[After a long, hard day of hardly fighting (or fighting hard?) the Jumpers (that's our heroes!) return to the ship for some rest and relaxation and maybe washing blood off of themselves. Because seriously, ew. Especially since they got such awesome outfits.] (Reflective and SHADES!) [Minisession Start!] * Murynal didn't get any blood on herself, contradicting her own player's bracketing, because she is Just That Cool. She's sitting in one of the more comfortable chairs and spinning her turned off !lightsaber between her hands. * Neisis asked Denal to make her a second suit of shiny reflective clothes while she ... discovered that Thalan had already claimed the shower for his cleanlyness fetish, so she's waiting on one of the other chairs and not spinning. She seems to be thinking instead. * Thalan is a shower thief and has a cleanlyness fetish. So nyah. :P * Justine is also sitting there. She's at one of the computer consoles, fiddling with it. Is something wrong, Neisis? (As a reminder, I'm an empath! And I'm very bad at turning it off. So let me know whatev. ^^) * Neisis looks at Mury. "Yeah. after that last fight... I think I need to learn some magic, but I don't know if any disks came with me into this universe so... Do I have to learn the magic they have here or hope a disk showed up or... I'm not sure how it works." * Justine is slightly frustrated with the computers. She's also still feeling a bit sore from having been shoved about in the fight earlier, but doesn't seem too bothered by that. * Murynal blinks, confused. "Disks?" * Justine looks over. "How do you learn magic from disks?" * Neisis nods happily. "Where I'm from, the spells are inscribed in these uh... boxes actually, but they're called disks and when you open the box, one person can learn the spell inside. I was thinking that It'd be useful if I knew Resta or Shifta... Or ooh! A Foi spell would be good so I could hit things from farther away. "Oh. Neat." Justine nods. Sure, magic might as well be learned by opening boxes; it's magic, after all. Maybe someone jumped over with some disks? I hope so! * Thalan gets out of the shower humming to himself. He idly brushes his fur as he glances at Neisis. "Magic's magic, where I come from it's inborn in some people, and others just memorize spells." * Neisis points at herself. "Newmen were created to be good at learning magic so most of can learn stronger spells than most humans can and we can cast them more often." * Thalan chuckles. "Where I come from humans tend to be very good at it, but the best are usually dragons of some kind. Half-dragons, spellscales, even the full-blooded ones." "Sensible," Justine says, and she sounds oddly like she's on firmer ground here. "I just wish I knew how they did it." (That was to Neisis. Justine has no clue about magic, but genetic engineering is well within her frame of reference.) * Neisis shrugs. "I dunno, the only dragon I ever heard about mostly tried to eat people... and everything else too." * Murynal blinks at Thalan. "Dragons can't use magic in my universe." Yeah, they tried to eat people. Then realized it was more profitable to control them instead. (Damn Ferengi dragons.) Wow, your dragons must be a lot smarter than mine. Smarter's an understatement. Does it work? Do they control everyone? * Neisis looks expectantly at Thalan. Well, it is called The Dragonstar Empire for a reason. Ooooh. * Justine frowns. * Murynal shakes her head. "That must be awful." They're big and powerful and live annoyingly long. Some have been alive for tens of thousands of years. "Is there anyone left to fight them?" * Neisis 's eyes widen. "That's amazing. I can't.. I mean tens of thousands? I'm going to be lucky to get tens." They sound like the Dra'Ma'Tongh, with the intelligence, lifespan, and magic... but ours stays out of things, mostly. * Thalan waves his hand. "Generally they fight amongst eachother. Outsiders, like those summoned, and gods of course can fight them. Most just don't find it worth their time, though." "A.I.s can exist that long, if they aren't destroyed." Justine shakes her head. "Maybe anything that stays around too long eventually goes bad." She's unhappy with that thought, Mury. * Murynal has a drink from her water bottle. * Neisis looks at Justine. "But, how long is too long?" Also, not all dragons are evil. Greedy, yeah, but not Evil. Not 'Destroy your planet because they can' evil. * Neisis looks at Thalan in alarm. "They can do that?!" "I don't know. Most people where I come from can live for a hundred years or so, depending how well they were originally designed. I think some can go for a few hundred if their engineering focussed on that." Well, anyone could until the ban on nuclear weapons went into place. * Justine grins a bit, some of her humour returning, "Of course, in my line of work, life expectancy's a lot lower than that, or even ten years." * Murynal blinks at Justine. "Is everyone engineered?" "Well, almost everyone. Supposedly there are still some planets with humans the way they were originally." She then adds, suddenly remembering the differing base principles of their respective universes, "Not personally engineered, of course. But when we colonized the universe, we had to use genetic engineering to adapt to different environments." * Thalan thinks. "So it's like bumping evolution along?" Oh, hmm. "Yeah. Although for planets with methane atmospheres and stuff like that, I don't think humans would ever have adapted without help. They'd just have died or had use life support equipment forever." Why would they want to live there? * Justine's taken a bit off guard by that. "Why wouldn't they?" You run out of space you need to settle somewhere, right? Ahh, I guess so, but we found a place where you could live, right? I've never thought about it before. We have some very interesting races where I come from too. Like floating sentient stones, or machines that house the souls of dead humans. I suppose that proves people have souls. * Justine shudders. Machines that house the souls of dead humans is not a happy thought for her at all. Wow. * Murynal glances at Justine. Were you going to take a shower, Neisis? * Neisis blinks. "Oh right! Thanks." She picks up her new clothes and dashes off. * Murynal then addresses the others: "So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?" "Maybe we can find a disk for Neisis in the market," Justine suggests. She's still a bit disquieted by the idea of souls transplanted to machines, so hey, shopping should be a distraction. "Maybe we can find that postcard, too." * Murynal nods. Maybe. It'll at least give us something to do. * Justine nods and waits for Neisis to finish showering so they can go shopping. * Murynal goes back to the spinny weapon thing! * Neisis returns a few minutes later with damp hair and a shiny non-shredded outfit. "Okay, let's do this while I'm still around." "'Bye Denal," Justine says as she rolls out ship's exit back into the marketplace. * Murynal waves, assuming Denal can see it, and goes. Bye Denal! * Thalan shrugs and waves to the ship. "See ya later." [It's a market... in Jumpers. There's just about everything you could possibly imagine, including the things you wish you hadn't ever imagined. There are tents and tables and benches and STUFF! STUFF EVERYWHERE! Much of it for sale. There are aliens too, including one guy with an elephant head. Not the head of an elephant but his entire head is, in fact, an elephant.] [There are of course other vendors too, including one guy with a spindle of postcards that's quite possibly the second tallest edifice in the area. The first one being the elaborate glass staircase built around it so people can get at the cards.] (I like it!) "Wow. This place looks ever neater than it did earlier." Justine looks around for boxes with disks. "Is that the sort of box you meant?" she asks, haltingly lifting her hand to point at a glowing golden cube floating in the air above a display table, a large runic symbol resembling a question mark etched into its side. (If you hit it, you might get a magic mushroom! :D) * Neisis blinks at it. "I don't think I've ever seen a gold one. They're green and black where I come from, but maybe that's what they look like here!" She marches over to the shop keeper to find out. (Who is being asked that?) (It's a TM: Hyper Beam) * Murynal tags along. [The shopkeeper has a table displaying a large amount of green mushrooms and a flask full of a red potion next to a sing saying "All natural herbal remedies".] Hi! Excuse me. * Murynal peers at the box. It is pretty cool. [The shopkeeper himself is draped in a red cloak and is wearing a white facemask.] * Justine wheels over too. ["Yes? Are you interested in our all-natural herbal remedies? They're guaranteed to fill you with life and energy."] Mhm, maybe. I want to know more about this. * Neisis points at the golden box. ["Oh, that. That's an ornamental floating box. It's used for outdoor landscape decoration. It's like a lawn gnome, but of course those have been outlawed."] * Neisis looks disappointed. "Oh, that's no good. Well, I mean I guess it's good but it's not what I was looking for." ["Oh? What were you looking for?"] I'm a Jumper and I'm looking for some things from my own universe that sort of the same shape, but it's green and can teach magic techniques. * Justine peers at the flask of red liquid. [The shopkeeper's wearing a mask, so his face is invisible, but his voice suddenly sounds quite nervous. "A Jumper? Oh, no, this is nothing at all a Jumper would be interested in. Very boring. And it *certainly* doesn't contain anything dangerous- I mean magical- I mean, magic techniques. Also! Look! Not green!" He points.] * Murynal blinks. "Are you sure that's just an ornamental box?" (I sense truth on the guy!) (Mury can sense he's nervous.) (No, seriously, I can sense if he's telling the truth.) ["Of course! What else would it be? That's crazy talk. Stop talking crazy. It's very ornamental, as you can see. And not at all green!" (Oh. No, he's lying. Duh.) (Except that it is not green. That part's true.) * Neisis nods happily at him. "I see. But I hoped that it was something simalar from this universe. Do you know where I can find that sort of thing?" ["Green things? Maybe at the Green Store. They sell most of the green things around here. They tried to underprice me on green mushrooms, but my customers stuck with me because of my quality guarantee." The shopkeeper is very happy to not be talking about the ornamental box anymore.] * Neisis sounds intrigued. "That sounds promising. Where is it?" * Thalan looks around and hmphs. ["Three blocks down that way. You'll see the entire chain of establishments: the Red Room, the Orange You Going To Shop Here, Yellow World, the Green Store, Blue R Us, Indigo-Go-Go, and Violet-Go-Go-Go. If you get confused, I have a handy pneumonic device to help you find your way: 'it's next to Yellow World.'"] * Murynal edges over to the dude. "What else does the ornamental box do?" * Neisis sounds confused. "Uh, I think I'll walk, thanks for offering." * Neisis blinks at Murynal. "Why do you have so many colour themed stores?" Why not? It's as good away to organize things as anything. [The shopkeeper answers Justine first. "Exactly. I mean, let's say you wanted something blue but weren't sure what. Where else would you go?" Then he turns to Mury. "It does absolutely nothing dangerous or illegal, that's for darn sure. And it's not green. You can't even paint it green, I bet. The paint wouldn't stick."] You're lying. * Murynal has her weapon in her hand now, though it's not activated. Uh oh. Green paint does stick? ["Okay, maybe you could paint it green! I never tried! But why would you want to? It wouldn't be half as ornamental then. This is crazy talk. Crazy crazy-talking people. I run a respectable non-colour themed business here."] * Justine casually tries to rest her hand on her gun's handle. Of course, this being Justine in gravity, no movement is quite casual, but nobody's paying much attention anyway. So what about it's illegal? * Thalan lets the man dig his own grave. * Thalan lets the girls be threatening. * Neisis frouns at the guy and Murynal. "What's in the box?" ["Nothing! There are no laws against ornamental floating boxes! Not even if you imported one to one of the 32 worlds in the 8 MK systems after you bought it! They're legal there too! Even green ones! And this one's not even green!"] ["IT'S NOT EVEN GREEN!"] Uhm... is the color that important here? * Murynal blinks. [Mury can tell that he's panicking big time.] * Justine stares at the box for a second. "It really isn't green," she confirms. Why don't you just tell us so we don't hurt you? I know if you're lying. [He looks around, his masked head moving from one Jumper to the next, then he... turns and starts running away down the street.] * Neisis blinks and then takes off after him. "Hey!" Justine draws her weapon, but the street's too full of shoppers for her to fire, even if she thought the situation were worth asking for permission to shoot. For that matter, she can't roll that fast through a crowd, so she's out of this chase. * Murynal chases, because he's running away! * Justine stays and guards the table full of mushrooms and the mysterious glowing box. (Roll Body, pursuers.) (How do you want to do this? and what sort of bonus does speed give me?) 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Murynal (2d6) and gets a natural 7 for a result of 7. (Fail by one.) (I don't know. Just roll something and decide if you succeed or fail.) * Thalan sighs and runs after him, maneuvering through the people quickly. 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Neisis (2d6) and gets a natural 4 for a result of 4. (Uh, very very made.) (Or do whatever. I really don't want to be DMing combat here. I just figured this was the sort of thing where you'd want to show off your builds.) 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Thalan (2d6) and gets a natural 5 for a result of 5. (Whee, make by 4.) (Okay, just describe whatever.) * Neisis quickly overtakes the shop keeper and moves to cut him off. "Hey! Stop running away!" [He comes to a quick stop as he sees Neisis ahead of him. "Aaah!"] * Thalan chases after him and makes himself fairly known if he tries to run away. Why are you running away? We might want to buy that floating lawn ornament if you told us what was in it. * Murynal lags behind, as she's not as ninjalike as the other two, but she does catch up quickly enough. She's not tired at all, though. ( NinjaLIKE? What an insult! I am ninja!) [The shopkeeper is surrounded! He looks around. "Hey! There's the Green Store!" He points to the building next to Yellow World.] * Murynal looks, maybe because this is the FIRST TIME HE TOLD THE TRUTH EVER. "Oh. So it is." Thanks for pointing it out, but I'm still curious about your yellow lawn ornament, sorry. [The shopkeeper tries to duck away while they are distracted. But only Mury and maybe Thalan are.] * Thalan doesn't even turn away. He already knows. [Only Mury is.] * Thalan is a ninja, after all. Really. * Neisis tries to grab him to keep him from running away. "How come you're running away? I mean isn't it kind of dangerous to leave your shop by itself?" (A SPACE NINJA.) (Roll to stop him, I guess. I dunno, Unarmed Attack.) 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Neisis (2d6) and gets a natural 6 for a result of 6. (Made by 1!) * Neisis grabs him by the collar after asking him the question. [He is grabbed. Finally, he sounds defeated. "A flamethrower," he says dejectedly.] * Murynal blinks. "Wouldn't that ruin your lawn?" * Neisis beems at him. "Oh! See if you'd just said that in the begining I could have told you that that's not what I wanted and we wouldn't have had all this chasing." * Neisis lets him go. [He looks about, seemingly unable to believe what just happened. "You're letting me go?"] We just wanted to know. * Murynal looks around now, too. "Where's Justine?" She goes back to find her. ["Oh." He starts to edge away.] I don't know. * Neisis waves at the weird shopkeeper and wanders back to find her friend. [The shopkeeper runs away.] * Justine is back by the vendor's table, talking with two eight armed purple things with antennae dressed in some sort of police uniform. [The two officers walk off before the gang gets back.] "Hi." * Neisis walks up to Justine. "We found the green store." "Oh. Good. Did they have your disks?" * Neisis shakes her head. "I don't know yet. We noticed we left you behind so we came back." He said the gold box is a flamethrower. "Did you catch him? Some police officers were just here looking for him." * Thalan walks in all normal-like. "Always need a flame thrower." Which would make it the worst- oh? He went that way. * Murynal points, realizes the officers are gone, and then runs after them to tell them that. (Which can be done sort of offscreen, so keep going. :)) * Neisis blinks but that's a one person job so she keeps talking. "Maybe they have green postcard of the... wait no that doesn't work. We'll go looking for your postcard afterwords." "They said he was suspected of smuggling weapons to some rebel insurrection on another planet." Is that all? * Neisis scratches her head. "I guess you have to do something with a lawn mounted flame thrower." (Thalan's CN, isn't he?) * Murynal returns. "I told them. Let's go to the green store." "Okay." Okay! I think a lawn mounted flame thrower is a pretty cool idea. It would ruin your lawn. * Neisis walks to the green store. * Murynal starts walking. Slower now, because she's not running. Maybe if you had a flame retardant lawn? "And it was ornamental too," Justine points out. "But I don't have a lawn, and I don't know if it would work as well inside a spaceship." Maybe it depends on the oxygen level. * Neisis shrugs. "It's not something I'd use." * Thalan vanishes into the crowds. Not to eat crab while being ninja. Nope. (HE IS TOTALLY A NINJA) (By the transitive power of ninjitsu, Thalan is RDM.) (Wait? What? I'm a cat boy?) (Yes.) * Justine looks around for postcards. (Where's my tail?) (In the cab following you, if you didn't lose him at that last U-turn.) (Oh no!) * Justine does see the police officers dragging off the shopkeeper in the distance. "Oh, they caught him." Justine approves of the forces of law and order triumphing. "You could look for your postcard there," Justine says to Mury, pointing at the tower. She could! * Murynal blinks. "Oh! A rainbow." And then she wanders over. Wanderwander. * Justine follows, but stops dead at the foot of the staircase. "I'll look at the ones on the bottom," she says. * Neisis follows Murynal. "Is there any sort of card you want Justine?" [One of the cops drags the shopkeeper in the red cloak and mask near enough to the tower of postcards for the gang to hear him saying, "And just as soon as we figure out how you're getting those weapons past MK customs and arming pro-monarchy insurrectionists all over the eight systems, you're going away for a long time." Then they're gone out of hearing.] "Oh!" Justine thinks. "Maybe one with a picture of some sort of natural landmark?" Okay! * Neisis climbs the glass staircase in search of rainbows and landmarks! * Murynal follows her, but in search for rainbows instead. * Justine looks at postcards at the bottom. * Neisis climbs up to the top of the tower and works her way down picking up postcards that look like they might be interesting to the others. If the shopkeep wants her to put them back she'll be in trouble. * Murynal is picking out postcards, looking at them, putting them back, picking out more postcards, looking at them, putting them back... * Neisis will probably be at this for an amount of time equal to the remaining time it takes for a half Chinese twenty year old to eat crab and talk with his family. * Murynal comes back down the stairs. "I found one with a tower on it. Maybe it's a landmark." She hands it to Justine; it has a spiral, purple tower that pops out of the surrounding jungle and into the clouds above on it. Plus, lasers. (LASERS!) (PEW PEW PEW!) "Thanks." Justine takes it. "Wow, I wonder if that's around here." I don't know. I wonder where the lasers come from. * Neisis comes down with a handful of cards. "Lasers? What lasers?" * Murynal points at the card Justine's holding. "Oh. You're right. Where do those come from?" Oh! Uhm. Maybe they're shooting at the tower and they're all bad shots? (The Stormtrooper effect!) (Only Imperial stormtroopers could shoot with such accuracy... and hit a humongous Sandcrawler.) (Hahaha XD) Did you find any rainbows? I couldn't. * Neisis holds out a couple of postcards to Murynal. One has a circular rainbow against a cloudy orange sky. The other one is, technically a rainbow, but the colors are all wrong. "Sort of." * Murynal takes them and peers, then picks out the circular rainbow. "Thanks." * Murynal goes to pay for them. "Ask the cashier about the lasers, and if it's near here." Okay. * Murynal makes sure she has Justine's card in hand before doing that! * Neisis wanders back up the tower to put the rest of the cards back. * Justine rolls after Mury. 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Neisis (2d6) and gets a natural 5 for a result of 5. * Neisis manages to get some of the cards back in the right place. * Murynal returns with the cards in a pointy hat with yellow smiley faces all over it. "He said it's on the next continent over and that he doesn't care where the lasers come from." She hands the hat over to Justine. "And he gave me this instead of a bag." (By the way. Ninja.) (Oh SHi-) (COMING OUT OF THE WALLS) * Justine takes the hat. She turns it over. "Thanks?" she seems a bit uncertain, but puts it on. Fortunately, it's light enough not to weigh her head down. * Murynal shrugs. "How does this replace a bag?" You can put things in it. You can put things in it. "Wait, what?" [And you get to the green store! It SAYS it's a green store, but it looks more red. Lotsa red lights and red glass windows. Oh well, care to step inside?] If you turn it upside down... why is it so red? I don't know? "Maybe they're red-green colour blind/" Let's find out. (They tried to make the Green Store green, but it ain't easy.) * Neisis goes into the green store. * Murynal does, too! [An overactive salesman greets you at the door. He, well, you can guess he's a he, is dressed from head to toe in purple. "Hellooooo, how can I help you?"] * Justine follows too. Hopefully there's room inside for her chair.] [The objects on the shelves cover the entire rainbow of colors. Yes, including green.] [There's plenty of room!] * Murynal looks to Neisis. This is her magic thingie they're looking for. * Neisis smiles at him. "Hi, I'm looking for a sort of green box thing called a disk and since this is the green store I was wondering if you had any." * Justine looks around. She tries to pick up a purple object that looks like a desklamp, but it turns out to be surprisingly heavy. She struggles for a minute, gets it an inch off the shelf, and decides it's not worth the effort or the risk of breaking it, so she sets it back down. Green, green? Well, you came to the right place, we only sell green things here! A green box, hmmm? And a disk? It's called a disk. It's actualy a device that teaches magic and I kinda need some. Oh, teaching magic. Yes, yes, I see. What kind of magic? I was thinking either some fast healing magic, or some ranged fire spells, or maybe something to make me harder to hit. One of the three. "Or all three." * Man blinks and looks confused. "My oh my, what kind of store do you think this is! We don't sell that sort of thing here!" Well, the disks are green boxes so I thought they might be here. Do you know where I could find something like that? (The Man is actually Thalan in disguise.) (PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE CAT BEHIND THE CURTAIN) [You notice a curtain to the right of the store. A blue curtain.] "Another vendor told us you might sell it." * Murynal wanders around the store, looking at various things, very few of which are green. She brushes by the curtain. * Justine rolls over to park behind Neisis. * Neisis isn't wandering, she's just questioning the shopkeeper, which is good because it means she doesn't trip over Justine. * Justine is not tripped over. This is good. She's already been pinned into her chair by someone's body once today. Huh? Who would say that? I don't see why someone would soil the reputation of my good shop with such scandalous sayings! * Murynal looks at the guy oddly. He had a shop full of mushrooms. "The salespeople in this universe are all very excitable. It makes it harder to shop." * Murynal moves the curtain and peeks behind it. What? Hey! Don't peek behind that curtain! (Thalan's back there!) [Behind the curtain is a green cat. About the size of a housecat, doesn't look too odd other than being green.] ... At least you're green. (... Uh... Okay. Right then.) * Neisis is still waiting for the shopkeeper to answer her first question. I don't know where to find such things. I don't know of boxes or disks that teach magic spells! * Neisis frowns. "Do you know anybody that might know?" * Justine looks from feline to shopclerk. "Cat got your tongue?" Oh ha ha ha. (Rimshot!) * The cat turns around and sulks. Is there something we could do for you that could jog your memory? * Murynal pets the cat, because it's adorable. (The Jumpers cast: they see weird stuff, go "Huh", and move on.) * The cat purrs. "I don't know of your magic, but..." It purrs some more. * Neisis perks. "Is there some other magic you know of?" ( Dammit, why does no one pet me. Oh, wait, because I hate to be touched. Right.) I know some magic, yes. *purr* I can teach you... for a small fee. * Murynal keeps petting the kitty. Aw. She even picks him up. (Justine's tone on her joke up there, incidentally, was chipper, not snarky.) Oh? How much? How much you got? (Ooh crap, how many credits do we have?) (Fsk if I know!) * Justine tells him. (I solve problems the lazy way.) * The cat purrs in approval. "I accept your terms." ( Also! More petting!) Ahh, I'm not sure we want to spend all of it. No worries then, I shall teach you and when you are done or out of money, we can stop. Oh, okay. That works. "How long will that take?" That's a good question. How long do you have? * Neisis laughs. "I'm not sure actually." * The cat purrs contentedly. "I'm not sure either, then." Mhm, disks work instantly, which is why I wanted to find one. I might drop dead in a second or a day or a year. So is quickly an option? * The cat stretches. "Hmph. Fine, I'll teach you as fast as I can, but no guarantees." Okay. (This "teaching" is going to have horrible side effects, isn't it?) (Yes. Yes, it is.) (I'm going to turn green and furry, arn't I?) (Of course.) (Oops. Oh well. It's only a temporary condition. Like being alive!) (Saw it coming. :P ) (And possibly provoked it as a result, in a very quantum effect.) (THis is why you don't give the GM ideas. XD) (But it's a quantum GM. You never know which of us will be the GM.) * Thalan walks in and glances around. "Did you scare the shopkeeper out of his boots here too?" No, he's a cat. So, if you would like to start now, we can. But we need solitude. * Neisis nods. "And he's going to take a lot of our money to teach me magic, and okay." * Neisis walks over to him. * Thalan hmphs. "Oh. Is this going to take long?" We're going to try and hurry things along. * The cat leaps down and walks to a room that opens up and sits next to it, waiting for Neisis to enter. "Where did you go?" Justine asks Thalan. * Neisis waves at the others and then walks in. * Thalan takes out some ice cream. "Getting some ice cream." Is it good? Yeah. Really good. :9 (Whenever everyone wants to break, we'll break.) * The cat walks in too and the door closes. [Session end because of MAGIC.]