Metroplexity

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Encounter Conditions

Only during The Missing Artist quest

Initial Text

Deep in the mists, you find the source of the strange red light that permeates this place. A massive lake of fire stretches on, far further than you can see in the mists.

The fire itself looks strangely unnatural. Although red is certainly a normal enough color for fire, it's hard to apply the word to this brilliant shade of crimson.

Faintly, towards the center of the lake, you can see the outline of a small rocky island.

Summary of Choices

1. Head for the island - With dying artist effect active gain body and spirit skill, Otherwise:
   1. Examine it - gain 6 XP in Perception
   2. Meditate before it - gain 6 XP in Will
   3. Sketch it with Unscathed Sketchbook equipped
   4. Lash out at it - gain 6 XP in Strength
   5. Topple it - after wobbling with a hooked chain
2. Dive in and have a look - gain 10 energy of Severely Charred and high damage or gain Unscathed Sketchbook and low damage or some items and low damage
3. Run around the lake - gain 4 XP in Strength
4. Try fishing - no effect (only with fishing rod equipped)
5. Find somewhere more hospitable - Nothing

Choice Text and Results

Head for the island

Before opening some walls in the dry riverbed

You bravely head towards the opposite shore and its strange stone monument, but the fire tears into you like a thousand clawed hands. Soon your nostrils are filled with the scent of your own burning flesh and boiling blood.

After a long agony in the fire, you barely manage to drag yourself back to shore.

You take 122 damage.

Without dying artist active

Rushing through the lake, you manage to make your way to the island before the fires consume you. The island itself is almost featureless, a barren spur of black rock in the middle of the flames.

The island's one feature does not disappoint, however. A statue, or perhaps a creature made from stone, rests in the center of the island as though it's standing watch.

Some sort of energy pulses through the statue, a strangely comforting presence.

You take 1 damage.

With dying artist active

You make your way to the island, holding the dying artist aloft out of the flames. When you reach the statue, a blinding light passes from it to the artist.

You see only the haziest of shapes. Two of the artist embrace, while an even brighter light stares from the distance.

When you finally come around, you realize you've been staring off the docks far into the distance at a brilliant star that you never noticed through the gloom before. Although the artist is nowhere to be found, you're somehow sure he's safe.

You regain a hit point!

You've learned a new Skill: Body and Spirit

Examine it

It's hard to make useful statements about the statue or creature without understanding what forces might have created it or put it here. Short of that, you're reduced to a purely cursory analysis.

The thing reminds you of a bull or maybe the minotaur of Greek legend. It seems to be made from one gigantic block of volcanic rock, although it's separate from the island it stands on.

Around the limbs, particularly the joints, you see hairline cracks. It could be normal wear rather than the thing trying to move, but given this place, you'd be hard-pressed to count on it.

On a more personal level, the closer you get, the more terror you can feel radiating from it. It doesn't feel frightening exactly, more frightened.

Eventually, the heat gets to be too much and you're forced to return to the mainland.

You've earned 6 XP in Perception

Meditate before it

(If not etheric)

You settle in next to the statue, slowly breathing the scalding air until you pass into a state of understanding. You can feel a presence plucking at the edges of your consciousness or perhaps it's just a hallucination from the toxic fumes in the air.

Either way, you eventually need to abandon your session and make your way back to the mainland.

You've earned 6 XP in Will

(If etheric)

You settle in next to the statue, slowly breathing the scalding air until you pass into a state of understanding. The island and the statue fade away, passing into the mists.

In the statue's place you see a familiar young man, although it's a little harder to recognize him away from an easel. He stands rigidly in the same position as the statue.

Something pulls at you, dragging you south. First you see the oily waters of Lake Metroplex, then the Midgard-built wall around the Slags.

Your drifting form settles over Midgard's lab amidst those ruins before slipping through its walls effortlessly until you come face-to-face with a beast of shimmering light.

It roars colors and ideas, confusing even your unconscious mind. It huddles closely over a hospital bed that seems to draw you closer.

You get just close enough to see the embroidery "S43" on the patient's gown before the thing's claws catch you.

You wake up with a jolt on your back at the shore of the lake.

You've earned 6 XP in Will

OR(If you've seen him at the lab)

You settle in next to the statue, slowly breathing the scalding air until you pass into a state of understanding. The island and the statue fade away, passing into the mists.

In the statue's place you see a familiar young man, although it's a little harder to recognize him away from an easel. He stands rigidly in the same position as the statue.

Something pulls at you, dragging you south. First you see the oily waters of Lake Metroplex, then the Midgard-built wall around the Slags.

Your drifting form settles over Midgard's lab amidst those ruins before slipping through its walls effortlessly until you come face-to-face with the artist.

He's comatose here, like you saw him in the lab. It's odd from this angle, floating in the room.

Eventually an insistent tugging brings you back to your own body, on the shores of the fiery lake.

You've earned 6 XP in Will

Sketch it

(Only with Unscathed Sketchbook equipped)

(If etheric and also after meditating at the statue while etheric)
(I got this message without etheric — someone doublecheck?)

You settle in to sketch the statue.

Although you have no great artistic skill, you begin drawing it in sweeping lines to the best of your ability. Slowly, you realize that the lines are moving and growing, creating a more detailed picture.

As the last line snaps into position, the statue begins to crack and crumble. The flames extending around you flicker as the cave-like ceiling begins to fall in under its own weight.

You make your way out of the warehouse, although it seems a much shorter distance than it took to get in. As you observe the building, you can feel the book in your hand twitching violently, the pages flipping.

An incredibly detailed drawing shows the artist moving, seeming almost alive for a moment. Then it loses cohesion, collapsing into thousands of meaningless lines, crawling through the pages like water.

(Unscathed Sketchbook transforms into Living Sketchbook, charnel house closes.)

(Otherwise)

You try to draw the statue, but its form somehow evades you, like the paper is fighting you every step of the way. Eventually, the heat gets to be too much and you're forced to return to the mainland.

Lash out at it

You smash into the statue over and over, never so much as sending a chip flying. After a while, the heat gets to be overwhelming and you're forced to leave.

or
//with stone horn, stone heart equipped?

You notice that the statue has begun wobbling, almost invisibly, with your strikes. Now if you could just haul down on it from the top, you might be able to knock it over.

Topple it

With a hooked chain, or pitted chain

You throw your chain over the top of the statue and give it a mighty pull. It slips off the moment you thought you might be making progress. Damn it.

You've earned 6 XP in Strength

With a black silver chain

You loop your shadowy chain around the statue's massive head, pulling down towards you. The chain slides through the statue like nanowire, leaving great steaming chunks of stone.

The pieces fall to the floor with a deafening clatter. A misty form, faintly resembling the missing artist, appears momentarily in the wreckage.

Then he vanishes, along with everything else in the warehouse. You're left on your back, staring at the normal, if dilapidated, rafters and thinking idly about the chain cutting into your arm.

You've learned a new Skill: Twisting Chains

Dive in and have a look

Undeterred by the wall of withering flames, you march your way into the pit to search for buried treasures.

After a long agony in the fire, you barely manage to drag yourself back to shore.

You take 89 damage.

You've gained 10 energy of Severely Charred.

(or, with high enough Fire Defense [10 suffices, and you might be able to get away with less if you have enough HP]
took 78 damage with 7 Fire Defense, survived, got the sketchbook

Undeterred by the wall of withering flames, you march your way into the pit to search for buried treasures.

You find something completely out of place on the floor of the lake… a student's black sketchbook. Even though it's been lying there long enough to get half-buried under sulfur, it's utterly unharmed.

It's actually doing better than you are.

You take 1 damage.

You found: Unscathed Sketchbook

(or after finding Unscathed Sketchbook and with high enough Fire Defense)

Undeterred by the wall of withering flames, you march your way into the pit to search for buried treasures.

You wander through the fiery expanse, the flames clawing at you like wild animals. You manage to find something pretty cool among the lakefloor's bizarre sediment.

You take 1 damage.

You found: 1 of: cold syringe, holocaust coat, red hot pipe, remains of a coat, scarred silver mask, or scorched watch and 2-3 of: mottled crystals, powdered glass, sulfur

(or, sometimes, after finding a certain number of things?)

Undeterred by the wall of withering flames, you march your way into the pit to search for buried treasures.

You wander through the fiery expanse, the flames clawing at you like wild animals. Despite your best efforts, all you find are a mixture of strange powders accumulated on the lake floor.

You found: 2-3 of: mottled crystals, powdered glass, sulfur

Run around the lake

You take a bracing jog around the lake of fire. You never seem to get much closer to the island rising out of the center, but it leaves you sweating like you've been running in a sauna.

You've earned 4 XP in Strength

or, with a number of black stone walls destroyed?

You prepare yourself for a jog around the lake, but end up spending more time carefully finding your way around the new channels emptying the lake.

It's kind of fun, but only in that you don't manage to fall in.

You've earned 5 XP in Reflexes

or with the containment suit equipped

Your run around the lake rapidly becomes a slow walk around the lake, followed by some sitting next to the lake while you're having trouble breathing and sweating too fast for your suit to absorb.

It's a pretty terrible experience all around.
You've earned 3 XP in Will

Try fishing

It seemed like a really good idea at the time, but all you managed to do was melt your line and lose your lure somewhere in the depths of the lake.

Ah well, score one for the fire.

Find somewhere more hospitable

Your body certainly can stand up to a lot of punishment, but you can't come up with a good reason to hurl yourself into a lake of fire at the moment.

See Walk Away