Equip Blankets imo
Equip Blankets imo
Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
But even the bed is frozen!
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He had some on him from before, those'll do fine.
What I mean is, if something as solid as a bed is frozen, it must be cold enough to penetrate a blanket.
But, eh, I probably read too much into the picture. Since Maria is fine and all with a blanket, I doubt she going to die because of ice, and that should apply to us too.
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Hostel Casa VolanteQuest Master's Note
Day ?
????? Phase – 02
Cold (-11 °C/12 °F)
It is easy to ignore the lightheadedness in my head. Rather, it’s easier to concentrate on the many issues I have to deal with right now.Character Status
I look at my surroundings, at the dormitory that has become a frozen world like something out of a fantasy.
Everything—almost everything—is covered in frost. The water in the air rapidly condensed and became small icicles latched to the metal frame of the bunk beds and the lockers. Just like the windows, the glass on the picture frames and the lightbulbs is completely shattered. Snowflakes drop almost shyly into the room from outside, where the ocean breeze has become a deathly gale that chills the bone.
It’s cold as fuck. But it’s not cold enough to create this scene.
The chill that knocked me out was something that could kill in an instant. A terrifying cold, that made on think the impossible words “absolute zero”. The pulse from that second sun, did it instantaneously drop the ambient temperature to an unfathomable degree, and it’s gotten warmer since then? Will it keep rising back to normal, or has it reached a steady state?
On the other hand, there’s the sleeping bag and blankets that covered me. Those also collected frost, but it flaked off effortlessly when I got out. Were these stored somewhere, and thus got spared the worst of the cold? No way to know, and I guess it’s not really that important.
Will that terrible chill happen again?
The second sun no longer shines out there, so that’s a good sign, I guess. In fact, you can barely catch a glimpse of the light of the sun, faintly leaking past a canopy of grey clouds.
The sea is frozen, as far as the horizon. I can see a ship, having just taken off, crushed by encroaching ice a few miles off the coast. And the horizon…
No. I’ll go mad if I keep at it. Focus on what matters right now, Javier.
Of course, I haven’t been idle. Multiple layers would be too cumbersome, and wrapping myself in blankets clumsy and unreliable, but I had to at least cover my unprotected face, especially my aching ears and lips. However, as long as I stay in this room, I can still rely on these thick and warm sheets, right?
So, like a mendicant monk wearing a veil to escape the harsh sun, I sit on the freezing cold bed with blankets draped over my head. Hands clasped on my lap, index fingers touching. My body shivers, it will be hard to concentrate. But I’ve done this dozens—no, hundreds of times—exactly for this purpose. I cannot allow a situation in which I cannot tap on my magic to exist.
Magic is not a convenient power. It is not like I can shoot fireballs at will or bend reality at a whim. Magic is clumsy and complicated; to be honest, it feels more trouble than it’s worth at times. But, damn it, it’s magic, and I’m never letting go of it.
“Come,” I whisper, as I flick the metaphysical switch. A familiar, awful feeling, yet strangely welcome this one time.
“Stop that! Stop doing that, unholy child!”
Boiling water sears my skin. My mind conjures a humming sound, as if I were a machine that was just turned on.
This is the feeling of magic. And it is mine.
Status Change
It doesn’t take long for the warming to take hold of my body. Yes, I’ll just let the energy circulate; no need to do anything else for now. Now I’m ready to get moving. Let’s take a look at the building beyond this single room. I leave, even as my body complains upon leaving the relative warmth of the blankets.
My stomach growls again. I’ll have to solve that one issue some time soon. I hear no sound but the howling wind, and my nose can’t catch the slightest scent in this weather. Stuffing my hands beneath my armpits, I challenge the hallway past the door.
It is easy to understand why being indoors provides no protection from the harsh cold. Just by walking down the hallway, I can see broken windows and doors blown off their hinges. The wind effortlessly rushes in, gaining speed in the narrow spaces—it might be even worse to stay indoors unless I do something about all the broken windows.
Everything is frozen, but there is not another soul—either the rooms were not occupied in the first place, or the deadly chill caught them someplace else. Well, it was the middle of the day; it’d make sense for backpackers and other young tourists to be outdoors at the time.
The moment I step out of the dorm room hallway and into the common area, my sense of values takes a new blow.
An ice block—no, an ice prison.
Right in the middle of the dining room where I had chili con carne with Maria, a person is encased in a block of ice. A single hand is raised defensively—this person had no time to react or respond in any way before she was trapped. She was encased in mere moments.
I shudder. For once, it’s not the cold’s fault. If I look a distance away, I can catch a glimpse of another such block where the receptionist would normally stand. A third block envelops a young man on a nearby couch, his hands still holding a local newspaper. They all hold looks of alarm, which didn’t even have time to become terror. In an instant, they became prisoners; trapped insects, in ice instead of amber. My eyes instinctively avoid the prisoner’s own. I don’t want to see; I don’t want to empathize with these poor people. The fear would disable me, and I need to keep moving forward.
Focus on what you have to do, and on what you can do. That’s how it’s always been, Javier.
Perhaps recklessly, I slide my trembling fingers down the smooth ice surface. The normal feeling and texture of ice; I dunno why I expected anything else.
As if I needed further proof: this is not a normal situation. No natural phenomenon would result in something like this. Something—some magical power—created this situation.
“Something”, my mind conjures. I know: it is too terrifying to use the other, more obvious word.
I exhale, and the vapor quickly condenses into a wispy mist. Turning on the magic can only do so much, and it is not a permanent solution. It is still annoyingly cold.
Why didn’t I end up like these people?
It’s hard to believe a sleeping bag and some blankets would make much of a difference.
I need to find Maria.
Walking past the kitchen and into the laundry room (where I find a woman encased in ice while bending over to empty the laundry machine), I catch sight of the back door. For a change, this one is closed; I can’t help but notice this when all the dorm room doors were flung open when the windows shattered and the freezing cold rushed in. This is a large building, and I’m far from checking all of it, but whatever people I’ve found are all trapped in prisons of ice.
Should I bother checking out the rest of the hostel building, or try my luck in the surrounding area?
- Stay inside. It’s fucking cold out there, and there might still be something I’ve missed.
- Go outside. If Maria were here, we’d have already found each other. I need a broader view.
Regardless of the choice above, there’s at least something I should do before doing either.
- Check for food and water.
- Try to break the ice prisons.
- Write-in.
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Go outside, but check for food and water first.
Yeah, sorry Daneel I'm such a noob.
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Check for Food and Resources, then Go Outside.
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
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1. Go Outside.
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3. Break some wooden furnature and start a fire (prefereably somewhere safe), then find Maria. This ice storm, or whatever it is, is clearly some sort of highly lateral attack. Any food and water that could be found easily is going to have been ruined somehow. Granted, there's water all around us, but I also get the impression that if we tried to eat any of that, we'd die the same way as a bunch of people from a certain novel by Kurt Vonnegut.
Likes attention, shiny objects, and... a ball of yarn?
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I joined two years too late...
The human body can go a few weeks without food but water is another story, given this may be the nordic three year storm before ragnarok I don't think eating the ice is an option. so check for Food, Drink and Resources.
Afterwards we don't have anything else of worth here so Go Outside.
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Hmmm... Check for Food and Water, then Go Outside.
Hostel Casa Volante
Day ?
????? Phase – 03
Cold (-12 °C/10 °F)
I can afford a minute if only to check whether the food I bought is still there or not.Character Status
The refrigerator…huh. This will be tricky.
It takes some effort to force open the door through the layer of frost sealing it, and inside…well, well. Really.
It seems the refrigerator actually insulated the stuff inside from the worst of the chill. The food is still frozen, but normal frozen. It’s below zero degrees in here, after all.
Ah, well, there are lots of frozen shards of glass; as expected of young tourists, always keeping booze around .Needless to say, the refrigerator no longer works. I bet nothing works anymore.
Well, defrosting will be a hassle, but it’s doable. On the plus side, the storage life of perishables won’t be an issue in this weather.
As for the stuff in the cabinet—ah, the hinge. The cold did its job on the metal, and now the cabinet door lies by my feet. Of course, everything is sheathed in frost—sheesh, I can’t take those things with my bare fingers.
Some rudimentary hand wraps later, I can reach for—aaah, the energy bars feel like metal ingots. Can I just warm them back to chewable?
There’s also stuff besides my own; the supplies purchased by the other guests of this hostel. Everything is frozen solid, but most if not all this stuff should be recoverable if defrosted. Now that’s quite the if, though.Choice
The next question is water. I immediately look at the freestanding dispenser at the corner—nope. The big plastic bottle just couldn’t take the deep freeze. No luck there.
Hmm, is all this ice around me safe to drink if melted? Uuuh, I don’t feel like testing that, but I hafta do something—
Wait.
This ice was likely created by magic. Magic is the problem, then perhaps magic could be the solution?
Let’s say I melt some of this ice. If there’s some weird, dangerous magic in it, can’t I just, dunno filter it out? That sounds like alchemy. But it’s not like magic is a physical thing I can remove with a sieve or a distillation sequence. That means looking beyond the Terrestrial framework…in that case, would it be more feasible to perform the filtering post-ingestion? As a foundation, the Black Sun. Yes, that might work.
An interesting challenge worth thinking about. Hell, my life may be at stake if I don’t solve this problem.
Base Status***** *****
Urriola Street is frozen—an adjective I’ll be using more and more often, it seems. Like so many of Valparaiso’s streets, it is made of cobblestone and sloped along its entire length. Uphill or towards the coast…is not a choice I need to make this time.
The walls of the buildings…the paint, it has flaked off? Did the paint layers freeze before the chill got to the bricks, and cracked off? That’s insane. Power lines have snapped off their posts but lie inert on the frost-covered street. Everything, everything is encased in frost and ice.
Even the people.
A mother struggling to push a baby trolley uphill.
A man in overalls stretching the hand holding to key to open the door of his delivery van.
A backpacker stepping out of a nearby restaurant while unfolding a map.
A pitiful, emaciated indigent seated against a wall with hand outstretched holding a cup with a few meager coins.
Like the people in the hostel, they are all entombed in cocoon-like blocks of ice, trapped and encased almost instantaneously, looks of alarm the only reaction allowed them before becoming unmoving prisoners.
Magic…my magic is nothing compared to this. How can something like this even happen?
I shudder. Thinking about this will lead me nowhere. I don’t know anything yet. That’s why…
Right across the street from the hostel begins the Apollo Passage: a big name for a plain staircase, wide enough for exactly three people side by side. The pedestrian walkway to one of Valparaiso’s forty-something hills from the southeastern side.
Looks like I’ll walk up Cerro Alegre today after all—
The abrupt, yet slow-building sound halts my heartbeat for an instant.
The homeless man, he has broken out—no, rather, the ice around him broke on its own. Instinct pulls me two steps towards the man before I halt.
Stillness. Stiffness. A layer of frost. An impossible, unnatural pallor. Skin and bone.
That poor man cannot be anything but dead.
My heart is still beating painfully fast. That was…that was too much after getting used to no other sound but the wind and my own labored breathing. My heart is complaining, pumping as if I had just finished a 10K run. Now the warmth of the magic running throughout my body feels a little too much. At the same time, it’s a reminder: I can’t just keep the magic switch on forever.
I…am more nervous and skittish than I was aware of. Calm down, Javier Lucero. That’s energy wasted.
I close my eyes for a second, and the cold caresses my eyelids as if encouraging them to stay down forever. Come on, it’s not that cold. I’ve camped out in colder days in Norway. It’s definitely not cold enough to create this frozen landscape. I’m just underdressed.
A deep breath. Let my heart rate drop to an active, but not frantic pace. Good. Let’s try this again.
I open my eyes, and I catch the heartbreaking sight of the homeless man, already more of a living corpse before the freeze; his pitiable life finally snuffed out.
This…this may be happening everywhere in this city. All these frozen people will eventually…
My heart is constricted. This is too brutal. This is too unfair. These people didn’t deserve—
…stop it. Stop it already. I’m wasting my time.
I’m sorry. I’m not a religious man but, in respect to the very religious man that once saved me, I can at least offer a prayer for you.
On the eastern most edge of Cerro Alegre (Happy Hill) stands Barburizza Palace, also Valparaiso’s Museum of Fine Arts. It takes its name from its last private owner, one Pascual Barburizza of Yugoslavian ancestry, who not only remodeled the palace into its current form, but the surrounding promenade as well. It is in his honor that the easternmost edge of Happy Hill is known as the Yugoslavian Promenade.
Normally, the promenade would offer locals and tourists alike a privileged view of the nearby port and Sotomayor Square, and of the popular beaches all the way to the neighboring city of Viña del Mar. It is my favorite place to watch the city’s fantastic New Year’s fireworks show.
It is hard to remember the beauty of this city right now. Snow, ice and frost have covered everything, as far as the eye can see. The city is frozen, the sea is frozen, and the sky…the sky is a drab grey. The city’s colorful walls, the joy and the pride of the Valpos, have been washed away by the dire cold as if to humiliate them.
Valparaiso has truly become a frozen hell.
But this trip was not an entire waste of time and precious body heat. There are some things worth noting.Singularity Map (recommended to open in new tab)
First, both the general freezing and the people-encasing phenomena are generalized. There are people in ice blocks here in the promenade. The nearby square just down the hill is dotted with the things. It looks like every single person in Valparaiso was trapped in an ice tomb.
Which brings the question: why not me?
Again, there was nothing magical in the blankets that kept me somewhat warm in the hostel dormitory…well, nothing I could tell at a glance.
And then there is the glow. Well, there are two of them.
The first and stronger one comes from further uphill in the southwest direction, away from the sea. No, not just uphill; at the very top of the hills outlining Valparaiso. A blue-gold radiance that ascends like tongues of flame leaping out of a massive bonfire.
There is nothing even remotely natural about that light, and it screams important. But it’s a long and arduous walk there; one I’m not ready to challenge right now.
The second light is a veil-like aurora, stretching throughout the horizon, as if marking the boundary of this messed-up world of ice.
Ideas fills my head: places to check, things to try, people to find. But I have to keep myself in order. First, I have to ensure my own survival. Only then I can think of anything else. I need food and water. There are both at the hostel. There is no point in something like raiding a supermarket just yet; everything will be frozen everywhere. I have to make sure I can eat what I have before I worry about getting more.
Let’s go back “home”.
***** *****Even in any other circumstance, it would have been impossible not to notice. To a degree, I guess that is a fortunate thing.
It stands—no, it moves slowly, shambling rather than walking, stumbling his way up the Apollo Passage while I was on my way down.
At long last, I see another person. But…
Source: © AP (edited with Adobe Photoshop)
It’s a zombie.
It’s a fucking zombie.
I cannot perceive any smell; or rather, the cold renders my nose useless. It barely makes any sound, even if its open mouth reveals teeth already rotting in life. It is the mere bizarreness of its very existence that roots my feet to the ground.
Something incongruous. Something that defies my understanding of “what is normal”. Something whose mockery of humanity threatens my very own.
The true fear of the zombie, the thing so many Hollywood movies fail to grasp, is made explicit here, in this slippery stairway. That the zombie is utterly inhuman, yet one can relate to it. Of course something like this could make the sternest man shudder in fear…!
After all, this zombie…this zombie…!
Six or so meters away, I can finally hear a sound. Its jaw tightens, and its facial muscles stretch into a grin, even as its frozen cheeks literally crack apart. The strain seems to be too much for its jaw and it dislocates, its brutally open mouth becoming a loose maw.
It’s a zombie, an unliving creature, but there is malice in its eyes!
This thing…this zombie, is no longer that indigent whose ice tomb shattered. It’s a thing that preys on humanity!
Danger! Encounter!
Last edited by Daneel Rush; July 14th, 2018 at 08:36 PM.
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1C and pray for drops
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Looks like an important thing will be finding the right people to thaw, assuming we can. It'd suck to have to face a Zombie Lord of Astrology or something.
Also Yes, defrost the Clif Bar.
Try to defrost the bar
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1C
Fireballs always work
Last edited by 34; June 5th, 2018 at 03:38 AM.
[A wild Gjenganger appeared! What will you do?]
>1C
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And yes, Defrost the Energy Bar.
Last edited by SleepMode; June 4th, 2018 at 11:08 PM.
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
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1C
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1C - Fireballs always work
Warm up the bar, we gotta eat something after all.
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Defrost the bar.
1C.
1C) I mean, whatever works.
Defrost the bar) Eating is slightly important, and we don't want to keep going on an empty stomach.
Apollo Passage
Day ?
????? Phase – 04
Cold (-12 °C/10 °F)
“Fire is divinity.”Character Status
When facing an aggressive wild animal in its natural habitat, fighting back would be the worst possible advice. Compared to most such beasts, the human body is weak and breaks easily.
“Fire is the source, the foundation, and the container of all energies.”
But this…thing in front of me, is no beast. It is no predator. I am not the best judge of people, but its small eyes and twisted, broken tell me that it wants my death.
“Fire is sevenfold.”
This is not a movie zombie hungry for brains. It merely kills.
“Fire is life. Ergo, prana.”
I feel its warmth, gathered around my raised left hand. My magical energy, my life, has ignited and become flame. It is not yet manifested physically, but it already exists. Magic is weird like that.
But the zombie does not attack. It does not close the distance to lunge at me.
The zombie stopped its ascent at some point.
Did it mirror my action? Did it stop in response to my chant? Was it merely a coincidence?
It is not particularly looking at my hand, so this is not some absurd, magic-sensing undead. But taking into account all these weird circumstances, let’s assume the worst case scenario and act accordingly. No matter what, the fact remains that I shouldn’t let this monster get too close.
There is a weird sound in the distance. Or rather, a sound my brain doesn’t want to understand.
I slowly raise my right leg. When the knee is about the same level as my navel, I quickly drop it back down, planting the sole of the foot and pushing my weight onto it. It is like the throwing motion of a baseball pitcher, and the blaze manifests in my hand right before I release the fastball—
It dodged!
With the speed of a martial artist, it jerked its body to the side and dodged the fireball. Now it rushes upstairs—this zombie’s speed is in no way inferior to a living human’s—, but I had planned for this possibility.
My body is already leaning forward from the throw motion; I just have to bend my knees and jerk my body aside to throw myself down as it lunges. I can hear myself wince as its nails scratch my back, but now I can turn to face his back even as I roughly slide down the slippery stairs. It is a dangerous position as I am sliding down head first, but the point is that I can get him with another fireball before he turns around—
“Shit, shit, shit!” No time to gape in disbelief, this is seriously fucking bad!
It dodged! The fucking thing took a step to the side right before the fireball could’ve struck its back!
It’s like it has eyes on the back of its head.
I don’t think; I just roll all the while tumbling down the stairs. My right wrist complains when I use it to push myself back to my feet. My brain still ignores the distant sound; priorities, Javier. Have a sense of priorities.
Anyway, I can’t fire a third fireball right away, so I gotta put some distance—
My vision goes blurry for an instant. Dizziness assaults me and my stomach grumbles for the nth time. Shit, I really was running on fumes until I defrosted that power bar. Good thing I thought of turning on the Athanor when I did that.
But it’s obvious I can’t go crazy on the magic until I eat a proper meal. Two more fireballs, tops.Wise Up!
I am lucky to not slip on my rush down the stairs, and I make it back to Urriola Street on my feet. The hostel is right across—
Source: Gene Page/AMC | Inquirer Entertainment (Edited with Adobe Photoshop).
“Fuck!”
I don’t even know what I’m cursing at: the two new zombies walking up the street, or the growing sound that I sure as hell can no longer ignore.
“Who the fuck is firing a fucking machine gun!?”
Welcome to Hard Mode!
Last edited by Daneel Rush; June 8th, 2018 at 07:56 PM.
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