TSH #368 • Down

[Monocheres]

Ouch! That's gotta hurt...

Try not to let it get you Down, folks, but it looks like our surviving adventurers aren't going to be surviving much longer ... unless perhaps some deus ex machina (or at least some machina ex deo) comes to their rescue pretty darn quick!

I wonder: Those translucent, ethereal, symbolic disks floating about ... are they the equivalent of billboards left behind by the Ascended? Or are they ... the Ascended themselves?

[Wizard CaT]

They do have repair machines. While violent and hurtful they should be able to make a recovery, even from the impact.

[Skatche]

They do have repair machines. While violent and hurtful they should be able to make a recovery, even from the impact.

Not if their brains (or Jellese-equivalent systems) end up splattered across half the Pod.

This last impact doesn't look too bad, since most of their momentum is vertical. Probably just broke a few bones. It's the next one that'll kill 'em.

[Ashes]

They do have repair machines.

Do they? Weren't the medical repair beds inside the part of the mover they ejected from? The city they're crashing into doesn't look bustling either. There's no ambulances flying around with portable medical beds.

[Monocheres]

The city they're crashing into doesn't look bustling either.

Not corporeally bustling, no. Indeed, in terms of solid, tratonic life-forms, it appears down-right abandoned. But it may in fact be positively packed with electanically-based Ascended entities. I am still speculating on what those floating discs are. And notice how everything seems to be blurry, how the pod appears to be plowing through mist. Is that some manifestation of the presence of the Ascended as well?

[Dan]

I wonder: Those translucent, ethereal, symbolic disks floating about ... are they the equivalent of billboards left behind by the Ascended? Or are they ... the Ascended themselves?

Er, this looks likea MinYan city, just like we'd expect from the time given in Pastel.

[Skatche]

The city they're crashing into doesn't look bustling either.

Not corporeally bustling, no. Indeed, in terms of solid, tratonic life-forms, it appears down-right abandoned. But it may in fact be positively packed with electanically-based Ascended entities. I am still speculating on what those floating discs are. And notice how everything seems to be blurry, how the pod appears to be plowing through mist. Is that some manifestation of the presence of the Ascended as well?

(a) It's motion blur, not electanic interference.
(b) It's smoke from the mover, not mist.
(c) I think it far too limiting to assume that the Ascended still live in Tryslmaistan and not in some kind of Utopian pocket universe.

[Wizard CaT]

They do have repair machines.

Do they? Weren't the medical repair beds inside the part of the mover they ejected from? The city they're crashing into doesn't look bustling either. There's no ambulances flying around with portable medical beds.

The beds are pointless, they just inject the machines into you. The machines I'm talking about are internal, and in a place like Tryst give you physical immortality.

[InterNutter]

There was that life-raft thing that inflated when the sphere separated. Maybe that's meant to cushion hard landings? And with that large profile, it's almost guaranteed to find the bottom before any smaller, lighter survivors.

...right?

I say 'almost' because there's a possibility it might be 'sideways' to linovection and thus be lighter than expected. Never forget the Fuck-up Factor.

[Skatche]

And with that large profile, it's almost guaranteed to find the bottom before any smaller, lighter survivors.

That's a good point. Except that, since it's not much smaller than the Pod itself, our heroes probably got caught underneath as it descended. Oops!

[Coda]

Perhaps the cushion uses some trick of physics (or even something as simple as a peg sliding in a groove) to make sure it slides around the perimeter of the pod rather than falling straight down.