The Horror... (A-Boo Peak)

The Horror...

You follow the map to the ancient battle site and see a pair of Whatsian ghosts dueling fiercely with a couple of Claybender wizard ghosts. The ghost of ionic energy zaps the air from the Whatsian's ionic pliers, and the ghost of magic erupts from the Claybender wands.

The more you watch, the more a question burns in your mind, just begging to be asked.

• Ask the Question
• Flee the scene

"Okay, here's what I don't get, you guys," you say, "the ionic pliers can pretty much do anything you want, without explanation, right? So isn't the Professor just a wizard, and the ionic pliers just a form of magic wand?" One of the Whatsian ghosts howls in rage at your question, and flies shrieking away from you. Er, I mean, flies shrieking away through you. It's pretty damn freaky.

You lose 13 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 7 hit points. (cold damage)

You follow the map of the battle site to a crypt that glows with alternating red and blue light. You hear more ghosts getting their fight on in there. It looks dangerous, and it sounds dangerous, and it quacks like a duck, but you should probably check it out if you want to continue.

• Enter the Crypt

You see two ghostly followers of Duke Starkiller and his Galaxy Battles backed into a corner and fighting furiously, great flashes of red and blue light coming out of their Light Savers. They're cornered by a trio of Dusken Radars, screeching about how dreamy Jared the Duskwalker is while slashing with their fingernails. "I don't know what your deal is with Jared the Duskwalker," you say. "I read some of his Gospel, and it was the worst-written thing I've ever read. I couldn't stop laughing."

With a shriek, two of the Dusken Warriors descend on you, raking your soul with their ghostly nails, then moaning and wailing into the night.

You lose 25 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 19 hit points. (cold damage)

In the back of the crypt there's an ancient stone door with Space Tourist runes carved onto it. You open the door and see a stone staircase descending as far as the meager light lets you see. You're sure that it leads somewhere awesome and fun, like stone steps vanishing into the gloom always do.

• Go down the Steps

You walk down and down and down (and down) the steps. At the bottom, in a vast underground chasm, there's a ring of Space Tourist ghosts in a circle chanting. "Reverse the polarity of the neutron shield array," they chant, in monotone, "funnel the dilithium signature through the hexonium matrix..." "Wow, your religion is really complicated," you say.

"RELIGION?" one of the Tourist responds. This is SCIENCE, okay?" Then three ghosts take turns scaring the crap out of you and then fly away, like a very condensed and more painful version of A Christmas Carol.

You lose 50 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 40 hit points. (cold damage)

You explore the vast underground chasm further, until you come to a place where stalactites and stalagmites have grown together, making a spooky underground petrified forest. You see flashes of light through the trees and hear the occasional shouted Latin phrase. Apparently some Claybenders are reenacting a battle down here.

You follow the sounds and see a whole squad of Claybender wizards waving their wands and hurling spells at some Battlie ghosts, with shouts of "Explodum Gonadia!," "Slicem Intestino!," and "Removio Pantsem!"

"I guess it's not too hard for you guys to come up with new spells, eh?" you say. "Punchio Facem!" "Insultus Yourmotherii!" "That's not funny," a Claybender ghost says. The whole squad raises their wands, turns to you, and in unison chants "Scareus Halftodeatho!" What follows is terrifying, but at least the Claybenders leave after they've done their deed.

You lose 125 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 100 hit points. (cold damage) That's all the horror you can take. You flee the scene.

---

You follow the map to another ancient battleground, where the ghosts of the five factions are doomed to reenact their conflict for all eternity. You see a Battlie with his Light Saver facing off against the phurious phaser of a Space Tourist, one on one. The Light Saver blinks red and blue, the phaser phases, but neither one can keep the upper hand long.

• Talk to the Ghosts

"Hey," you shout, "you guys shouldn't be fighting each other. You can coexist! I mean, the Galaxy Battles of Duke Starkiller aren't even the same type of story as Captain Kerkard's Space Tours. Galaxy Battles is just the ancient hero's journey monomyth, just with spaceships instead of dragons, and Space Tours involves actual science."

The Battlie ghost turns to you, his jaw opening wider and wider with the force of his furious screech. Then he flies away, leaving you more than a little freaked out.

You lose 13 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 7 hit points. (cold damage)

You see a trio of Dusken Raiders fiercely battling . . . well, each other. "Jared the Duskwalker likes ME the best!" one shouts. "He told me that I was his own personal brand of heroin!"

"No, he likes ME the best!" another shouts. "He told me that I was his own personal flavor of corn chip!"

"Well, that's fine, but he told ME that he couldn't even kiss me because he was so passionate about me that he would accidentally give me two black eyes instead!"

• Try to Talk Some Sense into Them

"Look, ladies, I know Jared is dreamy, with his shiny skin and his totally not being a real vampire and all, but have you stopped to think that your relationship with him is fundamentally unhealthy?" you ask.

HE LOVES ME!!!" the ghosts shout, in unison, their voices suddenly deep and terrifying, like a well that's full of spiders instead of water. Then a couple of them fly away, weeping.

You lose 25 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 19 hit points. (cold damage)

Behind a row of tombstones, there's a squad of five Whatsian ghosts plotting their next move against a squad of Space Tourists. "We could use the ionic pliers to agitate the groundwater underneath them and boil them all!" one says.

"No!" another says, "we have to give them a choice! Think, what would the Professor do?"

• Make a Suggestion

"Well, if the Professor is a time traveler," you say, "he would probably just never travel to this particular set of space-time coordinates, so he didn't get caught up in the fight. Or he would stop the whole war before it starts, and save everyone at once! That sounds like a real Hero of the Peak to me." "You don't understand! There are points in time that are fixed, and some that are blibbly-blobbly, and some that . . . look, you can't just . . . AIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" the Whatsian ghosts rise up and fly through you and into the sky, shrieking. It's pretty terrifying.

You lose 50 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 40 hit points. (cold damage)

A little ways uphill from the battleground, there's a group of Space Tourist ghosts struggling to defend their high ground under a combined Whatsian/Battlie assault. "Set phasers on . . . uh . . . " the Space Tourist's ranking officer says, stuttering.

• Take Command

"Set phasers on Sudden Realization that Faster-Than-Light Space Travel and Time Travel of Any Kind Are Most Likely Scientifically Impossible!" you shout. "Make it so!" The Space Tourists adjust their weapons and fire at their opponents. There's a brief moment of silence, like an indrawn breath, and then complete chaos as the opposing forces suffer a crisis of faith. Their moaning and shrieking is absolutely terrifying, but at least you've thinned out the ranks a little bit. You lose 125 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 100 hit points. (cold damage) That's all the horror you can take. You flee the scene.

---

You follow the map to another famous battle site in the Five Factions War. It looks like all the factions are taking a break from the fighting, though, and just sitting around talking amongst themselves. You eavesdrop on two Whatsian Commandos talking.

"What do you think true love is, then?" one says. "I think it's, like, being devoted to an emotionally distant man who keeps comparing you to his last girlfriend, who wound up missing under mysterious circumstances."

"Nonsense!" the Whatsian replies. "True love is being a constant companion to someone, taking them on incredible adventures through time and space and constantly endangering their life, and then leaving them when they get too old."

They see you watching and turn to you. "What do you think true love is, random alive person?" one asks.

• I Wanna Know What Love Is

"I think that true love is telling someone to keep her eyes closed so God doesn't melt her face off when the bad guys open the religious artifact you've been chasing across all of Europe," you say. "That's the kind of love that one usually doesn't have time for." "Preposterous!" one Whatsian says. He places his ionic pliers to your temple and blasts you with a jolt of pure terror, then flies away in a huff.

You lose 13 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 7 hit points. (cold damage)

Next you find a few Dusken Raiders sitting around talking about the only thing they ever seem to talk about, Jared Duskwalker and how in love they are with him. "I'll tell you what true love is!" the Dusken Raider says, twitching slightly. "It's when someone won't leave you alone, ever, all the while insisting that you stay away from him. And threatening to hurt you if you don't do exactly what he says. That's true love." The other Raiders nod, while gulping and looking like a cat trying to throw up a hairball.

• Put Your Two Cents In

"I think true love is a genuine give-and-take between equals, not giving up your own identity," you say, "like, if you don't have your own personality and will, if you can't disagree with the people you love, is it really love at all?" Of course the Dusken Raiders don't take kindly to your description of love, and their arguments grow ever shriller until they're full-on banshee wails that chill you to the bone. By the time they fly away in disgust, it feels like the hairs on your neck will never go back down. You lose 25 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 19 hit points. (cold damage)

You duck between the warring ghost factions and huddle behind a tombstone, where you overhear a squad of Duke Starkiller devotees talking with each other. "I think that true love is when you're about to go away for a long time, and the person you love says 'I love you,' and you say 'I know,'" one of the ghosts says. "I mean, you want her to know that you know that she loves you, right?"

"Nah," another ghost says, "I think true love is when you're ten years younger than a girl, and you fall in love with her so hard that the next time anyone sees you, you're only two years younger than she is. That's what love can do."

• Tell Them About True Love

"I think," you say, "that true love is when you're so worried about your pregnant girlfriend's safety that you murder an entire building full of kids. I mean, think about it." "Gah, what's the matter with you?" one of the Battlies says. He holds out his ghostly hands and blue lightning streaks out of them, transfixing you with terror from beyond the stars.

"I have a bad feeling about this," one of the other ghosts says, "c'mon, let's get out of here!" The ghosts fly away while you lie there and twitch.

You lose 50 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 40 hit points. (cold damage) That's all the horror you can take. You flee the scene.

---

You follow the map to the battle site. This one is close to a frozen mountain lake, with stunted and twisted trees grasping at the cold, indifferent sky.

Oh yeah, and a bunch of dead nerds still fighting their eternal battle. So there's that. You see a Claybender ghost throw its head back, howl at the moon, and turn into a werewolf ghost, which is pretty awesome. But his howl seems to have awoken something deep in the ancient lake, as tentacles start to whip the surface of the water. Soon a giant tooth-lined maw is resting just on the surface of the lake, but the Battlie ghost (currently haunting a full suit of green and red armor) nearby doesn't notice.

• Tap Him on the Back

You try to pat the ghost on the back, but of course he's non-corporeal, so you can't. His armor, on the other hand, is solid enough, so you end up tapping it instead. . . right on a big red button. The button activates the armor's jetpack, and the ghost flies through the air out of control, directly into the lake creature's maw. The lake creature follows up the horrific scene with an absolutely gratuitous and lame burp, but it's still incredibly terrifying. You lose 13 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 1 hit point. (cold damage)

You make your way around the frozen lake, but run into a Whatsian ghost on the other side. He's got a face like--well, you know how when you take a big bite of spaghetti and all the noodles are hanging down, and your date is embarrassed but you've already decided you don't like them anyway, so you just kind of slurp everything in? Yeah, his face looks like the first part of that. There's a cable running out of the mass of tentacles that he's got instead of a mouth, ending in a little sphere that lights up when he talks.

• Talk to the Ghost

"I beg your pardon, sir," he says, "but have you any orders for me? I exist only to serve."

Before you can respond, another Whatsian ghost rolls up, the one that looks like a tin can with delusions of grandeur. "Negative! I require orders! Give me orders now! Obey!"

"I must insist that you give me orders first," the first ghost says.

"Negative! I order you to give me orders!" the metal ghost shouts in his metallic voice.

The argument goes on, getting scarier and scarier, until you can barely stand to watch. At the end of it, both ghosts disappear, still shrieking at each other to give each other a command.

You lose 25 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 10 hit points. (cold damage)

You veer away from the frozen lake to a dirt path back to the graveyard proper. You see a light in the distance, and then hear the roaring of an engine. You see a Dusken Raider ghost on a motorcycle, driving seemingly straight at you. She throws on the brakes and squeals up to you in a cloud of dust.

• Scold the Ghost

"Hey! Watch where you're going! I'm alive, here, and I'd like to stay that way!" "Oh. My. God," the ghost says, licking her lips. "You sound just like Jared the Duskwalker when you scold me like that. That's why I have to keep misbehaving; you see, since he left us, the only time I feel near to him is when I imagine him scolding me. Watch!"

And with that, she revs her motorcycle again and runs it straight into a squad of her own soldiers, bowling them over every which way. At least three of them fly away from the Peak in disgust. Then she revs the engine again and tries to run you down, enthusiastically and repeatedly, until you're so out of breath and terrified you can't even see straight.

You lose 50 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 26 hit points. (cold damage)

You leave the dirt path so you don't suffer another paranormal drive-by, and strike off into the headstones again. You see a group of Space Tourist ghosts sitting in a circle, their phasers connected to each other by cables.

"What are you geniuses doing?" you ask.

"Shhh," one of the ghosts replies. "We're trying to boost the power of our communicator badges so we can beam down reinforcements. It's a delicate operation and we need to concentrate."

• Fail to Stifle a Sneeze

You try your best to ignore the tickling in your nostrils, but just as one ghost says "transport in 3, 2..." you WACCHHOOOOO louder than you've ever done before. There's a bang and a flash of light, and the Space Tourists are gone. In their place is a hideous monstrosity formed by randomly recombining all of them into a single terrifying creature. It looks at you with a dozen weeping eyes, and one of its mouths says, "Ge...sund..heit..." before it raises a phaser in a twisted claw and offs itself. Brrrr, man. You lose 125 hit points. (spooky damage) You lose 65 hit points. (cold damage) That's all the horror you can take. You flee the scene.

---

Occurs at A-Boo Peak with a A-Boo clue in your inventory.

Notes

• Each time you force some ghosts to leave the Peak hauntedness drops by 2%, then 4, 6, .
  • Getting beaten up results in only a 2% drop for that choice.