Comic 1117 - Begin conjuring the tradesmen
Posted on 10th Nov 2018, 9:06 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
Average Rating: 5 (3 votes) /
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Author Notes:
There's... a whole facility in there. You can see it through the windows, the interior of some kind of laboratory. Somehow. Despite the fact that you can have your pigeon casually hop around the back side of the door, and there's demonstrably nothing behind the door.
It reminds you of the bunker doors--though, the shorter handles and the presence of functioning windows leads you to suspect this is not, in fact, a bunker. It might use similar technology, or at least the same idea, but... something about it is different.
You begin to explain this to everyone while you prep the tradesmen ritual.
"Tha hell is Carpenter doin'?," Caius exclaims more than he really asks.
"He... he has been quiet for a while now," Dr. Finch replies anyway. He watches you solemnly for a moment before adjusting his glasses. "It would be difficult to guess what preparations he's made in light of his last defeat."
"Blondie," Michelle begins, a bit softly. "If we're gonna have to go fight Carpenter... I dunno, maybe y'shouldn't go full drain on the magic stuff. If there's questions we gotta ask... maybe one of us could do it."
"Hm," Dr. Finch starts. "Hm hm. A number of us have toyed with magic now, but I don't recall any of us meeting with the tradesmen outside of Mine--at least, not personally, as a part of this particular ritual. That... is an option, though I'm not sure how the nature of the spell would interact with her ability to keep up with us."
For now, you commence the spell yourself.
Your casting is a bit hurried, but you've done this enough times that the process is getting easier. Smoke fills the room... and you are greeted by the tradesmen.
"Hello again," their voices echo, smoothly transitioning from one figure to another mid-word.
Michelle does have a point--you don't want to totally waste yourself on anything less than the most pressing questions, at least not until you have a better grasp on what's going on.
You start to ask if Lydia's in any immediate dang--
"We would like to state that--purely from a professional standpoint--we were surprised by what you achieved in protecting your friends, Lydia and Grizwald. You accomplished things we would not have anticipated from you for months, if not years. Your rate of growth has made business... more interesting, to say the least. Many thought you could not win that particular battle, let alone as wholly, efficiently, and extensively as you did. This is not our approval nor congratulations, as we are a neutral party; we simply thought that you should be aware."
You're... guessing the emphasis on extensively, in regard to protecting Grizwald and Lydia, is a hint that they should be good for now.
You ask how long you have until Carpenter's plan can't be stopped.
"We cannot effectively price the answer to that question."
...You pause, trying to think of a way to rephrase it. What's... stopping them from answering it now...? As if they can sense your confusion, they continue.
"To clarify, the question has many answers. Arvin Carpenter has the ability to act upon his current plans at this very moment. He wishes for you to bear witness to them, in person. He wants you to attempt to stop him. In the event that you do make the attempt, the window of time to stop him shrinks substantially. If you do not attempt to stop him, you have until his patience wanes. Such as he is now, we cannot say with certainty how long that will take... and we do not sell uncertain answers."
You ask how you can permanently dispose of Carpenter without risking your friends or other innocents.
"We cannot effectively price a question that you already have the answer to."
You ask what's behind the door--what is actually at that address?
There's... a silence. Almost. Not quite. The candle flames flicker, briefly, and you feel whispering but you don't actually hear anything.
After what feels like an eternity, you get a response.
"We cannot answer that question."
...What? At all?
"We are not privy to what is beyond that door. We cannot see within it. We cannot tell you, at this time, what is occurring within. This is not information we have been able to obtain, and thus, it is not information we can offer."
If it doesn't work, then he already knows we can do it and is prepared for it. In that case, we would learn how much he knows about us.
If it Works... In be best case, Carpenter we'll drown XD.
If it Works at the beginning but we fail to execute it and Carpenter stops us... Well, we ruined it XD.
Considering that this man is not an idiot, he’s probably taking a small bit of his time trying to figure out how we made the flesh walls, messed up the beast thingy under the building, and so forth, as they were majors points that aided us is kicking his ass the last time. I have full faith in us having all of the necessities for this plan, but we should probably scout out the building beforehand.
Also, if we were just to take the building into a massive blood portal, we would have to take into consideration how much blood is required, how long it would take to pump it out, how to hide it from plain sight, and if there are any innocents that may be involved in this.
EDIT: Wait, were we talking about Patton Thale’s place or the bunker we found? I thought we were doing the former, though I guess this SORTA fits with the latter.
I suppose there isn't much we need to ask; maybe something to the effect of "what sorts of forces make it hard for you to gather information?"
Could be very general, but we might get some idea of what we are up against without forcing them to sell an uncertain answer.
Even if that force ends up not being the right one, we gain something we can probably use. Or that we'd at least be happier knowing, rather than not.
If Carpenter is able to stop gods from seeing what he is doing, he is REALLY deep in this shit. In the worst case, he is working with another god.
We Might discover the potential dangers we'll face fighting him XD.
and also how to make our own rituals. I mean someone made the safe bone armor ritual, I assume we could probably make our own ritual if we knew how and we dedicated the resources to do that
After that we rest and continue biomeching
1) Increased price.
2) Diminished value of answer.
If we're going to ask about how to make rituals, we should present a general field of activity we want to affect. Something we want to start getting into magically speaking. Like making ourselves more ready for combat, keeping tabs on the city, etc. This would not be SO specific that we're basically asking about one ritual, but we would be narrowing it down a lot.
Aw, what if Carpenter is working with Nil somehow?
Perhaps he is hiding his building in nothingness? That would explain why the tradesmen can't access it. Hmm hm.
...is that Nil is literally the concept of nothingness. We cannot fight nothing. We can only condemn more lives, more structures, more laws and factions and bonds, to his domain. While it is hypothetically possible to eradicate all of creation (affecting a heat death of the universe, for example), there is no conceptual way to banish the concept of Nothing from the universe.
A remote controlled meat-mech, or an army of them, could fight Carpenter without us being in Danger XD.
..though without knowing who else is inside, that may be a Bad Idea.
Oh. Weirder idea.
Ask the Tradesman if there's any way to make peace with Arvin.
Here's my thinking: if it is impossible, then we will get that information anyway. But if we ask what it costs, then they cannot sell us an answer if no price would be enough. If we ask for the price, here's the benefits:
1) Your question is worded as "Is there a way?" They could answer with Yes. That would be bad, and a waste of whatever they charge for the answer. If they play nice, then we will know the way to make peace, but not the cost in money, materials, people, time, personal sacrifice, etc.
2) Asking what it costs will tell us if we're even willing to pay up. If it would be too costly to make peace with him, we might prefer to just take him out. What if they tell us we'd lose Michelle? What would Michelle think if we gave her that information?
3) The obvious benefit is that, even if they don't tell us how to make peace with him, we will be able to get our hands on whatever resources we need. And if it is something we already have, we can go into negotiations with the full awareness of what we can expect to lose.
I don't think peace is in the menu, aside from the 'banish him in another dimension' flavour.
We DO have a pocket dimension we could use.
Damn, I never thought of making him into an ally XD.
This is not someone we want to have walking free, and it's not someone we wanna be buddy buddy with.
One, yes.
Two, HUG EVERYTHING.
I think Mine can skip over that part of the skillset without looking back.
2.How are we doing on the biomech front?
-asking about the effects of adding a note to the upgrading ritual
-the cost of identifying the unknown stuff from the bunker we have in our possession
-threats in the Ilworth power plant
-Bunker X's original purpose
-the number of entities asking questions about us or for/against us in the betting pool
-would they like some pancakes in trade for anything?
We should ask the tradesmen if there are any others we could/should add to the group as Allies.
Before the church it felt like our combat potential is a bit low, with more than half our Allies being non combatants, jury somewhere else and the three ghost girls being kids. Maybe mercs from the Deck, maybe other lab meat guys from shirai, maybe carpenter had an old enemy other than Nil who he worked with before but then stopped sleeping so he doesn't anymore