Nemos is sauntering out of his office eating a salad. He flicks a chick-pea into his mouth while his brain spins up - trawling his memory for what exactly it is he asked from these people. The trouble with pre-lunch naps is that you're just no use in a meeting until you've had some post-lunch coffee and a post-coffee fancie. http://www.bestofbritish.com.au/Uploads/Images/2104628frenchfancies.gif
"The only trouble is we fear we may have destabilised the economy of Umajo - the continent that's strict, self-regulating policy on information sharing has been both supporting the planet's economy and keeping unbridled, environmentally damaging expansion in check."
Why are there only pink fancies left. What is the point of having a secret palace of leisure when everyone else always eats the yellow fancies?
He put his salad (which was rubbish anyway since it didn't contain any sugar and he'd picked out all the ham already) on the side and started rummaging in the cake cabinet.
"Very interesting my friends" (best not try and guess at their names he thought to himself. It doesn't do for the leader of the planet's most supreme minds to show any kind of weakness) "Why don't you tell me all about it?" (Ha! Stall for time! AND it looks like I care at all! Oooh! An un-opened box! That's two yellow's for me and I shall have one of the browns while I'm at it!)
It is several days since the climax of the team's adventure in the lair of the Kenget Kamulos. Killing the Murder Pope after he'd Murder Morphed into Murder Jesus was - according to the other Kenget high-ups - supposed to be impossible. Interestingly they didn't mention the additional insult of his having been killed by a lady but then they also decided not to take revenge right away. They ushered the gang out of the fortress by a back door muttering about how they were going to have to try and cover this whole thing up. If it ever got out that Murder Jesus - divine assassin legitimiser of the Kengets - could be slain people might start to question exactly how much they want to put up with having a child-snatching, death-fuled sex catacomb in their mountain after all...
Outside, the team had furiously given Khunag a piece of their mind. He'd said he was sorry but that the previous Murder Pope had been the only man he'd ever truly loved and the fact that he'd not only been killed, but also that the killing had been pinned on him, was so heartbreaking he'd've grasped any opportunity to get his own back on the blighters that did it (as he did this he contritely pulled a weeping dove from his sleeve, did a backwards roll into a cupboard then stepped out of a different cupboard playing a sad tune on a violin which, when shaken, turned into a big spotted hanky for him to blow his mournful nose into).
It'd been hard to stay angry with the guy so Hoff suggested that he make it up to them by helping them save the world and they'd say no more about it.
As such, Tom gives a greatly shortened account of how they got the secret of enchanting objects to Nemos.
"Well the secret of enchanting objects was easy to get. We just found our new friend here" (indicating Khunag) "who already knew it and had grown disillusioned with being bummed by the physical manifestation of a god that shouldn't (and, it turns out, probably doesn't anymore) exist."
Nemos choked momentarily on his cake. Then, thumping his chest, he did the smile of a man who'd just been given much too much information about the person who'd only moments ago been asking him to pick a card any card. "So nice to make your acquaintance" he managed.
His eyes welling up at the memory of his beloved former beaux, Khunag just nods in response and disconsolately sticks his beautiful assistant back together.
"After that we thought we'd spend a while selling a LOAD of gear we'd acquired and using up all the training points we'd accrued... I got Siobhan this lovely WAR HAMMER with 20 attack points as a congratulations present... Um... not that we did anything she needed congratulating for you understand... I just... Well we..."
"It was my birthday" Siobhan helps out. "And I just can't get enough of that 'CLANG' sound..."
"So then we got all our magical weapons re-charged and bought Hoff some spells in preparation for our quest to get the secret of destroying metal. What a good use of money THAT was, wasn't it Hoff"
Tom shoots a barbed look at his hapless team-mate who hadn't had any idea that he wouldn't be able to learn any of the spells they'd bought while they were in the shop. As far as he could see there'd been no-way of checking before you'd bought them what kind of magic-user you had to be to be able to learn them.
"Then we went and made use of the critical training Siobhan's uncle offered us".
Another barbed look. Siobhan sheepishly avoids meeting it - it's hardly her fault that her uncle refused to give them mates rates. And besides, even though it bankrupted them, they did get 2 units of training for Dirr and 1 for her.
"And then we set of for the equipment maker's guild!"
At this point it suddenly sinks into Nemos's brain that - HA! - these are the people who he sent out to get those secrets off of the idiot people of Albion! Their coming back here successfully means that there's no more knowledge on the planet that the Dji Cantos don't have for themselves! This was such good news he had the other brown fancie out of the box and propped himself against the wall to listen to the tale with satisfaction.
"Well now, we've been there for weeks since then. You can see that all of our shoes are pretty much warn through from walking. I tell you Nemos - I have no idea WHAT the equipment makers were thinking when they built their workshop. To be honest - what would they have lost from having the one or two offices they had in an above ground shed? PLUS - what is it with people on this planet and keeping deadly - SERIOUSLY deadly - high level monsters in their work-places? Is it some kind of show of machismo?"
There is a pause that Nemos recognises is designed for his input so he makes a sort of nose-basted "Tch" sound and does a head-bob that he thinks will convey enough sympathetic "Yeah, isn't it just typical but what're you going to do about it eh?" to prompt Tom to move on without dwelling much more on this point.
"Well anway - this place was a total labyrinth of passages, each one taking several hours to walk down. PLUS - none of the rooms seemed to have anything in them that looked like it was related to making equpment. There was this room full over levers and diagrams of spikes that I'm SURE was connected to the building's security system. Well that exploded on us a few times when we played with the buttons in there so we eventually just moved on hoping for the best. Then there was this room full of pressure plates (which we ignored at first, but then we found that if you threw a bucked of water on the flames lighting the room you could see a secret pattern on the plates in the darkness which allowed you to access a chest that just had some jewelery in it... Not exactly 'equipment' though is it?)..."
Another pause. This time Nemos did a sort of shrugging head-shake gesture to suggest "Cor - what are they like".
"THEN we found this room where, I'm not kidding you, you had to ACTUALLY JUST WAIT AROUND for hours. HOURS. It had this, like, sign on the wall just that says "8:00 - 11:00" on it. Well we figured at first that this was a clue to when the mechanically locked doors down the way would open so we dashed over there just in time for 8:00 only to find that it wasn't that. So we go back and Dirr says 'maybe we have to be in HERE between those times?' so we give it a go. Well we would've rested to pass the time but none of us were tired and you know what it's like. You can't really rest when you're not properly tired can you? It just makes you feel all antsy and bothered."
Nemos nods. He knows exactly what they mean. When you're awake you're awake and there's nothing to be done.
"So we stood still for an entire day until it got back to the right time." (YOU HAVE TO STAND STILL IN AN EMPTY ROOM AND DO NOTHING BUT WATCH THE IN-GAME CLOCK TICK ROUND TO THE RIGHT TIME!!!!!!! ARRRRG!!!!!!) "and yep! This lever pops into existence at 8 on the nose! So we pull that and it doesn't seem to do anything so we treck over to the mechanically locked doors and check them and yep! One of them's open now too. And in there there's this lever that opens the other and we saunter over to that but you'll never believe it! The way is blocked with spikes! Well you remember that room I told you about with the levers that kept exploding? Well it turns out we have to back track all the way there again (which is two day's walk down passages you know!) to re-doobery the configuration in there before we can carry on. Now this is PARTICULARLY frustrating since we had a spike smashing hammer with us - not Siobhan's one, we wouldn't use a nice hammer on them, but a specific-for-the-job one we found lying around. So four days later (that's 2 days to the levers and 2 days back) we get to go through this door and find that it leads to a sort of mine!"
Nemos is slightly regretting having not asked Tom to cut to the bit where he tells him the secret. Even just hearing about this interminably over-protracted lead-up to their visit to the dungeons of the equipment makers is making him want to bang is face on his keyboard and throw the mouse out of the window - he can't really even imagine why they'd've bothered actually putting themselves through it.
"Well we didn't really see much down this mine you know. Loads of magical barriers about the place - you said, didn't you Dirr - you said we'd never get anywhere down there..."
"That's right. I said 'We'll never get anywhere down here. But let's carry on just in case we get somewhere'. I'm a sort of optopessimist you see. My mother was a prostitute."
"So we're not getting anywhere so we try jumping down this hole we found. Down that we found this staff - might be magical, but not very... it just seems to change the colour of certain flames... - and some more jewelery. Seems they've got a funny set up of moving walls down there. We played with them for ages but I'll be honest with you, we couldn't figure out how to progress and we were being hounded by REALLY tough monsters we just had no hope of killing so we left that bit."
Nemos's mind is wandering. He's thinking about who he's going to put on feeding duty today. Usually the hoover-attachment-face monsters that Contos developed for them only get fed once a week, in order to keep them ferocious. But now that the genetic engineer behind their creation had died, the Dji Cantos were going to have to start a proper breeding program to keep the numbers up and produce ever more ferocious specimens. That meant that the arduous task of throwing dead warniaks to them had to be done at least once a DAY now and since Harriet had mysteriously vanished lately, it meant someone important was going to have to do it. It was going to cause arguments, he knew it.
"...So then past the weird magic curtain doors we found a healing field but there was nothing else down there. Just monsters."
The story stops. Nemos wasn't really listening but he's sure that, since he's not been told the secret of destroying metal, there must be more...
"So... What happened next?" He prompts.
"Guess." Tom says.
"Did... you... find the secret of destroying metal under a sofa?"
"No".
"Did you... All find happiness as a troupe of performing musicians?"
"Nope."
"Did you... get consumed by paranoia in the face of a world where the individual seems insignificant compared to the tidal pull of the masses?"
"Not even close."
"I give up then..."
"We walked for DAYS back to the surface. We had to tramp for ACTUALLY DAYS down those stupid passages all the way back to the equipment makers above-ground house to ask someone for a clue. It must've been SOMETHING to do with SOMETHING down there - but we just had no idea what so we mounted an expedition back to the very start of the whole maze."
"And could anyone help you?" Nemos asks. Feeling the tedium of all that leg-work even just by hearing about it.
"No."
Surely keyboard smashed with hammer? Mouse thrown into furnace? DOSBox flattened and taken for recycling?
"So what did you do?"
"Well basically we wandered the streets for ages thinking that maybe that whole quest might've been a red-herring. We'd pretty much given up."
"I'd started writing a letter to my friends back home to let them know the world was going to be ending soon and that they should do anything they'd been putting off now otherwise they'd miss their chance" says Dirr.
"Yep we'd all given up on any kind of positive resolution so I got a tattoo. Just to see what it was like - look!" Siobhan rolls up her sleeve and shows Nemos a mass of raw and exposed tendons with a sort of bluey black smear tattooed into it.
"Oh it's lovely" he says.
"Well anyway - eventually we found a building in town we'd not been into. So we thought we'd pop in just to be nosey and it turns out it's the halls of the mountain priests. The guards were all 'you can't come in' but I was all 'errm - but it's important!' and they were all 'oooh - sounds important! You'd better come in!' So anyway, then we meet this guy Penkko. He's a representative of Sojekos, but Sojekos wasn't there and we didn't really know who he was anyway and..."
Alas. The clock strikes 5. This story has been going on for FOREVER and it's still not got interesting. Nemos slumps into his post-office-hours nap without warning. Knocking his salad bowl off the side-board as he tumbles to the floor. It lands upside down on his face.
"It looks..." states Hoff "Like Nemos's response to this part of our tale is that it is so drawn out and frustrating that he would rather try and drown himself in vinaigrette than have to go through it with us."
"To be honest, I can't say I blame him..."
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