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Does getting banned from SV preclude you from reading anything on the site?
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Does getting banned from SV preclude you from reading anything on the site?
It makes it a bit awkward. I can't put things on Watch. And obviously I can't Like, post things in reply or PM people.Does getting banned from SV preclude you from reading anything on the site?
It makes it a bit awkward. I can't put things on Watch. And obviously I can't Like, post things in reply or PM people.
Also, did you see my title?
He wanted to get banned after everything, so he posted one last message to get himself banned as he simply is that dedicated to the game.
The Dream is only in Yharnam, Yharnam is not the only thing in the Dream. And when I say Yharnam I don't mean just Yharnam the city, I mean the entire region, which includes Byrgenwerth etc.Not true. Hemwick, Cainhurst, Byrgenwerth and The Fishing Hamlet are all in the Dream, and they're way outside Yharnam.
And even then, there's also the other realms/dimensions/nightmares that you can visit in the game, like the Nightmare frontier or the Hunter's Nightmare.
That should say 'known'."If I'd knows that then I would have offered to expose you to more. Is it a natural ability?"
Thank you, corrected.
...Uh, Angelica and Mazikeen? Or are you planning to sit on the edge of reality like a game interface and pan around with a 'no fog of war' cheat on until you spot them?18th August 2013
10:25 GMT -5
"Then let us be away."
Lushun holds the Staff of the Netherworld and then strides forwards, towards the purple disc.
Or go and acquire it, if it's exotic reagents local to this world...I follow shortly behind, reforming my heavy armour outside of my basic armour to the best of my non-magical ability. Hopefully my tattoos and light armour can make up for the lack of magical defence. "You're sure that your protections are adequate? I'd hate to get stranded by myself. If there's anything that you need, I'm happy to provide it."
Welp, they're out of the world now. I wonder if he looked back through it, he'd see it like the video game screen?"No. I believe that this will-"
We pass through the disc.
"-do."
What, from Half-Life? The original, not the fan remake 'Black Mesa'. ...I can picture it...And… Here we are. Like the Phantom Zone, there's nothing here. Rather than grey, the background is a sort of washed out purple and green. Sight lines are less obstructed-. Xen! That's what the place reminds me of!
I assume that's more of a slight bow, being his heavy armour."We appear to be intact."
I nod, though I imagine that my heavy helmet obscures the gesture. "We do indeed."
Better than just floating in the void, but I get the feeling that sort of thing will get the attention of not-things in the not-space."Now… Based on Sandro's records…" He slams the butt of the staff onto… Nothing, and a platform of dull grey rock appears beneath us. "I can make a small part of the primordial void behave as though it were part of Ashan. Remaking a part of the prison outside of the prison seems a little perverse, but until we reach somewhere with laws and definitions, we will have to make do."
Thinking he could have messed with his local Paul? Sadly, The closest he would have gotten with intoxication and maybe eventually death from mana overload..."I should probably warn you that I tend to absorb exotic energies used in my vicinity."
"If I'd known that then I would have offered to expose you to more. Is it a natural ability?"
Presumably using the Orange Light sample to find a path through the void back to the DC Multiverse."No, something I had a group of magicians bind to me. Since I lacked an arcane presence, I needed a way to gain one. I warn you because I don't want to throw off your readings."
"Do not trouble yourself." Holding the staff in his right hand, he raises his left, with the purple mists swirling around the orange mote. "This is more than sufficient."
I would rather imagine she's mildly amused and curious at their confidence.He taps the butt to the ground twice more, and we're off.
"Will Asha be unhappy about this?"
'Illusive', if you folks remember the term from 'Mass Effect', means 'deceptive or illusory'. Unsurprising, given they share the same root phenome."Perhaps, but it's unlikely that she'll take any action. Sandro was attacked by religious necromancers and by people who hated necromancy, but never directly by Asha herself."
"The religious necromancers weren't in direct contact with their deity? I didn't think Ashan's deities were that illusive."
Naturally, that's the first thing OL asks: 'Is the being those folks talked to actually what they claimed to be?'"They were in contact with an embodied aspect of Asha called the Mother Namtaru; a giant three headed spider-like creature."
"Did they check?"
Just the fact it's three-headed suggests something truly phenomenal about its history. Either a divine byblow of some kind, or something cursed by a god."Hm? Check what?"
"Well, if I was a giant three headed spider and wanted a bunch of necromancer to obey me and I knew they didn't have a direct communication channel to Asha, I-."
Nothing says they couldn't still be. Gods aren't exactly known for being entirely fixed in their appearances. Zeus, for example, was quite the shapeshifter.He grins. "You think that she lied? That she played them for fools?"
"It's a basic question in Philosophy of Science: how do you know what you think you know? I mean, I thought that Asha was a dragon and that her children were dragons."
Or at least some folks inclined to believe what they were told. Honestly, if a three-headed giant spider told me something, I'd be inclined to agree with it regardless."I would be astonished if that were true, but I can't claim to have confirmed it for myself."
"Well, there you are. It's just good advertising."
Nice outfits.
Makes sense, if they were larger-than-human. Insect breathing mechanisms don't work that well at that size."Get a dead giant spider and a dead woman, and a saw blade and a needle and some fine thread. Cut off the spider's face, sew the woman's torso on, then necromancy the whole thing back to animation."
"They were really more like crabs."
A very talented necromancer, then. Or something a little divine."Then use a giant crab. I'm not a necrotechnician."
"That is technically plausible, but… Given the tremendous size and power of Mother Namtaru, I doubt that the explanation is anything like that… Simple."
Because even a realm with no space-time somehow has creatures living within it. Life... Finds a way..."Probably not. Funny though. And what's Urgas-." I see… Something, out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn to look again it's gone. "Does anything live out here?"
"I doubt it. We're in the void here. It's a realm antithetical to definition."
Well, it wasn't exactly well-studied, was it? He's in pretty unknown territory at this stage."Does that make it Urgash-type chaos, or something else?"
"Chaos can only exist without a framework that contains laws. As far as I'm aware, the void should just be nothing."
...Made out of the Void itself. Maybe that act also spawned something else."Then how are we here?"
"We exist in this little part of Ashan I've brought with us. But… Observe."
Complete and utter dissolution?There's a tearing noise as with a flicker of green a small part of his inner robe is sliced off the garment and floats towards the edge of the platform. As it goes over the edge, it…
Oh.
Huh, Pretty impressive. Careful thought, that could have acted like bait.It… What happens is a combination of boiling, melting and merging, but after a few moments there certainly isn't any cloth left.
"And how long will we be here-" Another flicker in the distance. "-for?"
So possibly the DC Multiverse. Maybe not Earth Sixteen, but it's probably not hard to hop dimensions once you're back."I have no idea. We're definitely getting closer to something else which contains your energy, but beyond that I can't say. I haven't found any records of anyone getting this far into the void before."
"Getting in was easier."
Assuming he still exists. I'm sure Lushun would be happy to go looking..."If Zachery Zor wants to share his methods with me I will happily use them henceforth."
"Fair enough." There it is again. "Did you see-?"
Maybe your graphics hardware isn't enough to handle shadow rendering?"Yes." His eyes remain resolutely fixed forwards. "I think it was a darkness elemental."
I look down and fail to see any sort of shadow, including where the light from my orange glow should cast one. "How?"
And there we have it. He has next to no idea about the details. I'm sure he's as close to an expert on it as they can get, but that doesn't mean he knows everything about it."There's a great deal about the void we don't know. And they might be some manner of void elemental, though that would defy everything I think I know about this place."
"Ah."
Save the curiosity for later. Are these critters likely to be hungry for material things?
It could simply disappear in a blip of logic."I wonder if any part of it can survive within the laws of Ashan?"
"I suspect that we are about to-"
So on a scale of 'Tzeentch demon' to 'Youngest Whateley Child', how eldritchly messed up are we talking?
'necromancers'"Well, if I was a giant three headed spider and wanted a bunch of necromancer to obey me and I knew they didn't have a direct communication channel to Asha, I-."
'Zachary', unless he's mispronouncing it."If Zachery Zor wants to share his methods with me I will happily use them henceforth."
I wonder if they're going to run into Ambush Bug.
Thank you, corrected.
600+ dollars? Where do you live? I didn't have to pay that much for mine.
As an example.
There are cheaper already-used playstation 4s, but they tend to be at physical stores. In a country I am currently avoiding, due to the ice problem in the streets.
I am currently living in Switzerland, and am trying not to use amazon, as it's somewhat unreliable and also supports IRL-but-dumb Lex Luthor. So.
I hold up my left hand, letting the orange light pool… And we both watch as orange mist rises, billowing through the air and flowing into the damaged part of her face. The results is a… Construct, mirroring the right side of her face.
"No?"
But unlike… My clone brother there, I've got two fully charged rings and there aren't a lot of things around here that can stop me. So worrying about exactly what they want or think probably isn't worthwhile. I need to meet up with Angelica and Mazikeen and then try and get back to our Earth. So I think that honesty is the best policy.
No."Oh, that's easy. I imbued Mazikeen with a small amount of orange light before we left." I generate a mote of orange light and have it float over to him. "Can you trace that?"
"I don't know." His eyes narrow as the purple mist envelopes it. "I think… I… Yes. Yes, I can!" He turns to me, smiling broadly. "Are you ready?"
'It's'
Thank you, corrected.
'its'"Have you ever seen an octopus try to pry a clam out of its shell? It's fascinating to watch it's mind-."
'an'He nods. "It's a imponderable. But my mana reserves are quite extensive. I think I will risk erring on the side of sloth. Did you bring drawing material with you?"
Yeah, I was gonna say that feeding it will probably just encourage it. Kind of the opposite of what you want to do.They're not… Squeezing or ripping it.. But… It's coming apart, and the small parts are… Vanishing… Somewhere-.
They branch into a dozen more tendrils and the construct starts to crack!
It technically may not even be one creature at all, but a colony that has aligned for fused to form a safe mass that can seek... Whatever it/they eat/s, and those are just keeping an eye out for the 'bigger fish'.18th August 2013
10:29 GMT -5
I see… Tentacles? Strands? Trailing from a central mass that appears to be… Just made up of more strands woven together. The near complete lack of colour on its surface makes it a little difficult to see where one part ends and another begins. I can't see anything I recognise as sensory organs, but there are… Strips? In a couple of places which glow faintly in slightly brighter versions of the colours which make up the background of this place. They're not… Pointing at us, so I don't know if they need to be facing us or if they detect fields or… Heck, they could be parts of its digestive system for all I know.
That might not be good, given that blind creatures explore something by spreading out.It doesn't appear to have a way to speak or hear and it exists in a place that doesn't have air or physical laws, so I don't know how much good speaking would do. It isn't attacking, but it is spreading its tendrils out around the small area of reality defined by our platform.
Perhaps a local adaption, something that found its way in through cracks in reality and bred."Any ideas?"
"It somewhat resembles a darkness elemental-. Perhaps this is where they come to move between shadows? Or perhaps this variety has adapted to the weaker grasp of Ashan's laws-"
...What'll happen if it engulfs them fully? Because this feels a lot like how a white blood cell functions: engulfing foreign matter and breaking it down.The extremity of the tendrils have reached about a quarter of the way around us, and the barrier is thickening.
"-to enable it to exist here."
To be fair, that may be it sniffing the air. What happens when it takes a deep breath?
To put in terms he might understand: There's differences between types of lamp oils, right? One might burn brighter but faster, another might be dim but long lasting..."Remember, if you're replenishing your mana from Ashan's background magic, you're not going to be able to do that when we get somewhere else. Even a small drain here might result in you being mystically crippled."
"But some form of magic exists in other worlds, does it not?"
Avoiding it so far. Probably being cautious."Yes, but if it's not similar to what you're used to you might have to relearn everything from scratch. In fact, you might have to unlearn things if the way it functions is diametrically opposed to how things work on Ashan."
"Elves live a long time. I will relish the challenge. But as to this, you see how it's avoiding intruding on our space?"
Not personally, certainly. That other bloke came through here, most likely, but this one may not have encountered him..."Currently, yes."
"We're an anomaly in its plane of reality. I doubt that it's seen anything like us before."
Do keep in mind that the clam is a living creature, and the opening process is prelude to dining."I respect your scholarly curiosity, but-." Oh heck. "There." I point to where one strand is clearly probing the boundary of our bubble. "It's trying to get in."
"Have you ever seen an octopus try to pry a clam out of its shell? It's fascinating to watch it's mind-."
"Ever been drunk?""Yes. Have you ever been a clam?"
"Ah… Not… Precisely." He considers the growing tentacle wall with a little more concern. "Hm."
Melting, but not disintegrating. So it can probably survive entering their frame of reference for a short time at least, though not undamaged...The tendril I'm watching… The very end melts the moment it hits the outer surface of the bubble, the part just behind the tip bending and pulling back. It isn't getting anything inside-.
"Ahh…"
...So it's a matter of whether its curiosity gives way to any sort of self-preservation instinct it may have."Problem?"
"It's barely noticeable, but when it does that, it drains the strength of the spell maintaining our bubble of reality. Just a little. If this is an animal then it will probably give up when it fails to make any progress."
That doesn't make me feel any better, I'll note."Most animals would either avoid or ignore a novel thing in their environment."
"Unless it doesn't register us as a threat."
The most basic drives: shelter, food and..."Unless that's an elemental behaviour, no. The only reason why an animal would act like this is if it thinks we might either be edible-."
…
...Companionship, to put it politely. And I don't think either of them would enjoy any invasive explorations."Ah, or?"
"Something it can have sex with. Now, I don't know much about elven culture-."
Yes, faster sounds good. Must go faster."I'm-. Not, not interested in that sort of thing. Not with that."
"Can you make this go faster?"
Increasing the energy usage might make you more... Interesting to it."Technically, we're not moving so much as realigning. I can increase the speed of the change, but I don't know whether that would help or not."
"How would it not help?"
...Also a good point. Slow-moving things are either too dangerous to eat or too big to harm, and I don't think they are either, yet."It would put extra stress on the shielding, and… I don't know what drew that creature's attention to us in the first place. It may well be that moving faster would draw more of them to us."
"And going slower might let more of them reach us."
Which is the actual translation of the term, yes. I suspect a largely-medieval world doesn't really spare the resources for that kind of progress.He nods. "It's an imponderable. But my mana reserves are quite extensive. I think I will risk erring on the side of sloth. Did you bring drawing material with you?"
"Ashan doesn't have photography?"
"Light..? Drawing..?"
Well, if he doesn't simply poof out of existence in Earth Sixteen, he's going to have a fun time learning."It's using a sheet coated in light sensitive chemicals to record an image."
"Fascinating. I never really studied alchemy, but I'm sure I'd have heard of something like-"
Yeah, might want to get on that, boys. Because I suspect it'll find the inside a lot tastier than the outside.My eyes widen as the tendril reaches inside the shield, probing around like an octopus.
"-that-. Oh my."
The question is how to attack it. Will it just absorb anything you throw at it, or will it be hurt?
Quickly, please, before you both find yourself with facefuls of alien wing-wang.I create a construct hemisphere around the probing tendril and gently restrict its movement. After hesitating as it realises that there's a barrier in its way, the tendril begins feeling along the inside edge of the construct-.
It's bifurcated. Two tendrils are now-.
Sounds great, until it starts eating the Orange Light... Which it may be trying to.I look around the edge of the shield. Oh dear. Dozens of tendrils are attempting to gain entry, and two others I can see have managed it. I give up on construct hemispheres and simply generate a construct barrier around the interior of the shielded area, with small blisters for the ones which have already made it through.
Let's hope it's allergic to your food."Could you try feeding it something?"
I give him an unimpressed look, but pull a ration bar out of my armour and break off a segment. I reach over to the original tendril and gently deposit it into range of the two-. Four grasping tendrils.
...Nope, not allergic. possibly found it quite tasty.One latches on, its partner getting the idea a moment later and grabbing the other end. The other two don't appear to be guided, but instead find it by chance. And then…
They're not… Squeezing or ripping it.. But… It's coming apart, and the small parts are… Vanishing… Somewhere-.
They branch into a dozen more tendrils and the construct starts to crack!
Thank you, corrected.