“That woman. Came through and took everything from my brothers and sisters. Then she came in here and grabbed me by the throat and pulled it out. Stole all my alcohol. Didn’t get the stuff under here though. Woke up in a pile of my own blood. Growler Gary ain’t no coward. Fuck Jumping Jen-Jen. Gary would’ve fought. Doorway was like a wall. Not a coward.”
A memory tingled the back of my mind. Something I’d read in my book. I’d read through the NPC chapter earlier, and I was suddenly reminded of a particular passage.
<Crawler Azin. 17th Edition>
Some NPCs are indestructible. You can kill them, and they regenerate in a matter of minutes. If you find one of those, it means they have something on them or they know something important. Big important. The trick is finding out what that is.
<Note added by Crawler Drakea. 22nd Edition>
We found one of them and tied him to the front of our shield. Ha. The next day the Nagas patched it. Didn’t make an announcement or anything, but the guy disappeared. Went back to the church to grab him again, and it wouldn’t let us take him from the building. We dragged him out the door, and he exploded and then was reborn. Tried it five times before giving up. Turns out he knew the password to the safe that held the key for the stairwell chamber.
Donut, as if she’d read my mind, asked the relevant question.
Donut: WHY WOULD HE COME BACK TO LIFE?
Carclass="underline" In some games, you can’t kill NPCs if they’re necessary to complete quests. I think maybe this is the same thing.
Donut: OR MAYBE HE’S A LIAR. HE’S A DOG. DOGS ARE LIARS.
Carclass="underline" Maybe. Let’s find out if he knows or has something.
“I believe you,” I said to Growler Gary. “I believe you’re not a coward.”
The hyena looked up at me, wide eyes registering surprise, as if he just realized I was there. It was awkward talking to him like this, with him on the floor, and me leaning over the bar. His eyes held my own for a moment, and I feared he was about to burst into tears.
“We’re going to stop them,” I continued. “The people who made it so you couldn’t leave and fight are the same people we’re trying to stop. But we need help. Do you think you can help us?”
“I’m useless,” Growler Gary said, using “I” to refer to himself for the first time. “I’m just a bartender. They wouldn’t let me fight. She was so pretty, and she called me a coward. But I tried. I couldn’t leave. And then she died right in front of me. Right outside the door. She died thinking I was afraid.”
“Hey,” Katia said. “Don’t call yourself useless.”
“Why?” he asked. “I am.”
I leaned a little deeper over the bar. “After we’re done here, we’re headed to the end of the line to meet up with some friends who need our help. Is there anything at this station you think could assist us? We’re going to take one of the trains up there, but there are monsters on the tracks. Plus I’m worried about the power. We’re afraid we’re going to get stuck.”
Growler Gary closed his eyes, and I thought for certain he’d passed out again. But then he said, “You could take one of the interdiction team carts. The carts are normally driven by a pair of transit security gnolls and an interdiction repair team of five hobgoblins. Jumping Jen-Jen was a driver. I kept the marrow juice cold just for her. Sometimes they’ll have a second team if the tracks need repair, too. This station services over one hundred different lines. You just dial in the line you want to go to, and the cart goes there. They’re powered by batteries, so they run even if the line is out. Make sure you take a lead car. They got the front portal. Cleans everything up nice and tidy.”
“That’s great,” I said. “We’ll go check them out.”
“You do that,” the gnoll said. “Now let me finish this bottle.”
“If he is important,” Donut said as we left the bar, “we still haven’t figured out why. All he did was blabber on about stuff we could figure out without him.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Both the repair station and the armory were indeed looted. There were empty wooden cases of hob-lobbers sitting on shelves in the repair station, along with multiple tables and empty tool shelves. There was something called a Repair Bench that was stupidly left behind by whomever had looted the place. I took it along with the plain tables and the shelves and the empty boxes. The armory was similarly empty, though it was filled with metal shelves designed to hold spears along with forty wooden mannequins designed to hold armor. I took them all.
From there we returned to the small yard just off the tracks. A line of carts sat there, parked in rows. In addition, six portals stood at the end of the small yard. The first five were attached to tracks. The smaller, sixth portal was up on a landing and was meant to be walked through. This last one, I realized, was a way to get to additional platforms, similar to the one at station sixty. If we went through the portal, it’d lead to more portals eventually leading to various colored platforms. The map would help us walk to platforms we’d already traveled to, but the whole system gave me a headache. I was glad we didn’t have to deal with it. I turned my attention to the five, larger portals.
I moved to the portals before we investigated the carts. Each of the five were up against a wall, meaning none of them were pass-through portals. A manual switching station allowed one to choose which of the tracks to enter. There was a small sign above each station.
The first was a one-way portal that led to trainyard C. The little sign could only be read using my Escape Plan skill, and it simply said, “Trainyard.” I took a screenshot, and trainyard C was a burned-out mess. A pair of large, ogre-sized ghouls stalked across the trainyard, headed for the distant, knocked-over gate. Were those wrath ghouls? Yikes.
The next four portals were a little more complicated. Each sign was a long list of colored lines, each one different. Each portal had a list of 48 different colors, from Orange to Amaranth to Pink to Zomp. On each of the four lists, the colors were numbered from one to 48. I examined the first of the portals using my skill.
Ultima Corp DungeonWerx Industrial Subspace Multi-Destination Light-Duty Portal.
Analyze? Yes/No.
I clicked Yes, and I scrolled to the bottom of the list.
Type: One-way, selectable portal. Requires DungeonWerx Portal Selector to dial destination. If no selection is made, portal defaults to selection one: Orange Line.
Can you pass this portal? Yes
Environment on other side of portaclass="underline" Compatible.
Visual Analysis? Yes/No.
I clicked Yes, and all I could see was a regular train track. I assumed it was the orange line, but I had no idea where on the line it would be.
“It looks like they can dial a destination and drive there, but I don’t know how they get back,” I said. “They probably have to go all the way to the end, but I’m not sure.”
From there, we moved to investigate the carts. There were three different types. The first was a simple, flatbed cart with two sets of four wheels on it. Each of the battered, well-worn carts was about the size of a small car. It had no controls. Just a hitch on the back along with holes around the edges, likely so equipment or a railing could be attached. This cart was like a trailer designed to be attached to the other, powered carts.
I tried to pick it up, and even with my strength I couldn’t do it. I could lift one end up and drag the whole thing, but there was no way I could put the whole cart into my inventory. Just one set of four wheels and axle alone felt as if they weighed more than a ton and a half by themselves, and there were two of them. That plus the heavy wood made the prospect impossible. Even Katia couldn’t do it with her mass maxed out. Not yet.