Session Fourteen: Size Differentials

From the logs of Igneous

This is a series of bag-explorations, for which thorough notes were not kept.

Scene 1: Bigger

We investigated the bag with gold, which was in some sort of dark, warm, moving organic structure. Seeing danger, Doktor Meetslab insisted on doing first reconnaissance solo. This proved possibly mistaken, as he suddenly found himself coughed out. Worse, the cough inverted the bag, cutting him off from aid. Worst, the creature that coughed him out was a dragon, roughly 128 times his size.

After a long time of getting batted around like a cat toy, Doktor summoned up all his diplomacy and convinced the dragon that he was more useful alive. If she would simply agree to swallow him whole, he would return with treasure. She agreed, but first placed a variant geas on him to in fact deliver the treasure. The spell lasted longer than a normal geas, but could not force him to take self-destructive actions, and made no attempt to protect itself from rules-lawyering.

As an afterthought, Doktor asked the dragon's name. She answered only that she was The Dragon Queen.

Scene 2: Smaller

We found a bag full of civilized, medieval-tech, sentient mice. They had cultivated a flower that grew wraithbone (Igneous made a note to both jumblemorph it into himself and conventionally transfect it into some kudzu for faster growth).

They were very impressed with jarred peanut butter. Trade will be easy.

They also knew a Sword School optimized for fighting larger creatures. There wasn't time for any of us to learn it, but their greatest warrior, named Tim, agreed to come with us to fight the dragon in return for our support to his community (this will likely involve aerosalizing irrigation systems).

Scene 3: Exactly the Size It Means to Be

We found a bag in mechanus. Not willing to risk giving modrons access to Lost and Found, we recovered it with a Gate. We also took a small sample of mechanus assimilating oil, kept in a low-tech glass jar surrounded by a kilometer of hard vacuum.

Scene 4: Mind-Bogglingly Large

We found a bag in a Great Library. The collection of knowledge was so vast that it warped the internal geometry of the sphere. It also gently pushed the minds of all present to contemplate the big questions, which in turn drove them to drink. We weren't there long enough to be affected.

Despite the natural hazards, the inhabitants of the library were quite friendly. So long as we didn't make trouble or misshelve books, we were welcome to return and research any time.

Scene 5: The Harder They Fall

The first treasure we returned to the Dragon Queen was a short-fused ship-scale microtorpedo coated in gold paint. It mysteriously failed to explode.

(Later we discovered that the entire sphere had techbane properties. Fortunately (?) microtorpedos are fission-based and fail safe, rather than antimatter-based which fail dangerous.)

Somehow, we'd known this wasn't going to work. Things this easy never do. So we fought.

She'd known we were going to try something, and sent a golem duplicate to receive the treasure, while she lurked invisibly on the roof. But Balthazar only needed a mouthfull of the golem's fluids to declare "It's a fake!", and Igneous's native sonar spotted the real dragon.

From there, it was just a matter of dealing fatigue until she dropped. And then slashing until she didn't get up.