From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: [KQ] 'Raelf [Warehouse] Just Say Gno (repost)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 18:08:01 GMT

[ADMIN]  I tried to post this yesterday and it seems to have gotten itself
hosed in transmission.  If you've seen it twice, my apologies.

JOYSTIX FACTORY LEVEL 2:
-----------------------

In summary:  Thk, freed from his captivity in the bowl of liquid
joystix drug, has come up to where 'Raelf (cosmic surfer) and
Quruuminias (an Illithid) are tied up by toon indians preparing
to barbeque them.  'Raelf is still suffering the effects of the
hallucinogen which Elstrek administered while he was distracted,
and is holding Quruuminias in place by a sort of mental reflex,
while enjoying the intense replay of all the toons that Q. has
been manifesting in his attempt to escape.  Meanwhile, Kron and
his crew have fought off the remaining guards, and Arvor has
escaped with Elstrek.  Let us hope they enjoy their encounter
with Thk Prime and the T-Crocs in the sewers below...

"SQUID FACE!!!"

"Now Thk, no need to get violent.  We can both be reasonable here."

"I'm coming for you, sssspawn of a geoduck.  Prepare to meet my
sssstomach..."

[ The mind flayer attempts to distract the enraged lizard-man by
  using telepathic attacks on his ego and his id.  ]

Thk pauses, considering.  The bottom feeder is right.  He *is* nothing
without his trident ...  leaving the safety of the swamps for the
danger of the humans with their weapons and their magicians and gods
and...what ever could have possessed him to do something so foolish
and dangerous!

~That's right Thk.  You're in grave danger, and only I can help you
and protect you now.  Untie me.  Join with me and --~

"Hey Thk!  Lighten up, Dude.  Don't take Squiddly Diddly so seriously."

[ 'Raelf watched the pretty lines of void streaming towards the
lizard man from the illithid, and twanged them to see if they would
make a noise.  No noise, but they did turn into some colorful
patterns as they vanished. ]

Thk shakes his head in confusion.  "Where, where isss the Trident?"  
He approaches and stands over the mind flayer.

~I'll take you to your Trident, Thk.  ... rant, rant, rave, etc.
rule the world, we will, etc., Luke, I am your father, rant rant ...
Just untie me first and --~

"Whoah!  Can you get a load of this guy, Thk?   Hitler step back!"
[ 'Raelf realized, deliriously, that more strings were attaching to his
  friend Thk, like puppet strings.  Pinnochio started dancing around
  the mind-flayer's body, and the strings got snarled together.  After
  a moment the puppet boy pulled a large sharp knife from the back of a
  nearby smurf, and cut all the strings.  Then he danced off, shouting
  "Papa Gepetto!  I found your knife!  Now you can carve me a ... "]

Thk bends downwards, eyeing the cartilagenous skull of the mind flayer.
He licks his lips hungrily. 

"W-what are you doing, Thk?"

"Your head.  It looks so tasssty.  And I am ssso hungry.  The Trident
can wait.  I'll find it later."

The lizard-man's lips peel back over teeth that are rather sharper and
more menacing than they usually appear, and he places them almost
gently around the top of the bound mind-flayer's head.

Quruuminias realizes that he will be eternally disgraced, having his
brain eaten by another creature, a death reserved for the most pitiful
of rejects and failures.  He begins begging abjectly, trying to pull
together enough force to get away from this plane - but the attempt
to shift out, manifests a half-dozen more of those eternally-damned
illusions...  cute little fairy horses.

"Gnarly, gdude!"  'Raelf leans forwards.  "Turnabout, huh?  Way ironic!
Hey, watch out for those tentacles.  Squiddy wants to suck face."

As Thk prepares to strike, Quruuminias slowly brings his maxillary 
tentacles up to Thk's face.  It will be a toss up as to which of the
two is faster at extracting the other's brains...

Kron steps around from behind the lizardman.  "Wait a moment.  We need
information.  If you tell us where we can find Blink, the Waster, we
will let you go free."

"Agreed.  At last, a voice of reason."  Kron's head is suddenly flooded 
with information about Blink and the Wasters' Headquarters nearby in
the Low City.  "Now, call this brute off me!"

The toons begin to vanish, as Quruuminias relaxes his plane-shift power,
no longer attempting to escape... and 'Raelf suddenly realizes he's been
drugged.  FLICK-FLICK-FLICK - he shakes his head, clearing the last traces
of hallucination, and stands, ropes gone.

Quruuminias is suddenly free, the char-marks on his robes from the imaginary
heat also vanished.  The lizard-man is still in place, though, his teeth
beginning to close, pale yellow rivulets of illithid-blood starting under
the razor points where they touch.

Kron nods.  "Let him go, Thk."

The lizardman releases his jaw, and stands back.  Quruuminias gently
massages the delicate mauve skin surrounding his cranium, then begins
to posture and pose again in an attempt to regain lost dignity.

"We shall meet again, foodbeasts.  And I shall personally suck and savour 
the tender tissues from each of your cranial cavities."

<<THREATS!  Try it, squidlips!>> is heard by him, and possibly Thk or
Kron, since they're standing close.  An invisible shove in an impossible
direction, and

* FWOOOOMP! *  The KronQuestors are knocked backwards by an implosion of
air.  And the mindflayer is no where to be seen.

'Raelf grins.  The mindflayer forgot his bag of stuff.  'Raelf grabs
it before it can be retrieved.  Bargaining power.

Then all those in the room turn as the trapdoor opens, revealing the leader
of the upstairs guards.  Maleiu imagined what he must be seeing--none of the usual
inhabitants, apart from the slaves, who were starting to arm themselves from
the bodies of the guards, and instead a lizard man, a being that looked like
he was made of stone, an armoured knight(Marcel had also regained his feet),
and half-a-dozen other formidable-looking opponents.  Not to mention a yapping
orc dog pup.

Kron breaks the silence.  "We're not the Guards or anything.  We were just
paying a friendly visit here.  Everyone else seems to have left, so we'll just
show ourselves out.  Any problems with that?"  On cue, everyone else there 
bared their teeth and raised their weapons ever so slightly.

The leader decides on prudence as the better part of valor, and decides to
attempt a long life rather than a short quick death.  Whether to retreat,
though, or show them the fast way out...

'Raelf walks over to the east wall.  Stone, reinforced, six inches thick,
a corridor behind it, four feet wide, a wooden wall, a small empty room
with things stored in it, and beyond that, a wall that touches a large
mass of air ... Shortest way out.

<<Heel, fido!>> his staff was lying on the floor where it was left after the
illusionary black girl had stolen it, with the help of her red-haired friend
in the cloak of invisibility, and the junior-league barbarian with the club,
but it had been left behind when they evaporated, and it flies through the air
to him.   <<Area effect, diameter five feet, depth six inches, earth .95 to
air, rego et transmuto>> ...  the staff touches the wall and glows amber.

A circular hole, five feet in diameter, appears.  'Raelf waves to Kron.

"Hey, dudes, we need to get out of this drug smog, lest we end up addicts
like the zwilniki at the trap door.  This way leads out."  He leaves through
the hole, making a passage leading to the outside, to an open stone stairwell
that leads up to a side street.

On the street, he offers to purge the drug from anyone who wishes, and
to heal physical injuries.  Those who accept, are advised to eat food in
mass quantities within the hour, to make the healing "take" - otherwise it
can be dispelled, which would hurt majorly.

Mental injuries he can't do much for.

----

"You're out of the woods, you're out of the dark, you're out of the night.
 Step into the sun, step into the light..."