you easily break the surface. Like jumping in a lake. But if you wanna get out, it's like an ant stuck in a drop of water. Dark water. Deadly water. Water that wants to mutilate you. You'll be stuck inside, watching a whole different world that you can't reach. And then the morphine loses its effect...""That is why you need gyromitrin: It is toxic, and it hurts what is living - it will hurt the living air. But it won't hurt you, because you don't feel pain. The damage done to the living air will create a temporary vacuum, but that doesn't suffocate you or anything like that, like in our reality. In the... the... the In-between, yeah, that's the name. The In-between. In there, vacuum is freedom from the living air. There is no tension anymore, so you can walk through the exit rift and reach your destination." "The brew lets see, the catalyst lets enter, the morphine lets survive the gyromitrin lets you escape. That's everything we need. We're gonna be doing some rift-walking." "drat, Dude, you're either completely derailed or an utter genius. And I'm having trouble figuring out which." "Yeah, I am, man." "So all we need is to mix those things up and we're good to go. Right?" "First of all, we need two Juices. One for you, one for me. So that's two bottles of brew, two measures of unsaturated psionic catalyst, two of morphine, and two of gyromitrin. Yeah." "Juices?" "Yeah, that's how it's called. The Juice. You mix all these things up and you get the Juice. You drink the Juice, then you rift-walk."Dude clearly never read those TCC threads about Juice I see. "Now, how to, like, mix the ingredients is the real issue now. You add too much morphine, you faint in the in-between dimension. You add too little brew, you can't see the exit rift. You add too much catalyst your mind moves faster than your body does. You add battery acid, you die!" "What's with you and battery acid?" "I don't know, man. It's that old geezer. For some reason I can't stop thinking about him after I mentioned him. It's, like, horrible. I'm not using batteries for a while." "Anyway, did you keep some notes on how to make the Juice?" "You're asking me that after all we've been through? Like, what the hell, man? I don't know, man. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Did you check around the lab or in a super concealed crack in a wall no one could ever find?" "I found a stack of them in the lab. Most of them look like long-winded scribblings to me, except for one which says not to overcharge the cats." "And that's drat good advice! Not as good as, like, not to drink battery acid, but drat good nonetheless. As for the long-winded scribblings, I'll check them out, man, but I doubt that it's there. Recipes, now those I usually write simply and concisely. Like, for example: seventeen milligrams of unsaturated psionic catalyst, fifty-five milligrams of morphine, one milligram of gyromitrin, three hundred milliliters of mushroom brew." "You take the catalyst and..." He pauses, and you see him turn distant again. He scratches his head a few times, then his jaw, then he nods and says a few hm's, before finally - and at this point quite predictably snapping his fingers flashing a smile. "I got it, man! I know how to make the Juice. I just remembered the whole recipe. Oh, I'm good. I'm good." "Okay, listen now: We got recipe for the Juice, and we got all the ingredients. But - and that's one big but - but what comes next could be, like, anything. The vision got pretty blurry at this point. I know we gotta rift-walk, but I don't know where that's gonna take us. So if you wanna take a break and, and, and stock up - or have a cold brew, do it now. Come see me when you're ready, man." "I'll, like, be in the lab." "I'll be back soon, Dude." Now to proceed the final part of our journey with dude, we need to make sure we have two of every ingredient we need to make Juice. Mushroom brew, psionic catalyst, morphine and gyromitrin. Thankfully all is provided for us in this place so this means we just needed to pick up some mushroom brews in the storage room and we're good to go. No tediously wandering all over underrail trying to find missing ingredients for us  "I've got all the ingredients we need to make the Juice right here. I'm ready to search for the rifts." "Awesome, man! Let us begin." Start making the Juice with Dude.        "Okay, I'll go first." He presses the bottle against his lips and pours the Juice into his mouth A few gulps later - the bottle is empty. "Yuck... it's warm. But my eyes... they're open again, man." Naturally, you observe him for any side effects, but they are absent; it is as though he drank a normal, run-of-the-mill bottle of mushroom brew. Now, just as you stare at him inquisitively, so does he stare at you blankly. "What?"It passed the first test. He didn't go blind. "What do I do when I come up to a rift?" "You gotta get... attuned to it." "Attuned?" "Yeah, yeah. You focus on the rift, and you let the Juice flow. Then... things pretty much happen on their own. The Juice leads you through. You know, you enter, you don't feel pain, you disperse the living air and get It... just happens. If you prepared everything right. If not... you're in trouble." "You're also in trouble if you see yourself in the In-between."You know, I'm beginning to wonder what might have caused Dude's memory to become Swiss cheese in the first place. "Okay I'm off to do some rift walking." Welp we've come this far so... In for a penny...  Quaffing juice gives you some extra perception and the gift of second sight. What does that mean you ask?  We can now see the portals in reality. It can do a few other useful things that aren't immediately obvious too. But we won't be able to know this till we venture to the Black Sea, that's assuming you remembered to bring a steady supply of Juice with you that is.  Attune yourself to the rift.You fix your eyes on the rippling energies of the rift and focus your mind on it. You can almost feel your consciousness flowing from your forehead into the rift on a wave of Juice. For a brief moment, with a deafening shriek, your mind is flooded with countless images, all indiscernible and mushed up into mental white noise. You snap out of it with a gasp. You see the rift more clearly now. It beckons you closer. This is the best idea we've ever had. Step inside the rift.   Not ready reading Drive A Abort, Retry, Fail?_
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Jan 24, 2023 07:42
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Those cats are painful since most armour protects poorly against laser. The only way I managed to get through this bit was by bringing a lot of dog cages.
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Jan 24, 2023 09:18
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Edgar Allan Pwned posted:how long is this game? Too long, in my opinion. Every time I try to actually finish the game, I'm getting worn out soon after starting endgame. In my opinion most of Deep Caverns could and should be cut with no loss in game's value.
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Jan 24, 2023 09:25
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Holy poo poo, never occurred to me to catch those fuckers. I forgot about the dog cages almost immediately after doing Big Bret's first quest. Can't believe I missed the opportunity to shoot psionic cannibals with a feral laser cat gun.
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Jan 24, 2023 17:35
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Fascinating, Looking forward to seeing where this goes from here. Also hoping for a new page this is starting to murder my tablet trying to load everything.
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Jan 25, 2023 02:30
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This senseless violence against cats must cease. Also the page loading times, yes, I agree.
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Jan 25, 2023 02:32
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Thank god, I thought it's only my browser that takes forever to open this LP.
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Jan 25, 2023 03:45
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Just a little push now.
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Jan 25, 2023 04:04
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Most SSLPs seem to do that for me, including my own  I too long for the next page.
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Jan 25, 2023 06:19
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