M127

Plague-Hunters 2

Weakened, Imgor knew he had no chance at pursuit now, so he got up with Joshua's help, and trotted to his horse.
Once he recovered he should be able to try to use his tracking spell to find either Joshua or Sapphire, with a bit of luck, and a good guess as to where Sapphire might have been taken, if he only knew something about the abductor.
On the ride, while recovering most of his physical strength, Imgor wondered whether or not they had to set up camp for the night, or if they would be able to reach a town or even their destination before.
Only some time into the ride he recalled what had happened to the wyvern: apparently the plague had spread faster, than even Joshua thought possible, although Sapphire's 'ability' may have been the cause of that, if speeding up the plague like that is even possible. That is also likely the reason why she was abducted, which means, whereever she is taken, the plague will likely have something to do with it.
Once he had recovered sufficient mana, Imgor planned to check for the density of the plague, kind of like a map. If his assertion is correct, Sapphire will be taken to either a high concentration of the plague, or a low concentration of it.

Plague-Hunters 2

Boleep

@Eklispe

Yeah...there is not much imgor could reasonably do...

NCQuest: Favors for Favors (Taking new players)

Joe wasn’t particularly fond of having to do more simulations, they were always either way too easy or way too hard. Although that couldn’t be blamed on the scenarios, as the computer was simply deterministic, which in turn meant all its actions would always be the same in the same situation, thus making it either easy or nearly impossible to beat it, at least in Joe’s opinion.
But he didn’t complain, as all that would do is disrupt everyone for no gain, so he plugged into one of the simulation pods.

He was greeted with a virtual, globular menu around his ‘cockpit’, mission scenarios and descriptions. Only one was apparently selectable, and already had a ‘loading’ bar underneath it at 90%. While waiting for the scenario to fully load, Joe decided to check back with the specialist whether or not everything is working alright, since some of the pods had been worked on: “Any quirks left in the system, or is everything as the manual states?”

“Err, yeah, everything should be just fine and to-the-book? Are you seeing something wrong, Mr… Verona, right?”

“I am not seeing anything out of the ordinary here, I just want to make sure you didn’t overlook anything and thus render your readings unusable.”

“I am the expert on that here, but thanks for caring. As I said before, do tell if the following little mission is a bit too easy, just reminding.”

The loading bar reached 100%, and Joe promptly selected the only choice.

He was thrust into the virtual environment of the simulation proper, with the ‘fabric’ of that world going fritzy every so often, making it lag or corrupt visually. James noted this and was intrigued, mildly worried.

“Are you feeling alright? Your readings are fluctuating heavily, at best. It’s wanting to just read ‘∞%’ sometimes... You should be frying in that case!”

“I am fine, although the simulation is frequently showing heavy visual and audio artifacts, alongside lag. Were the computers downgraded?”

“No, they’re the best available. I optimized them myself when I got here. Do you have anything unusual involving your nervous system in your medical history? Brain damage, electrical accident, anything at all?”

“Not that I know, but neural resonance tests I sometimes did in private always ended up reading NaN, not a number. I thought the software was faulty and reported it to the engineers, to take a look at it. They said it was fine before the last test I did, which yielded the same result.”

“Then what the heck is wrong…? I’m looking at your plug’s firm and software and it seems as up-to-date as possible and bug-free. Whatever’s wrong, it has to be with you I guess! Do you experience anything odd when in the cockpit or what?”

“Not that I know. What happens if you undo your optimizations and read out every variable after each calculation? The values causing the errors should be apparent then.”

“Well gee with you plugged in that does have a chance to make your brain dribble out of your ears. Perhaps you should just do this later while we figure this out?”

“Fine with me, do you want a recording of the current output of the plug for testing with a dummy plug?”

“...Do I look like a corporate lackey who has access to that sorta stuff? Or am I reading you wrong?”

“No, but maybe you got one somewhere, who knows?”

“Well I don’t, although I do need one in hindsight. It’d be really useful huh? In any case, you can climb out. You’re dismissed, I guess. Unless you wanna watch the others flail around.”

“I’ll stay to watch, I have nothing better to do at the moment.” After saying those words, Joe unplugged and exited the pod.

Plague-Hunters 2

Imgor was on the ground, too weak to get up. This was the second time this day, which was definetly one of his worse days. He hopefully still was able to do significant damage to the wyvern, or at least prevent it from fighting back at all.
However, he still wasn't done yet, even though he had next to no magic reserves, and was weakened from a sudden drain of magic; his crossbow was loaded and cocked, and when applied to a very very small radius for an instant, he would still be able to cast his tracking spell using the shred of magic he regenerated since the sudden drain, but even then, the radius would be too small to reach the barrier from his current position.
Imgor recalled the rune, that increased the range of vitae spells, if he wanted to use his tracking spell to find out anything about the barrier, he needed it to increase the range sufficiently to even reach the barrier. He envisioned how it would look like when adjusted to he fairly low range from his location to the barrier, and he started drawing it onto the ground with his fingers, in the end, the rune would be roughly hand-sized.

At the same time, his familiar started returning to the ground below Imgor, initially to provide shelter for him should the need arise. He asked his familiar to draw a larger version of the rune under the ground around him, not made up of tunnels, but carved into the tunnel's and cave's floors or ceilings.
After half a minute of drawing, the familiar's rune was finished, and subsequently, Imgor cast his tracking spell, with the intent of finding the weakest spot in the barrier, that has an effect on nearby parts of the barrier; in essence a fault, that would cause it to at least partially collapse, if said fault was damaged sufficiently. He hoped he would not pass out from using up all his magic for the 3rd time this day.

Interestingly enough his spell did not point out any particular point in the barrier itself, rather it seemed the wyvern itself was the weakness of the barrier. At least that's what Imgor managed to glimpse before his spell failed again due to low mana reserves.

A slight confusion set in in Imgor's mind, caused by a mix of the extremely low mana, the weakened body due to sudden mana drain after extremely low mana, and this revelation, so Imgor just stares at the pile of rubble, that trapped the wyvern.

Plague-Hunters 2

Yes, but I have no idea what to post.

NCQuest: Favors for Favors (Taking new players)

But my post if I wrote one would be Stein getting in her mech and...? Yeah, that's an exciting worthwhile post!

Gowi

From my observation, this is exactly what happens when an RP goes too slow for the players, they have no idea what to do in a post, as anything they would do, that would make for a worthwhile post, would be progressing too much.
Then again, I am more used to chat RPs, which usually feature shorter posts[as typing speed is a limiting factor], and people are less likely to wait for you, since everything is live, and due to their usual speed, chat RPs require one's full attention, so when there are no posts, people get bored very quickly. Forum RPs have their advantages too, notably the insignificance of typing speed, and the fact, that they are not bound to a meetup of all players at the same time, but so far, out of all the RPs I have been in, a live chat RP, that lasted more than 1 session, got much more done over the course of an IRL week with either daily or bidaily 2-3 hour sessions, than almost all forum RPs got done in half a year, at least those I know.
My point is, if there is at least 1 day per week, in which all of us[players] are available, we should probably be all working together on a weekly group post at that time. If everyone is there, there is no one to be left behind by the speed at which we might progress.

NCQuest: Favors for Favors (Taking new players)

Also still good. I am still waiting for a certain thing to happen *nudge* :P

NCQuest: Favors for Favors (Taking new players)

*waiting*

NCQuest: Favors for Favors (Taking new players)

I will be available.

Plague-Hunters 2

By the time they arrived, Imgor had recovered sufficiently to physically fight. As he jumped off his horse, he used his weight and momentum to provide the necessary force to cock his crossbow, which he then immedeatly loaded with a wooden bolt he had crafted while waiting for his switch-weapon to be ready and aimed it at the wyvern.
"What if we were to completely limit its movement while it is still asleep?" He replied to Alexander, while asking his familiar to dig below the sawmill to cause it to collapse onto the wyvern. The mass of a building should be enough to hold it down.
However the eerie feeling of the place overshadowed Imgors planning, so just to be sure, he used his tracking spell to search for anything potentially hostile.

The moment his tracking spell was triggered, Imgor felt something like nothing else. It nearly felt like the spell was percieving the air around him as hostile and he couldn’t shake an uncontrollable feeling of dread. If simply standing in the area made them uneasy, Imgor’s spell amplified that by an outrageous factor. It felt like the entire forest was hostile and that’s what his spell was after. Imgor immediately felt his magical energy reserves being depleted at an alarming rate.

Still weakened from before, the sudden drainage caused him to collapse again. He attempted to warn his teammates: "This place...all is our enemy." He couldn't speak more words in that moment, but his familiar had already gotten to work below the sawmill, it knew, that Imgor wanted it that way, one less enemy is always better.

“Yes, I’ve felt it too. It almost feels like a trap. However I think we should still continue with what we intended in the first place. If it is, I’m sure the enemy will make their presence felt.” Joshua responded to Imgor.

His face expression changed and it was hard to mistake. For once he was worried. The fact that both Imgor and Sapphire were not at their best clearly did not escape him.

At the same time Sapphire removed her scythe from the back yet the motion was pained and slow. Her hood for the most part hid the beads of sweat forming on her forehead.