Comic 1137 - Check the last door
Posted on 2nd Dec 2018, 9:16 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
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Author Notes:
"It can happen, I believe," Pierce casually replies. "There are said to be more... sinister entities on the astral plane, with no compunctions about swallowing stray souls. It's one of the risks of astral projecting in unfamiliar territory. A few are powerful enough to be named--lesser gods, in their own way, or perhaps devils from a certain point of view... but I've not seen much in the way of details. Content for a different book, I suppose."
You thank Pierce, and return to the situation at hand.
If you leave now, you give whatever this is--be it a giant spider, a sinister spirit, or some kind of devil (as that's now on the table, apparently)--time to recover, and recharge its ability to blast everyone. You want to know more about what you're dealing with before you give it that kind of breathing room.
Using your wand, you flick some more blood on the floor and ceiling... and begin to portal blood up into the webs themselves, soaking it into them. It'll give you a better jumping off point--you think you can build some infrastructure to ground all this in the red, if not use it to just drain all the power entirely out of the building. You're also curious about the composition... and if you could possibly make webbing like this yourself. For now, you focus on spreading your blood sufficiently throughout it.
There's still one door left in the hall--and if you've read the building right, it should be near the convergence point. You have your bug wander back out into the hallway, and through that final door.
The Entity That Definitely Is Ghostly Psychic Mutant Electro SILKWORM Satan.
UH
OH BOY, THAT BE IT
(I will edit my comment later to be more constructive)
EDIT: here we go
be prepared to dodge, so if it sees our bug and is rearing back or doing any sort of thing we can still preserve our bug (though it's fine if it gets destroyed we can make another)
People in Discord say they want to try finding a way to talk to this first, and I agree. Let's move forward try to find any imprints that can speak properly for better communication and then we can talk with them.
I believe we'd want to go to a fully diplomatic result, I don't wanna have a shaky truce with this thing.
We either need to be so much friends with it that we can hug it without repercussions (well without intentional repercussions, that slime looks corrosive) or it dies. Friendship or death not that we'd force friendship on it, but if it's not willing enough to be peaceful, then that means it could turn bad at any moment after a truce. It's fairly powerful too, which is why I'm cautious.
For now, relay the bug's information to everyone you can, Finch and Pierce mostly since they might know something about this. Finch about mutant silkworms and Pierce about any sort of deity/sub-deity that looks like a silk worm.
Fuse too actually, he's from the lower tiers and he should have the experience to have seen different mutated animals, not sure if he'd know this, but doesn't hurt to ask.
EDIT 2: one backup plan would be to just straight blood the thing. A swarm of bloodbugs doesn't work against an electrical entity because the last time we did a similar thing to that against something that could use electricity (Bunker X floor 0 final monster) it just destroyed all the needles flying at it by arcing electricity.
So if needed, I think we're gonna have to create a big monstrosity that has a lot of electrical resistance and a lot of injectors. The injectors don't even have to be ranged, it could just be attached to the body, it'd be a monster that would hug the silkworm and just super blood it. Just because it can make use of corrosives doesn't necessarily mean the whole circulatory system is made of corrosives (like in Alien) it might still have regular blood
this is just a backup plan though
Plan B is for Blood. Should diplomacy fail, try coming up with a way to blood it. It won't be easy getting blood NEAR the thing, much less keeping the blood intact once it's within the creature. (Can forcibly-clotted blood even still do the control thing...?) But it's the next-best plan.
Plan C is for Corpse. If we can't befriend it or blood it, then we might need to kill it. Fortunately, we've practiced defending against its electricity and we've got some pretty good weapons for direct combat.
Plan D is for Destruction. If the whole situation becomes unsalvageable, we burn the whole place down and find a new solution for our Mars family.
We know it's sapient - maybe we can diplomacy our way out of this particular boss fight. Let's try to get a better idea of what this thing wants with us exactly.
If stuff goes REALLY sideways, we could blood it.
Or if we want to go with a less destructive method, we could get the blood bug to get into the momma mutant silk worm like thing (like, burrow into the skin, somehow, because it might be a hassle to get in through the mouth), and then just flood it with blood so that we can either make it cease to be by messing up its internal organs or by explosively adding new body-parts to it. After that, we can come in and use Caius's brand new bone hammer on the eggs.
SPRAY STARCH, IT'S THE ONLY WAY!!
We own the city. Therefore we technically own the worm (ish).
I propose this: perform the ask-for-info ritual and ask "What question could we ask you that would require us to trade you the worm for you to answer?" If there is no such question, the trade doesn't take place and we apparently don't own the worm. If the question DOES exist, we consider whether the price to know that question is worthwhile, and if it is, we trade for it and then ask that question and trade the worm. No more Silkworm Satan.
also on a side note I will be impressed if anyone figures out why I am calling it that
Also we're gonna need a bigger gun.
Also, wait wait wait-- what if the Zombie Goasts we saw weren't incomplete because they'd been *gnawed on,* but were incomplete because *they weren't finished developing yet.* Maybe the Zombie Goasts are the psychic projections of this entity's developing babies!
Granted, this could still be a Very Bad Thing, because it's entirely possible that Electro Mutant Psychic Ghost Vermiform Lilith would be willing to kill for her children-- she might be inclined toward violence against perceived threats, or might just seek to feed them, no matter the suffering of whatever she's feeding to them.
As for suggestions... let's try diplomacy. Very carefully, and being very well-prepared for things to go realbadwrong. Whatever we do, we must NOT give even the SLIGHTEST hint that we might mean harm to those eggs. Misunderstandings would be very, very bad!
then give them the bad news: its giant spider silkworm satan
I wonder why it hasn't formed a cocoon yet?...
...Can it? Does it need to?
Would make for quite the moth, certainly.
More, ah, importantly, how did this happen in the first place? How did a (presumably) lone experiment live this long? And, uh. Does it need all those eggs?... Would it let us purchase one or more nonviable eggs? Via electricity?
Something to consider if we get proper communication going.
(Note: Admittedly, I don't know what we would do with the eggs.
But they strike me as useful for crafting something, or at least giving us ideas on building better bugs.)
Also holy shit, that's a big-ass worm. Judging from the size of the holes it was leaving this bugger's being doing some growing. We definitely need to get some diplomacy going, because we don't want to abandon this place and we certainly don't want to pick a fight with something that big. I'm not much of a physician but if something is able to hold itself together while being that large it's probably crazy strong or durable.
Edit: I mean jesus christ the skin on that thing's got to have the tensile strength of at least steel (probably much more) unless some space-fuckery is going on.
By reading through the archives I just stumbled in the comments for this page
http://bloodismine.thecomicseries.com/comics/1062
over what Loki said:
"If we can levitate a needle full of our blood, or a ball of our own blood, then we should be able to levitate ourselves! Mine can fly!"
I'm no real expert regarding flying objects and electricity, but I think the fact that we would not touch the ground would be good.
Now let me point out there is a stairway leading upwards down in the room.
That means there must be a stairway leading sown somewhere else in the building, most likely directly behind the net that blocks the rest of the entry hallway.
We should find a way down there first before attempting to fight OR communicate with the worm.
Also lets not forget worms are crazy, they shoot with bazookas only to use the recoil to fly to another part of the map and lets not even begin to talk about what they do to the poor sheeps.
so
mental image this thing into Finch's and crew's minds after a little warning cause damn
Liek....
I was not expecting this at all. Maybe ask Pierce if there's some lessor god that looks like that? I'll admit to not knowing how silkworms act
That thing's ugly, but at least it's not a demon-goat-spider thing.
Otherwise, I'm for trying the ritual to find a way to trade it away or at least get some info on it or what it wants.
But We have access to the INFINITE. We are not a mortal playing in matters above us, we are an old god intervening in matters far beneath us. We do not act out of necessity. We act on desire. Our only restraints are of our own making. We can ignore death.
Remember that old phrase “stretch thin and drink deep of worlds?” We could literally pull this planet into the Red and there is nothing than anyone could do to stop us. Scary things are afraid of us, and they are RIGHT to be afraid. There is nothing we cannot do, so long as we have cause to do so.
If we choose to communicate with this creature, we do so out of convenience, not necessity or fear. It exists on our whim, and it’s in our house.
I'm guessing a lightening gun isn't going to work on that thing.
Should check ghost-gun on the way towards the ... umm... thing. "Philemon"
I now see cowboy hats, saddles and "YEEEEHAAAAWWWW"s in our near future. :D
OK, maybe go near it(with the bug) to see what it does, we can always make a new one. If it doesn't seem to react, that means 3 things: 1. It is dead, asleep, or somethings else, 2. It is blind and doesn't use heat stuffs, and 3. It only cares for humans. If it doesn't react, blood it. If it does react and eats and/or attacks the bug, make new ones.