quest/src/epistolary/00035.md

---
title: 00035
created: Wed, 09 Nov 2022 12:34:03 -0700
updated: Thu, 10 Nov 2022 21:49:20 -0700
public: yes
syndicated: yes
---
### 00035 {#00035}

> Shouting in the direction of the grampus "Yo! That dude is
> definitely going to forget us. We're almost the definition of
> forgettable, I mean it's not like we're some kind of murderous
> hobos or something!"
> 
> While shouting Corraidhin takes aim, and slings his magic missing
> at the figure, aiming for a kill. (Meta: I'd like to spend that xp
> now, lets take this sucker down).
> 
> After the missile flies loose the skeleton begins to pull
> Corraidhin back into the hull of the ship, he kicks desperately at
> the boney clutches desperately trying to break free.
> 
> "I always knew I'd go out fighting some undead spooky thing. If you
> don't become a necromancer, you end up some necromancers thrall."
> at least, that's what Kevin used to tell me. I always thought he
> was being melodramatic.
> 
> As the skeleton drags Corraidhin back through the hatch he grabs
> the dagger, in a vein attempt to ready himself.
> 
> "I guess this is it my Stabby friend, time to show these Skeletons
> what happens when you back a Sysorceor into a corner"
> 
> And with that Corraidhin activates his fork bomb.

~


> While feeding their jellyfish bites of wasabi pear and watching the
> sysorcerer investigate the hull, Inky eventually notices movement
> in the direction of the ship's deck in the form of a figure
> crawling out of the hatch with a bundle. Inky squints at the
> retreating form. Could it be another retrieval team, or a rogue
> agent? Master Corraidhín would probably not be pleased if the
> crystal melon were to fall into unknown hands, never mind of those
> whose names don't start with the letter "B" and end in the letter
> "r".
> 
> Sparing a brief second to lament the waste of a perfectly good
> snack, Inky reaches into their bag and lobs a spiky chestnut
> cluster at the figure's breathing bell from the opening of their
> bubblebee, followed by a glass bottle of blahoblin shoe polish. The
> glass shatters on impact, sending the dark, sticky and somewhat
> pungent substance all over the figure's (punctured) breathing bell
> and face.
> 
> As Inky's bubblebee floats up a little closer to the figure, Inky
> tosses a smaller bottle at the figure, this time of some synthetic
> blood from another brick that Inky had set aside for experiments of
> a different sort. At the last moment the thruster accelerates, Inky
> throws their paring knife at the bundle where the cord hugged the
> figure's waist, before veering away just as quickly as the
> horkosgrampus nearby catch a whiff of the blood.

**RETCON**: It has been brought to our attention that the `scp` spell
does not *move* an entity, but merely copies it from one location to
another. As such, the original merbear and tardigrade are still on
the deck of the SS RSS. Their facsimiles are present near where Inky
used to be.

Okay so two extremely interesting and complicated things happen all
at once and in quick succession. It's very chaotic and explosive and
cinematic.

THING THE FIRST

Corraidhín aims his shootin' finger---the one that resolutely,
emphatically mashes the Enter key when deploying to production---at
the floaty thief. The very same second he fires off the magic
missile, he sees the figure jerk as a small projectile first
punctures its jellyfish helmet and then coats its entire cranial area
in black ink.

It screams, "Aw, fuck!"

The breathing bell is having none of this shit, thank you very much,
and detaches itself from the figure's head and starts to propel
itself away. As such, the figure no longer has access to breathable
air.

It screams, "No, wait!"

And then a fine blade juts out from the bubblebee severing the cord
connecting the floating bundle to the would-be thief. The blade
scoops out a hunk of flesh from the thief's hip in the process.

It screams, "Ouch! Stop, I wasn't going to..."

The horkosgrampus---kind of lazily drifting about thus far---stir
from complacency at the first scent of blood. But they snap to
ravenous attention at the first utterance of a possible lie.

Finally (an instant later) the magic missile strikes its target and
the thief splatters like a wet paper bag full of soup hitting the
ground.

It sputters and coughs and screams, "I wasn't going to! Please, you
can have it! I wasn't going to take it! I don't even want it! It's
yours!"

And the horkosgrampus fucking lose their minds. They stop being mere
toothy scavenger whales, and instead become the ravenous, wrathful
instruments of the god of oaths and promises. They descend upon the
liar in a fury of teeth and tusks. First Mate "Lucky" Three-Fingered
Gerald cackles with depraved, unhinged mirth as he is torn to shreds.
In the end a single golden orb---his false eye---is all that is left of
the would-be thief of the second Ginnarak Crystal.

The eye and the crystal slowly emerge from the horkosgrampus frenzy,
hovering suspended above the harrowkrake trench.

THING THE SECOND

Remember there are two extremely interesting and complicated things
happening all at once?

The second thing is this.

First, Corraidhín lets loose his magic missile at Three-Fingered
Gerald. Then, as he is being pulled down by the undead pirate
skeleton, he lets loose a fork bomb.

The fork bomb is also known as a 'rabbit attack' because the rapidity
with which it spawns new processes resembles the fecundity of
breeding rabbits.

So here's what it looks like. The skeleton pulls Corraidhín downward.
Corraidhín points and clicks. Pew, pew. A single small sea bunny slug
wriggles its way between the skeleton's fingers where it has a hold
of the sysorcerer's ankle. Another two wriggle out. Then four, eight,
sixteen. In an instant there are dozens, hundreds, thousands,
millions of the tiny slugs in the hold of the ship.

Everything, every living entity, every process, light and sound and
thought itself, it all grinds to a halt as the sea bunnies continue
to multiply until billions and trillions of them squeeze and burrow
their way amongst molecules, betwixt atoms, and into the quantum foam
between subatomic particles.

The ship and everything on it and inside it---including the original
merbear and tardigrade---collapse into a singularity. It continues to
exist in this moment in space and time but only as a static snapshot
of the moment that its operating system crashed. It is a mirage, a
core memory dump, a segmentation fault, a flickering feedback loop,
the same two to three seconds endlessly repeating: Corraidhín backed
into a corner, and pointing a finger at a skeleton, and then BANG!
over and over and over again.

Corraidhín, you can continue to act and move, but your have become
unhinged and unattached from this moment in space and time. You can
interact with entities inside the ship, but will struggle mightily to
comprehend and interact with entities outside the fork bomb.

Outside observers see the SS RSS become paper thin and translucent as
it starts to lose its footing in this plane of reality.

WHAT DO YOU DO

[www](https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00080.html)