Mercade's Terrible, Horrible, Lousy, Rotten, No-Good, Absolutely Bad Day - Part 1
| Mercade's Terrible, Horrible, Lousy, Rotten, No-Good, Absolutely Bad Day - Part 1 | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 11 December 2012 |
| Location: | Dalamascan Sands |
| Synopsis: | Mercade is dropped out of Darkness into the middle of the desert. This is just the beginning of a very bad day. |
| Cast of Characters: | Mercade Alexander |
Mercade fell through darkness.
The only way out of the Casino GOLD was through Darkness, from the realm of the Shadow Lord and into the world beyond. No one knew where the Casino really lay. And this is why he fell. Because despite the sorrow and anger in his heart, he did not draw upon it. His heart still belonged to the Light, so the Corridor could not support him. The detective fell from darkness, into darkness, eventually coming to a sudden, painful halt in cold, gritty sand.
Cold, perhaps, was the wrong word for it. It lacked warmth, but there was something about it that chilled the bones more than temperature would indicate. Mercade idly wondered what it be, as he cleaned his face, and then looked up to see the Tower.
The tower was as black as pitch, a massive finger striking up from the dunes. The lined were gradually ridged, the design ancient in appearance. It did not seem to suffer from exposure to the eternal desert wind, standing in stark defiance. It rose to pierce the heavens as if to challenge the Gods themselves. Impenetrable and foreboding. the edifice loomed over him, uncaring, a silent sleeping thing that did not acknowledge his existence. It existed here ages before him, and would exist ages after. He stood in the massive, terrible shadow that it cast, the Tower blotting out the sun as it passed in a horrible eclipse.
Mercade scrambled to his feet, kicking up sand and rock as he looked around. The entire area beyond the Tower was barren dunes as far as the eye could see. And he had no idea where the hell he was. His groan was dutifully absorbed and ignored by the desert sands. Without a better idea of where to go, the incredibly ominous tower appears to be his safest bet.
The sun beat down with a devilish heat upon Mercade as he walks around the base of the massive tower. The distance was deceptive... Or perhaps his mind simply rejected the idea of an edifice so mind-bogglingly huge. It took over an hour from where he landed to just get to the base. He walked around the edge, his hand trailing on the oddly smooth stonework as he looked for an entrance. Some time later, he found it, a massive door, framed with ancient runes - no doubt from an ancient race, long gone to the sands. He looked from the steps, out over the sand. His experience with desert showed him a few tiny motions under the sand... predators, no doubt, waiting for something to walk near.
He then realized, with a shiver, that there were none of the kind beneath the shadow of the great tower. Slowly, he looked back to the entryway, weighing his options... But the door stood open, inexplicably. The gaping maw promised shelter from the overwhelming heat... At least for now. The possibilities of useful salvage also weighed on his mind.
He judged it unlikely that there were anyone inside alive... That thought failed to salve his thoughts, however, as he entered the Tower.
The interior of the Tower was even more alien, if it were possible, than the outside. He could understand the tan-colored stone. It resembled some types of granite he’s seen before, but it was far more durable. He couldn’t even scratch it with the penknife he kept on hand. The walls were irregular, carved in complex paths with deep holes and crevices lining it. Metal doors separated each area, in gleaming, unblemished steel and incised with ancient letters. The floor was no different, with strange, curved lines that create unusual patterns that he has never seen before that spreads through the area.
Mercade stepped inside carefully, wary of hidden traps. He looked over the doors, the floors, the ceiling. There was no sign of movement or activity. Nothing he could salvage. The entire area was spotlessly clean, without even a trace of dust. This only increased the foreboding as he moved from room to room, the massive halls echoing with his footsteps.
He entered a hall with a large, spiraling ramp to the next floor. Mercade looked up at it, considering what kind of people could possibly have made such a place, and put a foot on the bottom edge of the ramp.
And then everything went to hell. From deep within the holes, small, spider-like robots emerged, a single baleful eye staring at him, They began swarming en masse as they poured out of the walls... But those were not the most terrible. Panels opened up, revealing larger, humanoid machines, their monoptic searching and locking onto him as they raised weapon-arms towards him.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a terrifying sound came from above, a crackling, grating laughter as dry as ancient autumn leaves. Mercade pulled his only weapon, a pearl-handled stage revolver supplied by an erstwhile ‘benefactor’... But he only had six bullets. What could he do against this horde? Mercade chose to do the most sensible thing.
He ran like hell. He leaped over an incoming cluster of spidery robots, beams of scorching light punching holes in his coat. Burning pain lances through his body as the lasers cut light wounds into his body, but he’s still going to reach his target. He hits the nearest battle robot with his body, and he hammers that bright monoptic with the handle of his gun, shattering the lens as he grapples it. He twists around, pointing the robot at a second one. The laser fires from the blinded robot, coring a second one. He doesn’t stick around, immediately releasing the robot amidst a hail of deathbeams, using the blinded bot for cover as he tries to outpace the spiderbots to get to the door.
Amazingly, it wasn’t locked. Mercade doesn’t question his luck as he bursts out through the halls. Everything becomes a sweat-soaked, adrenaline infused blur as he desperately runs from the enemies chasing him. He turns a corner, finally, to see the massive stone entranceway of the Tower...
And it was closing, slowly grinding closed as a strange, deep tone like ancient bells resonate through the edifice. Mercade doesn’t stop running. He lunges for the closing door, aiming for the dwindling crack...
And it pounds closed behind him, the detective barely escaping. He gasps there, recovering his breath in the pounding sun... And looks out over the dunes.
The desert rings with a frustrated scream. “I HAAAAAATE DESEEEEEEEEEEERTS!”
Hours later, Mercade staggers across the hardpan, cracked ground in the beginning of the evening darkness. The desert is not all sand, thankfully, but often rocky, parched wasteland or salt flats, with just enough sand in between to make him thankful it was not all dunes. The problem is that he found no freaking clue on where to go. In the distance, he saw some faint orange mechanical shapes. He had no idea if it was going to be any safer than the Tower he escaped from, but he had to have a direction to go. Wandering aimlessly in the desert was a death sentence.
Were he a native, he might have known better.
When he crested the last dune with a groan, he looked over what stretched before him. An oddly flat patch of sand, with many structures pushed up out of them sort of like ancient, abandoned oil derricks. Flickers of light moved among the derricks, pointing out /something/ was out there... Mercade squints, trying to see better, but he has nothing to help him see that far. Instead, he shrugged, and moved down to get a better look.
Had he approached in the daytime, he might have noticed where the desert ended and the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea began. He stepped into the fine silty dust that suddenly came up to his thighs, and stumbled forward, waving his arms in surprise. “WHOA!” He righted himself, barely, up to his waist in the Sandsea just in time to hear the hiss of an approaching creature... The sand... fish... thing that erupted promptly lunged, knocking Mercade aside and sending him ‘afloat’ in the sand, causing him to rapidly begin to drop. The buoyancy of sand is not like water, after all.
Mercade flailed, trying to grapple onto the fish, but it whipped past him, lashing him with its tail and buffeting him back moments before it began snapping at him. It latched onto his arm, ridged, sharp teeth tearing through his leather coat and flesh with equal ease.
“HELP!” Mercade yelled, though he knew no one was around to hear him. He sank farther into the sand, relentlessly knocked farther out as he flailed, trying to stay afloat uselessly. The sand closed over his head, and he grasped desperately for something, anything to help him...
And a painful, hard sensation ripped down his arm as something latched onto him and pulled him up, dangling him painfully in the air. A dark, blurry shape resolved itself before his eyes, as he blinked the dust out of them, and he saw a hissing creature ,holding him up with one clawlike arm.
“OH GOD!” Mercade yelled. “You guys don’t sound like Tuskens at all!”
A moment later, light exploded in his eyes as a club hit him across the back of the head, and all became darkness as he slipped into blessed unconsciousness.
