Field report, 10/08/1154
Mariana Gibbs, West Forest Ranger Station
*Summary*
Mission purpose: respond to distress signal from Callen Pond village
Mons encountered: Plaguelings (newly discovered); Plague Knight (unsure if this is a mon or what)
Puzzles encountered: 2
Mission status: success??
Suspicious items
recovered: glowing green gem; radio jamming device
*Background*
We received a
distress signal from the village of Callen Pond, a two hour ride
south of West Forest Station. Requests for help – typically to
gather materials from the woods or deal with minor monsters – are
common from this village; the villagers are very friendly and tend to
reward Rangers with pie. This message was fairly typical: there was a
nest of birds they wanted someone to take a look at. It sounded
simple, a routine mission. Ha! How wrong we were. Ok
fine, leave out the foreshadowing.
*Personnel*
Rangers Rafael Still and Darren Miller joined me. I brought a Tricorn and a Damn O' Klees, and loaded my medium with Fireball, Darkvision, and Heal spells; Ranger Still brought a Changeling and a Monitor with Heal and Revive spells; and Ranger Miller brought an AngerCycle and a Hero, with Fireball, Darkvision, and Heal spells. As per protocol, our mediums were fully charged with 10 Energy and we had six mon-healing tokens.
*Tall Tall Forest status report*
The Tall Tall Forest
is on the way to Callen Pond so we took the opportunity to observe it
from a distance with binoculars. Just like you told us to.
We spotted four Tall Men in the trees, one of which exceeded ten feet
by my estimation. None of them seemed to have an interest in crossing
the forest boundary, but one of them waved at us. Can you
please stop sending us to check on the Tall Tall Forest? It’s
creepy.
*Initial impression*
The village seemed house, so we peered in a window. There was something really weird on the living room wall, so we decided to investigate further. Ranger Still had his Monitor pick the lock on the door and send in a camera tentacle to scout. I would like to note breaking into the house is allowed under rule 74.3.D, since we suspected supernatural danger. I would also like to note that we were correct in our suspicion.
The house was a
mess, like someone had been searching for something. Monitor couldn't
find any of the occupants, but there was a fleshy blob stuck to the
living room wall. It was in the shape of an eight-rayed sun. That
symbol has been showing up for years, and we still haven't figured
out what it means. There’s a lot of interesting historical
theories behind its origin, such as the eight rays representing the
eight types of mons, or Anyway, that symbol was our first
hint that things were going to get pretty weird.
The bathtub was full of a blue liquid. Rafael decided not to have Monitor take a sample, since it might be dangerous to mons. There was also a metal tile on the counter, with a straight line bisecting it.
We decided that this
house was too creepy, and went to try the next one in case it made
more sense. It didn't. There weren't any flesh-blobs but there we did
find some beakers in the bathroom, with red and yellow liquids this
time. Monitor did some sort of visual analysis and determined they
were chemicals which could be used to make explosives. This was not
very reassuring, but at least we hadn't seen anything blown up so
far? So far, insert ominous foreshadowing
again.
There was also a journal in one of the upstairs rooms, sitting next to another metal tile, this one with a T connecting the midpoints of three sides. Monitor lacks the dexterity to turn pages, so Darren suggested we enter the house to investigate. At this point something was obviously had promised us pie.
Trying half-heartedly to maintain a sense of propriety, or honor, or whatever, we opened to the last few entries on the theory that they would be the most relevant to the distress signal and whatever had happened here. The clues it offered were pretty sparse. The writer, who served cherry pie last time we visited, was worried about her husband's illness, when a doctor conveniently showed up. It was a pretty unhelpful doctor, though, and mostly just poked people with a pointy stick while refusing to take off its birdlike mask.
We were about to leave the house when there was a noise in the kitchen at the back of the house. Charging down the stairs, Darren managed to catch sight of the thing before it left out the window. Rafe and I followed him out the back door but the thing was sprinting away across the field towards the woods. It was about three feet tall and wore a long, loose green cloak. Sticklike limbs occasionally emerged from the folds as it ran.
"I think it... had a beak?" Darren said uncertainly.
"A beak?" I repeated.
"Yeah, a big curved one."
"I think we just found one of the bird things!" Rafe said excitedly. "The nest they told us about."
"Or we found the doctor," I pointed out. The beak could have been part of a mask.
"Nah," said Darren. "No stick. And the doctor sounded a lot taller than this thing."
"Two of them in a big coat with one standing on the other's shoulders?" I joked.
Um. I just remembered this is an official report. Wow, this is a mess. I will fix it. Sorry. It's just been a really, really weird day, okay?
*Preliminary report on the Plaguelings*
Rangers Still and Miller and I went back around to the front of the house. We were going to investigate the remaining buildings in the village (one more house, and the church), keeping a lookout for more bird-things or the large masked doctor. If that didn't work, we would start searching for the nest in the woods the bird-thing had run into.
That is when we were ambushed. Two green vials landed on the ground in front of us and burst, releasing a green gas. The cloud missed me, but hit the other two and their mons. Up on the roof were two more bird-things. Their faces did indeed appear to be covered by beaked masks, and their hands and feet looked like bird claws. Since they appeared to be preparing more poison, we had no choice but to fight back.
The bird-things mainly throw jars of poison, and are vulnerable to ice and lightning attacks. Having seen their masks in person, they are remarkably similar to descriptions of a plague doctor's mask, from several hundred years ago. The masks were filled with herbs in a futile attempt at preventing infection during an epidemic. Given that the plague doctor is one of the few ideas surviving from that time period, this fits the theory that mons have something to do with persistent ideas. It also makes sense that the plague would translate into poison, as it's a more effective weapon against anything smaller than an entire town or group.
In any case I propose calling the bird-things Plaguelings, since they're sort of like small plague doctors. Unfortunately, we were not able to capture one for further study. We may have overreacted due to the threat of poison; and the ice was surprisingly effective, so we quickly killed them. They left no bodies, confirming that they were mons rather than a different type of wildlife.
One more theory. The historical plague doctor's other tool was a sharp stick they used to keep the infected from getting too close to them, which was actually effective at preventing transmission. This sounds a lot like the doctor mentioned in the journal.
My overall impression is that the Plaguelings warrant more study, and their unique poison capabilities could be very useful. Although it might be hazardous for their handlers. We observed today that handlers with mons out were protected from the effects of the Plaguelings’ poison vials while their mons took damage, but it’s unclear how that would work if it were the handler’s own mon throwing the poison. One would assume the Plaguelings are immune to their own poison. Any experiments with the Plaguelings should be conducted at a safe distance until we know the effects of the poison on humans.
*What we found in the church*
The church is still
under construction. Honestly I don't know how it keeps making
sure all the construction in the past five years has been done by
rangers from our station, in return for pie. Maybe someone should
look into that? Or maybe not, I'm pretty sure there would be a lot of
objections if it turns out we aren't allowed to take bribes in the
form of pie. Could we look into hiring this village as full time
catering instead?
It is kind of
unfortunate that I only have a pen to write with can only cross
things out. I know you’re going to complain about this report,
Sally, I mean Ranger Lynne since you insist
on being formal for some reason, but if you want us to do
nicely organized reports you’re going to have to give us pencils so
we can edit.
Anyway! We had used
a few Heal spells after encountering the Plaguelings, so we felt
fairly prepared when we headed to the church. At least we knew what
church, as usual. We found two more metal tiles on the altar, but
decided to leave them in case they were am offering to some
dark god (we'd never actually asked the villagers who the church was
for, maybe we should look into *that* instead of possible pie
bribes). There was also a lump under the carpet. Pulling it
aside, we found a metal ring attached to a trapdoor, presumably
leading to the basement.
I'm pretty sure the
church didn't have a basement last time I was here. Is there
any record of one of us helping construct a basement? Is everyone
keeping quiet because of worries about getting caught eating illicit
pie? I'm in favor of pie but seriously guys, this pie conspiracy has
gone too far if it leads to secret church basements that monsters can
use to stash kidnapped villagers. Cough,
foreshadowing.
The trapdoor was locked, but had four square holes in a grid. There were some glowing lights on the midpoints of the outer edges of some squares. Typical puzzle nonsense. We returned to the houses and retrieved the metal tiles, then took the other two tiles from the altar. The door opened once we had assembled them such that the lines on the tiles connected the glowing dots on the sides of the squares in one network. Attached is a sketch for the puzzle research department.
The room at the bottom of the stairs was empty. About ten feet away there was a roughly constructed wall with a note sticking out of it. Two parts red, one part yellow, three parts blue, it read. I recalled the liquids we’d found in the bathrooms of the two houses, and Monitor’s assessment of their purpose. Ah, the next puzzle involved making explosives. A little unusual for a puzzle, but still a straightforward means of defeating a wall.
The result from mixing the chemicals was a greyish stretchy substance. We smeared it across the middle of the wall and debated how to detonate it.
*Why we blew up the wall instead of radioing for backup*
We *did* try. We were going to radio and ask your opinion on whether it was a good idea to blow up the wall. But our radios weren't working! We even tried climbing the church tower to get better reception. All we got was static. It would have taken too long to go back and ask, since Callen Pond is pretty remote.
However, it did seem
a little irresponsible to go around blowing up walls without telling
anyone what we were doing. Especially when we might end up collapsing
the church, since who knows if shady pie-fueled construction
follows good engineering principles. Okay, I can't
entirely blame the possible collapse of the church on the engineers,
maybe the wall was load-bearing. Perhaps we should
ask architects to label which walls are load-bearing and which are
okay to blow up. But who’s going to listen to me?
Apparently not whoever built the secret basement!
Anyway! After writing a brief note explaining why we felt it necessary to blow up the possibly-nonexistent-until-today church basement (there had been a puzzle instructing us how to do it, which lent the plan credibility), which we tacked to the outside door, we used Hero's lightning spears to set off the explosive and destroy the wall. And the church was totally fine. It shook, but the shingles didn’t even fall off the roof.
*The other side of the church basement*
The wall crumbled away to reveal a door. This one was strangely unlocked, and revealed a hallway leading to a large stone room. There was a really big mon in there. It looked sort of similar to the Plaguelings, except it was a lot bigger – about eight feet tall – and was wearing armor. Also, it had a sword. It was enveloped by a yellow-green cloud of what turned out to be poison, possibly the same poison as the Plaguelings use. Preliminarily, I'm going to call it the Plague Knight, but further study is needed. This thing is really weird. I'm not sure how we're going to do that, though. Rafe's Changeling took its form for a bit, but then got killed so we lost it.
In addition to
leaking poison, the Plague Knight mostly hit our mons with its sword.
It also at one point threw a large wooden cross at us, which then
boomeranged back to it, hitting us all again along the way. Which
is strange, because crosses are absolutely the wrong shape to be
boomerangs. And why does it even
have a cross? Is it some sort of crusader? A cross
between a crusader and a plague doctor? Why would that even be a
thing? The Plague Knight is thematically dubious.
The Plague Knight is also vulnerable to ice and lightning, like the Plaguelings were. It definitely seems related to the Plaguelings.
Instead of vanishing upon death like it should have, the Plague Knight collapsed into a pile of armor. This was vaguely worrying, as mons do not leave remains. Yet it had pretty clearly been a mon. A few seconds later the armor began glowing. This was definitely worrying!
We were considering running away from the weird glowing armor when we noticed the tanks. There were large glass tanks set into the back wall, each containing one of the five villagers. Leaving them there with the glowing armor seemed like a bad idea, and it would take too long to move them, even using my Tricorn (which Darren had just revived) and Darren's AngerCycle as transportation. Instead, I used Tricorn to move the armor to the end of the hall, and shut the door. Then we dashed back to the room and stood out of the way of the hall.
This turned out to be the right decision, because a few seconds later there was a loud bang and pieces of the door came tumbling down the hall. There were scrabbling noises from the end of the hall where the door had been and then another Plagueling came storming into the room. This one was a lot stronger than the others had been, and could fly. (Maybe the others could fly, actually. We did see them on the roof.)
The Plagueling/former Plague Knight (?) flew/leaped across the room. As it passed over our heads we could see it lift up a glowing green something. Energy flew out and a bunch of person-sized beakers of purple liquid appeared around the room. The Plagueling then hit a few beakers, which burst to reveal more Plaguelings.
I’ve never heard of something doing that. There’s been research into duplication for years and it’s gone nowhere but this mon somehow had the power to create copies of itself. The copies were extremely weak – we could take them down by punching them once, and our mons had no trouble, either – but still pretty dangerous. The beakers were also full of mildly corrosive liquid, as we found out when Monitor got splashed (this was after several duplicates had killed the Plague Knight Changeling, so Rafe had switched mons). At one point one of the Plaguelings (maybe the original?) started glowing, and then exploded, freeing a lot of duplicates from the beakers. The Plaguelings we saw on the roof didn’t seem to be able to explode, so I don’t know how this one could. Maybe it’s similar to a Changeling and only looked like a Plagueling?
Anyway, we ended up with a lot of unconscious villagers and a glowing green gem which fell out of the robe of the last Plagueling we killed. The villagers didn’t remember anything about the past few days, and seemed confused as to why Darren and I were leading them from the church basement – the church didn’t *have* a basement. They offered us some pie, as usual.
Oh! There was also a device in one corner of the basement. When we turned it off, our radios suddenly came back to life, with you complaining at us for not answering. As we told you then, we didn’t answer because someone had been jamming the signal. I didn’t know those things existed anymore! We’ve packed it up to bring back to the Station so someone in research can take a look at it.
Meanwhile, Rafe was examining the gem. It floated a few inches off the ground, gently spinning. When he tried to pick it up, it floated a few inches above his hand. Frustrated, he tried hitting it with a crowbar we’d found at some point (I have no idea when we got this, or who thought it was a good idea to give it to Rafe). Destroying an obviously supernatural item seemed like an incredibly stupid idea to me, but it was too late to stop him. The gem shattered; the pieces sat on the floor (touching the floor!) for about thirty seconds; and then they all flew back together, smashing into each other with such force it launched the newly-whole gem three feet into the air. When it landed, it went back to hovering a few inches above the ground.
We captured the gem in a bag and took it with us. We will have to give it to the specialists to take a look at later. It’s way weirder than the radio jammer. For now we are eating pie. And apparently recharging our mediums. That’s pretty weird, they’re only supposed to do that at a proper Station.
*Update*
Rafe’s medium is now at full power, despite all the heal spells he’s used, and keeping two mons on standby. He also has a new spell in it, one he’s never seen. He doesn’t know what it does, but it costs five energy so it’s probably pretty powerful.
*Update*
Rafe got spooked and left me with the gem-bag. We’re keeping Darren away from it in case it’s dangerous – at least someone will be free of the gem’s influence. My medium is now fully charged as well. And there’s a new mon in it. Something that costs seven energy. What is it? I shouldn’t check without supervision from a research team, but I’m really really curious….