Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison) Subject: [KQ] 'Raelf [Warehouse] Just Say Gno (repost) Message-ID: <1992Sep9.180801.4356@intelhf.hf.intel.com> References: <1992Sep7.193123.14723@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> <1992Sep8.170837.58725@cc.usu.edu> Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 18:08:01 GMT [ADMIN] I tried to post this yesterday and it seems to have gotten itself hosed in transmission. If you've seen it twice, my apologies. JOYSTIX FACTORY LEVEL 2: ----------------------- In summary: Thk, freed from his captivity in the bowl of liquid joystix drug, has come up to where 'Raelf (cosmic surfer) and Quruuminias (an Illithid) are tied up by toon indians preparing to barbeque them. 'Raelf is still suffering the effects of the hallucinogen which Elstrek administered while he was distracted, and is holding Quruuminias in place by a sort of mental reflex, while enjoying the intense replay of all the toons that Q. has been manifesting in his attempt to escape. Meanwhile, Kron and his crew have fought off the remaining guards, and Arvor has escaped with Elstrek. Let us hope they enjoy their encounter with Thk Prime and the T-Crocs in the sewers below... "SQUID FACE!!!" "Now Thk, no need to get violent. We can both be reasonable here." "I'm coming for you, sssspawn of a geoduck. Prepare to meet my sssstomach..." [ The mind flayer attempts to distract the enraged lizard-man by using telepathic attacks on his ego and his id. ] Thk pauses, considering. The bottom feeder is right. He *is* nothing without his trident ... leaving the safety of the swamps for the danger of the humans with their weapons and their magicians and gods and...what ever could have possessed him to do something so foolish and dangerous! ~That's right Thk. You're in grave danger, and only I can help you and protect you now. Untie me. Join with me and --~ "Hey Thk! Lighten up, Dude. Don't take Squiddly Diddly so seriously." [ 'Raelf watched the pretty lines of void streaming towards the lizard man from the illithid, and twanged them to see if they would make a noise. No noise, but they did turn into some colorful patterns as they vanished. ] Thk shakes his head in confusion. "Where, where isss the Trident?" He approaches and stands over the mind flayer. ~I'll take you to your Trident, Thk. ... rant, rant, rave, etc. rule the world, we will, etc., Luke, I am your father, rant rant ... Just untie me first and --~ "Whoah! Can you get a load of this guy, Thk? Hitler step back!" [ 'Raelf realized, deliriously, that more strings were attaching to his friend Thk, like puppet strings. Pinnochio started dancing around the mind-flayer's body, and the strings got snarled together. After a moment the puppet boy pulled a large sharp knife from the back of a nearby smurf, and cut all the strings. Then he danced off, shouting "Papa Gepetto! I found your knife! Now you can carve me a ... "] Thk bends downwards, eyeing the cartilagenous skull of the mind flayer. He licks his lips hungrily. "W-what are you doing, Thk?" "Your head. It looks so tasssty. And I am ssso hungry. The Trident can wait. I'll find it later." The lizard-man's lips peel back over teeth that are rather sharper and more menacing than they usually appear, and he places them almost gently around the top of the bound mind-flayer's head. Quruuminias realizes that he will be eternally disgraced, having his brain eaten by another creature, a death reserved for the most pitiful of rejects and failures. He begins begging abjectly, trying to pull together enough force to get away from this plane - but the attempt to shift out, manifests a half-dozen more of those eternally-damned illusions... cute little fairy horses. "Gnarly, gdude!" 'Raelf leans forwards. "Turnabout, huh? Way ironic! Hey, watch out for those tentacles. Squiddy wants to suck face." As Thk prepares to strike, Quruuminias slowly brings his maxillary tentacles up to Thk's face. It will be a toss up as to which of the two is faster at extracting the other's brains... Kron steps around from behind the lizardman. "Wait a moment. We need information. If you tell us where we can find Blink, the Waster, we will let you go free." "Agreed. At last, a voice of reason." Kron's head is suddenly flooded with information about Blink and the Wasters' Headquarters nearby in the Low City. "Now, call this brute off me!" The toons begin to vanish, as Quruuminias relaxes his plane-shift power, no longer attempting to escape... and 'Raelf suddenly realizes he's been drugged. FLICK-FLICK-FLICK - he shakes his head, clearing the last traces of hallucination, and stands, ropes gone. Quruuminias is suddenly free, the char-marks on his robes from the imaginary heat also vanished. The lizard-man is still in place, though, his teeth beginning to close, pale yellow rivulets of illithid-blood starting under the razor points where they touch. Kron nods. "Let him go, Thk." The lizardman releases his jaw, and stands back. Quruuminias gently massages the delicate mauve skin surrounding his cranium, then begins to posture and pose again in an attempt to regain lost dignity. "We shall meet again, foodbeasts. And I shall personally suck and savour the tender tissues from each of your cranial cavities." <> is heard by him, and possibly Thk or Kron, since they're standing close. An invisible shove in an impossible direction, and * FWOOOOMP! * The KronQuestors are knocked backwards by an implosion of air. And the mindflayer is no where to be seen. 'Raelf grins. The mindflayer forgot his bag of stuff. 'Raelf grabs it before it can be retrieved. Bargaining power. Then all those in the room turn as the trapdoor opens, revealing the leader of the upstairs guards. Maleiu imagined what he must be seeing--none of the usual inhabitants, apart from the slaves, who were starting to arm themselves from the bodies of the guards, and instead a lizard man, a being that looked like he was made of stone, an armoured knight(Marcel had also regained his feet), and half-a-dozen other formidable-looking opponents. Not to mention a yapping orc dog pup. Kron breaks the silence. "We're not the Guards or anything. We were just paying a friendly visit here. Everyone else seems to have left, so we'll just show ourselves out. Any problems with that?" On cue, everyone else there bared their teeth and raised their weapons ever so slightly. The leader decides on prudence as the better part of valor, and decides to attempt a long life rather than a short quick death. Whether to retreat, though, or show them the fast way out... 'Raelf walks over to the east wall. Stone, reinforced, six inches thick, a corridor behind it, four feet wide, a wooden wall, a small empty room with things stored in it, and beyond that, a wall that touches a large mass of air ... Shortest way out. <> his staff was lying on the floor where it was left after the illusionary black girl had stolen it, with the help of her red-haired friend in the cloak of invisibility, and the junior-league barbarian with the club, but it had been left behind when they evaporated, and it flies through the air to him. <> ... the staff touches the wall and glows amber. A circular hole, five feet in diameter, appears. 'Raelf waves to Kron. "Hey, dudes, we need to get out of this drug smog, lest we end up addicts like the zwilniki at the trap door. This way leads out." He leaves through the hole, making a passage leading to the outside, to an open stone stairwell that leads up to a side street. On the street, he offers to purge the drug from anyone who wishes, and to heal physical injuries. Those who accept, are advised to eat food in mass quantities within the hour, to make the healing "take" - otherwise it can be dispelled, which would hurt majorly. Mental injuries he can't do much for. ---- "You're out of the woods, you're out of the dark, you're out of the night. Step into the sun, step into the light..."