Post
Post #0 (isolation #0) » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:10 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
Mislead 2: A Maze of our Own Devising
Moderator:
callforjudgement
Backup Moderator:
Sméagol
Playtested by:
podoboq
Based on an idea by:
FakeGod
Note: For events in the game before it had to be restarted, see this thread. Alignments have been rerandomized, so information from the old thread will not be useful in the new one, except possibly for meta purposes.
Player list
Gamma Emerald
replaced
Not_Mafia (
who was prodded five times
)
Realeo
Imperium (Nachomamma8 + Tammy)
Infinity 324 (
prodded twice
)
Peptobislawl (
prodded twice
)
NJAC
Creature (
prodded twice
)
Vedith (
prodded once
)
Titus
replaced
Blade Dancer (
prodded once
)
Alive
players can post and vote, and must attempt the day's section every evening. If a
Maze Engineer
is alive at the end of the game, their faction wins.
Spoiler: Alive players
Everyone died :-(
Trapped
players can post, but cannot vote, cannot attempt sections, and do not directly contribute to their faction's win condition. They die after their section is attempted.
Post
Post #1 (isolation #1) » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:14 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
This game uses relatively normal rules for activity and fair play; there shouldn't be anything there that you're unaware of. See Callforjudgement's Standard Rules if you want details, or if you aren't already very familiar with typical rulesets. However, this game does not use a normal day/night cycle, and
there are no normal lynches or nightkills
; thus much of section B of those rules does not apply.
For things that vary from game to game, here's the guide:
Factions
: 7
Maze Engineers
(town-equivalent) and 2
Maze Guardians
(mafia-equivalent)
Phase sequence
:
Nonstandard
, see below
Deadlines
: 240 hours for morning phases; 96 hours for evening phases
In this game, you are trapped in a maze, formed of nine
segments
; one created by each player. Each segment contains two paths, one safe, one dangerous. The game ends once all nine segments have been attempted (or as soon as the result becomes inevitable, i.e. one faction has a guaranteed strategy to win).
The
Maze Guardians
are trying to protect the maze they created, hoping for the death of everyone who enters it. They win if all nine players die.
The
Maze Engineers
don't care about the maze as much, and are hoping for survival. They win if anyone survives.
Gameplay will alternate between
morning
and
evening
phases (which both follow similar rules to day phases). In the morning, players collectively vote whose segment they wish to attempt. This vote will use standard plurality voting rules with a hammer (i.e. if more than half the players are voting for the same segment, the morning will end immediately; otherwise the segment at the top of the vote count will be selected at the end of the morning phase). In the evening, each player individually chooses a strategy for attempting the segment, posting their choice in
bold
in the game thread. The evening phase ends once everyone has chosen a strategy; if a player has not chosen a strategy by deadline, they will
Follow
by default. Here are the possible strategies:
Dangerous paths are deadly, but not always immediately deadly; making the wrong choice in the evening causes you to become
trapped
. In this state, you can still post in-thread in an attempt to give advice (or misleading advice!) to your fellow players, and can still use your factional communication if you are a
Maze Guardian
, but cannot take part in the game in other ways: you cannot vote on a segment, and cannot make evening choices. Additionally, if you become trapped after your segment was attempted, or an attempt on your segment is completed while you are trapped, you will die (within the game; I don't kill players in real life) and not be able to take further part in the game. As all nine segments must be completed as part of the game, trapped players are therefore doomed and guaranteed to die at some point. It's a pretty deadly maze. Additionally, because
Maze Guardians
necessarily follow themselves into danger, they will necessarily be trapped at the latest when their segment is attempted (they may also choose to trap themselves earlier in order to mislead the town into thinking they are innocent). This guarantees that each
Maze Guardian
will die at some point during the game. The question is, can they take all the
Post
Post #2 (isolation #2) » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:16 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
Note: this game's flavour is intended for entertainment purposes and does not contain any hints about the game itself. Whenever a flavour element is potentially relevant to gameplay, such as the safe path in a section, it will be randomized.
The maze had been finished, and its opening ceremony was winding up. The maze's owner, a somewhat eccentric and stooped old man, walked slowly along the exit path that linked the centre to the outside world. Behind him, the maze's designers and engineers, the nine of them that were left, walked equally slowly in formation.
They were walking slowly for a reason. The maze was a marvel of engineering, designed to resist all the usual solution techniques. So far, nobody had entered the finished maze, but its future victims would find that as they ran through corridors tracing out paths, the maze would shift beneath their feet, changing according to only a complex pattern that only its designers knew. There were traps and triggers everywhere, and even the exit path, in its apparently smooth and gold-plated splendour, could trap the unwary at the final hurdle. Every now and then, someone would step out of line for a moment just before a burst of flame shot up from the floor, or a swinging axe blade came down from the ceiling. And those, of course, were only the most obvious traps.
As they neared the exit, they stopped. Partly to have one last look at the maze in its completed state, before it was reset. Partly because they all knew this was the most dangerous section. The world outside was in view, but there was one last trap that they had to avoid.
The owner addressed them, giving a last, short speech. This maze was not just a marvel, he said. It was also made for a purpose, something
important
. It was vital. And most importantly, nobody else could know the route through!
And with those words, he started again, aiming for the exit with surprising speed. Perhaps he couldn't run as fast as the maze's builders, but it was fast enough, especially when the only people in a position to stop him were stunned with surprise. Everyone knew what would happen, but they had no chance to react in time; and as the owner disappeared past the threshold of the maze, the exit path rapidly rotated sideways and broke apart, with the pieces scattering to the corners of the maze.
Post
Post #3 (isolation #3) » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:17 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
With 8 of 9 players confirmed, the game has started! (The ninth player has since also confirmed.)
They might have been scattered, but they'd spent years in the maze already. Even though the maze's builders were unfamiliar with each others' sections, they knew the common passages linking them together all too well, having spent so much time going back and forth while gathering materials or helping to connect up the mechanisms underneath the maze. So it would not be too hard to at least form a group to discuss their next move. They needed to find a common location to get to, but a hub near the centre where every path met was an obvious choice.
Still, the question of where to go from there was a tricky one. They'd made sure that no one person knew the entire solution via building their sections independently, so they'd need to work together. But there'd been plenty of mysteries in the maze even while it was being built. One engineer had tried to guard their section with live tigers; when they were eaten by a tiger, nobody was much surprised, and the section was subsequently walled off and removed from the solution of the maze. But several deaths were less easily explained. An engineer had been stabbed to death by a paperclip, and it's not likely that the paperclip did it itself. Another had apparently drowned in an inch of water. And given that the engineers who died were the ones who worked on the mechanism, and knew most about how the maze was solved, it seemed likely in retrospect that the task of eliminating those who knew too much had started early.
So once everyone met up, there was a lot of tension, and uncertainty about where to go first. They would have to rely on each other to plot a path through. But who could they trust?
Last edited by callforjudgement on Thu Oct 20, 2016 2:36 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post #300 (isolation #12) » Tue Oct 18, 2016 3:50 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
Titus replaces Blade Dancer.
(As a side note, it would have been nice if you posted the replacement request from the Blade Dancer account so that I didn't have to trawl through a bunch of Blade Dancer games to confirm that you were the same account.)
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Post #351 (isolation #14) » Thu Oct 20, 2016 2:33 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Waiting around in the maze forever wasn't going to do any good. It was time to start setting the routes back into order, to try to cajole the maze into providing a means of escape.
After some deliberation, the builders marched off towards the section that Imperium had built. Some of the builders had had great architectural plans, aiming to be visually striking or to provide a twist on the normal structure, but not Imperium; Imperium was a traditionalist, and for them, a maze was made of ten-foot-high hedges and narrow paths made of soil. Of course, the thin twigs and living wood that make up a wall are not exactly the most secure thing in the word, so hidden inside the leafy veneer of the walls' surface was a much stronger core, made of carefully woven barbed wire.
But for what this part of the maze lacked in originality, it certainly impressed in scope. Imperium was not really someone who liked to rely on booby traps and surprises; the maze protected itself not with pressure plates or hidden wires, but with the sheer amount of running it would take to brute-force it. As such, they didn't even really remember the path in detail, but it didn't matter; knowing where the important turns were allowed the larger blind alleys to be skipped, and the smaller dead ends could be bypassed via good old-fashioned scouting, and the time-honoured technique of always turning left.
However, one issue with the standard maze-solving techniques is that they assume the exit is on the outside. If you can run a complete loop around an area, the most trivial techniques will end up never visiting it. And for the builders with better navigation skills, or for the lucky few that had seen this part of the maze from above, it was clear that there was an area that the natural route was avoiding. Even for the others, it was hard to miss; there were thicker branches, differently-coloured leaves, and the occasional disturbed twig that made it clear that this was meant to be noticed.
There was a decision to make. Was this area worth investigating? Or was it a decoy or a deadly trap? Imperium cautioned the others away from it. "Seriously, don't go that way. It was built as a trap for the curious, but this is not the time for curiosity." Then Imperium walked past it, following the natural route perhaps deeper into the maze – or perhaps out to an exit and freedom. But could the others trust them?
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Post #403 (isolation #18) » Sun Oct 23, 2016 3:32 am
Postby callforjudgement »
I've decided that there's not much reason to apply activity requirements during evening for players who've already picked a strategy. As such, not prodding yet. However, players who idle for more than 72 hours during the evening phase will have to post in the first 24 hours of the following morning (thus if you've idled for a while, you should post in-thread now if you can't guarantee getting to the thread tomorrow).
Also, a request: please post bold-actions on a line by themselves. If you don't, I might or might not catch them (they can blend into other text sometimes).
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Post #407 (isolation #19) » Sun Oct 23, 2016 9:18 am
Postby callforjudgement »
The maze's owner had tricked the builders once, leaving them trapped here to fend for themselves. And given what had happened during the construction, it was fairly certain that the maze was not the only adversary they were facing; spiked flails and hidden pits might be one way to kill someone, but in a place like this, words could be another. Some people say that knowledge is power; but you don't need power to survive. Here, knowledge was life.
Vedith and Peptobislawl looked at the entrance to the area that Imperium had warned them away from. It was hard to make out; instead of the neatly tended hedges outside, the hedges inside were overgrown and starting to become actual trees, with their leaves blocking out much of the light. But they could, at least, make out that instead of the interminable flat corridors that Imperium had built inside, the inside was full of little hills, and slopes, becoming quite three-dimensional at times. Could there be an exit here? Well, if the exit were a tunnel, it would be easy to hide. And nothing but Imperium's word let them know that the wider maze had a conventional solution.
In the end, though, they decided there was too much risk. The forest of hedges could well be a trap. There were traps everywhere in the maze at large, so it was not hard to believe what Imperium told them. But then, the familiar maze of hedges outside could be a problem too. Imperium's group was already receding into the distance, and trusting them blindly seemed foolish. With traps everywhere, it would not be hard for Imperium to lead the party into another. Besides, they'd have to run to catch up, and even if they hadn't known through their time building the maze that running was a bad idea, they'd learned that in practice from their experiences earlier.
There was another way. The completion of the maze had been rushed; the opening ceremony had probably been held a little early, and there were still plenty of loose ends to tie up; things like litter left behind, and the occasional set of tools that needed to be put away or returned to the rental store. They'd been planning to clear them up later, but there was neither much opportunity, nor much point, in doing that now. Still, though, they'd left people the opportunity to be prepared. Vedith had scavenged a flamethrower that nobody had quite had the time to install. Peptobislawl had snagged a blowtorch that someone had left behind, either out of forgetfulness, or possibly as a consequence of being murdered. They might not know their way through this section of the maze, but they knew which direction they'd have to go in; and even if they didn't know which path to take, they could carve a path of their own.
A fire in a hedge maze can be quite a beautiful thing. Imperium, and the party following them, looked back as they neared the edge of the maze. It was clear that something was happening, and at least Imperium was fairly surprised by it; this was not something that was designed to happen. But as they came in sight of the exit, Vedith and Peptobislawl, covered in soot, stumbled through a carefully cut out gap in the burning hedge beside them. Everyone scrambled to get out of the smoke, and into a small building that they all knew well; it was one of the break buildings, originally used for shelter during construction, and repurposed to hold puzzles used to shift the paths of the maze. It might have been dangerous for the less experienced, but they all knew what to do by heart; and for tonight at least, they could use it for its former purpose, as a safe place to sleep.
Nobody died, and nobody was trapped. (Imperium must have been a
Maze Engineer
.)
Last edited by callforjudgement on Sun Oct 23, 2016 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #620 (isolation #28) » Tue Nov 01, 2016 9:40 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Re: the question about prods, I reset the prod timers due to the site downtime, but a couple of players are due to be prodded within the next 24 hours if they don't post first.
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Post #645 (isolation #29) » Wed Nov 02, 2016 4:59 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Come morning, and everyone was still alive. Many of the beds had been removed from the building in order to make room for levers to control the maze, maps which varied from accurate to misleading to outright fabrications, and the occasional surprise. However, many were still left over – easily enough for the remaining builders – and that end of the room, at least, was safe. The flamethrower and blowtorch had been discarded outside, partly because nobody much wanted to be trapped in a burning building, but mostly because they were out of fuel. Luckily, the windows were still intact and the door was well-sealed, meaning that there was not much need to worry about the copious amounts of smoke outside. So the night was uneventful, if somewhat uncomfortable; most of the builders had never had to sleep at this end of the maze, and those who did had a dubious taste in mattresses.
The next step on the route was not far from here. Overlooking the smouldering remains of the hedge maze, a smoking tangle that had by now been reduced to coils of barbed wire, a mansion stood on top of a hill. Peptobislawl had mostly built houses before being hired to work on the maze; that was what he was good at, so he built one inside the maze too. There
hadn't
been a direct route there, but after manipulating a few levers, turning a few dials, wincing at the occasional unavoidable electric shock that triggered in the process, they'd made the maze everywhere just a little bit straighter, and they had a route onwards with no more danger than the occasional bear trap.
There was only one path up to the mansion, and, apparently, zero paths out. Clearly there was a secret passage somewhere, but simply by looking at the building, it was hard to tell where. Everyone nervously stepped inside to look around; there was a tiled floor, with Peptobislawl giving a briefing on which tiles were safe to step on; a number of doors on the ground floor, most of which were barred shut; and a conspicuously missing space in the middle where you'd expect a flight of stairs to belong. The typical structure of a building is to connect every room to a central hallway, but that makes for a terrible maze; it's much more mazelike if you need to take a convoluted way from one room to another, so many of the ordinary doors were inaccessible, and Peptobislawl had spent a long time building secret passageways, false walls, voids in the ceiling, and the like.
Following Peptobislawl's lead, the procession of builders walked through the long dining room, finding and following passageways hidden under the table. Someone instinctively brushed away a cobweb without thinking, and then realised immediately afterwards that they probably shouldn't have done that, but it turned out not to be a trap after all, merely having been the work of a harmless and now somewhat disgruntled spider that had moved in. They came to the lounge, and carefully scrambled across the furniture to avoid touching the floor. Then as Peptobislawl lead them to the end of a second, hidden
back
hallway, it was hard not to notice a fork in the path; to the left, a door which was "boarded up" but for which the nails were clearly loose and could likely easily be pried out; to the right, what looked like a closet had its door ajar, with a narrow set of spiral stairs hiding inside and giving a route up to the upper floor.
Peptobislawl wrenched the boards from the door and opened it, revealing a stone ramp leading down into the depths of the hill. Was this the secret passage to move onwards in the maze? Or was it just yet another trap? He stayed silent, holding on to a wooden handrail that had been installed in order to deal with the steepness of the slope, and started to make his way down.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #660 (isolation #31) » Fri Nov 04, 2016 4:31 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
An announcement: it's possible that there will be more site downtime this weekend (mith has suggested that it might be required for a server migration). If it happens, you'll be able to visit http://pnewman.net/shelter/ for updates on the downtime (or just random discussions with Mafiascum users). If the site does go down, I'll extend the deadline by at least 24 hours (more if the site is down for a nontrivial length of time). If the site stays up, the deadline will be as stated in the vote counts. If a player has not chosen a strategy by deadline, they will Follow by default.
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Post #677 (isolation #33) » Sun Nov 06, 2016 6:04 am
Postby callforjudgement »
It was a cautious party of builders who made their way down the passageway. Peptobislawl, ahead, was concentrating intently on staying upright; the floor was very steep, and bare worked stone has merely average amounts of friction, so holding onto a handrail with one hand and aiming a torch he'd taken from a cubbyhole with the other was taking up most of his concentration. Another six followed behind, finding the situation equally intense.
Titus and Infinity 324 watched them leave. They had something of a bad feeling about this; clearly there was a secret exit somewhere, but would a secret exit be so obvious? Exploring the upstairs was tempting, but would be very time-consuming in a place like this, where almost anything could trigger a trap of some sort; risky, too, because perhaps not every trap would be detected before it were triggered.
In the end, they thought about Peptobislawl's background as a builder. Engineering of all types – civil, mechanical, electronic – is based on rules you follow to ensure that the result is stable, reliable, and safe. If someone builds a lot of houses, they get good at building houses; they're not going to forget something like a damp-proof course to keep the floor safe from groundwater, or a reinforced lintel to prevent a door becoming a weak spot in a load-bearing wall. And, most relevantly in this case, they're not going to forget about making sure there's an escape path in the case of a fire. No doubt if Peptobislawl had thought consciously about it, he'd have realised that a maze is a better maze if it traps people inside; but once something is a habit, it tends to stay a habit.
Their eyes fell on a dusty, insignficant window at the end of the hallway. Even if they weren't going to survive going up or down, they could at least go
out
. Unsurprisingly, the window didn't open; more disappointingly, there was nothing around to force it open with. So it became a case of repeatedly barging into the window with the full force of their bodies, until it first cracked, and then shattered.
Down below, the passageway had levelled out. Everything seemed to be going according to plan; they'd expected a passageway leading out of this place, and this seemed to fit the bill quite well. But as the atmosphere within the party was becoming more relaxed, things suddenly got tense again. The light of the torch faded, then switched off; either it had had faulty batteries, or Peptobislawl had switched it off intentionally. Then Peptobislawl ran back along the corridor, pushing past everyone to get back the way he came. He was shouting something; they couldn't quite tell what he was saying, but there was urgency in his voice. Then a horrible grinding noise filled the area, drowning out even the shouts.
A small flame pierced the darkness. Someone must have had a cigarette lighter on them. It was a good thing too; the small amount of light may well have saved their lives, as they saw a boulder rolling towards them in the distance; not from in front, but from behind. Peptobislawl must have been trying to distract them from outrunning it, making them set off in the wrong direction. Some of the builders reacted faster than others, but soon, all of them were running for their lives. Peptobislawl seemed to welcome the collision of the boulder, lying down in front of it so as not to slow its progress. Imperium, who had been slow to decide and thus was at the back of the queue, had the next-smallest start, tripped, and everything for them went black. The rest of them were confronted with a dead end; luckily, though, a spherical boulder does not fit well into the right angles of a typical corridor, and by dodging to the side, and crouching in the corners, the rest of them managed to get away with no worse than crushed chests or mangled legs.
Of course, there was nowhere to go from here. Medical attention was needed just from their injuries, and with the boulder blocking the corridor, they'd likely need treatment for carbon dioxide poisoning before long too. The best they could do was to hope that someone would get out alive and be able to send an ambulance (and likely, some fairly expensive excavation equipment) to extract them from this mess. Perhaps they could help somehow?
Banging on the walls didn't really get them anywhere, but technology has come on a long way in modern times. Mobile phones wouldn't work through metres of rock, but many of them had also scavenged some of the short-range radios that they'd used to coordinate while building the maze in the first place. The batteries wouldn't last that long, but they'd last rather longer if they only turned on one at a time. And now certainly seemed like the time to use one. It was vital that they told the others up above what had happened. So they picked up a radio and started to broadcast a warning again and again, hoping to get a signal.
Peptobislawl and Imperium died. (Peptobislawl must have been a
Maze Guardian
.)
Realeo, Not_Mafia, Creature, Vedith, and NJAC are trapped.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Mon Nov 07, 2016 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #906 (isolation #41) » Sun Nov 13, 2016 12:44 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
Breaking out of the mansion might well have saved Titus's and Infinity 324's lives, but it wouldn't solve the maze by itself. Looking for a path that they could take from here was pointless; they could simply walk back round the the entrance. However, it was raining, and they quickly noticed a patch of ground nearby where the rain wasn't falling; looking upwards, they could tell that there must be some sort of bridge connecting the mansion to the maze beyond. They couldn't really see it properly, but they could see the rain hitting it and distorting the view beyond; presumably it was made out of some translucent material
Of course, reaching it was another matter. Their shoulders were badly bruised from shattering through glass, so attempting to climb the wall was out of the question. They probably couldn't have managed it even at full strength. The only choice was to go back inside and look around upstairs. With nobody to guide them, their movement was incredibly cautious, with careful searches every step of the way, but it turned out that their first impression – that the upper floor was severely unfinished and had not had much effort put into it – turned out to be the case, with nothing more dangerous than the occasional missing floorboard or nail that hadn't been hammered into the wall correctly. Night fell quickly this time of year, and it was dark by the time they'd reached the window connecting to the bridge, so they decided to camp out in the building itself until morning. There were no proper beds up here, but there were a couple of mattresses on the floor; presumably other people had needed to rest here too, back when it was being built.
In the morning, they set out across the bridge; the floor was some sort of plastic, and fairly slippery from the recent rain, but it was easy enough to make progress even though neither of them quite dared to touch the handrail. During the long evening hours, they'd discussed where to go next with the others by radio. The first stop was a nearby shed which housed some specialized equipment that was too unwieldy to transport; they were most interested in the radio repeater, which they set up to allow them to continue to gain advice from the others. Next, they'd need to find somewhere from which they could shift the mazes' paths that bit closer to making an exit, but there weren't any control rooms nearby; they'd need to go through one of the main maze sections on the way.
In the end, they settled on the section that Vedith had built. It looked fairly ominous from the outside, seeing as it was surrounded by a tall solid wall with barbed wire on the top, and they could see some sort of machinery towering above it. The entrance came as something more of a surprise: it had a turnstile, requesting an admission fee. Luckily, they had enough change in their pockets to place into the ticket machine and buy their way in, but if neither of them had withdrawn money recently, their journey might have ended right there.
Once they were inside, the view opened up and showed them what they were dealing with. Vedith had constructed a theme park here inside the maze; but instead of being able to freely walk around inside, the rides were connected so that the entrance of one was at the exit of the next. They started with the dodgems, and as Vedith explained, they had to ride from one end to the other inside the car because they were powered from the floor using fatal amounts of electricity. And as they quickly discovered, the journey involved actual dodging, and not just each other's vehicles. Next up was the ghost train; those things are considerably scarier if you know for a fact that they're actually trying to kill you! Still, with Vedith calling out instructions on how to dodge the traps over the radio, they got through to the centre of the theme park, which contained a large lake.
There was more than one way to go from here. The next ride on the route was a rollercoaster, whose route went over the lake; assuming that it was safe to use, it'd take them to the other side and onwards. Alternatively, they could see some boats on the lake, and one of the mooring ropes was attached to the bank nearby; they'd be to pull the boat to shore, and row their way over. Vedith didn't even mention the boats, as though he'd forgotten their existence; he simply told Titus and Infinity 324 to get into the third car of the rollercoaster, explaining that the others had intentional defects that were intended to cause problems along the route. When he was asked about the lake, he laughed. "Not much use trying to row your way across there!"
Normally I'd replace Vedith at this point, but given that he's trapped and we're in his section and therefore he will die at the end of the section no matter what, I'm not sure whether it will be necessary. If anyone wants me to find a replacement for Vedith so that they can hear from the replacement, let me know by PM, and I'll put out a replacement request.
Post
Post #918 (isolation #44) » Mon Nov 14, 2016 2:40 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
This was still an environment of untrustworthiness and scepticism, but this time, at least, the remaining builders thought it wise to follow Vedith's advice. So they got into the rollercoaster, put their seatbelts on, and waited. Then they realised that someone would have to start the thing manually, which involved getting out, pressing a button, then running like mad in order to get back to their seat before the ride started. Luckily, machinery this heavy takes a while to start, and the ride was still only inching forward by the time they were both safely back inside.
Many people would enjoy this sort of ride under normal circumstances, sitting back and letting the adrenalin flow through them. These were not normal circumstances, though, and instead of relaxation, it was a time for concentration. The track on which the rollercoaster ran was one of the highest points on the entire maze, and at the tops of the precipices and loops which made up their route, they had a good enough view of the whole area to make a quick mental map of the maze's current arrangement. Even if most of it wouldn't move, having a good handle on the positions of the connecting paths that shifted around were vital; they could try to do it from memory, but it was reassuring to have a reference that let them know for sure that they were manipulating things correctly. Things seemed to be about as good as could be expected for the time being, although without access to more of the maze's control rooms, they'd be limited in the adjustments they could make.
Towards the end of the journey, it became clear that something was wrong. Luckily, in this case, wrong was not deadly. The rollercoaster had not been malfunctioning as badly as Vedith might have hoped when he designed it, and they could probably have survived just as well in the other cars. Oh well; better to have a maze with too many solutions but not enough.
They could also get a closer look at the lake from over this side. It wasn't close enough to see exactly why they needed to avoid it, but they could still get hints: the occasional splash of some kind of wildlife, the occasional jagged edge of something above the water that implied there was something worse below. Best not to dwell on what could have happened, and move on.
As they were leaving, they realised the radio had been silent for a while. They thought the repeater might be out of range, but a quick test showed that it was still working. In the end, someone else took over the radio. Vedith was breathing slowly shallowly, eyes shut; he seemed to have fallen asleep, or perhaps his body was shutting down inessential systems to save oxygen. It wasn't worth trying to wake him; not yet, anyway. If he needed less air, there would be more for everyone else.
Vedith died. Nobody was trapped. (Vedith must have been a
Maze Engineer
.)
Last edited by callforjudgement on Mon Nov 14, 2016 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #1005 (isolation #54) » Thu Nov 24, 2016 4:50 am
Postby callforjudgement »
This time, there hadn't been much need for discussion. I mean, they'd discussed things anyway; trying to traverse the maze in the dark was far too dangerous, so they'd had to take shelter until morning, taking refuge in the shed that housed the rollercoaster's machinery, and there wasn't a whole lot to do but talk. When they woke up, though, Titus had made up her mind; she'd built the next section of the maze herself, and knowing the way through it already, couldn't easily be persuaded to take an alternative path. Infinity 324 was a lot less decisive, but it made far more sense to stick together than to split up and lose the ability to guide each other.
Her section of the maze was underground; she hadn't been much involved with the activites up above, but she'd become very familiar with the caves down here while she was working on them. They weren't natural caves – this had all been solid ground when she'd originally got here – but they hadn't been designed either, being created by blasting away large sections at once with water and explosives and letting the shape follow fractures in the rock. The whole area was lit by the sunlight outside, reflected round the cave with a carefully arranged sequence of mirrors; way more energy-efficient, not to mention more visually striking, than electric lighting would be, especially as the mirrors added space to the whole area, making a moderately size cave seem like more of a massive cathedral.
Something that any speleologist would have noticed was that the cave was upside-down. In a naturally formed cave, you have long, thin stalactites dripping down from the ceiling, and low, wide stalagmites forming bumps on the ground. This cave was the other way round, betraying the fact that the karst here was not naturally formed; Titus had placed all this very deliberately, and it was the main part of the maze's attraction and danger. The density grew greater as the cave went in; eventually, the ground would be impassable. Anyone traversing the area would have to walk on top, balancing on the points of the needles jutting up from the ground. Looking carefully, they'd also notice handholds embedded into the bumps on the ceiling (stalactites? stalagmites? it's hard to know whether they were defined by their shape or their position); after all, Titus had needed to come this way several times while building the rest of the cave, and she hadn't wanted to risk the chance of losing her footing and falling to a spiky end.
To start with, there was only one way to go, so Titus and Infinity 324 carefully wove their way along the obvious route. The cave was full of surprises; their footing frequently moved as they put their weight on it, but there was an obvious pattern, meaning that before long, they'd got into a rhythm and were dancing from pin to pin. However, the ceiling was getting higher, and the handholds getting less useful. Eventually, there'd be a choice to be made; either abandon the handholds and risk their movement with no support, or keep their grasp on the ceiling and rely on their arm strength to get them through.
Titus concentrated. She hadn't had nearly as much practice this deep in the cave – after all, she'd never expected to have to follow it herself – but she knew what to do. She let go of the ceiling and went into a sort of trance, following the rhythmic steps more carefully than ever, as a mistake might well be fatal. "Like this!" she shouted. But was she trying to solve the maze? Or was she planning to lead Infinity 324 into a trap? He stopped at the last point he could for a rest, hands on the ceiling and feet on what passed for ground around here, and tried to make his mind up as to what to do next. The route did continue onto the ceiling, after all. Earlier he'd had no option; but now, he had a choice. But what choice would he make?
I've heard that there's some sort of big holiday going on at the moment in the United States. Given that only one person has a decision to make here anyway, and Thanksgiving gives a pretty good excuse to not be online for those who celebrate, I'm resetting all prod timers. (Sorry for being a little behind with my modding duties; developments have been happening in Real Life which are positive but fairly distracting. Hopefully normal service should resume soon.)
Post
Post #1015 (isolation #56) » Sat Nov 26, 2016 1:04 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
As before, activity requirements don't apply in Evening phases to players who don't need to select a strategy. That means not a whole lot of players are proddable.
Post
Post #1048 (isolation #57) » Mon Nov 28, 2016 5:07 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Infinity 324 let go of the handholds, and started to stagger his way across the moving needles. He could see why Titus was concentrating so hard; following the pattern was not trivial, not really because it was hard to remember, but because there were so many steps to get right in the right order. She was ahead of him, skipping between the footholds in their predefined sequence; and although she didn't make it look
easy
– she was clearly far too nervous for that – she was at least making it look like a natural thing to do. But then, she'd had a lot more practice. He was making rather heavy weather of things, showing his inexperience with this sort of obstacle, but he
was
making progress, and before long everything was starting to flow more easily.
And before long after that, everything stopped. The airy arrangement of the cave had concealed its true size; it was rather smaller than it looked. Titus was back on the ground at the far side; she'd fallen over, because while her movement pattern had been conducive to dancing on a sequence of moving obstacles, it was substantially less good at standing on something solid and stationary. Infinity 324 decided to play things safe, and dived for the ground at the end of the cave as soon as he was close enough, landing with a roll to absorb his momentum. They'd cleared the cave! So what next?
It was getting darker outside, but there was still enough light to see by. And sure enough, even though the light from the cave entrance was dim due to multiple reflections, there was more light, showing a way back out. They took a while to catch their breath, but it was worth moving on before darkness. And as Titus had promised, they ended up at their destination, a series of levers and wheels that could be used to, yet further, reshape the maze. It would soon be almost half complete. That said, there was more than one passage they could open, and more than one route they could take; plenty of sections were still to be completed.
So they brought out their radios, and made sure everyone was still OK. People were thirsty, and hungry, and dizzy from hours of breathing shallowly, but they could still contact the builders of all the remaining sections. They'd been trying to push the boulder into a better location; it seemed impossible that they'd ever get past it without outside help, as that would require somehow pushing it up a long incline and reinserting it back into the ceiling, but they'd managed to get it into a slightly wider space, letting a trickle of vital air into the area; stale, but at least less stale than the air they'd been breathing.
Time to get an agreement on where to go next. Going into the unknown in the remaining fading light was out of the question, but the cave made for a sheltered place to sleep, and nobody was in immediate danger. So they talked, and waited, and talked, and slept, and talked some more. What else could they do?
Nobody died, and nobody was trapped. (Titus must have been a
