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[LP CYOA] Spiral

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
A lock pick.

The padlock you are dealing with is not complicated. You should be able to fashion a lockpick from items you can find in the hospital. Thinking that there won’t be any need to venture far, you descend to the sixth floor to begin your search.

Still, it does bother you that you possess this knowledge. There is little you remember about yourself – you recall, vaguely, that there was a period of time where you were surrounded by books, but you can’t reconcile that faint memory with the ability to pick a lock. What were you? It would indeed be slightly distressing to discover that you had been a thief of some sort. You settle for the more comforting possibility that you are a locksmith by trade.

The sixth floor is as deserted as the rest of the hospital – somehow, it does not surprise you. The things that you need can most likely be found in a surgical ward or some similar room. Luckily enough, it does not take you long to find one.

track: room

The room has multiple trolleys and medical equipment. As you walk into the room, you notice something odd lying half-hidden behind a blue privacy screen. It’s a black object… a plastic bag? No, it’s a rather large garbage bag. You frown. It feels rather strange for hospital staff to leave a bag like that lying around. Wouldn’t it be considered unhygienic? Still, the bag is none of your concern. Turning towards the metal trolleys, you open the drawers with a softly muttered apology to the hospital for, well, stealing their instruments.

Alright, I can work with this.

You get what you need in the second drawer. A pair of fine forceps and a surgical clamp. Levering the instruments in your hands, you bend and twist them until you shape the stainless metal into something that can be used as a general purpose lock pick. For just a second, you do wonder: does it mean anything that you are familiar enough with hospital equipment to manipulate them for other uses? The thought brings about a sense of dissonance that passes quickly, as you focus on your work.

You hold up your new pick to the harsh fluorescent lights. A small sense of self-satisfaction passes over you, but it is quickly interrupted by the small, rustling noise of plastic.

The… garbage?

The lights blink. You whip around to face the source of the noise, and see a pale white hand reaching out for you. Startled, you fall back with a shriek of fear, your arms raised instinctively to ward off whatever it is that is coming for you. The unpleasant surprise causes you to lose your balance and snag yourself on the trolleys. You fall, bringing down the trolleys and the medical equipment mounted on them with a loud crash.

It takes a few seconds of you looking around wildly to realize that nothing else is going to happen. In fact, there is no garbage bag at all. You shake your head in confusion. Did you hallucinate it all? You get up hurriedly and leave the room while checking yourself for injury. You appear to be perfectly fine, except for a small, dark bruise on your forearm that you must have gotten when you fell.

As you walk down the empty hallways, however, you can’t help but feel as if there is an extra footstep shadowing yours.

***

Returning to the door, you twirl the lock pick in your hand while examining the padlock intently.

It shouldn’t take long.

You have bent one of the forceps to serve as the torsion wrench – sliding it into the bottom of the lock, you give it a twist to confirm the direction of the turn. Next, you insert the pick into the keyhole, gently searching for the pins that you are supposed to push. With this sort of lock, there should be five of them.

Click. That’s the first one raised. You repeat the process again, and the remaining four follow shortly after. You turn the forceps, releasing the padlock. Finally, you have access to the rooftop. Removing the padlock, you lock it again with the hasp released, push the door open and walk out.

track: courtyard

The first thing that hits you is how cold it is. Winter is coming. The wind is strong and you are dressed rather thinly. Shivering, you make your way across the flat roof. A light fog seems to have moved in – still, you are able to make out the lights of the city in the distance, and the moon and stars are dazzling in the night sky.

Strangely, there is a faint, rotting smell in the air. The stale hospital air did not agree with you, but you can’t really say that this is an improvement. Looking around, you note four other buildings besides this one. It looks like they are connected through short, covered walkways; from here, you can see two corridors leading to the adjacent buildings. The one on your left is lower, and leads to a large, round structure, while the one of the right is higher up and goes to a block not unlike the one you are currently on. The buildings are arranged so that they surround a large central courtyard, lit up by small yellow lamps.

After spending a while on the rooftop, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything else to do up here. You turn around to leave.

The door is closed.

Perhaps the wind blew it shut. Grabbing the knob, you turn and pull.

It’s locked.

You do remember locking the padlock before coming out here, so someone must have opened it up and locked the door again.

“Hello?” you call out, knocking on the door half-politely, half-fearfully. “Is anyone there? I’m still up here!” Your words are almost swallowed up by the wind. There is no response. Even after what must be minutes of calling for help, there is no sign of the door opening. You look around the rooftop again.

If you aren’t a locksmith, but a thief after all… maybe you are good at climbing?

***

00:30

A. The front-facing part of the building is too difficult to shimmy down especially in these windy conditions; you try your luck in getting down from the walls facing the central courtyard.

B. You try to drop onto the covered walkway to the building on your left and crawl your way across.

C. You try to drop onto the covered walkway to the building on your right and crawl your way across.

D. It’s just too risky. You would rather sit tight and wait for someone to come. If you fall, you aren’t getting away with any light injuries.
 
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Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
treave said:
Winter is coming.
:salute:

Which one of the three is safer to climb down? The walkway to the right is highest... and therefore the least dangerous, correct? How high is it? Will we break too many bones if we fall (and we probably will)?
 

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
A - climb down seven floors to the ground.
B - climb down three floors, crawl across, then up one floor.
C - climb down two floors, crawl across, then up one floor.

Of course, there's also the possibility of falling off the roof of the corridor.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Well, let no one say we don't have guts! We shall demonstrate it one way or the other.

C.
 

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
It's up to you how you estimate which path is less dangerous, but if you fall there won't be any need to worry about broken bones.
 

Akkudakku

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 17, 2014
Messages
1,125
A! We are already marked for death. In the second choice after rebirth, ah well +M

Seems that going by memories kills us. But then again what else can we do? Pump the WIS and INT stats, thats what!
 
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LWC1996

Learned
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
222
A.

I think trying to crawl across either direction in windy cold conditions is a bad idea, because of :

Tokigawa leads your little group towards the corridor swiftly: true to his claim, he knows his way around here well. The connecting corridor links the main hospital to an adjacent building. It is constructed as a metal bridge spanning the two structures – the walls and roof are made of clear, reinforced glass. Thick metal doors enclose the bridge at both ends; through the windows set into the doors, you can see the blue carpeted walkway and the exit at the other end.

And I doubt anyone can open the roof door any time soon. What if they can't find keys in the office we were just in? You gonna take a chance and die up on the roof?
 
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Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
And I doubt anyone can open the roof door any time soon. What if they can't find keys in the office we were just in? You gonna take a chance and die up on the roof?
The roof may not be locked in the first place. Read the notice again, it only references the roof of the main building:
After the incident last week, the roof of the main building is temporarily off-limits to patients. To prevent anymore unwanted cases of wandering, the door has been locked. Staff who need to use the roof may apply for permission on a case-by-case basis and obtain the key from the general affairs office on the 6th floor.
I don't believe for a second that we won't manage to find a way in if we succeed in climbing, but suppose that we do. What is there to prevent us from getting down from the walls of that building instead of the one we are currently in?

This difficulty seems largely artificial.
 

Rex Feral

Prophet
Joined
Jan 29, 2013
Messages
1,300
How about next time we ressurect we take a note down on the names of the patients. I can bet it's the other characters around here but it might be interesting to read a couple of notes on them.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
There are names of the patients?

...

Holy shit! There are documents on the people in here!
There are files and folders lined neatly inside their racks, containing forms and templates. Some are empty, but most have been filled up with patient information. None of it mean anything to you - flicking through the papers, you note that most of the patients on this floor appear to be young adults, but nothing else strikes you as being particularly out of the ordinary.
Compare it with our previous attempt:
There does not seem to be anything else of note in the files; strangely enough, they are filled with pristine forms, templates and letterheads. None of them have been used, each of the fields are empty, and there are no signs of anything having been erased from the paper at one point.
Interesting.
 

ChumBucket

Augur
Joined
May 16, 2010
Messages
349
Yeah, it's like we should have learned by now that you have hidden nuggets of important information hidden in the flavor text. :roll:

Oh well, guess I will throw in my vote now that we are semi stranded.

C
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
By the way, did anyone notice that the room we found the forceps in and where we made a mess is on the sixth floor, yet the (presumably same) room where Uehara was killed was on the seventh, directly above the nurse's office.

What that might mean is unknown, though. Maybe I am mistaken and Uehara wasn't killed in the surgical ward.
 

Rex Feral

Prophet
Joined
Jan 29, 2013
Messages
1,300
It was ChumBucket's observation. Only after he mentioned them did I check again the update.

And it' the 7th floor. Although it's noted as 6th because the ground floor is noted G
 

ChumBucket

Augur
Joined
May 16, 2010
Messages
349
Yep, Nevil, we are the first to meet the monster this time. I have no doubt we are on a clock now that we have been touched by death.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
What do you mean, 'we have been touched by death'?

The bruise on our forearm is not of unnatural origin. I don't think we would have long to live if it were. It only took us 17 minutes to become completely wrecked as the 'bruise' spread to our whole body after Amanozaki touched us.
 

ChumBucket

Augur
Joined
May 16, 2010
Messages
349
I think we were touched, and that vision was more real than our character realizes, he is just rationalizing the incident.

As for the time, I don't have many arguments refute that, but there could be other factors at play here we are unaware of. The hand might have just brushed us, which could have less of an effect than actually getting grabbed. The "Big Bad" could be weaker at this point and couldn't manifest fully. I honestly don't know. Remember treave has often used the Unreliable narrator trick on us.

Edit: And honestly I don't think we should let it affect our decions at this point anyways. We are isolated, have somewhat limited choices, and our character is not fully aware of the situation.
 
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TOME

Cuckmaster General
Joined
May 25, 2012
Messages
1,820
Do we know which of the buildings is research and imaging facility? The one where we saw the girl in same uniform as Uehara?

“…Mori-san, where is that?”

Mori squints at the screen in question – the girl is standing in the middle of a darkened hallway, hands behind her back as she rocks on her heels. After a while, she spins around and walks off-screen. There is something off about the image that you are looking at; you have a feeling that this hallway is not located in the main building. “I have no idea,” he admits after a while. “I need Tokigawa or Okuyama to confirm this, but from the looks of it, it could be one of the other buildings. There, see the lines on the wall?” He taps the glass sharply with one blunt finger.

“Y-yeah… are those… to show the way to different locations?” Though you cannot make the colours out clearly through the monitor, they appear to be different for each line, and the top-most one bends off at an intersection halfway down the corridor.

“Yes. It’s not used in the main building. I’m thinking that’s the research and imaging facility that Tokigawa spoke of. They use these as navigation guides over there,” answers Mori.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Here is the plan of the building:
We are here, on the ground floor, in the main lobby. The reception area is just over here, and a short corridor connects us to the main staircase and the lifts. Both go all the way up and down to the highest and lowest levels of the building. Beyond the lift lobby lie the hospital’s cafeteria and shop, as well as a hall that leads to the gardens in the central courtyard, which is shared by all of the buildings in the Ikei complex. If I remember correctly, the second floor has a couple of large wards, the main operating theatres, and the outpatient clinics. In this building, the third floor and above all consist mainly of standard and VIP patient wards. There is a hallway that connects to the physiotherapy building on the fourth floor, and one that goes to the specialists on the fifth floor. In the basement, a big part of the first sublevel consists of the kitchens, which also connect to the cafeteria above it. The laundry and shower facilities can also be found there. The second sublevel is where we will find the security center, maintenance rooms and service corridors.
B leads to the physiotherapy building, while C leads to the 'specialist center', wherever that is.

There is this tidbit, though:
Tokigawa’s hand is steady, and soon enough he produces a serviceable map that tells you easily where you are. As he finishes up, he says, “From here we cannot get directly to the research and imaging building or the specialist wards. The gardens would be the quickest way, but we’d have to see if the doors can be opened.”
Note the use of 'or'. Seems like 'the research and imaging building' is the large round one.
 
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