After the Win Game Thread

Zebedev continues watching the antics from behind his table leg.

(not sure what I can do, I don't think the giants would listen to me)

 

Stunned and speechless (and a bit confused as to what's going on), Ililani hides worriedly, and absentmindedly clings to Zebedev. It's a little unnerving for everyone involved.

 

Argus' words are lost in the hubbub as Billy sprints across the gap and crushes his boot into Paranoid Giant's ankle. PG falls directly on top of Blind Giant's still-thrashing form, and Blind Giant, in a burst of fear-and-pain-induced strength, throws Paranoid Giant across the room, knocking over several desks and revealing everyone except Olaf, who has cleverly hidden behind a crystal ball on the countertop.

Perverted Giant sees everyone, says "Hey, there's a bunch of those f...." and then falls over unconscious from Oleandre's tranq dart.

Paranoid Giant leaps to his feet, screams, and falls over again, very narrowly missing Zebedev with his elbow, and knocking Ililani several dozen feet across the floor with selfsame elbow. She's winded and bruised, but not meaningfully incapacitated other than no singing next action due to no air in her lungs.

Finally, Blinded Giant starts to scramble, on his back, away from the doorway and toward the stairs at the far end of the hallway. He's not making great progress relative to his size, but even then he's still moving at quite a clip compared to your typical running speed.

 

"Great Lumberjack Logrolling!" Billy yelps as Blind Giant hurls his friend all the way across the room. He says in from a prone position on the floor because, let's face it, something like that will make anyone duck. The Blind Giant is on the way out of the room, but Billy has to wonder if he can really do anything about that, given that he just threw a full sized giant all the way across a room the size of your typical castle.

Tossing something heavy on him is out of the question, and Billy was a step ahead of Oleandre, so he didn't see exactly how he took out the Perverted one.

On the other hand, a running foe is a mostly impotent one, and it's still too soon to say these guys are a problem one way or another. So Billy hefts himself to his feet and slowly backs away from the Blind Giant, watching carefully for movements from the other two. "Everybody OK?" He yells, not sure if he can be heard. "I dink we're good for now."

 

(I do not have anything I can think of to do at the moment. I am looking for what I can help with, if anything. If I can use my OmniPresence again at this point, I am looking to see what is in the direction the giant is running, or if the thrown giant is alive and well enough or not. Also I am keeping my eyes open for anything strong enough to bind the giants if they need to be restrained.)

 

"Oh dear... Miss, are you alright?"

Zebedev runs over to Iliani and helps her walk to the nearest hiding place.

(hopefully there is still a place to hide somewhere)

 

Ililani gasps for air, then tries to get to her feet. "...," she tries to say, but fails. Zebedev leads her to a safe spot, and she sags against the cover. "Remind me...to never...go near...giants...again."

 

Having started looking for more of those large bolts to throw as soon as he threw the first one, Oleandre only stopped when one of the giants knocked on of his group's members through the room. He might be luckier in the future, but this time he had to concede defeat and admit that there were no more of these projectiles for him to find there.

It took him a short while to reassert the situation, and by then Billy was already asking if any of them were injured. Not that it mattered in the long run, as it was doubtful that any of them other than the one hit had any medical skill. Heck, even the lady probably couldn't do anything of the kind, so it really would be better for them to avoid taking damage like that in the future. Still, it was the thought that counted, and Billy's question was one that should've been asked, like it was.

"I'm fine, not a damn thing that could've slowed me down."

With one of the giants slowly scrambling towards the deeper parts of the complex and two of them being incapacitated, they were now free to act. Of course, the first action they took would have to be one that somehow made it possible for them to get deeper as well without revealing their presence, unless they left the wretched place but he doubted it was possible now. And thus, they would have to either stealthily neutralize the blinded giant, quickly gather information and get on the move, or somehow convince the panicked giant to help them. The last option was unfortunately unavailable to them, not without one of them being well-versed in the art of smooth talking, and with them not knowing anything about possible traps or detectors in the corridor where the blinded giant already was, it was impossible for them to be certain about the "stealth" part.

So, the one option they had to take involved gathering information. He turned to face the place where Olaf hid himself and shouted, hoping that his message will be received by the man.

"When you decide to stop hiding, take a look at the frecking map I told you about! You can get a darn better look at it than either of us, and I'm bloody sure we'll need it!"

After he said that, he started walking towards the part of the room where the panicked giant was lying. Now, the only thing to do was making sure that he was really incapacitated and not just listening on them...

 

Blind Giant, being ignored, makes it to the staircase at the far end of the hallway just as Khaled and Borat drop in at the far end of the other hallway. They see Chris, who has been tranqed, and immediately start slapping him silly and yelling at him.

Olaf quickly reads and memorizes the map.



Everyone else quickly gathers under the downward-side door frame for protection as Paranoid Giant recovers from his fall and starts thrashing around violently, clutching his ankle. Finally, he lays his head down on the ground in exhaustion...and finds himself looking right at the entire group, just as Olaf floats down to them.

"What the fu--?" he starts to ask before an arrow the size of a respectable tree trunk rather rudely juts out from his forehead, killng him instantly.


"YOU GOATFUCKING SHITFORBRAINS!!!!" yells Khaled as he lowers his bow. "YOU KILLED CHRIS!!!!"

In the moment's silence that ensues, Blind Giant shouts down the staircase. "BAAAACKUUUUUUUUUUUUPP!"

 

"Oh Shit.... We had better prepare for a lengthy battle now..."

"They did not kill Chris. They used medicine to make him sleep. Feel his neck for a pulse." "Do not let them shoot you or you will fall asleep like Chris."

(Again I am not doing anything in particular. Just directing traffic so to speak.)

 

Zebedev finally decides to be useful, now that he knows these giants can hear him.

"Look here, boys. As Tentacle-man said, Chris is just unconscious. My friends did a good job of fighting off those three giants, but I don't think we can handle this backup that is being summoned. Since you all seem to be friends with Tentacles and the Chin, it seems to me that you should call off your fellows before we are forced to get violent again."

(I guess this is Power Word: Parley? Doesn't quite follow the description, but I would think it would work here.)

 

Billy stares at the now-dead giant in disbelief and mutters, "Dat was probably not necessary..."

"De senator's right, folks! Me and de boys," he pauses and nods to Illiana, "and de lady of course, can hide pretty good. No one's even looking for us, hey? Buy you guys maybe should make tracks. Unless you wanna be like Chris." To emphasize his point, Billy fishes out and lights his cigar, showing once again why emphasizing points is not his forte.

As Olaf drifts down, Billy turns to him and says, almost reverently, "Do you dink you can get us around and not get us... lost?"

 

Having gotten close to the panicked giant, Oleandre had a very close view of his head being hit with a giant bolt. That made his thoughts venture, and the last thing he could even vaguely hear was a scream of "Backup!". It took him a long moment to stop the thought train that departed with the death of the giant, and when he finally managed to do that he knew what they'll have to do to survive. And he knew what they were supposed to do there, or rather, he managed to extrapolate the situation they'd found themselves in when the dragons weren't able to return them home and compare it to people here.

The rest of those people were capable of returning home because there was something different about them, something that should be uniform in every member of this group. And yet, the group was as diverse as it could've been; a politician whose talents were allegedly inexistent and who obfuscated incompetence, most likely to probe Oleandre's reactions; a female musician with nothing known about them; a squid-man hybrid from nobody-knew-where, with ability to see what was happening in places where he could not have been; a technologically-supported, speech-impeded lumberjack; an inept psionicist with ability to fly; and himself, the walking thrown weapon repository, with experience in the criminal underworld.
So why could it have been that they were the ones who could not get back, while all others had not this problem? The diversity ruled out any relations to power, both physical and magical, inherent potential was also unlikely and so was versatility. It could not be dependent on any particular abilities, or it would have been something noticeable.

And that left one option that Oleandre was sure could, and was, related to that. In his original journey through Dredmor's dungeon, Oleandre had found three mysterious portals leading to something akin to a pocket dimension attached to the dungeon itself. And there, in one of the rooms of one such dimension, he had found a statue of Inconsequentia, and the representation of the goddess had done something to him when he tried examining it. And it was something that could've happened to just a small group of them.
And that went even further. Because if his theory was right, then they were not supposed to somehow find a way home, but earn their way home by doing what Inconsequentia had in mind for them. That revelation was something that he would not tell the group about any time soon, he was sure of that.

"Damn. Damn. Damn it." - He started talking, but words he threw into the air weren't directed to anyone in particular, they just were there, for anyone who wanted to listen to them. - "We need to act quickly. First of all, we need some way to hide the giants you brought in here. All of them, and in this base. Then, there is something they'll have to be questioned about. I don't give a rat's ass about their feelings on it, we can't leave that base now and we can't let them die."

 

The giants look at the group in some confusion. They'd just been fairly rapidly told to stop fighting, to run, and to stay put and be 'questioned'. The situation isn't helped much as Snoopy finally makes it down the giant ladder, asking "What's all this fuss now?...holy crap."

Khaled, seemingly the on-the-ball one, looks between Oleandre and Billy. "Well...we could close the door and hide in the hallway, or we could climb partway up the ladder and hide up there...that's about all I got. Which do you think is smarter?"

His question is underlied by a few voices all reporting up the stairway:
"Squad two, backing up!"
"Squad seven, backing up!"
"Squad nine, securing the stairwell!"

The blind giant sits up, regaining his composure, and addresses the room. "All right, you bastards. I can hear you. I know there's a bunch of you in here. Someone wanna tell me what the fuck is going on before my friends get here and decide the safest thing to do is torch this whole branch?"

 

Zebedev is a bit frustrated that his party gave the giants conflicting orders.

He whispers so only the "friendly" giants can hear: "Ignore what my comrades say, they can't see the big picture. Go call off your fellows, now!"

Zebedev accents his words by glaring at the rest of the party, hoping to get them to be silent this time.

 

I speak quietly to the Senator and suggest that we barricade the doors we can. Then either retreat to regroup above and fight on terms they will be in less control of, or arm the giants with the techno-giants tranquilizer guns. Perhaps even both. I also suggest we should grab as many tranquilizer guns and tranquilizer darts as possible. Those things could be invaluable.

 

Ililani hums quietly to herself, thinking fervent thoughts about making Zebedev seem more authoritative. As she does so, she moves to put Zebedev between her and the giants, trying to make herself look like as little of a threat as possible.

 

Thinking that no answer means "Yes", Billy moves to protect he who is now, in his sole opinion, the party's most important member. "Just hang on to dat map, buddy. I'll keep 'em off of you."

A quick threat assessment of the area shows that the blind giant, who wants someone to talk to him, is the only really dangerous person nearby. Oddly, the Senator isn't talking to him, but Billy knows better than to try talking to someone who can't see him. It usually just gets laughs.

Argus remains an unknown quantity, but after the jaunt through the forest Billy is now sure he at least knows how to take care of himself. The rest of the group is... less promising. On the whole, they look almost to scrawny to have beaten Dredmor, much less one of these enormous giants. Best to disrupt incoming enemies as much as possible. One hand strays up to the part of his arm where the orange tattoo resides.

((Billy activates the Orange Octagon and prepares to put it in front of whatever comes through the door next))