Search Results: 520 messages were found

Moving silently closer to the origin of the signal, Harpalos was cautious to not gather too much attention. It was a time of war after all and that radio system was not in the most convenient of all places. He was not in a hurry however. He didn't know that he wasn't alone to study that signal. So he didnt want to rush things, and thus making a fatal mistake. While the war was between the Machines and Zion, it just happen that forces from both sides have reasons to shoot on a Merovingian ship, even if he had always been an advocate for peace.

La Crypte moved down into a tunnel entrance, going down in the Earth. He followed it in a straight line, but he panicked when he saw that the tunnel stopped abruptly. A quick look on the map of the surroundings showed him that it was simply a very sharp elbow. He had to reduce the speed of his ship greatly if he wanted to make it without crashing in the wall.

He was preparing for the maneuver while Caillech, sitting in the co-pilot seat pointed him something on the screen. "Look! The signal is coming straight from where we are!" The source of the radio signal was indeed around. So instead of taking the curve, Harpalos shut down the propulsion engines and let the ship land in the tunnel.

"Bon, we'll go see what is this..."

Harpalos and Caillech moved near the ship door. They knew they were alone around here, but they took no precautions. They took an energy rifle each. They had never used these weapons before, and Harpalos prefered things to stay like this. The door slowly opened. Rarely did they come out of the ship. After all, they had all the confort they needed there. They got off the hovercraft and started scouting the surroundings. Caillech suddenly tug Harpalos' shirt, pointing him at a small object near the wall. "Look!"

Both advanced cautiously. They saw a metallic cylinder sporting an antenna. It was firmly stuck into rubble. A small screen was attached on it. Harpalos kneel down and looked at the small characters displayed.

"A Parable Nope No Not"

He read that line out loud. "Oh, and I can input something on this little keyboard. One, two, three... Eighteen. Eighteen characters.

"Oh, an enigma! You'll probably be able to solve that easily, it's your speciality!"

"Don't be that enthusiast, honey."

They started discussing about what this could be about. Caillech gave him various possible leads, but Harpalos was too focused. This wasn't an obvious one and he had to get it.

20 minutes later, he got a flash of insight. His third one so far. He verified his hypothesis, and it made sense after all. Obvious, but not that much. And too precise to not be it.

"Hello you..."

He typed cautiously the 18 characters, making sure he didn't make any mistake. He reached for Caillech's hand, and with his other hand, hovered his finger over the Enter key. He nodded to Caillech, showing that he was confident.

******************
--Enter

"What the hell is going on!"

Harpalos was behind cover. The man that tried to ambush them surely didn't expect to see Caillech react that quickly. Anyway, both had managed to reach for their rifles. Caillech was in the open, looking toward the cylinder. Harpalos also looked in that direction and he saw the man, sitting on the ground, holding his pistol in despair. What was this cylinder? Anyway, he had to come back to it. The last thing he saw before the man appeared was the screen of the device displaying "Entry Accepted". A small mechanism had been activated and half of the cylinder was now open. He didn't know what was inside however. And one thing is certain, he didn't cross nearly half of the globe to return empty-handed, and even worse, dead because of what was still a game to his eyes.

He got up, holding pointing his rifle toward the man. Never he intended to use it, but in case of danger, he wouldn't hesitate. He did a few caution steps and signalled Caillech that he had the situation in control.

"OK, no panic. We don't want you any harm. I won't spoil any blood here today, and Caillech will do the same. My name is Harpalos. The cylinder here next to you had a sort of puzzle which I solved. So here is the plan. I take the content, get back to my ship and no one will get hurt. Once I'm away, I can even contact you to tell you what was required to open the cylinder, and tell what was in it. Sounds good?"

"Heille! Ca faire là? Câlisse, prend moi pas pour un cave."

Harpalos was boiling in rage. The man had the arrogance to call Caillech "his girl", to offer him water which was probably his own recycled urine and worst than all, he insulted his language. Harpalos was usually a calm and diplomat man, but one thing he couldn't stand for is lack of respect. And in these extremely rare times, his temper barrier could fall down. And his language filter also. What he just shouted wasn't only French, but also very crude. Enough to make Caillech wonder if he was really alright. In more than one year of common life, she never saw him pissed off like this. And he was also surprised by himself. Usually, he kept out of the trouble, indicating why he never had much reason to lose his mind, but this time, a prone opponent was verbally spitting venom at his face. He had to keep his cool or terrible things could happen.

"Sorry sir, but this cheap Merovingian accent is my native language, French. And you should know that while that program picked that language surely just for the show and to give himself an elite image of some sort, I grew with it.

Now, you've shown how disrepectful you could be and you don't deserve my pity. Anyway, in 2 minutes I'll be out of this place. You'd better start forgetting about me and this data."

He signaled to Caillech that he was over with him. Caillech aknowledged, throwing a severe look to the man. They started moving back to the ship, pointing their rifle to the man to make sure he didn't do any false move. The finally reached the hovercraft and quickly closed the door.

"Who was this man Harp? Was he crazy?"

"I don't know, but I think it's Ballak. A former Tetragrammaton member."

Ballak wrote:

(( Technically Harpalos, you never picked up what was in the machina on the ground, but it seems you're implying you have it so I'll play along. ))

((Arg... You are right. In my first version I had picked it, but since I'm allergic to power rping, I had decided to give more lattitude to others by not taking it immediately. It looks like I didn't remember about my rewriting when I wrote today's part. I'll let you decide if you want me to put it back))

Once Harpalos entered the ship, he ran to the ship's control room and started the engines. Ballak surely didn't came here on foot. His ship had to be somewhere. And he'd rather not fall into a trap. While the energy started flowing in all the circuits, Caillech sat at her copilot chair and started to look at what they found in the cylinder. A rolled up paper sheet and a disk.

"Look! Paper!"

While at another era paper was a something humans considered for granted, the reality wasn't the same anymore. Paper, like many resources, were now artifacts. Just that was a nice discovery enough, without knowing yet what was on it. Caillech unrolled it and tried to figure out what it was. Harpalos was too busy navigating to check at it, but Caillech still tried to keep him in touch.

"It's a map. I don't get it, there are coordinates and that part down here looks like a quote of some sort"

"Interesting. We'll check that later. What's on the disk?"

Caillech pulled out the data disk. It was a generic one, the kind they had tons aboard the ship to store books, programs and such. Caillech slid it into the system and waited to see the details loaded.

"Oh, it's an audio file."

"Load it into the audio program and play it."

Caillech copied the small file to a hard drive and ran the audio reading program. They quickly recognized ZaneZavin's voice, talking in a concise and authoritative way.

"You have come this far and should be proud of yourself. If you are a true adventurer you will continue this journey. This map may lead you to great things, but you will need to fill in some"

"CLICK"

Harpalos suddenly reached for the switch controlling the audio output and shut it immediately. The ship slowly came to an halt.

"I just ran a scan of the surroundings. We are not alone. I see two ships, on each side of the tunnel. Ballak's ship is on one side. And for the other, no idea. One thing is certain, the tunnel is too narrow to allow two ships at the same point. We have no choice, we must go to the opposite side from where Ballak came and face whoever is blocking the way on the other side.

And Zane, what kind of mess did you brought us into..."

The ship that was behind them stopped pursuing them. These last seconds might have been the most terrifying in Harpalos' life. La Crypte was a small ship where all the weapons systems had been replaced for some fancy communication stuff. Basically, it was totally unfit to sustain any sort of combat. Its small bulk and speed however made that it could be possible to navigate up and down, left and right to try to avoid as much gunfire as possible. He knew that the exit was close, that he didn't have much distance to reach the surface. Once there, he could fly up to the black clouds and thus be totally masked from his pursuer. However, the ship pursuing them had stopped, thus ending the dogfight. Harpalos had a breath of relief. However, the challenge wasn't over.

There was another ship, this time on the other side, nearly blocking the way. He was lucky however, the ship was taking off and slowly doing a 180, and thus, also heading outside. He had to maneuver the ship quickly. He had to transition the ship from high to low speed in a very short limit.

"Hold yourself, this might hurt!"

Inertia, even in a hovercraft, is a physic law always waiting to rear its ugly head. And well, this time they would have to experience it firsthand and suffer the discomfort of a quick transition. At least, the side-effects of inertia would be more tolerable than let's say, a full-speed collision.

Harpalos lowered the lever controlling the speed. Caillech had put her hands on the dashboard of the ship, while Harpalos firmly gripped the commands. Both absorbed the shock right, but the same couldn't be said about the gear in the ship. A cacophony of metal objects hitting the ground followed. But at least, they had made it. The ship was now following the ship in front of them, up to the surface exit. Harpalos scanned the airwaves and tried to open a communication with the other ship, to learn if it was friend or foe.

"Harpalos, captain of La Crypte. I suggest you to leave the place with haste, there's a trigger-happy machinist captain behind us. I retrieved what was hidden in this place, there's no reason to stay there."

Thanks a lot!

The "Diamonds last forever, unlike unhappy mommys" from TheHostileIntention really cracked me up.

It's a good mission, I was surprised however to learn that we had the vial finally. Maybe it should have been told more precisely that this was done by some operatives. Oh, and I got something that I found rather strange...

[Team] Bluepill: I am...somewhat impressed. For a human, you manipulate code very well.

Another cinematic taking advantages of the drawing style instead of pre-rendered 3D. I absolutely loved that one. I did like seeing the General with his real attire and not his wetsuit SMILEY

The usage of upbeat music was also a nice touch. I think that the increased level of production actually shows in this one. The usage of special effects such as lightning, fire and color palettes made it look closer to an animatrix cartoon than a paper diorama. So yeah, very very good work! I want to see more of this!

Here's the one I get :

But more troubling, here's the second one :

I don't understand...

Hum, speaking of the operator, he said something about a maintenance ship. In really recent times it's the second time that I see mentions about the logistics of non-Zion redpills, something which was rather cloudy in the past.

I've already have a problem similar to that, while taking a green hardline from the loading area.

I am still greatly ashamed of this brillant failure. The serious implications of this unexpected assault by commandos is only overshadowed by the total lack of efficiency displayed by my colleagues.

As other roleplayers from the Linenoise era, I am sad to see you two go away. Especially Dare, I'll never forget our talks during the roleplay meetings where others tried to organize themselves. The Visati will always keep its place in my memories.

Aurevoir,
Harpalos

Hey Espi, I'm not a very good sig designer (as you can see with the same sig I have even if Le Concile doesn't exist anymore), but since you're a good bad guy, I decided to sacrifice some of my precious working time to make something. Feel free to comment!

:smileytongue:

Not a big action screenshotter, but that one bring me some very fond memories. Old-school alert!

Yep, that was 7 Zionists jumping down on our roof, with one already there.

N.W.O. - Ministry

Strapping Young Lad - All Hail the New Flesh

Edge Of Dawn - The Flight

I follow the Merovingian simply because he's the only one that can provide me the kind of environment I need to evolve intellectually. Being a free mind requires you to live freely, and I need a situation where the only barriers to my freedom are the ones I set myself. Serving the exiles is the price I have to pay for my intellectual confort, and I'm ready to do it. Dealing with information is also something I'm expert in, and this is the Merovingian's speciality.

And why am I in Consequence... These are my friends and they know how important it is to hold tight. I need stability, I need to see that people around me have goals and I need the challenge faction life brings to a solitary man such as me. I'm not the typical Consequence member, more interrested in the politic side of things. But I think that having a wide spectrum of talents such as in Consequence makes us the force we are.

Dragonforce. Yuck.

Samael - Slavocracy

Deutsch Amerikanishe Freundschaft - Der Sheriff

Infected Mushroom - Becoming Insane

Eisbrecher - Phosphor

I've been in Consequence since when Linenoise died. Just to let you know, there's a place for non fighters here. I regularly get asked why someone like me would be in Consequence. Simply because I get the freedom I need, a strong group of fighters to go defend our interrests where I wouldn't, and mostly, friendly people with no hidden agendas.

Godlike - KMFDM

8 / 10

Brazil

This really sounds like an innovative idea...

I have always a book nearby, so when I'm bored I read.

Oomph! - Augen Auf

Wumpscut - Rush

Great work Traxada!

I bought my PC a bit more than one year ago to be able to play MxO. It's still the only game I play.

KMFDM - Tohuvabohu

Covenant - The Men

Truely amazing.

Eisbrecher - Adrenalin