The Thirteen Moons of Shamballa (in-character thread)

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"Familiar with electricity! What cheek. Go on then, it would seem that a gentleman's word has little value here. My companions and I have no reason to deceive. I will be the first to submit to the examination"

Major Hunter lights another cigar, exhales a cloud of smoke and purposely walks towards Prospero.

"Where do you wish me to go for this examination Mr Prospero? By the way sir, would you have some brandy or whiskey on hand? My personal stock was destroyed in the crash, and I am as parched as the Sahara. What?"
 
AsenRG said:
"Sure, attach your machine. As long as it doesn't look as one of those inquisitorial machines, I'm fine. Didn't intend to lie in the first place".
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Shemek hiTankolel said:
"Familiar with electricity! What cheek. Go on then, it would seem that a gentleman's word has little value here. My companions and I have no reason to deceive. I will be the first to submit to the examination. Where do you wish me to go for this examination Mr Prospero? By the way sir, would you have some brandy or whiskey on hand? My personal stock was destroyed in the crash, and I am as parched as the Sahara. What?"
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"Gentlemen, gentlemen, there is no need to be offended. I know not from what primitive land you hail or what your people have mastered beyond flint-and-stone fire-making. I admire your subintellectual bravado, but come, there is no need to argue over who goes first." Prospero depressesa button in the wall and a shelf piled with musty tomes spin on a hidden axis to reveal an entrance to a laboratory full of strange machinery and beakers filled with multicolored liquids. An examination table stands near one wall and Prospero strides towards it. A hunchbacked lab assistant in pale pink robes attends the professor. "Dionisio, prepare the truth machine!" He gestures to each of you to take a seat on the exam table, which is easily large enough to accommodate all of you at once.

[Let me know if anyone resists, or says or does anything before sitting; otherwise I'll proceed from here!]
 
Spisarevski takes a seat and puts a leg over the knee of the other.
"We have even mastered steel-making, just for your information. And multicolored glass-making, printing press-making, internal combustion engines, lighter and heavier-than-air craft, and a few bonus tricks. Now, please go."
 
"Ah, yes, the savage ego, staking pride in its tribal achievements and constantly in need of assuagement, yes indeed," mumbles Prospero as the straps metallic headbands and wristbands around the appropriate parts of your anatomy. He takes a small remote control device out of a cluttered drawer and turns the dial on a console with a bank of built-in screens. You notice that the metallic bands you wear are numbered one through three, corresponding to the three numbered screens switched on by Prospero. "These will display a visual representation of your memories and knowledge. Now, each of you relax your mind and think of where you come from and how you got here. Any attempt at fabricating a false image will result in both a blank screen as well as an electric shock to you. I'm most interested in the results!"
 
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Dumarest said:
"Ah, yes, the savage ego, staking pride in its tribal achievements and constantly in need of assuagement, yes indeed," mumbles Prospero as the straps metallic headbands and wristbands around the appropriate parts of your anatomy. He takes a smalk remote control device out of a cluttered drawer and turns the dial on a console with a bank of built-in screens. You notice thag the metallic bands you wear are numbered one through three, corresponding to the three numbered screens switched on by Prospero. "These will display a visual representation of your memories and knowledge. Now, each of you relax your mind and think of where you come from and how you got here. Any attempt at fabricating a false image will result in both a blank screen as well as an electric shock to you. I'm most interested in the results!"
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Out of Character:

Keep your mouth shut,
You're squawking like a pink monkey bird
And I'm busting up my brains for the words

Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
 
Spisarevski turns his eyes towards the ceiling - trying very hard not to think of a grey ass with a snide attitude - then looks back and does as he's instructed.
He thinks of Sofia, the trees lining the boulevards, the splendour of the palace, the foreboding nature of the "black mosque", where political prisoners are being- according to rumours - interrogated.
He thinks of Berlin, and London, the way he'd seen them: a place full of sabre-fencing academicians, and streets with howling radicals in need of fighting counseling...and a place full of urban poors and the hereditary nobles in command. A place much like Sofia, except that some nobles refused to do business - while in Sofia, it was business, politics, connections or study that provided influence to the man. But one always had to fight for it, even in academia.
Fighting!
He thinks of the carnage that he participated in at Doyran. The Allies thought they can take the "Knyaz Boris" position back...at least the first three times.
Spisarevski, however, had seen the look on the faces of those that were sent in the fourth and fifth wave against "Knyaz Boris". They looked like condemned men whose commanders had yet not understood that they can't capture the position, and kept sending them in the maws of certain death...
He thinks of his first kill. A man probably just a couple years older than him, stabbed with Spisarevski's bayonett.
He thinks of the second. This one he can remember in much less detail, but he'd seemed middle-aged, though with a springy step.
He can't remember the next few. At the end, he was just looking at them and seeing silhouettes. He remembers caving the skull of one with a hand grenade whose pin he hadn't had the time to remove.
He also remembered returning back as part of a defeated army that had suffered no defeat. Politicians and high-ranks had lost the war, being outmanoeuvred. But the population blamed them.
It was why he went in academia, despite having been granted an award.
 
Major Hunter sits in the chair, and relaxes.
As he puffs on his cigar, his thoughts drift towards pleasant things: the endless summers of his childhood tramping through the woods of his ancestral lands, and on rainy days, through the ramshackle sprawl that is Gormenghast his ancestral home. The thing that he found by chance in an old abandoned part of the house... He remembers his first day at Eton, away from home for the first time, sad and lonely, and being set up upon by some of the Sixth Form lads, whom he drubbed and left lying on the ground bloody and bruised. He recalled his joy at being commissioned an officer and being given his first command -the time he spent in India, one long safari, polo game, and adventure. The first trip to Canada, and the winter melancholy of the northern Ontario forests threatened to overwhelm him, as it almost did all of those years ago. He recalled landing in France, as part of the British Expeditionary Force, a proud member of the Old Contemptibles. The joy and exhilaration of battle came over him, as did the sadness of first hearing of the Armistice that rainy November day. The awe of meeting Mr Holmes in 1915, and the fallout from this encounter 10 years later when he was forced to resign his commission, reduced in rank, and was excluded from polite society. The look in King George's eyes. All of these thoughts and many more came flooding into Brigadier Hunter's, no Major Hunter's head.
 
As Professor Prospero surveys the output of your minds, he wryly raises an eyebrow and quickly scribbles notes on a tablet. "Astounding! You are neither liars nor insane, at least not in the sense of legal insanity under Shamabllan law. Your world, however, is obviously full of madmen. Your leaders are quite psychotic to allow such mob-rule idiocy as democratic elections to determine your fate. It's no wonder you sought refuge here, though your means of escape confounds me. You mean to say you have airships that can traverse the ether as well as bridge dimensions? I have been working on just such a theory, but unfortunately it remains merely hypothetical. I will have to present you to Emperor Malvolio. He will be particularly interested in your...'mustard gas,' was it? We have many rebellions that need to be put down and such a barbarically indiscriminant weapon seems an ideal threat. Obviously no one would ever use such a tool, but the rebels need not know that! Yes, I believe the Emperor will be quite interested in making your acquaintance."
 
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"I don't know that formula, Professor Prospero", wryly notes Spisarevski. "But I know a story about another scientist. Professor Nobel invented a very powerful explosive. I remember that he was persuaded nobody would ever use those against humans... and here is what we made of those explosives".
He remembers the shells exploding near Doiran.
"There's always someone that would use any weapon...and in our world, his invention was weaponized a long time ago. Forty years ago, he left his belongings to a fund that bestows prizes to people who do their best to prevent wars. Wars in which his invention shall be used. That's how sorry he was for helping make wars ore barbaric...so let me ask you something, Professor Prospero: are you ready to be disappointed the way professor Nobel was? Or do you trsyt fully not only your Emperor, but allthe generals as well?"
 
Major Hunter responds to Spisarevski:

"Quite!"

To Prospero:

"Wars should be left to the warriors. When your lot gets involved it only messes up the works. It's no great thing to kill using a machine, or some gas, but when one has to look into another's eyes before the fatal blow, it's another thing altogether."
 
The machine shows the dead look in a pair of grey eyes, partially hiddn by a dirty blond mane, and then Spisarevski nods.
"I can confirm".
 
[I hate to do it, but since we haven't heard a peep for almost 2 weeks, we'll move forward without the third wheel of the tricycle until we hear from him...]

Professor Prospero claps his hands and, in response, two of his blue-furred guards unstrap Dr. Klingermann and haul him bodily away through another door as Major Hunter and Spisarevski helplessly watch. Seeing your concern, Prospero shrugs and remarks, "Fear not, he'll be treated well, in accord with his station as a man of science. Deeper probes of his knowledge are necessary. If he is as intelligent as he appears, he will cooperate; if he is not, his cooperation is merely a formality."

He strides across the room and draws back a large purple curtain, revealing a strange contraption shaped rather like unto the open jaws of a megalodon about to swallow its prey whole. Various light-emitting diodes and crackling antennae protrude here and there on the exterior. Directly at the center of the machine is a bizarre whirlpool of light and sound, spinning endlessly, and occasionally you catch a glimpse of a face or a landscape and hear a speaking voice or music amid the static. Prospero beams proudly and announces, "Are you curious? This is, I believe, the pinnacle of scientific achievement. Shall I explain its purpose?"

He motions to two of the Blue Apes to unfasten you from his mind-scan machinery, which they do none too gently.
 
"Yes, of course", Spisarevski answers, while raising from the machine, and massaging his members to restore the bloodflow. He pays no heed to the ungentle treatment, other than a smirk at a almost-clearly-purposeful push.
"Not being equal to the Professor, we might not understand the details of its operation, but I suspect our knowledge should prove adequate to understanding the principles, and certainly - to appreciating the results of its work", he adds thoughtfully.
 
AsenRG said:
"Yes, of course", Spisarevski answers, while raising from the machine, and massaging his members to restore the bloodflow. He pays no heed to the ungentle treatment, other than a smirk at a almost-clearly-purposeful push.
"Not being equal to the Professor, we might not understand the details of its operation, but I suspect our knowledge should prove adequate to understanding the principles, and certainly - to appreciating the results of its work", he adds thoughtfully.
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Shemek hiTankolel said:
Major Hunter looks at Prospero and nods.
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"So, obviously these dials and sensors are used to attune the central flux"--he gestures to the bewildering whirlpool--"to a particular location. Once correctly tuned"--he fidgets with the machine's controls, rather like tuning a radio to a particular station, with static and high-pitched squeals in between channels--"the image at the center becomes clear and one may step through the central flux and be instantaneously transported to the chose location." He tunes the dials to display a sylvan glen in which some sort of druidic ceremony is taking place. Men and women draped in green cloaks wear helms adorned with antlers and drink from wooden bowls as venison roasts on a central spit.

Prospero points to the screen and say, "Typical barbarians of Silvia. However, they at least pose no threat to the Emperor with their silly woodland ways. You see, we are beset by the rebellion of ungrateful malcontents on nearly all sides. Every meal the Emperor takes must be scanned for poison. He can go nowhere without a bodyguard, and yet men cannot be trusted. Thus our wondrous Blue Apes have been uplifted from their savage jungles and educated in martial ways. They are utterly loyal."

The ringing of a campanile interrupts his train of thought. "Hearken! Any audience with the Emperor must wait, or we'll miss a most delicious execution! Come, let us hasten to the scaffold to get a good view!" He claps his hands to command his legionaries to escort you as he straightens his toga in anticipation.
 
Major Hunter follows Prospero's lead thoughtfully smoking his cigar. He is certain that this fellow is as mad as a hatter, but that he may provide a means of escape back to Earth. He no longer has any doubt that they have left home and, incredibly, are upon another planet.

"I say old chap, will the Doctor be returned to us intact? He's really not a bad fellow for a Hun. What?"
 
Shemek hiTankolel said:
Major Hunter follows Prospero's lead thoughtfully smoking his cigar. He is certain that this fellow is as mad as a hatter, but that he may provide a means of escape back to Earth. He no longer has any doubt that they have left home and, incredibly, are upon another planet.

"I say old chap, will the Doctor be returned to us intact? He's really not a bad fellow for a Hun. What?"
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"Ah, yes," Prospero says, "the atavistic concern for the well-being of your fellow tribesman rears its head as expected. I'm sure your witchdoctor Klingermann will be treated entirely in line with his degree of cooperation and usefulness. But don't concern yourself with that; we must hasten before we find our view blocked by the rabble. Although I am the greatest scientist who has ever lived, even I am unable to override the Shamballan festival tradition of first-come, first-served."

He quickens his pace and leads you back through the corridors of power, and your legionary company make no bones about pushing or shoving you forward if you fail to fall in step with Professor Prospero.
 
Dumarest said:
"Ah, yes," Prospero says, "the atavistic concern for the well-being of your fellow tribesman rears its head as expected. I'm sure your witchdoctor Klingermann will be treated entirely in line with his degree of cooperation and usefulness. But don't concern yourself with that; we must hasten before we find our view blocked by the rabble. Although I am the greatest scientist who has ever lived, even I am unable to override the Shamballan festival tradition of first-come, first-served."

He quickens his pace and leads you back through the corridors of power, and your legionary company make no bones about pushing or shoving you forward if you fail to fall in step with Professor Prospero.
Click to expand...

"It would seem that the primitive excitement of public spectacle has you firmly within its embrace Mr Prospero. For all of our faults, our species has at least progressed beyond this need of glorifying executions in such a public and festive way."
 
AsenRG said:
"A curious custom", Spisarevski notes, following Prospero. "Should I take it that the victim was much hated?"
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Shemek hiTankolel said:
"It would seem that the primitive excitement of public spectacle has you firmly within its embrace Mr Prospero. For all of our faults, our species has at least progressed beyond this need of glorifying executions in such a public and festive way."
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"He was founs guilty of high treason. And need I remind you that your minds have been scanned? Leaving aside your own grand tradition of public executions, i particularly enjoyed the spectacles of your revolutions against the proper order in...I believe the names are France and Russia? And do you posit that--let me recall the names, they are so bizarre to the civilized ear--ah, yes, do you posit that Germany and Japan are examples of your progress? We could learn much from you in the realm of barbarism! Come now, they are about to begin!"

You arrive at the outer edge of a rabid throng assembled before a scaffold. A hooded executioner armed with an axe stand patiently as an official bearing a lenghty scroll leads a mancled nobleman up the steps to the platform. The nobleman looks inappropriately serene for his circumstances.
 
"The Japanese were our allies last time, but I don't really know much about them", Spisarevski shrugged. "And you can ask the herr doctor about German civilisation, seeing as he is a native. In what concerns the rigmarole in Russia, I'd say you're right, but that's just the followers of some fringe economist theory... Oh! I see an axe - do I take it that he's about to be beheaded?"
 
AsenRG said:
"The Japanese were our allies last time, but I don't really know much about them", Spisarevski shrugged. "And you can ask the herr doctor about German civilisation, seeing as he is a native. In what concerns the rigmarole in Russia, I'd say you're right, but that's just the followers of some fringe economist theory... Oh! I see an axe - do I take it that he's about to be beheaded?"
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Prospero smiles and laughs gently. "Oh, it's much more entertaining than that. The fool has already likely been forced to imbibe a poison that is partially paralytic, which will inevitably kill him; however, before he dies from that he will be strung up and hanged, but not quite enough to snap his traitorous neck--only so much as to turn him purple and wishing he were dead--and then, as he chokes and coughs and regains his breath, a swift stroke of the axe will sever his head at the neck. Such treatment is only fit for traitors, wouldn't you agree?"

And yet the nobleman on the scaffold appears neither groggy nor partly paralyzed to your eyes; neither does he seem at all fearful but rather has an oddly insouciant aspect to his visage, as though he were in on a secret unbeknownst to his captors. The throng pushes closer in anticipation, and the overwhelming feeling is that they sense something unusual as well.
 
"Ah yes. I heard a song about this kind of execution recently...it should deter other traitors, indeed, though I am being unashamedly barbarian in my preferences! By the way, before the execution has begun - what traitorous plan did he try to carry off?"
And internally, Spisarevski is expecting to see the cunning escape plan of the young nobleman. But unless Prospero can quickly change his mind, the Earthman can only wish him good luck...
 
Major Hunter softly and quietly chuckles to himself and scans the crowd looking for the nobleman's accomplice.
 
Spisarevski is absent-mindedly scanning for calico-headed accomplices.
 
[You're not entirely sure what you're looking for or what would be a telltale, so how about some Search rolls to find out what, if anything, you spot or notice!]
 
Let's try the new system, then.
3d6+2
Seems like I have an 11, with the +2 pips (didn't find how to add them to the roll).
 
OOC: I will be looking for people who might moving towards the condemned, in any windows that may be overlooking the execution area, at the people next to, or very near, the scaffold, anyone dressed in clothing that might seem inappropriate (i.e long cloaks and hoods pulled over their heads), and finally I will look at the condemned and see if he is doing anything that might be a clue to some intention.
Search is 4d6+2

Here is the roll.


6 + 4 + 4 + 1 + 2 = 17
1543429976307.png1543430001152.png 1543430020611.png1543430031764.png
 
AsenRG said:
Let's try the new system, then.
3d6+2
Seems like I have an 11, with the +2 pips (didn't find how to add them to the roll).
Click to expand...

Just wanted to let you know that as of now there is no way to add to the rolls. That may change with the dice roller in the future. We’ll see.
 
"Well," remarks Prospero, "I don't see what Duke Corbaccio has to smile about. His wretched existence is all but over."

He appears oblivious to what you notice, which is a group of young men and women, scattered in the throng, all with purple hair with an identifying yellow streak, and all placing in their ears what appear to be plugs.
 
"People with ropes around their necks don't always hang. Violaceous haired angels protect that poor beggar."
Major Hunter states and casually turns away from the spectacle, ready to place his fingers in his ears at the first sign of trouble from the purple-haired youth.
 
Spisarevski smiles, and merely shrugs. He has no enmity with the noble.
But he's ready to drop down, in case his helpers start shooting.
"Maybe he's just not willing to give you the spectacle of his humiliation", he says. "Or maybe he knows something you don't...I mean, everybody knows the way executions are conducted, right? Therefore, he knows what you're planning...and isn't going to play along. Even just spoiling the mood of the crowd would be a kind of win, methinks."
 
The rear of the crowd pushes forward and from its midst small metal canisters are thrown onto the gallows, where they start to hiss and release a dark green gas. Additionally, all around you it seems noise-makinh gadgets have been furtively activated, emitting an ear-splitting screech at a frequency that is apparently specially keyed to the Blue Apes, as legionaries fall to the ground clutching their ears and grimacing in pain. The two Earthmen present find the noise annoying, but not painful, rather on the level of a gnat buzzing in one's ear. It's very difficult to see much else through the green haze, but you can hear fighting and yelling and feel yourselves being pushed this way and that. Prospero stands livid with fear and disbelief, but soon he is pushed out of your sight and engulfed in the green gas.
 
Spisarevski drops low - the thing is going up from the canisters, so if he doesn't pass over one, it's safer near the ground - and pulls his upper jacket over his mouth for whatever protection this might afford him. Then he helps the nearest woman or women and child, or children, to do the same, and pulls them away from the crowd.
Pushing people aside is very much an option for a man who was trained in wrestling as soon as he could walk.
 
Major Hunter will put a handkerchief to his nose/mouth and head towards the convicted nobleman. This looks like the best means of escape. He will try and steer Spisarevski towards the nobleman as well. Major Hunter will shout in Spisarevski's ear:

"Follow me! They might show us the way out."
 
AsenRG said:
Spisarevski drops low - the thing is going up from the canisters, so if he doesn't pass over one, it's safer near the ground - and pulls his upper jacket over his mouth for whatever protection this might afford him. Then he helps the nearest woman or women and child, or children, to do the same, and pulls them away from the crowd.
Pushing people aside is very much an option for a man who was trained in wrestling as soon as he could walk.
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Shemek hiTankolel said:
Major Hunter will put a handkerchief to his nose/mouth and head towards the convicted nobleman. This looks like the best means of escape. He will try and steer Spisarevski towards the nobleman as well. Major Hunter will shout in Spisarevski's ear:

"Follow me! They might show us the way out."
Click to expand...
In the chaos, people are being bowled over and trampled by the scattering crowd. An attractive young woman with yellow-streaked purple hair practically throws herself at Spisarevski's feet. Simultaneously, an effete young man with a similar hairdo is pushed into Hunter's arms. You both hear metal-on-metal clash of nearby swordplay, now and then catching, amidst the smokescreen, a glimpse of a rebel dueling with a soldier in bright orange livery topped by a tall shako adorned with brilliant blue and green plumage. The army men look rather Napoleonic to your European way of thinking. You hear someone yelling, "Prospero's guests are rebel spies!"
 
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"But the doctor is still here", Spisarevski says. "And these guys are using chemical weapons in a crowd...what does that tell you?"
Then the crowd started moving...

"Bullshit", exclaimed the young-ish Bulgarian, outraged. "I don't know anyone on this world! What a spy could I be?", he asks the Heavens, dragging the purple-and-yellow-haired woman away.
He looks around.
"Ah well...it's mob justice or running away with a traitor. One of these allow us better odds of survival...hey! Colonel! Let's join the runaway!"
 
"Colonel is it? We'll have to come back for the Dr. Anyone that possesses a machine that can read our minds as if they were newspapers can keep us locked up for ever. Help me rescue the one about to be executed. He's our ticket out for sure."

Major Hunter shoves aside the youth in front of him and runs toward the two men fighting. He is also looking for a pistol, preferably, or other weapon that may have been dropped in the ruckus. If he doesn't find anything on the ground he will attempt to knock out the fellow with the shako, who is attacking the rebel, with straight right to the jaw. If he succeeds he will take the soldier's sword, and pistol if he has one.

Major Hunter has 5D in Hand-to-Hand, in both Str and Dex.
 
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