Log:Rift Crisis II, Scene 2

Rift Crisis II 2019/01/25 Blok Ghost Magus Riot Titan Niddik Kattag

2

Early on Saturday morning, some disturbance big enough to wake the magically sensitive throughout the city occurred, centred on Buckingham Gardens. Various heroes, whether because they sensed it themselves or for some other reason, converged on the park.

It turned out that some dwarves from the Kingdom of Guk-Madduk on Gloaming had constructed a stable tunnel through the fabric of reality to Colonial Bay - and opened a store. The store is visible as a shop front inside a stone arch, on the east side of the park.

After some negotiation, the heroes persuaded the dwarves that they needed permits, and one of them (Kattag) is going with Blok to city hall. Of much greater concern is that the construction of the tunnel has affected how Earth relates to other worlds, weakening the walls between realities. A fae magician has arrived to assess the problem.

And, meanwhile, screams have been heard from the woods across the park! 

Blok says, "Blok just remember, City Hall closed today and tomorrow. Must come back another day."

Kattag mumbles. "Closed for two days?! Is it some sort of festival?"

Magus just happened to be strolling through the park when he notices the group of heroes gathered by the dwarves. He approaches the group, hands in the pockets of his overcoat.

Titan hears the screams and says, "Excuse me...I'm going to go check that out. Hopefully it's something minor." He takes a couple of steps and leaps in the direction the noise is coming from.

Blok says, "Blok not know why but City Hall closed two days of every seven. Earth custom, Blok think."

"Two days out of seven?" wonders Kattag."Do they take so little pride in their work?"

A couple of people come running out of the woods, panicked.

"What's happening?" wonders Niddik.

Ghost follows Titan, although at a more sedate pace.

Blok says, "Blok not know reason. Should return to park."

Titan continues leaping in the direction where the screams came from, picking up the pace a little bit as he sees people running out of the woods. He switches to flying rather than jumping when he gets close to the trees.

Titan sees some motion in the trees, some barking, and then whining of dogs.

Kattag starts stomping back toward the park.

Blok starts back toward the park.

Titan furrows his brow as he notices something at least out of hte ordinary. He continues flying through the woods to get a closer look.

A dog, stuck with some sort of spike and bleeding, passes Titan, running out of the woods!

Ghost calls ahead to Titan, "I'm sensing a fae waypath that shouldn't be here. Watch out."

Titan nods. "Fair enough. I'm sure I'll be fine. Though that dog looks like it'll need a vet."

Just a bit further in Titan discovers the likely culprit. It looks like a huge porcupine. (A couple more such porcupines are in his peripheral vision.) By this porcupine is the body of another dog, with several spines in it. The porcupine's head is by the dog's body, like it's going to eat it....

Titan flies over and lands in the porcupine's way, hoping the dog is still alive, but there's no time to check to be certain.

The porcupine fires one of its spines at Titan!

The spine sticks deeply into a tree behind Titan.

Titan should, in theory, be worried about that. But he isn't. "Hey there, not-so-little guy. Where did you come from?"

The porcupine doesn't seem to understand Titan. But nor does it seem frightened of him. It stands its ground by its kill.

Titan steps forward, "Well, we can't have you just killing the local dogs and people. So, I'm afraid we're going to have to subdue you and toss you back where you came from." He goes...to grab the porcupine. Again, might not be the best decision, but then again, he hasn't come across anything that could pierce his skin in a long, long time.

Ghost gets closer to where Titan has reached.

The porcupine makes a sort of objecting squeal as it's lifted.

Titan says to Ghost, "Where's the gate so I can toss this guy back where he came from? I can't see it."

Blok advances into the woods.

Three more porcupines dash out of the woods - one near Blok.

Magus points to the other porcupines advancing.

Magus says, "Bloody Hell. There's more of the buggers coming."

Ghost shakes her head, "There's no gate as such, Titan. This area is shifted half way to the Twilit Realms. Anything can just lk across from the other side. This is exactly what the Fae mages were worried about."

Ghost adds, "This is just the beginning."

Ghost activates her force armor and pops off a sleeper needle at the creature next closest to Titan. If Titan wasn't there it would be a penetator needle.

The porcupine is taken by surprise: normally it does the stinging. It seems stunned, in fact.

Ghost lifts her right hand and points a forefinger at the porcupine. The device attached to the nack of her hand makes a soft 'pooping' sound as Ghost fires a drug tipped needle into the creature.

Magus looks at the nearest porcupine and mutters and ancient incantation. An blast of eldritch energy flies from his hand as points the creature.

The eldritch blast catches the porcupine hard, stunning it and sending it tumbling back a few yards to the edge of the woods.

Fortune sighed as he put down the strange wares he was examining. Freaking. Dimensional. Nonsense. Every time. He turned to look at the unengaged porcupine, ready to leap at it.

Titan sees more of the creatures. "I really don't want to hurt them badly, honestly. They're just wild animals, I'm assuming." He continues to hold onto the porcupine that he has, "Any suggestions about what to do, Ghost?"

The porcupine held by Titan squeals again. Then explodes in a mass of quills.

Ghost shakes her head, "Not my area of expertise. The embassy mage may be able to create a barrier to prevent more coming through if we can neutralise these."

The flying quills bounce off Ghost's force armor, but impart sufficient impact to shake her up.

Several quills cut clean through the trunk of the closest tree, felling it!

Ghost is fortunate not to hit any tresses but is hurled back a considerable distance.

The porcupines might not have much intelligence, but they have enough to tell that Blok doesn't look like good eating. The one near him turns instead to attack the nearest screaming, fleeing human, which looks distinctly more like prey.

Titan is mostly unhurt by the porcupine's quills, and gets thrown backward 8m, landing on his back.

The remaining porcupine sees Fortune coming toward him, and fires off a defensive quill.

Blok sees the porcupine turn toward a fleeing human, and leaps to block the attack. Quills rattle against his stony hide and fall to the ground, but he barely feels them. The force, however, does spoil his landing, and he falls to the ground.

The quill goes flying past fortune. Fortunately, it also flies past the various normals behind him.

The tree the porcupine felled topples - toward the porcupine! It only just manages to escape it!

Fortune goes in for a swing, but despite the intensity and focus of the strike, he couldn't find an opening in the porcupines... defensive stance? That couldn't be right.

Ghost comes back onto her feet, shaking off the ringing in her eras. And with hearing like hers, that's a lot of ringing. Assessing the situation she picks on the porcupine that is off balance from getting out from under a falling tree, and fires a sleeper needle at it.

Another popping sound as her advanced weapon hits.

Magus sees the porcupine squirming on the ground and grumble. He chants a spell and blasts the creatures mind.

The porcupine emits a shrill cry and passes out.

Fortune upon seeing and hearing that someone is able to neutralize these creatures without having to deal with their strange prehensile rocket spines, withdraws from the fight, instead focusing on getting civilians out of the way with his speed.

Titan tries to get to his feet quickly and get over to the recovered porcupine, intending to punch it...but with a pulled punch. No need to seriously hurt the thing.

Titan slips a bit as he's getting to his feet. The ground is a little wet. He grumbles to himself and just manages to get over to the porcupine, unable to actually strike it before it can act.

The porcupine Titan approaches holds it's nerve (doesn't do the explosion thing) and fires off a single quill.

Titan takes the spike to the chest, and it bounces off harmlessly, aside from tearing a hole in his shirt. Then again, it already has several from the prior explosion of quills.

The porcupine Blok blocked gets ANGRY! It attacks Blok, edible or not!

The final porcupine's target has run off! So it turns on the nearest possible food: Magus.

The quill fired by the porcupine bounces off Blok's shoulder, sending him rolling back.

Then porcupine appears to have fired entirely the wrong quill by mistake. It shoots off harmlessly into the woods.

Blok clambers to his feet and unleashes a Thunderclap upon the porcupine.

The porcupine is stunned by the Thunderclap!

Ghost cries out as Blok unleases a thunderclap. Elven hearing. Then she turns to Titan, "Can you handle these? I should encourage the duty mage to attempt to strengthen the barrier between worlds. This is only going to get worse, you know."

Titan nods. "I should be fine with these two."

Ghost makes her way back through the woods to where the dawrves and embassy mage are. "Adept Mage, we need you to strengthen the barriers. And you dwarves, now do you understand?"

Kattag frowns as only the bushy-eyebrowed can. "How were we to know that your world was so weak?"

The embassy mage nods. "This is - difficult. There's no way to unmake the tunnel, at least that I can see, without worsening the problem. But I should be able to seal off - or at least 'push to' - an open gate.'

Magus sees the creature attacking Blok and figures he'll give the big guy a hand. Magus chants and sends a mental bolt flying towards the creature.

Ghost thinks, if the trial takes place in the embassy I'm sure I could get away with a claim of justifiable dwarficide.

That porcupine follows its fellow in shrieking and collapsing.

Titan calmly takes a swing at the porcupine in front of him, but pulls his punch, not wanting to severely injure it. He doesn't worry about getting stuck, though.

The porcupine goes down in one blow.

Titan strikes the porcupine, and actually feels it, though his skin isn't broken. "Hmmph."

The porcupine attacking Magus sees no reason not to continue, not understanding about the mind blasts.

Blok moves closer to the porcupine and uses Thunderclap, aligning so as not to catch Magus.

The porcupine is stunned. And Ghost wishes she were farther away once more.

Titan walks over and punches the stunned porcupine out. He takes a deep breath and says to himself, "Well, today has gotten weird." He calls out, "What's the situation with getting them back where they came from?"

Magus sees the porcupines quills flying towards and raises his arms in defense. Luckily, the mystic shields surrounding him absorbed the shots.

Magus walks over the last porcupine squirming on the ground. He raises his and blasts it with eldritch energy, knocking the creature out.

Magus says, "No clue Mate. Maybe the dwarves know."

The embassy mage mutters in the fae language in a voice so low only Ghost can hear as he walks toward the woods. A lot of it is none-too-polite comments about dwarves. "But they are right in one way. If the fabric of the worlds were not so thin here, it should have been safe. As it is - it is fortunate there are paths from here to so many different worlds. If we were close to just a single world, that world and this would have collapsed into each other. But by the same token, this is such a tangle - I have no idea at this stage how to undo the damage."

The mage, overhearing, says to Magus. "Unlikely. But I can help."

Magus says, "And who might you be?"

The mage strides into the woods, saying, "An accomplished worldwalker. Bring the porcupines. I shall disentangle these two worlds."

Titan drags the porcupines over to where the embassy mage is.

He hunts out a spot, where there observant might remark that the trees look a little different, somehow. "Place them there -then let us withdraw."

Blok collects quills.

Magus lights a cigarette with his amulet lighter. He takes a long drag and exhales a stream of smoke.

Magus says, "I don't suppose you can close that gate."

Titan shakes his head, "From what Ghost wasn't saying, it isn't a gate. Something about...worlds being overlying or something?"

The embassy mage leads the group back a distance, then sings a song. During the song, the trees seem to shift a little. Or perhaps fade out to be replaced with others. Though only out the corner of one's eye, it seems.

"There," the embassy mage says. "The way is closed, though it is not sealed. Sealing it is beyond my powers - at this stage. Your world and that world - and likely many other worlds - are joined, now. And undoing that joining will take time. How much, I cannot yet say."