89 lines
4.9 KiB
XML
89 lines
4.9 KiB
XML
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<title>BASEMENT QWEST</title>
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<link>https://tilde.town/~dozens/quest/rss.xml</link>
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<description>Friends having ADVENTURES! Huzzah!</description>
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<item>
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<title>74</title>
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<author>dozens@tilde.team (dozens)</author>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">74 - Tue, 21 Mar 2023 21:11:46
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-0600</guid>
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<pubDate>Tue, 21 Mar 2023 21:11:46 -0600</pubDate>
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<description>
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<![CDATA[
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<h3 id="00074">00074</h3>
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<p>Blavin’s vouchers enable you to far exceed your modest
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budget for retrofitting the cyberplasm balloonship for space
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travel.</p>
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<p>Not only were you able to get a portable atmosphere and a
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starhelm from the ever resourceful Wandering Bazaar. But you
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were also able to mount a ballista on a turret in the center
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of the main deck so you can fire large bolts in nearly any
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direction. And even a mangonel on the top deck: a long range
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trebuchet that takes more time to load, aim, and fire; but
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which does considerably more damage than the shorter-range
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ballista.</p>
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<p>Above the Milk Market, a crew of Alex’s agents get the ship
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ready for departure. They have stoked the burners, and the
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resident sunspoke has happily filled the balloons with enough
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lift for the ship to start to pull and strain at its
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tethers.</p>
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<p>You cut the rope loose, and Vay’Nullar falls away beneath
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you as the ship rises into the sky.</p>
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<p>When the air becomes thinner and the sunspoke begins to
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sputter somewhat, you switch off the burner move the sunspoke
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into a cold locker in the galley to induce hibernation so that
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it doesn’t accidentally burn through your limited reserve of
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oxygen.</p>
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<p>You activate the portable atmosphere, a small block of
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newtonian covered with arcane runes and affixed to the cargo
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hold. Newtonian is an alchemical substance made of pure
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density. There are entire volumes in Nullar’s cosmic library
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devoted to the timelines that met an abrupt, violent end upon
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the discovery of the substance. Luckily, the alchemists of
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Basmentaria in your timeline were able to stabilize the
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element before all of creation collapsed into a singularity.
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And now it is commonplace for runewardens to attune small
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pieces of the stuff to spacefaring ships so that each ship is
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able to sustain its own unique gravity plane. In this way,
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each ship retains an amount of breathable atmosphere relative
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to its size; and starsailors are able to confidently walk
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along the top (and bottom!) of their craft.</p>
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<p>Next you head to the starhelm.</p>
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<p>Even when it comes to magic, there are certain principles
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that tend to hold true. One such princple—when it comes to
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starsailing, at least—is the conservation of energy. There are
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lots of different kinds of starhelms. But they all consume
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<em>something</em> in order to propel your ship across the
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stars.</p>
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<p>However endless the treasures of the Wandering Bazaar may
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seem, starhelms remain quite rare. You consider yourself lucky
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to find the one that you did. It could have been a costly
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Forgehelm, requiring constant fuel in the form of precious
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stones and powerful artifacts. Or an even more costly
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Bloodhelm, slowly siphoning away your life essence.</p>
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<p>Yes, all things considered you could have done much worse
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than the Emotionhelm that you purchased. All that it requires
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of you to keep the ship on course is that you scream, rant and
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rave, and bawl and cry at it periodically.</p>
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<p>You imagine it ought to be quite therapeutic, actually.</p>
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<p>Portable atmosphere activated, and having fed the starhelm
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a bit of melancholia, the ship finally exits the planet’s
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atmosphere. Your crew takes down the balloons once they start
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to deflate and stores them in the cargo hold. And you set sail
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for Lua, the Red Lady.</p>
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<p>In the distance, you see a pod of gargantuan aetherwaels
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drifting through the void. Nearby, you see a small school of
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space guppies swim by and then quickly scatter as a space gull
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dives at them and tries to scoop up a quick meal.</p>
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<p>You have a couple day’s of travel ahead of you, and the
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very non-empty void of space on all sides of you.</p>
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<p>WHAT DO YOU DO?</p>
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]]>
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