[Fic] "Trollstuck," part 8 -- Homestuck
May. 16th, 2012 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingback to part 7
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Trollstuck, part 8
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====>Go straight
You decide to start with the simplest option. The main rooms are most likely to have written records and those are what you need to find.
Also, it's really easy to get lost in the twisty passages or the underground tunnels. You could always punch your way straight up with telekinesis, but that's bad for site integrity and also cheating. Mostly you track your passage with a ball of varicolored string Alonde sent you a sweep and a half ago when you wanted to try knitting -- knitting was not a thing that worked out in any way at all, but at least the yarn is useful!
You venture down the short hallway between the food preparation block and a huge, high-ceilinged room that you think was probably a communal food consumption block. The tables are long since fallen to ash and gone, but the floor is tiled in a rough mosaic design of grain, fruit, and meat. You keep forgetting to take pictures for Sollux. You think he'd like the little bees somebody added to the picture, hovering around a bowl of flowers.
There aren't any personal signs or symbols here, though there is a line of writing in an unfamiliar alphabet over the door on the far side of the room.
Thinking about Sollux and pictures reminds you that you did bring your camera. And if Alonde can translate her Ancestor's journals, she can probably translate this, too. Unless rustbloods and seadwellers didn't speak the same language back then? That seems weird, but if they weren't part of the same empire and lived on the other side of the continent from the Great Ocean without the convenience of computers and rockets to bridge the gap, who knows how different various groups might have been!
Archaeology is so neat. Also frustrating, since so much information is suppressed or only stored off-planet because nobody thinks kids will care, but definitely neat!
====>Take a picture
You aim your headlamp upward and take a picture of the inscription. Then you walk through the door.
====>What's the next room like?
You're not sure what the next room was for. Dancing? Government meetings? Religious services? A market? It's completely empty and the décor isn't very informative. The walls are completely covered in white tiles, the ghostly effect broken only by the utter black of the ceiling and the varicolored tiles of the mosaic sigils that march around the room in three staggered rows. (Also there are niches you think might have been meant to hold lamps.)
The signs are mostly in shades of red, orange, and brown, but there are splashes of higher colors here and there. The frustrating part is that at least half the signs are shown in more than one color. A triangle with a squiggle might be picked out in orange-brown on the lowest row on the east wall, and then repeated in olive green in the second row on the north wall, and then again in muddy yellow on the bottom row on the south wall.
It's like instead of getting a symbol assigned on the basis of blood color and horn shape when they successfully won their way out of the wriggling caverns, people picked them on a whim as adults. You've even seen your own sign in teal, for gog's sake. Teal! (That's in the top row on the west wall.)
It's also in the correct color in the middle row on the east wall, right over the middle of the next doorway, with funny black arrows around it instead of more caste symbols. The first time you saw that, you thought your eyes were playing tricks on you. Then you thought it was a ghost playing tricks. Now you just think it's weird.
But not any weirder than a lot of other stuff in this site. And it's not like the other three doors don't have similar singled-out signs. The north wall has a funny thing that looks like a set of brackets and a plumb bob in lime green, the south wall has what looks like a wriggler's attempt at writing 24 in cerulean blue, and the west wall behind you has something almost like Davven's symbol in the right shade of orange, but with a jagged line through the circle instead of a simple dot at the center.
You take pictures of the doorways for Alonde, and start recording the rest of the room with the video function on your camera. You have to stop twice to shoo raptormom out of the shot; she keeps climbing the walls and licking the tiles like she thinks they might be snacks. Your lusus is not always the sharpest sword in the armory.
Eventually you think you have all the signs recorded.
The east door leads to the entrance of this hive building, which is completely blocked by meters of hardened volcanic ash. The north door leads into the maze of twisty passages, all alike. The west door leads back to the food consumption block. You haven't been through the south door yet; someone locked it before fleeing from the volcano, and there are plenty of open rooms to explore in this town.
Which way will you go?
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Note: remember that going back to the kitchen includes the option of going through a tunnel into another building altogether, as well as the option of entering the maze of twisty passages, all alike, via a different doorway. (The choice of entrance might or might not be relevant.) Also remember that Aradia is telekinetic. Locked doors are not a huge issue. :-)
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continue to part 9
You're stuck being Aradia for at least one more section, maybe two. (It depends on which direction you pick and how the writing goes.) After that, other options open up. *grin*
Also, FYI, I have decided that the inhabitants of this nameless town were killed largely by a pyroclastic surge one day after the initial eruption of the volcano. (In other words, they baked. Very rapidly.) The town was then buried over the next several days. The reason Aradia is not finding any carbonized organic material is that minor earthquakes over the subsequent millennia broke the seal over the town and let some air in, which apparently disintegrates that type of remains very fast. The reason she can move around inside the hives is that Alternian construction of that era was A) very solid and B) designed to be completely light-proof during the day, and since the pyroclastic surge happened around noon, all the doors and windows were shut so hardly any ash got in.
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Trollstuck, part 8
---------------------------------------------
====>Go straight
You decide to start with the simplest option. The main rooms are most likely to have written records and those are what you need to find.
Also, it's really easy to get lost in the twisty passages or the underground tunnels. You could always punch your way straight up with telekinesis, but that's bad for site integrity and also cheating. Mostly you track your passage with a ball of varicolored string Alonde sent you a sweep and a half ago when you wanted to try knitting -- knitting was not a thing that worked out in any way at all, but at least the yarn is useful!
You venture down the short hallway between the food preparation block and a huge, high-ceilinged room that you think was probably a communal food consumption block. The tables are long since fallen to ash and gone, but the floor is tiled in a rough mosaic design of grain, fruit, and meat. You keep forgetting to take pictures for Sollux. You think he'd like the little bees somebody added to the picture, hovering around a bowl of flowers.
There aren't any personal signs or symbols here, though there is a line of writing in an unfamiliar alphabet over the door on the far side of the room.
Thinking about Sollux and pictures reminds you that you did bring your camera. And if Alonde can translate her Ancestor's journals, she can probably translate this, too. Unless rustbloods and seadwellers didn't speak the same language back then? That seems weird, but if they weren't part of the same empire and lived on the other side of the continent from the Great Ocean without the convenience of computers and rockets to bridge the gap, who knows how different various groups might have been!
Archaeology is so neat. Also frustrating, since so much information is suppressed or only stored off-planet because nobody thinks kids will care, but definitely neat!
====>Take a picture
You aim your headlamp upward and take a picture of the inscription. Then you walk through the door.
====>What's the next room like?
You're not sure what the next room was for. Dancing? Government meetings? Religious services? A market? It's completely empty and the décor isn't very informative. The walls are completely covered in white tiles, the ghostly effect broken only by the utter black of the ceiling and the varicolored tiles of the mosaic sigils that march around the room in three staggered rows. (Also there are niches you think might have been meant to hold lamps.)
The signs are mostly in shades of red, orange, and brown, but there are splashes of higher colors here and there. The frustrating part is that at least half the signs are shown in more than one color. A triangle with a squiggle might be picked out in orange-brown on the lowest row on the east wall, and then repeated in olive green in the second row on the north wall, and then again in muddy yellow on the bottom row on the south wall.
It's like instead of getting a symbol assigned on the basis of blood color and horn shape when they successfully won their way out of the wriggling caverns, people picked them on a whim as adults. You've even seen your own sign in teal, for gog's sake. Teal! (That's in the top row on the west wall.)
It's also in the correct color in the middle row on the east wall, right over the middle of the next doorway, with funny black arrows around it instead of more caste symbols. The first time you saw that, you thought your eyes were playing tricks on you. Then you thought it was a ghost playing tricks. Now you just think it's weird.
But not any weirder than a lot of other stuff in this site. And it's not like the other three doors don't have similar singled-out signs. The north wall has a funny thing that looks like a set of brackets and a plumb bob in lime green, the south wall has what looks like a wriggler's attempt at writing 24 in cerulean blue, and the west wall behind you has something almost like Davven's symbol in the right shade of orange, but with a jagged line through the circle instead of a simple dot at the center.
You take pictures of the doorways for Alonde, and start recording the rest of the room with the video function on your camera. You have to stop twice to shoo raptormom out of the shot; she keeps climbing the walls and licking the tiles like she thinks they might be snacks. Your lusus is not always the sharpest sword in the armory.
Eventually you think you have all the signs recorded.
The east door leads to the entrance of this hive building, which is completely blocked by meters of hardened volcanic ash. The north door leads into the maze of twisty passages, all alike. The west door leads back to the food consumption block. You haven't been through the south door yet; someone locked it before fleeing from the volcano, and there are plenty of open rooms to explore in this town.
Which way will you go?
---------------
---------------
---------------
Note: remember that going back to the kitchen includes the option of going through a tunnel into another building altogether, as well as the option of entering the maze of twisty passages, all alike, via a different doorway. (The choice of entrance might or might not be relevant.) Also remember that Aradia is telekinetic. Locked doors are not a huge issue. :-)
---------------------------------------------
continue to part 9
You're stuck being Aradia for at least one more section, maybe two. (It depends on which direction you pick and how the writing goes.) After that, other options open up. *grin*
Also, FYI, I have decided that the inhabitants of this nameless town were killed largely by a pyroclastic surge one day after the initial eruption of the volcano. (In other words, they baked. Very rapidly.) The town was then buried over the next several days. The reason Aradia is not finding any carbonized organic material is that minor earthquakes over the subsequent millennia broke the seal over the town and let some air in, which apparently disintegrates that type of remains very fast. The reason she can move around inside the hives is that Alternian construction of that era was A) very solid and B) designed to be completely light-proof during the day, and since the pyroclastic surge happened around noon, all the doors and windows were shut so hardly any ash got in.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 04:47 am (UTC)hee worldbuilding!
Oh, those signs she found over the doors. *_*
EXPLORE THE DOOR WITH YOUR SIGN???
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 04:55 am (UTC)====>Explore the door with your sign
You walk through the east door. This leads to a small antechamber with several closets and a lot of hooks on the walls, probably for hanging coats. You think the rows of ash on the floor along the walls might have been shelves for boots. A massive set of double doors is painted with a flaking mural of the landscape surrounding the buried town: the ocean, the fields, and the volcano in the distance, looking green and peaceful under the light of exaggeratedly large stars.
You cannot open the doors; they are blocked by many cubic meters of solidified volcanic ash. You wonder what used to be outside them. Fields? A stone plaza? A street and then another building? There is no way to tell.
You sigh. Raptormom butts your leg and then nuzzles your hand when you reach down to scratch the base of her horns.
You turn and go back to the strange room with all the symbols.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 05:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 05:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 03:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 12:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 10:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 07:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 10:31 pm (UTC)====> Enter the door marked by the scratched version of Davven's sign.
====> Examine horrifying artwork. (Sweet troll Jegus, is that puppet pornography? And why are all the trolls dressed as hoofbeasts?)
====> Attempt to appreciate irony of troll "high culture" apparently having been strongly influenced by a lowblood.
====> Fail, due to extreme shock and disgust.
====> Abscond.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-17 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 01:04 am (UTC)Also, if the above scenario is indeed a thing that could happen, would Aradia stumbling across the Demoness's quarters (unless I'm mistaken, the room with her sign wasn't actually the Demoness's room, but the entry chamber to the building she's currently in or something of the kind) in her
panicked flightentirely reasonable tactical retreat be stretching the bounds of believability?(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 02:27 pm (UTC)