The shooter, a punk kid about 18 or 19 years old looks wide-eyed like he's just seen a ghost. Then he stammers "You're supposed to die when you get shot." And then turns and runs like a bat out of Hades.

*Blink*

Not going to be able to catch up with him, I realize after a moment when the thought of questioning him for info occurs to me.

Next plan?  Find a nearby place to hide.

Some facts occur to me.  1) Some guy I never met just tried to kill me.  This bothers me a LOT.  I did nothing to this guy, and yet....my emotions rocket from shame to guilt to a desire to hunt that guy down and cut his hands off.

2) He thought a paintball gun would kill me.  That tends to suggest the locals are significantly weaker than I am.

3)I'm in a society where killing random strangers is A-OK, or at least commonplace.  That's all kinds of bad.

GE26

If all you're doing is hiding, you're going to hide and wait and wait and wait. Nothing will happen, no cars will come by, no people will come by. You will just sit and hide until the sun sets.

So are you just hiding?

Yeah, I'm going to wait until sundown, and then start to slowly move out heading in the direction I had been, but even slower because of the dark, and because of increased caution.

I'm not sure what's going on here, but its odd for sure.

GE12

OOC) You might not remember this, but Samantha told you that she had already met you. She was 8 years old when she versed out. This could very well be her first world. You didn't like Super Samantha. How about helpless 8 year old Samantha? Let me know what you think.

The streetlights are on. It's actually fairly well lit. You don't see any shady bad guy types. But you're walking down the road. It's still a rundown, not so great neighborhood. Occasionally you pass by propaganda posters. "Be a Good Citizen. Pick up litter." The one you see most frequently though is the picture of someone being shot, with the caption "Be a Good Citizen. Five Minutes Minimum." You see that a lot. You walk for miles, you haven't found your gear yet though. But you do see a police patrol officer. A flatfoot. He's got the standard police toolbelt. Handcuffs, baton. But instead of a pistol, he has an expensive looking paintball gun. He waves friendly enough when he sees you. But when he sees the paintball stain on your shirt, he looks rather sad. In a thick Irish accent he says:

"Ah laddie, ya was murdered was ya? Did ya get a look at the fella what done ya in? And don't forget to be a Good Citizen and report that."

"Say I was not paying attention in class when the teachers went over that, in fact, I may have been sleeping, just how would I go about that?  And yes, I saw the fellow."

I try for my best gentle, accomodating humor.

OOC: Someone else would be better.

GE16



He huffs and says in his thick Irish accent "What? Did ya just fall off'n the banana boat laddie? You're supposed ta be a Good Citizen and report when ya get shot. Ya did die like you were supposed to, didn't ya laddie? All Good Citizens are required to die for at least five minutes when they get shot. Don't ya see the bloomin posters?"




OOC) Would you want to bring in anyone else at all? Every other time I've run this world, it was the first time the player met Super Samantha. I'm doing you a little bit differently. Would you another verser or not? I'm just trying to learn here. It wouldn't be Super Samantha. It would be a younger version who is eight years old. Would you prefer a male or female? Or no one at all? Remember Olivia King? The lady who owned that bow and arrow set you've got? She might show up...... Tell me what you want.

"Well, I pretty quickly sat down somewhere and stayed there most of the day."  I give him a small smile.  "And I'm reporting it to you as  you're the first authority figure I've seen.  I rather think I was in a bad part of town."

GE 8

The officer accepts your explanation and pulls out his pad and pen to take a report. He asks for a description. (Young, 18 or 19, blond male.) and he advises you not to wait next time. Saying:

"Not dying when you're shot and failing to report are both violations of the Good Citizen act. They're Punishable Offense."

And there's a very ominous tone to his voice there.

(Doing Therapy)

"Right. Well, I did, sort of, but yes, I take your point officer.  I will be more quick to the task."  I put up placating hands even as I wonder if I can get my sword out before he gets his nightstick out.

That is, if I have my sword.

OOC) Which would you rather have? An Order weapon or a Chaos weapon? And don't say it's up to me. I know it's up to me. The Second Lieutenant is asking the Sergeant Major for advice.

You don't have your sword. You have your bow. The officer keeps looking at it strangely but says nothing.

"Ya be on yer way laddie. I'll get this report in to HQ and we'll catch the murderer."

And he sends you on your way.

The scriff sense to the rest of your gear is ahead.

(Doing Therapy)

Order weapon, definitely.  In fact, probably one of my favorite weapons would be a quarterstaff.

"Thank you, officer."  I am relieved, and I turn to walk on, letting myself become composed, and then remembering to thank God.  I continue up the street, and after a few minutes remember I'm supposed to be on the watch for other 'murderers'.

Weird, weird, weird, I mutter to myself as I track down the scriff vector.  But at the same time, I kinda like it.  Its fascinating.

OOC) Your choices would be an Order hammer or a Chaos blade.



GE10
You're fine. No one else is out this late.




You find your gear in a small clearing in the woods. There's a bag full of gold, silver and gems that you got, the urine moped, your Katana that you brought from home. And whatever else you had. Give me the details of that. But you are most surprised to find among it a black iron Katana and black iron blacksmithing hammer.

The Katana is perfect for you. It's WOQ. Like it was made to fit your body. The hammerhead is round like a soup can. It looks like you could go around it with a micrometer and it would be within a thousandths of an inch all the way around. Both have ORDO IN CHAOS IN ORDINEM inscribed on the black iron. It seems Magehammer made them for you for when you decided to come back and learn to use them.

OOC) Like I said. It's an Order hammer and a Chaos blade.

(Doing Therapy)
This message was last edited by the player at 15:56, Thu 31 July 2014.

I load up my items, 'refuel' by scooter, and consider.  Evidently I'm some sort of quasi immortal being now, and have many lives instead of life now and life eternal, or being doctrinally correct, life eternal.

Hmmm, perhaps I should enquire into the state of the soul of the locals.

Survival?

Let's see what my gold or labor can bring tommorrow.  I'll rest here, and think, and pray (a bit), using my bag to lean up against (near up right), and compose my soul.  Manana at dawn will be a good time to see if I can purchase lodgings and food and water with a single piece of gold, keeping the rest hidden as noobs, which I now am tend to get robbed if they flash gold.

OOC) As far as I am concerned, Magehammer and Samantha explained versing to you. You have all of your OOC knowledge of it. Unless you feel like playing it like you don't know. But as far as I'm concerned, they told you everything you know OOC about versing. I think it's too hard to keep track of what you know and what you don't.



You did pass a couple of churches.



What about it?



GE20

So you find a place to sleep in the woods. And some hours later, you're woken by a thunderstorm. It's raining on your shelter. It's starting to leak a little.

(Doing Therapy)

OK to versing knowledge. Good point.

Churches, good.

Survival?  Just thinking of what I need to consider.

Wake up.  Grumble, grumble....try to do my best with my covering, and wait as patiently as I can in a sour frame of mind which gets occasionally interspersed by laughing at myself.

I'm tempted to sing 'rain, rain go away' but if it did that would be too freaky.

I mean, unless you Want to play it like they didn't tell you anything. Up to you. I'm just saying. I'd be cool with it either way.



Yeah, Referee wants to explore the religion of this kind of world.



Something I'd like you to answer. Why does no one like Magehammer? Krillis was the only player who ran well with him. Of course, he had the sack to physically attack Magehammer after he played a prank on Krillis. Anyone reading? Reply on the OOC thread if you would like. I'm serious. A teacher, trainer, who is willing to turn you into a Supercharacter. What's not to like? I want to learn how to run supercharacters. It's just my thing. Anyone tell me what I'm doing right or wrong?



GE 15

The rain continues for a maybe a half hour, then it stops. You get back to sleep. But you're still a bit groggy when you wake up. A large cup of coffee or a couple cans of Coke might be in order.

(Doing Therapy)

I can deal.  Although the thought of coffee...oh well.

I straighten up as best as I can, and head into the town looking for opportunities to buy food, or coffee, or lodging, or change gold to local currency, or newspapers.  Whatever comes first.

I try to be invisible, or at least non-descript, and not important.  My ideal would be 'he's big, too big to tangle with, but boring' and have people ignore me.

You have a black iron Katana and a black iron blacksmithing hammer. A Chaos blade and an Order hammer. I just wanted to make sure you were clear on that. Unfortunately you're like Ralph in The Greatest America Hero. Insanely powerful weapons and no instruction manual. Magehammer made them for you for when you came back to learn to use them.

Almost forgot. You've also got that 30-06 rifle that you found. That and 100 rounds of ammo.



GE21
Nowhere you see offers coffee. What kind of world is this? But you do see caffeinated soda for sale.



GE11
You pass by a couple of seedy looking pawn shoppes that say "We buy gold" There's your usual restaurants. McBurger, Dairy King, Burger Duke. There's hotels. Some of them rent rooms by the hour. You pass by a few trash cans that have newspapers in them. Pulling one out (probably yesterday's paper) you see the headline "Paintball violence on the rise." The story tells about how muggings and random shootings are growing more commonplace, and a call for stronger Paintball Control. And everywhere, you see the propaganda posters "Be a Good Citizen. Five minutes minimum." with the picture of someone being shot.

It strikes me that in a world where "Violent Crime" means getting shot with a paintball gun, the crime rates would be crazy high. Since no one is really getting hurt, there would be no conscience to the actions.



You pass by a couple of guys in leather biker jackets. You ever seen The Karate Kid? (The original) It's Johnny Lawrence and the Cobra Kai. When you pass by, one of them gives you a dirty look and says "Look at that freak." but they make no aggressive action towards you.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:17, Wed 06 Aug 2014.

I check the price on the soda, after wincing at the lack of coffee, and then multiply the soda price, in my head by five to get a guesstimate as to the cost of a meal.  Then I multiply that by three to get another guess as to the cost of a day's food.

Forex: Soda= $1, then meal = $5, then food for day = $15.

I think a bit and add a third to that total for $20.

I also check on the price of the hotel rooms (not by hour as that's going to give a strongly odd number of little use for my economic model), and the newspaper (if it has a price.  I can see it not having one, as being paid for by all subscribers or by a pure add supported system like local TV).

I spend about thirty minutes building my economic model of what I'm already calling World Three.

When Cobra Kai sneers at me, my fingers bunch up in fists momentarily, and then I deliberately relax them, and walk on, listening for the sound of footsteps coming up behind me.

I check if my economic model matches McBurger and Burger Duke.  Science requires experiments.

And once I think I have a handle on the economics, I go into a pawn shop with a single bit of gold in my hand, with the other stuff well tucked away.

GE15

Prices are a little bit better than you would expect. Like maybe $6 instead of $7 for a fast food meal. The hotel would be perhaps $35 instead of $45 a night. And it's in dollars. That cash you brought from home would probably be good here.


GE11

They pay no further attention to you. You were just a moment of entertainment to them. You do notice though that they're all carrying collapsible batons on their belts.



GE13
The pawn shoppe is small and quaint. It's run by a middle aged man who speaks with a Russian sounding accent. His name tag says Alex. Where you would normally see a collection of firearms, you see a collection of high end paintball guns. If you checked the gold section of the newspaper, you would see that gold was going for $1000 an ounce. Alex looks at your ounce gold bar, looks up some things in a computer, and says "I'll give you Seven-Fifty."

Worthy of note, the computer says "Manufactured by CarterTech Industries."

I smile to myself, pleased at the low prices and the relative accuracy of my model.

Hmmm, thugs have actual weapons while normal citizens carry paintball guns?  That could be a sign of a problem, like back Home where the bad guy's ran around packing and the good guy's had legal restrictions.

Umm, anarchotyranny, I think Jerry Pournelle, SF Grandmaster, called it.  Its the worst of Anarchy and Tyranny combined.  Of course, I could be overreacting, but I keep my eyes open for clues.

"Alex, I think we can make a deal." I offer my hand to shake, and give him the gold bar with the other hand.  It occurs to me I should have waited until I had cash in hand, but oh well, too late now.

CarterTech, not Apple, or Dell, or Microsoft, or even Linux?  Ok.

OOC) There's a Russian guy named Alex that runs a pawn shoppe near where I live. So that's who this guy is.

Alex hands you the cash. You notice that sitting next to the paintball guns in the display rack, there are also a number of the collapsible batons that the Cobra Kai were carrying. Alex has a paintball gun and a collapsible baton in holsters hanging from his pants belt. He asks if you're interested in purchasing either.

"We just got these paint sticks in last week."



Yup CarterTech. And it says "Scriff Inside" on the label with the CarterTech logo.

"Yes, I think so for both.  Plus I'm going to need some more ammo (for practise) and some large targets."

Make a mental note to check out CarterTech later.

GE14

Alex asks "You have a preference on color paint?"

But he hands you a paintball gun. The magazine hold 30 paintballs, a CO2 cylinder and a box of 500 paintballs. The batons might as well have been made by Nerf. They have paint canisters that go into them. The object is to paint the other person more than they paint you. There are rules of engagement to it. But it's a paint baton.

He doesn't sell targets.

Alex says "All dis come to one hunert dollars."
This message was last edited by the player at 18:05, Fri 08 Aug 2014.