In Progress [LP CYOA] Tower

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

If he wanted to abduct us, why would he ask?

Why does any abductor ask? To make it easier.

Ask yourself why he'd be using the mist if he didn't intend to nab us.

Sure, he might be some sadist

Huh? I never suggested he was, though he certainly fits the bill.

I mean ABDUCT in the dictionary sense of the word. He intends to take us by force or deception.

That's why he's using the mist to silence our screams and possibly drug us to make us compliant. His motives are beyond that are irrelevant. We can ask Tlalli once we escape, since he seems to know her, but certainly isn't friendly with her or he'd be helping her instead of offer some random kids ice cream if they go for a ride in his van.

What will be different is his perception of us, and perhaps his proclivity to help in the future. Who knows, attacking might be the right thing to do, as that might make him even more curious and enamored by us. That being said, I feel like politely declining his offer is closer to the type of character we've established ourselves to be.

Really? Was our character a straightforward retard who presented himself to Rasputin? Didn't we hide from him?

Regardless, there's no reason to play ourselves into a corner based on who you think our character is. You could just as easily say that our character likes going places with strangers because he went with Tlalli.

We should make the choice most likely to get both us and Sophie out safely. That's probably C. We need to get out of this mist FAST.

 

[Nevill]

I'll wait to hear more arguments.

Well, remove the thin film of supernatural from the situation.

You are a kid walking through an alley with your sister, and then a kindly gentleman appears out of nowhere, says they know your family, and offers you a candy and a ride home, while simultaneously blocking the way out. All stranger danger instincts should inform you to run, but he is kinda ensuring you can't. What else is there to do?

The fat man laughs. “As I was saying, my dear, there is no need to be afraid, hmm? I just want to talk.” He leans over gleefully, his blue eyes almost bulging in excitement. Striking the ground with his cane, he continues talking. “I came to talk with Dame Tlalli, mind you, that dear old friend of mine. Imagine my surprise when I found such wonderful little children along with her, in such a dangerous place! How very, very risky indeed, hmm?”

“What do you want?” you ask curtly.

“Why, all I desire is but to do what any gentleman would! I cannot in good conscience ignore the plight of children lost in the woods.

He sees the discomfort and the fear he is causing, but it only amuses and excites him. He says he came here for Tlalli, but he isn't talking to her, and also mentions he didn't expect her to bring kids to a dangerous place - to me it sounds like a threat of extortion. The children weren't lost in the woods until a moment ago, and in fact were in less danger before he showed up.

He is lying to us about his motives, and that likely means he is also lying about Tlalli being a friend... and if so, there are only so many reasons to approach us.

Of course, it could be a case of personality deformation, and there could indeed be a candy in his van, but do you want to wait and see?

We need to get out of this mist FAST.

If the mist doesn't dissipate, we are boned though.

No idea where anyone is, we are in a mist we can't see through, on a mire with shifters and hostile Astra users about. And we can't even scream.

...maybe the book could let us out, I dunno.

...the other problem is that the sling takes a bit to get going. Wouldn't it have been nice to have a revolver with us right about now?

 

[baud]

B>D>C

Not sure about which way to say no, but I'm not really interested in accepting Bull's offer.

 

[Nevill]

Or, and this is speculation, this was a trap designed to kill Tlalli. She would walk into the swamp hunting the first shifter, get ambushed by the second shifter and then Mr. Bull would finish her off. Now that his original plan went down the drain, he may be trying to take us hostage for leverage. Whatever his motives, I don't think that they're benign.

Baltika may be onto something here.

Don't talk to strange spherical men with unknown motives. Punch them and blow the rape whistle.

 

[Esquilax]

She did not tell you much, but you know she was only expecting one, and that she started tracking this thing on a different floor.

After that, Tlalli had leaped into battle – the shifter was a strange, bear-sized, reptile-headed beast with fins, changing into a monstrous hag and back again throughout the fight.
...
“Still, I say, Madam Tlalli is really quite the amazing woman, even though she is the furthest one could get from being a proper lady,” Sophie says, peering through her glasses. Tlalli has the hag in a chokehold at the moment, attempting to twist its head off. The monster shrieks and begins transforming once again, turning into a seal-like creature and slipping out of Tlalli’s grasp.

“Indeed, the Grand Old Lady of the Hunters’ Association truly lives up to her name, does she not? Why, to think that even this is not the full extent of her ability. That is truly a scary thought, hmm?”

Someone speaks up behind you. You whirl around, placing yourself between Sophie and the newcomer.

A tremendously fat man stands before you, monocle on one eye and a clownishly tall top-hat atop his head. His tailcoat is a deep blue, strained around his immense belly. It looks as if his buttons are about to pop at any time. A wide, toothy grin is spread over his face as he twirls his cane joyfully. Most of all, you can feel a wrongness about him… a wrongness you last felt with the monk in the ruins.
...
“Why, all I desire is but to do what any gentleman would! I cannot in good conscience ignore the plight of children lost in the woods. Indeed, I had thought better of the Grand Old Lady than to bring such delectably young, upstanding youths into the jaws of danger, tsk tsk. What would I be if I did not offer my assistance to you then? A monster, hmm?”
...
He spreads his arms and makes a pirouette, his girth belying a surprising agility. “Yes, indubitably! My Astra, the Silver Compass, lets me travel through the floors in the wink of an eye! Why, my dear, should you care to take a ride with me, I will have you home and tucked in bed before the hour is past!”

You look the fat man in the eye, and he looks back, not shying away from your gaze, grinning all the while. “It’s a very jolly good proposition, if I do say so myself, hmm? But tick, tock, time is running out!” Taking out a pocket-watch, he makes a big show of peering at it. “I am a busy, busy man, you know! Places to be, people to see!”

Obviously, as Tigranes mentioned during the previous choice, using flimsy speculation as a basis for decision-making is bad. However, I can't help but feel that there's a connection here. Tlalli is in search of shapeshifting quarry that is difficult to track down, and she's been on the trail through different floors as well. Then, just out of nowhere, in the middle of the battle, this fucker pops up. He has a disconcerting presence about him that our fairly astute character immediately notices, he is in the form of a man that just seems like the kind of body that an immense shapeshifting creature would take, and on top of that, he possesses an Astra that makes tracking him down extremely difficult.

Tlalli may have only been expecting one of these beasts, but I can't help but feel that this is exactly whom she was looking for.

We're still in the middle of the fight, everyone. I think that this thing is trying to fuck with our head to get our guard down. We came here to protect Sophie, that's what we should do. Let's fire a rock into this fucker's dome.

C>B

 

[Baltika9]

Tlalli may have only been expecting one of these beasts, but I can't help but feel that this is exactly whom she was looking for.

We're still in the middle of the fight, everyone. I think that this thing is trying to fuck with our head to get our guard down. We came here to protect Sophie, that's what we should do. Let's fire a rock into this fucker's dome.

Alright, I'm swayed. Deck this creep and make gram-gram proud. I must say that a revolver would have been more useful and we should still pick one up. Whatever, I think this will become a knife fight. At least we're getting some action.

Flopping to C.

 

[baud]

Tlalli may have only been expecting one of these beasts, but I can't help but feel that this is exactly whom she was looking for.

We're still in the middle of the fight, everyone. I think that this thing is trying to fuck with our head to get our guard down. We came here to protect Sophie, that's what we should do. Let's fire a rock into this fucker's dome.

Alright, I'm swayed. Deck this creep and make gram-gram proud. I must say that a revolver would have been more useful and we should still pick one up. Whatever, I think this will become a knife fight. At least we're getting some action.

Flopping to C.

I feel like if we draw a knife on that guy, we're going to get smacked around. He's good enough to move around in the jungle (?) of that level, so at least he's not defenceless.

 

[Tigranes]

C > B.

If you don't think this guy is obviously bad business then you hire wolves to babysit your sheep. Dude screams pedo kidnapper so hard you've got to have lost all sense of reason to go with him. And we are not going to entertain this dude with our sub-Saharan speech skills when the dude doesn't even want to chat. So A/D is out.

I think Baltika's point that this was all a trap for Tlalli, and now they're trying to take us hostage / take us out easily / get us out of the way is the answer. All we can do is make it as difficult for him as possible through every means of disruption.

 

[ItsChon]

Honestly, I don't really care if it's C or B either way, because I'm certain the outcome is going to be the same. I doubt us launching a rock at his head will be enough to make him kill us, as I'm fairly certain he is a friend of Tlalli's that is taking the time to amuse himself while Tlalli finishes up. Still, I'll be changing my vote to

C>B

because I think that the reaction we get from launching a rock at his head versus politely refusing will be even more amusing to this fellow, and I think that'll bode well for our future.

 

[Kipeci]

How considerate of this John Bull guy to get us back there by bed time! Very considerate to the parents and family who’ve been missing us, what a joyful reunion it will be.

I vote A, not much time. He has all sorts of other folks to catch.

 

[Baltika9]

===Poll===

A - 1
B - 9 (10)
C - 9
D - 2 (0)

Votes

Kipeci - A

Absinthe - B
CappenVarra - B
Azira - B>D
Grimgravy - B
baud - B>D>C
oscar - B
asxetos - B
ItsChon - B

Baltika9 - C
Nevill - C
ERYFKRAD - C
Kz3r0 - C>B
Lambchop - C>D>B
Esquilax - C>B
Tigranes - C>B
Zerafall - C
hello friend - C>D

Egosphere - D>B
Life of the Party - D>B

===

I feel like if we draw a knife on that guy, we're going to get smacked around. He's good enough to move around in the jungle (?) of that level, so at least he's not defenceless.

I was half-kidding. Decking him with a rock is our way to hopefully distract him so that he drops the mist and get Tlalli to then suplex him and put him in a triangle choke. Like Lambchop said, simply refusing is probably futile. The only way I see it working is if he has some weird Dracula-esque code of honor that prevents him from taking the unwilling, which is a pretty thin hope. Else, he'll at least take one of us hostage, probably Sophie, since he went to the trouble of approaching us in the first place.

I think that the 'Home Alone' response is our best option.

 

[Esquilax]

I feel like if we draw a knife on that guy, we're going to get smacked around. He's good enough to move around in the jungle (?) of that level, so at least he's not defenceless.

Yes, but my goal is not to win, it's to buy ourselves time, like with D:

You look the fat man in the eye, and he looks back, not shying away from your gaze, grinning all the while. “It’s a very jolly good proposition, if I do say so myself, hmm? But tick, tock, time is running out!” Taking out a pocket-watch, he makes a big show of peering at it. “I am a busy, busy man, you know! Places to be, people to see!”

I think he's desperate and pressed for time. Why would he be mentioning this otherwise? I'm just hoping that the surprise of doing something so ballsy (stupid?) breaks the spell around us long enough for Sophie to cry out and Grandma to come rescue us. The goal of C and D is to buy ourselves time, except C features a strategy that we actually have the skill-set/build to execute.

 

[Tigranes]

Even if dude is improbably NICE BOI that just wants to tease, then B/C shows that we're not fucking retarded and show some initiative, which he will appreciate.

A is just "hey let's do something totally moronic and put us, girls AND grandma in danger for no reason other than the off chance that the spooky dude who randomly showed up, put us into magical mist, and is now blackmailing us into cooperating, is actually NICE BOI"

 

[Life of the Party]

We also have Sophie with us, who is much better at talking than we are

 

[oscar]

B

Sometimes too obvious bad guys really are bad guys.

 

[Zerafall]

C.

 

[Azira]

At least Kipeci seems to know of the John Bull character, even if the rest of the codex looks to be oblivious.

How much of this character is present in what is in front of Wrinkly and Sophie is up to discussion though.

 

[Absinthe]

If John Bull really is some kind of personification of the fictional character, then C just might be the dumbest move we could possibly do, since it's the only one that would antagonize him for real.

 

[asxetos]

B. i dont see the need to preemptively attack.

 

[CappenVarra]

yes, although it's perfectly normal to feel unnatural wrongness and reach for your gun sling when confronted with the british, that kind of rashness is usually shunned in polite monster hunting circles

 

[Kz3r0]

I don’t know if Bull is based on a manga character, based on the setting the first thing I thought is that he is Crowley.

 

[Esquilax]

B. i dont see the need to preemptively attack.

This guy unleashes a mist in our surroundings, cutting us off from the one person that's able to help us, and that doesn't make you t suspicious? If he wanted to talk, he wouldn't have a problem with talking while Tlalli is around. But he's avoiding her. Why?

“Why, all I desire is but to do what any gentleman would! I cannot in good conscience ignore the plight of children lost in the woods. Indeed, I had thought better of the Grand Old Lady than to bring such delectably young, upstanding youths into the jaws of danger, tsk tsk. What would I be if I did not offer my assistance to you then? A monster, hmm?”

I'm obviously speculating, but yes - you're a shapeshifting monster.

 

[Absinthe]

Esquilax, you might want to read up on the fictional character of John Bull. The man identified himself as such so it would probably do us good to keep it in mind.

 

[Baltika9]

Esquilax, you might want to read up on the fictional character of John Bull. The man identified himself as such so it would probably do us good to keep it in mind.

I'll be my usual dense self: what's it matter how this creepazoid introduces itself as? It could dress up as Mary Poppins, and still would be a dangerous being that did the following:

This guy unleashes a mist in our surroundings, cutting us off from the one person that's able to help us, and that doesn't make you t suspicious? If he wanted to talk, he wouldn't have a problem with talking while Tlalli is around. But he's avoiding her. Why?

 

[Esquilax]

Esquilax, you might want to read up on the fictional character of John Bull. The man identified himself as such so it would probably do us good to keep it in mind.

I did, but what of it? Imagine that we were dealing with the exact same scenario we're dealing with now, except that instead of John Bull, it was Uncle Sam abducting politely coercing us into going along with him. Would anything change?