The snake-like creature was long and thick, but it wasn't moving particularly fast.   Punching Bag dashed it's head against the rocks, sending the creature into a whirling frenzy of activity as it tried to get out of his grasp.  It gyrated and spat, making a high keening sound until, mere moments later it--literally--exploded.

Thousands of tiny black shards rained down on him covering his shoulders and head, some even getting into his mouth.   There was a momentary--visceral--ick factor, as Punching Bag felt thousands of tiny creatures skitter over and around and off of him.

A wave of darkness sloughed off scattering in all directions--most of which advanced toward the thing in the cave.

--
Kevin was a good "thirty feet" from the cave entrance. Close enough to the snake...  Did you want Punching Bag to have closed the distance?  That's a full move-action, but well within his capability.  I'm reading it that you're taking the snake on this round, so it's not a multi-attack....

Not so much a direct attack this round, but the effect is sufficiently creepy and most people have the whole knee-jerk reaction when suddenly being covered by a swarm of insects or (in this case) spiders... Please roll Will against an Affliction, DC15.  It's only got one rank: Dazed, to represent the initial shock,  In this case, it's a sustained attack so long as there are a lot of spiders all over him.  But, I just don't see it lasting beyond a single round.

Yeah, I'm using this to refamiliarize myself with combat...  It's been, well, since last time we played together.

3 ranks damage, enough for it to dissolve the snake-form.

“What the frak?!”The ex-wrestler certainly did not expect the snake to pop like a water balloon into hundreds of spiders all over him. He kept his cool though. Staring down guys that could punch holes into concrete helped build up mental fortitude. There was no way he could squash them all one at a time. Instead Punching Bag raised both fists into the air and bright them down into the ground like a pair of atomic sledgehammers sending rock and dirt flying in all directions squashing the spiders against his body or sending them flying in decimated pieces. A thirty meter radius crater was left underneath him. He looked up quickly to see what the bear was doing.

13:50, Today: Punching Bag rolled 22 using 1d20+8.  DC 15 will save against spiders.
Move: none
Action: use Double Hammerfist attack (Strike 5: Burst) DC 22 Dodge roll to avoid

OOC: Not giving the snake/sider thing a dodge attempt on this.  It doesn't have the foresight to anticipate this attack, let alone take action to avoid it...

The crash of Punching Bag's thunderous move reverberated across the park, and debris--spider and rocks and water and dirt, branches, etc... all of it went flying.

What followed was an eerie stillness, as if the entire area was holding it's breath.

But the bear was nowhere to be seen.   It couldn't have moved that quickly, and the cave was small enough that it didn't look like there was any place further back to go.


There was shouting from down below. Ranger Papados called up.  "Sweet Jesus!  Are you okay?"

The crater Punching Bag created with his attack was starting to fill with water as he was close enough to the stream-bed that it's sudden manifestation had altered the course of the water.

Water would always seek the path of least resistance.  And this appeared to divert the stream to the south a little, to follow the public path up to the top...

Kevin shook his head. “Where did that damn bear go? Did it teleport or turn invisible? Was it just an illusion by the snake thing?”He flung some of the dust and debris into the cave to see if it collided with something he couldn’t see. As long as that wasn’t the case, he waved down at the ranger. “I’m okay. How is the guy down there? Did you see the bear run away somewhere?”

Punching Bag then used his super speed and increased strength to gather the debris and filled the hole back up packing it down as best he could. Really hope they blame the bear on this instead of me.

"Nothing came down."  But Jesus, half the hillside shook." Papados called up. "Was that it hitting you or you hitting it?  I... I don't think that was a bear.  Bear's can't do that kind of damage."

He didn't say it in such a way that it was an accusation.  More a dawning awareness that this was something well outside the Parks & Conservation Officer's regular duties.   "I'm going to have to close the park down for now.  Issue a warning to the city..."

Abruptly, there was startled shouting to the East.  probably far enough beyond the trees, that it was coming from the residential area bordering the park.   If that bear--or whatever it was--got out of the park... who know what it would do.

Kevin nodded to the ranger. “Agreed. Please close the park. I’ll try to find the thing as it sounds like it may have ran outside the park.”Punching Bag then decided to leap through the air to the East where the shouting was coming from. Getting up in the air might give him a better vantage point of looking for the bear before he lands. If he spits the bear, he goes for the tackle.

Jumping through trees is never as pretty as it sounds  There's all those... branches.  and once in the air, it's just not that easy to control where you land.  With enough height, he might get a good cross-breeze.  But without sufficient wind-resistance to control the fall...  If he landed on a house or power-wires or... well anything, he was big enough that he could possibly do some more property damage.

This is color and narrative insight.  I'm not looking for any roll or anything.  Just looking for an excuse to write potential damage he does in the course of things.  I'm actually put in mind o f the damage the Tick does when he jumps from building to building.  And that makes me laugh, too. Yeah, this world needs a "Damage Control" contractor's sector.  Definitely.

After a few jumps--mercifully with minimal damage, he spotted an anomaly from his aerial reconnaisance.

He ended up in the backyard of one of the properties bordering the park area.  It was a wide well-tended yard for a large one-storey rancher style home.  There appeared to be a party of some sort going on, with perhaps two dozen people. There was a couple of foldable tables set-up and there appeared to be paper plates and cake and drinks set-up.  Music from the fifties was playing, though Punching Bag couldn't locate the source.

Most of the people there were old; several were in wheelchairs, and there were a handful of young women and men, all in pale pastel-colored scrubs.   Nurses or health-care practitioners.

One of the men in scrubs stood in front of the group while something...a man or woman, Punching Bag couldn't tell... seemed to be crawling along the grass--from out of the treeline.   It looked like it was a burnt husk, blackened and grotesque, twisted, with it's flesh roiling and writhing...


Definitely a woman, though.  Definitely not a bear.  She had long slender legs, thick buttocks tapering to an insanely tiny waist.  Broad shoulders though and a thick mass that might've been hair... also writhing, also moving.  But, then, he'd seem Gagamba's hair do that, too.

"Jose!" someone called.  "Be careful. Sonoma, Melissa.  Fetch some blankets.  We're going to need an ambulance!"  The woman giving orders sat in a wheelchair at  the center of the crowd, with an unopened brightly-colored box in her lap.

"Easy..." Jose, the young man approached the woman crawling out from the trees.   "Easy." Jose stepped closer.  "Can you talk?  What's your name?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:21, Wed 20 July 2022.

Kevin rushed to stand between the woman thing and the other people holding out his hand to signal them to stay. “Everyone stay put. This is a very dangerous creature that has already injured a hiker in the park. It seems to mimic things it sees and hears. Don’t get close. I have a surgeon on speed dial to help it if needed. I will capture this creature and get it scanned for a medical diagnosis.”He stood his ground and took the wrestlers stance awaiting the creature’s approach.

The humanoid form  got to it's knees, but couldn't seem to maintain the balance necessary, and it fell forward.

Kevin noticed that where it fell, it lost cohesion, separating into a thousand insects or spiders, or... well, somethings.  It had a face that it maintained and it seemed almost as if it was screaming, trying to articulate, but it made no sound, only the faintest of scritching noises of pincers on pincers, tiny legs rubbing against tiny carapaces.

It tried to press forward. And Jose  wasn't backing away.  "She needs help, man!"  Jose said.  "She's all burnt and shit.  She's in pain!"

The woman in the wheelchair must've been in her seventies or eighties.  She was thick-set but with a square jaw and stark white hair, surprisingly thick.  She looked dour, with thin-pressed lips that suggested Russian descent. "You.  Young man!  What does it want?"

Jose looked back at the woman holding the birthday present.  The intensity of her gaze made him stop moving forward.  Jose glanced at Punching Bag.  "What did it do to the hiker?"

Kevin kept its eyes on the creature and himself between it and the party people. “I don’t know what it wants yet. The thing seems to be a collection of spiders or insects trying to conceal themselves as a colony inside a form it has seen. As far as the hiker goes, it ripped most of the muscle off his leg before he could see what happened. Maybe it’s hungry? Is there any meat here that we can toss at it to see if it will eat it?”

A look passed between Jose and the old woman.  Then--Kevin noted it--there was almost imperceptible nod from the old woman.     She was the one in control here.  Not dictatorial, but authoritarian?

Jose took a step back, raised both hands.  "Okay."  He said and backed up a step. "Muscle.  So, like, protein.   Hey, Garcia, Andrea.   Bring out a bunch of hot-dogs.  THe real ones, not the veggie-dogs."

"Wait,"  one of the old women looked up.  She had a delicate piece of unfinished lace-work--stunning detailed work--in her hands.  "You had veggie-dogs?"  Her question ended on an up-note, annoyance and suspicion obvious in her tone.

"No, mama-san.  It's not like that." one of the nurses in lavendar scrubs sat down hurriedly. "You know how much sodium they have.  And what that will do to you!  We knew if we told you, you'd,... well, <I>you'd get all upset.  Like right now.  Let's go in and see what we can find.  Maybe some oat-cakes?"

"Poppycock!" the woman shot back.  "I want a veggie-dog.  If I can't have real meat, at least I can have real fake meat!  I'm going to be dead in a month or two anyway.  What's a little sodium going to do, eh?"

And while they were arguing, another of the staff came out with a big pot of heated water, and sheaf of butcher's paper with raw bratwurst still inside.   He handed it off to Jose.

Jose took unnecessarily elaborate steps to grab bag of raw bratwurst from the other guy's arms.   He motioned with his head and the big guy put the pot down on the grass beside Jose.   Several bratwurst dogs bobbed in the hot water within.

The swarm-form surged forward toward the pot, but stopped within inches.  It reached out with an arm, the shape of muscles twitching, fingers clenching and unclenching.    It lifted it's head forward, and cried--a pitiful scream of denial.


"Madre de dios!" Jose said low under his breath.  and he stepped back reflexively.

Kevin slowly stepped forward and fished one of the brats out of the water and laid it on the ground in front of it. He suspected that perhaps it was the hot water that it was scared off. Hopefully, it would be ok with processed meat instead of human meat.

Despite the near-boiling water, Kevin fished out a hot-og.

The swarm surged forward, tentatively at first, then, after a few moments, completely covering the bratwurst.  In the process, it lost it's vaguely humanoid form and was only a mass of crawling, black and brown and red.

Tendrils from the main mass also extended to the bag of raw bratwurst that Jose had dropped.  It was a thinner tendril, more hesitant.

"Jose."  the old woman in the wheelchair called again. "I think it would be a good idea to get everyone inside.""

Jose looked torn between his duty to the senior's residents and his fascination with the mass of creepy-crawly things.

"It doesn't look..." Jose said, slowly, uncertainty painted on his face.  "They're not all spiders.  I see centipedes." he glanced over at Kevin.  "This thing's conscious?"

Kevin nods. “Looks like it on a very basic level. Is there any other meat available? Hopefully it can be appeased and transported to a more secure facility. Do you have anything like a giant jar? I will compensate you for it.”

Jose left and returned shortly, while the other orderlies and care attendants arranged a surprisingly well orchestrated  move of the party-guests inside.  The old woman was among the last to go, as she was clearly the one calling the shots.  Resident or not, even the care attendants deferred to her.


The clutter of creepy-crawlies devoured the hot meat first, then the chilled meat.  Protein, it seemed, was protein.  And it might've been Kevin's imagination, but the clutter did seem to be thickening or getting larger.  But it didn't seem to  be acting aggressively.

After a couple of minutes, Jose returned, but this time he carried a very large stainless steel pot.  Probably the largest they had on-site.  Kevin would guess that they probably had a dozen residents staying in the building, so it was likely from an smaller industrial kitchen.

Jose stood there, pot in hand, flushed and eager to assist.  But, the question remained... how exactly did you capture that many insects or spiders?

The wrestler knew that if he tried to grab it the mass would just pop like last time. He had to trap it somehow. Kevin grabbed the big metal pot and lid from the man and smeared pieces of hamburger all around the inside covering as much surface area as possible. He laid the pot on its side holding one of the handles with his left hand and the metal lid with his right. It was like luring a cat into a carrier with a piece of fish before you took it to the vet. Deep down inside though he thought. No way this will actually work.

The mass had shrunken somewhat and seemed, if anything, less frenetic.  The protein seemed to be a strong motivator.

The main mass had separated into two distinct pools, around the hot and the frozen meats.  But in the end... they were ants and spiders and centipedes etc, picking away at the bratwurst bits.   It didn't happen quickly.

Or, rather, it happened quickly compared to ants and spiders and centipedes, but not at all quickly compared to human expectation.  At the rate the swarms were going it would be nearly a minute to devour each bratwurst.  Time enough to scoop most of the swarms up, one by one...

Jose even provided a couple of enormous soup-spoons from the kitchen, then he had the idea and ran off for a couple of minutes, returning with a shop-vac and an extension-cord...

After that, it was pretty straight forward.

One thing Kevin did notice was that as they ate, the swarms seemed to become less active, less busy.  Much of the size and mass of the swarms had also shrunk over the time,  eventually, revealing that each swarm appeared to have a small cluster of tightly-knit spiders at their core... spiders that were a distinct emerald green color...

So... what do you do with that?

Honestly, I couldn't think of a way to model this with a dice-roll and I didn't really see much drama in it.   I've established what I want with this scene and it will be important later on in the game.  But for now... Call it a success...  You've succeeded at this mission and you get the hero-point for it.

So, assuming you've got the swarm-queens and a sizable portion of the swarm... what do you plan to do with them?

We don't need to RP this out.  But I still wanna know what the plan is, so I can background stuff appropriately.

Kevin realized from his observations that feeding the swarm calmed them down and caused them to reduce in size. The cluster of emerald green spiders seemed to be the core of what they were. They had to be some sort of hive mind in order to function as they do. He decided that it would be best to gather them up with plenty of food to keep them occupied for a time and deposit them into one of the air tight specialized holding cells back at the base for further study. An expert would need to be called in.

After packing up the swarms, Kevin walked to the backdoor of the house where most of the people had gathered to watch what was going on. “Thank you everyone for staying calm and assisting me in this situation. The threat has been pacified and will be stored in a secure area for further study please go about the rest of your day. I would suggest that you keep this to yourselves as we don’t want people thinking that every little ant they see is a threat. Thank you and have a great day.”In particular, he shook the hands of the man and old lady in the wheelchair for their part in the encounter.

I am so sorry to have let this draq.  Let's give you something to do...  It's a little bity of filler, but I figure we'll wrap up some loose ends, and if it goes elsewhere... so be it.

Containing a cluster of spiders inside a massive soup-pot wasn't particularly easy, because there's nothing graceful about it.    The walk back to the car was certainly made quicker by Kevin's enhanced physiology, but still.

By the time he got there, there were a half-dozen more parks & recreation vehicles and a handful of police-cars as the southern portion of the park was being cordoned off.  Public access to the seawall walkways was still being allowed, but anything further inland was being evacuated.

There was an ambulance on-site, and the woman that had been with the hiker was standing with a cel-phone outside of an ambulance.  Presumably the guy with the avulsed leg was within.  Commando-guy was nowhere to be seen.  Given the presence of an automatic weapon it was probably safer for everyone that way.

A trio of individuals dressed in full-on hazmat suits trudged up the path Kevin had first followed to get to the mouth of the stream.

It wouldn't be long before the media would probably also arrive.

Ranger Papados was in consultation with two city parks types, and he waved Kevin over.  "A... soup pot?"  he asked, clearly uncertain whether he should be amused or concerned.

Kevin nodded and held up the pot for him to listen to. “Caught the nasty buggers in the backyard of a residential neighborhood not far from the park. They’re some sort of meta strain of arachnids and insects. There are the three main colonies of emerald green spiders in here. They seem to come together as a sort of hive mind when they are hungry in search of food. They mimic other things they have seen and heard. I was able to lure them in the pot with hot dogs and hamburger meet before crimping the metal lid down. They are trapped in here for now. Do we have an environmental management branch here that can handle meta-enhanced wildlife?”

Papados seemed nonplussed.  "Hot dogs and hamburgers?"  He repeasgted. "These things like basic barbecue?  Yeah, tell me that's not weird...."


He talked as he walked, clearly guiding Kevin away from many of the other folks.  "We might have another angle on thing.   There was a briefcase inside the cave.  Held a bunch of vials.  Test-tubes with a a green liquid inside them.  SA couple of the tubes had broken and it was leaking into the ground and water.  That's why the hazmat team.  Do you think it's possible these spiders were normal and were somehow turned into this... hive-mind thing?"


It was entirely possible.  In fact, this would entirely corroborate Marcus' (And the AI Archie's) conjecture that the animal activities here were related to Exalt.

"Anyway, I'll make some calls, Animal control has to have something set up for containment of invasive species.   Maybe Woodland Park or one of the universities can take them on-board...  I know Mars Tech has been looking into self-contained environment for their private space-program." Papados shook his head.   "Can you hold on to these things for a day?  Or even a few hours?  Or are they dangerous enough that it needs to be turned over right away?"

Punching Bag shouldered the pot and shook his head.“I’ve got someplace I can keep them in the meantime? Do we know where the water system under the park leads? Into the lake or the public water system?”Kevin would just store the pot in one of the nullifying cells in the base back home. Even with the creatures being so small individually, it would be air tight enough to where they couldn’t escape.

Okay, I'm so much not a fan of an established "nullifying" effect.  I'll discuss that in the OOC thread.  But an airtight or porous but micro-mesh containment would be sufficient.  It'd be easy enough to devise something.  Just bring it back to Marcus and Sam, and they'll get it set up.  This nicely sets up something for down the road...

The source is a natural spring.  Papados would explain that the little stream ultimately lets out into the ocean.  In it's dosage, it's unclear how much of a threat this might pose.   But City Parks and Washington Department of Natural Resources ill probably have it in hand.  The stream does not feed into the city water systems.

PB gives a salute to the ranger and takes off back to base where hopefully the veterans can devise a containment room for these little buggers. He was able to make a temporary one out of a big metal pot. Surely with their resources they could make something more long term.