Book Eight, Chapter 63: The Provisions
By the time we made it back to the boat, we were in a dead sprint. The water was rising, and the river, which previously had ended at the banks of the muddy marshland, was now running through it because we had cleared the storyline.
We worried that the boat might get taken away by the current, or worse, that our little homemade homing beacon might be gone by the time we got there. Luckily, that wasn't the case, because when we got there, there was something pinning the little plastic contraption down to the ground so that it couldn't float away as the water rose.
It was Silas, the mechanical showman.
As we approached and realized what he had done for us, we were amazed. Water was rising almost a foot up his red wooden box, but he stayed there on top of the tracking device so that it wouldn't float away. We didn't have time to marvel at it, although Camden seemed to get a kick out of it, at the implication that whatever controlled this machine was on our side in some small way.
“The only question is,” he said, “is this a servant of Carousel, or did the consortium send it here, or does Silas the mechanical showman have a soul?”
He continued to ponder things.
We were in a hurry as the river rose, so we each quickly hit the red button one after another without examining our prizes. After we collected our stuff, we ran one after another over toward the boat in order to get it ready to start back on the chase.
“So what are we doing?” Cassie asked as soon as everyone had collected their rewards and was aboard the boat. “We just wait for that thing to float away?”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “Once the current takes it, we follow it.”
It was a simple plan.
“I almost forgot that the only reason we ran that storyline was so that we could make a turn in the river,” she said.
So much work just to keep moving forward, and when we got where we were headed, we were in for an even more challenging storyline.
For an animatronic ticket dispenser, Silas was showing a lot of free will all of a sudden, staying in that spot as his red box sank into the mud, his dull lights flickering, and the mannequin’s arms flailing, shining its little usher’s flashlight around. It was like he was waiting for us to be ready, holding down our tracking beacon until, eventually, he just disappeared.
A bunch of water moved in to replace him, and as it did, the plastic bag with the orange water wing and the magic cue ball surged up to the top of the water and began floating with the current.
We used the trolling motor at first because the marshland wasn't exactly deep, but we didn't end up in too many tough spots. Eventually, we could relax and follow the river through the marshland wherever the tracker led us.
Only then did any of us actually review our rewards.
I got two stat tickets and some money, as well as two tropes. That was a pretty good haul. I was the highest-level player on the team, and it was nice to start leveling again, even if it was only a bit at a time.
I looked over my tropes.
| Did you get that? Type: Rule/Insight Archetype: Film Buff Aspect: Filmmaker Stat Used: Hustle
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| Dodging kaiju, running from zombies, documenting ghosts, these are only a few of the tasks a camera operator must do during a found footage horror movie, all while getting the perfect shot. With this ticket equipped, the user will always pick up useful footage while On-Screen if they are recording the scene with a camera or recorder. The shot will be clear enough to make out, and any background details, even those they might not have noticed at the time, will be captured when the film is reviewed. The recording might even catch things that weren’t there but could have been as the narrative goes on. If it didn’t happen on film, it didn’t happen.
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