Difference between revisions of "Chadius: TOA Summary 5/28/09"

Latest revision as of 21:00, 2 June 2009

• Tara adds Pretzel to the crew
  • Tara flies and lands nearby, Li carries crew in.
  • Security force asks if team has seen Pretzel, as he snuck into a security tape room. Team promises he will give correct paperwork.

• Next day
  • Tara puts on her piloting suit, brings a breakfast
  • Off to the Indian Ocean! Tara flies to the dropoff point.
  • Li hooks people up, drops out and flies flawlessly.
  • Li lands in Docking Bay #94. Ceelie convinces the guards to play pranks on each other.

• Lily reads the computer system--decent security but nothing too crazy
  • Goes to kitchen, hides in closet and searches records
  • The Lying Blade is supposedly still in the vault; also there's a Merm there
  • Hey, Tarxius is in a room here. Can't detect mental signals though.
  • Pretzel goes off to follow the Merm when she breaks in.
  • One group will sneak, other will stay here
  • Lily stays (not good at sneaking)

• Living Quarters floor
  • lots of residents thinking gross stuff and doing gross things
  • Golems, too
  • There is a green crystalline room at the end of the corridor. Tarxius is in there.

• Tarxius talks
  • Henry screwed his memories around, thinks Henry's last name is Tarxuis
  • He can't leave the room or he will "cease to exist"
  • Has a map with multiple paths. He thinks it's very important.
    • The map lacks references, and he doesn't know which path is correct.
  • Gives them an easy escape

Brain Dump: Ceelie

Okay, okay so there it was, time for the Island Adventure. And I had this plan, you see, since apparently I'm the Planmiester now. Tara had saved up a little to get some improvements for her airplane. As part of the upgrade, she got pontoons added, so she'd be able to do a water landing. However, she'd have to land pretty far away from the island in order to really be stealthy about this. But the cool thing is, Li can fly. And, Li is really strong. Strong enough to carry D and Lily. Uhm, and maybe Pretzel too, he sort of just glues on. So we get climbing harnesses and rig it up so we could tie in just in case Li drops anyone for any reason. And as we fly by the point along our route that is closest to the island, Tara will give the word, and Li will jump. Woosh! And we all fly nice and quiet over to the island, and aim for one of the docking bays. It'll be so awesome.

While I'm planning all this out, a bunch of security guys ran by, then came back again, then stuck their heads in and asked if we'd seen this random guy who was taking tapes out of a security tape room. They then proceed to describe Prezel. Oops. Tara apologized, and promised that he'd file all the right paperwork tomorrow. In triplicate.

I finished up the rest of the sneaky, sneaky plan and then waited around for the next day to arrive. Well, I'm sure I did spend probably a grand total of a half hour sitting around tapping one foot, but that gets boring really fast. So I started out by raiding the recycling for all those fun tubes left over from toilet paper and paper towels. (Hey kids, D recycles! Recycling is cool! Don't do drugs!) They are fun to play with and crawl through, but that gets boring too. Now, if you can get some masking tape, and a few of the flat pieces of cardboard too, you can make some awesome ramps and stuff! I made all kinds of cool hills and even unrolled one of the rolls to make a swirly curve. I set up an awesome combination obstacle course/running track all through the ballroom. I taped the stuff together and taped it down and then had an awesome run through the whole course! It was super awesome, after I hit the finish line I whipped around and went through it backwards! And then I was too tired to run more but I felt all nice and warm and happy. I ambled over into the living room and climbed up to the couch to curl up on my favorite pillow. Snuggling my pillow reminded me of Helen, but it was too late at night to talk to her. D was asleep, Tara was staying at TOA and she would be asleep too, anyway. It was very quiet, which is nice sometimes. In the end, that night, it made me miss E. He would've helped me build an even better race track. And he would've raced me, and probably won, but it still would've been more fun that it was alone. I tried again to reach out to the cave where I knew he was coming back, slowly, so slowly. It's so hard to tell whether he can hear me or not, but I keep believing in him. It is also nice sometimes to have quiet times sending warm happy thoughts to someone you miss very much.

When everyone else woke up and we all got going, we met up at TOA to prep and head out. Tara had her flight suit on and breakfast in her hands, and pretty much the rest of us had our climbing harnesses to strap on and go. The flight went pretty smoothly. It was a little scary jumping out of the plane. I mean, I can fly, and I still thought it was scary! I guess D has done skydiving stunts before, so he knows what it's like. But it must have been weird with Li instead of a parachute. Anyway, Li was awesome as always. I still can't figure out how he does it, but he is brilliant. He sliced through the air, with no disturbance from all the crazy stuff in the wake of the airplane, and swiftly headed straight around to the docking bays. I scanned ahead and found that docking bay #94 had the fewest guards, and one of them was in the bathroom.

I decided to plant some suggestions with the other two about how awesome it would be to prank Smith. I mean really, he's got it coming.

Lucky for me, Smith actually had pranked them recently, so he really did have it coming. And how. Those two headed off to prank him real good. Of course, we took advantage of the un-manned entrance and slipped right on in. We snuck up the hallway towards the kitchen and ducked into a supply closet.

Now, I know what you are thinking. But I swear the kitchen actually, truly, was the best and most inconspicuous area for us to hide in. Really.

Meanwhile, Lily was able to begin hacking into the computer system. They had some security, but nothing like what you'd expect. She looked up their inventory records, which indicated that the Lying Blade we fought back in Tarxius's hospital room was still in the vault! That's a little weird. Then we find out there's a Merm trying to break in to the vault. Oh no, another team! Now what? We asked Pretzel to sneak off and follow her, without getting caught. Then Lily finds out the Tarxius is here! On the island! Wow, I wasn't expecting that.

Since Pretzel had already gone after the Merm, we decided Lily would stay here and work on the computer system to see if she could get more info, while D, Li and I snuck upstairs to find Tarxius. I could see a crazy blank spot in the living area, right about where he ought to be, so we headed that way. As we got closer, I was scanning around for stuff and listened in on a few people who---EEEEW. Don't make me explain it, it was gross. GROSS. You won't think it's gross. But it is. I didn't want to know. But I heard it anyway. You don't want to know. It was almost refreshing when a golem went by. We avoided it, and ducked into the green crystalline room at the end. It looked a lot like Grapha's place at TOA. And sure enough, there was Tarxius.

He looked up and had one of those great big "HUH!?" moments. He explained to us a bit of how he sort of woke up here, and some of his memories are messed up now. Henry did some very bad things to him. For one, he seems to actually believe that Tarxius is Henry's last name. He knows it's preposterous and a wrong memory, but that's what he remembers. Then, there are whole chunks of his mind just completely missing. I looked -- there was stuff that was just gone completely. Kind of like when someone opens up all the Reeses' peanut butter cups and eats the middles out of them. Gone forever. Arvel himself took the job from good ol' Jerk McHenry, it seems, to get and keep Tarxius here. They say if Tarxius leaves, for any reason or in any way, he will "completely cease to exist." It seems ridiculous, but seeing where things were eaten out of his mind, I'm starting to believe it. It's terrifying if I think about it for too long, but that's the right way to describe what happened to his memories. It's not like there is a blank slate where they were erased, that could be written on again. It's like there's a hole like someone cut them out with a scalpel, except even the hole is hidden. Creepy and terrifying.

As you might guess, Tarxius isn't too happy with Henry McMonster right now. So he was ready to tell us anything and everything he could to help establish his nastiness. Including handing us a kooky map, with no reference or scale, just a lot of paths from point A to point B. And, he doesn't know which path is right. I think this is going to take a lot of studying. Maybe Tara and Lily and I can figure something out if we all think about it together. We will have to see when we get back to HQ whether we can make anything of it, and whether there are any other TOA resources that would help. And whether Lily can find anything on the internet without giving anything away...

Anyway, he thinks the map is very important. It could be something our favorite un-friend planted there, but on the other hand, it could be really critical. We have to assume it's important and find out what is going on here. Tarxius then helped us with an item that would let us sneak past the golems really easily, and pulled a distraction (roof deck party!)

We got back to the docking bay and took off again, with Li flying us back to the plane. I explained all the Tarxius stuff to Tara on the way back, since I couldn't talk to her from inside the room. She found it very interesting. I think we have a lot more work to do on this case. Every sub-mission we complete leads to more unanswered questions and more work to be done!