Chương 79: 3.4 Climbing Up the Walls - Radiohead (4:45)

BigDutchOven Zeke is the definition of walking headfirst into a rake. PixelBaron LMAO Zeke goes on vacation for five minutes and somehow gets abducted. At this point, every thug and low-level criminal in The MIZ has to know he's the easiest fanfic protagonist to capture. Bandits see him walking down the street and they start high-fiving each other.

"Bro, that's the guy!"

"No way. The free hostage?"

"Yup. Grab the sack." StoryLeech Zeke has two natural predators. Ambushes, and any stranger saying "hey man, come check this out." FlavorTwists Can you imagine being Riley right about now? She'd just warned him that the city was getting more dangerous and gangs were recruiting. Then she leaves him alone for ONE afternoon and he gets bagged, tagged, and dragged to the Cathedrals of Ash. ReCoil44 (Primary) Mock him if you must, but I would caution against confusing comedy with consequence.

What has occurred here is not merely the kidnapping of Zeke. No. What has happened is that our central figure has been seized by an adversarial force of unusual competence and thrust into a new crucible. This story has now introduced a narratively vigorous antagonistic faction who is capable of bypassing safeguards, subverting expectations, and dragging the plot into harsher terrain. I applaud Zeke for producing such dramatic material. StoryLeech Seriously dood… someone needs to study you.

Nobody talks like this naturally. I remember hearing about some woman who hit her head and she woke up speaking with a British accent and it was because she had a tumor that got dislodged or something. You might want to get yourself checked out. Blazer66 You're beautiful ReCoil. Don't listen to what everyone else says. CradleOfMirth | narratively vigorous antagonistic faction | Dood got jumped in an alley. GnomelandSecurity (Proctor) Everybody shut up for ten seconds and focus.

Zeke is trapped in one of the Cathedrals, probably surrounded by bandits and Black Teeth, and everyone here is trying to do stand-up comedy. Yes, it was funny that ReCoil spent a bunch of time trying to build a whole Arc for Zeke, and then it got derailed with Zeke's kidnapping. But we need to move past that and help him out. DuckDetective13 He's right. And the first issue we've got to address is: how the hell Zeke got shoved into a Cathedral of Ash in only three days. That might be a plothole.

Zeke was out of touch with the forum for three days, and that timeline doesn't really make sense. Even the nearest Cathedral of Ash from The MIZ should take at least five days to reach by vehicle through the Deadlands. That's assuming that nothing goes wrong. So how did he get grabbed in the city and then end up at a Cathedral so fast? EdinboroughArchivist ^Duck. The travel math doesn't work out. If he was taken from the city and woke up in a Cathedral, one of three things must have happened.

Either there's a Cathedral much closer than anyone thought, OR Zeke got the math wrong on the transit, OR he was moved through a portal. DataDatum What the hell is Patch up to in all this? He's basically gone all Big Brother with this peeping… yet Zeke still gets kidnapped? Was he distracted by a bird or something? InnerMarrow Ooo. That's a good point. Patch is supposed to be Rank 11 with his pathfinding. You'd think he would have noticed if something was going on with Zeke.

If nothing else, he should have spotted the kidnappers and had someone step in to keep Zeke out of harm's way. Ch3micalBurst93 Rank 11 doesn't mean omniscience. Patch isn't some all-seeing god. Remember how Zeke had us putting together all those PDFs to let Patch know what to look out for? That means that he still needs information and context. Patch might have some limits like range restrictions and blind spots.

I'm not saying that those limits explain the timeline or anything, but I'm also not going to rag on Patch for Zeke getting taken. UnhelpfullyHelpful | Zeke getting taken. | Good movie. Now we just need Patch to call up the Black Teeth and be like "I've got a specific set of skills. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you." VeneratedWitchHunter It's just a plot device. Zeke needed a way to move the story along, so some guys came along and snatched him up. It's a classic storytelling technique.

Even if Patch did know and was all-seeing, he'd probably still let it all happen because it's necessary for the story. BrokenKing42 Where is Zeke? Bro just popped onto the forum and told us he was kidnapped and then disappeared. What's up with that? FlavorTwist He already explained about that. He said he's trying to keep the dimensional storage stuff secret.

If he starts pulling out his Tech Slate in front of his kidnappers, they'll take it from him or search him and realize he's still got his weapons and food and stuff. Give him some time to get his bearings. He's probably waiting until he can sneak away to a quiet corner before messaging us again. MushroomCleric My man is live-blogging his own abduction. I love this story. Z3ke (Original Poster) My updates are probably going to be a little bit shorter than you're all used to.

I've still got my Tech Slate out, but I'm trying to keep it as quiet as possible. None of the people who grabbed me know about my storage space, and I'm guessing as soon as they do they'll take everything I've got. That means I've got to sneak all my messages out when no one is watching, so don't expect constant large updates. As for what happened, I was walking through the city a few nights ago. I don't know exact times and dates because it's not like I've got a clock nearby.

Anyway, I was walking through The MIZ and came across this giant crowd blocking the street. I couldn't tell what they were doing. Maybe it was a protest or maybe a fight had broken out. I don't know. All I know is that people were packed in the street, shoulder-to-shoulder, and I didn't feel like trying to muscle my way through. I took a side street to try and bypass the crowd. I was halfway through it when this group came out of nowhere.

A bunch of guys stepped out on the street and I turned away because I didn't like how they looked. Two more guys came in from behind me and they helped box me in. At first I thought they were just going to try and mug me for my money. One of the guys in front rushed me and I pulled out Corva's hand axe from my storage space and started swinging. The first guy grabbed for my arm and I buried the blade of the axe in his shoulder. He screamed and stumbled backwards and I saw the opening and took it.

I lunged past him and tried to get away but then someone hit me from behind. I stumbled forward and spun and hacked wildly. The problem was I was too close to the buildings in the street and the axe smacked off a wall instead of a person. Then fists started raining down on me. One of the guys grabbed my wrist to try and control the axe while another guy slammed into my back. Someone kicked the side of my knee and my legs folded out from under me.

I managed to elbow one of the assholes in the throat and he had to fall back and I heard choking sounds coming from him. But I didn't get to revel in my small victory for long before I got punched straight in the mouth. I was rocked back and everything tasted like blood. I tried to bring the axe around again but I was tackled to the ground. Then one of them stomped my forearm into the pavement and another pinned my hand and twisted my fingers until I lost my grip. The axe clattered away and then I was beaten.

Someone kicked me in the side of the head. I had a knee in my spine and a boot to the rib. I tried to get back to my feet but I was shoved down and a fist was driven into my stomach so hard that I folded over and couldn't breath. That's when I figured that it was how I was about to die. I was getting ganged up on by a bunch of thugs, and they'd leave me broken and bleeding out. Thankfully… that's not what happened. Someone yanked my arms behind me and another guy threw a sack over my head.

They tied my wrists together and then dragged me upright and carried me down the alley while I was still trying to breath. I was shoved into a vehicle. I think. Maybe a car or a truck or something. We drove for a while - probably ten or fifteen minutes - and then we parked. They hauled me out of the car and pushed me forward and we entered some kind of building. I was shoved and pushed and marched deeper inside the building.

I ended up stumbling all over myself because my hands were tied and I couldn't see where I was going. That's when the weird part happened. I'd say around two minutes after being forced to march through the building, I felt this crushing pressure slam into me from every direction all at once. It was like someone was squeezing me. The whole world tightened and my ears popped and my teeth hurt and my chest tightened. I couldn't breathe and I felt like I was going to pass out. But then the feeling vanished.

Just, poof, gone. Everything was back to normal. Before I could think about what just happened I was being dragged forward again. Maybe another minute or so passed as I was guided through the building and then they shoved me so hard that I tipped over. They ripped the sack off my head and cut the bindings on my wrists. Then one of them punched me hard on the side of the head and everything tilted a bit. The floor came up to greet me and I heard mocking laughter.

By the time I pushed myself upright, whoever had kidnapped me was slamming a door shut behind them. It took a few seconds for my vision to stop swimming and i got my first real look at where I was. It was some kind of holding pen. There were stone walls that were slick with damp, and iron bars on one side. The ceiling was kinda low, probably only about five and a half feet up off the ground. Everything smelled like mildew, sweat, piss, and old blood. And there were people everywhere.

It's dark enough that I can't really make out anyone fully, but I'd guess that there are about forty or fifty people in here with me. DuckDetective13 Edinborough was right, it's got to be a portal. What Zeke described about the pressure, the ears popping, and the sudden disorientation lines up with lore about portals. That was a portal gate they snuck Zeke through. MapHackJunkie Yep. But we still don't know exactly where the portal led to. Sure, it's a Cathedral. Maybe.

The Black Teeth guy that Zeke mentioned earlier would point in that direction. But there's a bunch of sites that the Black Teeth own, so we don't know which Cathedral he's in. Zeke, we need more info. Describe everything around you. Tell us about the cells and the number of guards. Tell us about the clothing people are wearing. Are there symbols on the walls? Is there any sound you're hearing? Give us all the description you can. ReCoil44 (Primary) Yes. Help us understand the architect of your suffering.

This was not a random street crime, nor is it the crude opportunism of scavengers. It was a coordinated abduction supported by logistics, manpower, and access to portal technology. Someone of consequence wanted bodies to be moved discreetly. Do continue. StoryLeech Jeezus. You can just tell that ReCoil is the kind of guy to own multiple scarves. Z3ke (Original Poster) | Zeke, we need more info. Describe everything around you. | Okay.

I'm pretty sure I'm in some kind of basement or an underground storage area or something. Everything is damp and the whole place smells like shit. There's rust on everything. The bars on the holding pen are iron, but they've all got that orange-brown stuff on them that crumbles and stains your hands whenever you touch them. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I don't know how many guards are around because I only ever saw that one guy that I told you all about. The only light in the area is from a few weak lanterns set way down a corridor that bisects all the holding pens. Oh yea. That's right. There's another holding pen directly across from where I'm being kept, but I can't really make out the people being held there because the place is so dark. Everyone in my pen looks rough. They're filthy and covered with dirt and their clothes are all torn up.

Nobody has changed their clothes or showered in a couple days, and they're all seated against the walls or they're curled up on the floor trying to sleep. No one is talking. Another weird thing is that whenever I look at someone, they'll usually glance at me for a half a second before quickly looking away. It's weird and it's like whatever fight they used to have got beaten out of them.

One more oddity is that a bunch of people in my cell, and in the one across the corridor, all have blue stains covering their arms and legs. It's not at all natural and instead reminds me of those old pictures of coal miners where they'd get out of the mines and everything was stained black. Except… this is bright blue. Do any of you know what that means? 10161066 That's Veylstone dust. It would actually explain a lot about how Patch didn't spot the portals or the kidnapping.

SpicyShoyu If they've got a enough Veylstone to be staining the prisoners, they've got to be making disgusting amounts of credits. GnomelandSecurity (Proctor) Yep. Hastings is right. Zeke, that blue stuff that people are coated with is almost definitely Veylstone dust. It's a rare mineral that's found out in the Deadlands, and it looks kind of like blue chalk in its raw form. What makes it so valuable is that it messes with a bunch of magic. Basically, any magical "sight" gets messed up when dealing with Veylstone.

Any skill that is based on divination, probability reading, tracking, or pathfinding is next to useless. It counters all of that stuff. If the people who grabbed you had Veylstone lined cars or crates or rooms, then a lot of sight-based powers would struggle to track you. MapHackJunkie It would also explain how a portal is being hidden in The MIZ. Normally, if someone set up portal access there, Patch or the Pale Regiment or one of the other major factions would have noticed and shut it down quick.

But if the portal chamber was shielded with a bunch of Veylstone, anyone trying to scan the area would just get a whole bunch of static. I'll say this much, that kind of setup is expensive. It's not amateur hour there. Creating a portal and hiding it would take a shit ton of credits. You only ever see that with banks or guild vaults. The Pale Regiment has a bunch of Veylstone stuff surrounding their most important items, and it's not something that just anybody can go out and buy. InnerMarrow Congrats Zeke.

You didn't get jumped by a bunch of random street trash. You got jumped by a bunch of randoms who have enough cash to hide a portal inside one of the most dangerous cities in the Fracture-verse. Cool. Cool. Cool cool cool. KickInator Zeke: Help. I have been captured by the Sinaloa Cartel. BabyBloos If the prisoners are coated in the Veylstone dust, that means they're probably mining it. You don't get that kind of build up from just carrying around a couple rocks. Z3ke (Original Poster) I'm in a mine?

K1LLPR1EST Not necessarily. All the Cathedrals of Ash were built pre-Fracture and they served a variety of purposes. Some of them were military sites. Some were research compounds. Some were bunkers or logistics hubs. Some were built near cities and others were built where nothing else was around for miles. Right now, you've got a couple possibilities for where you are. If you give us more details, we can narrow those possibilities down. You might be in a holding cell that is attached to a mine somewhere.

You could be in a processing site where ore gets moved and sorted. Or you could be in a slave block where a bunch of other people are kept before the Black Teeth move them to where they need to go. ReCoil44 (Primary) NullSigil once explained the Black Teeth to Zeke, but given his famously porous attention span, I suspect that much of that information has dribbled out of his head and leaked harmlessly to the ground. So let us revisit the matter properly. The Black Teeth are a moving civilization built on predation.

If you wish to reduce them to the simplest terms - and I do this for the benefit of the majority of this forum - the Black Teeth are the Frontiers reinterpretation of the Mongol Horde. They are a fusion of scavenger clans, slaver guilds, salvage cartels, and war convoys fused into a single migratory force. They rarely hold territory in the same way the more civilized factions of Frontiers do.

Instead, they travel in immense armored caravans made up of spike-plated buses, jury-rigged troop haulers, fuel tankers, and mobile fortresses assembled from welded wreckage. Some Black Teeth convoys stretch for miles, and when one passes by the horizons blacken with smoke from their engines. They fly black banners and decorate their vehicles with chains, cages, jawbones, and trophies taken from their victims. Their modus operandi is to sweep across a region like locusts and strip settlements bare.

Machinery is dismantled and fuel reserves are emptied. Those few unlucky enough to survive a Black Teeth raid are collared and marched away to slave pens. Then the convoys continue onwards, leaving nothing but dust and death in their wake. More relevant to your current predicament, Zeke, the Black Teeth control several Cathedrals of Ash. As K1LLPR1EST correctly pointed out, the Cathedrals are ancient structures that predate the Fracture.

They are old military black sites and research complexes that were once places devoted to governmental power but now have been repurposed for cruelty. Unfortunately, we do not yet know which Cathedral Zeke has been taken to. That distinction will matter if he wishes to escape, because not all Cathedrals serve the same purpose. Some are undermanned stopover points for convoys passing through.

Their entirety of being is meant as a safe harbor for the Black Teeth to repair and refuel before continuing on their destructive ways. These Cathedrals are often undermanned, and escape from them is difficult but still possible. Some cathedrals are prisons or temporary holding sites where captives are sorted, sold, and transferred. Or they are mines built over valuable seams of minerals. These places are harsher and more disciplined.

The guards are more attentive there because the slaves represent financial assets, and financial assets are closely watched. Escape from these Cathedrals are more challenging, but possible through cunning, luck, and blood. Then there are the fortress Cathedrals which are semi-permanent redoubts where convoys regroup, repair, and project power across entire regions. These sites are defended by the majority of the Black Teeth, and escape from such places requires courage, hard-work, and planning.

Finally, there is the darkest possibility for Zeke. The Chapel Pit. It is the Black Teeth's great wound carved into the earth: part headquarters, part slave mine, part industrial graveyard, and part ceremonial seat of power. When the clans of the Black Teeth gather, they gather there. Thousands labor below ground. Furnaces burn without pause. Convoys come and go in an endless procession. Those taken to the Chapel Pit are rarely seen again.

To call escape difficult would be dishonest, since for all practical purposes… it is impossible. The Chapel Pitch is surrounded by kill-zones, watch towers, and armed guards. It is fed by roads controlled for miles in every direction. It is the absolutely worst place that Zeke could have chosen to be kidnapped to. StoryLeech Hey Zeke. You said you were trying to limit how long you've got your Tech Slate out because you're afraid the guards are going to take it from you. Don't try to read ReCoil's stuff.

TL; DR - You're in the Cathedrals of Ash, but we don't know where exactly you are. Give us a bit more info and we might be able to narrow it down for you.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Someone please have an idea of how I can get out of here because I don't know how long I can last like this. I'm broken and exhausted and shaken and trying to type all this up while pretending to be sleeping in a corner in the holding pen. Also, I'm covered in all that blue dust shit. It's in my hair and under my nails and inside my clothes and probably sticking to my lungs. I can taste it when I breathe and it's everywhere.

After my last post, I shoved my Tech Slate back in storage and it was lucky I did because a bunch of guards came stomping down the corridor and started opening cell doors shortly afterwards. The moment they opened the door they rushed into the room and started swinging their clubs and laughing and yelling at everyone. A bunch of the people tried to shy away from them and move so as to not get hit, but we were all packed in so tightly that you can't really move more than half a step before you bump into someone.

There was this older guy near the front of the holding pen and he didn't move out of the way fast enough. One of the guards cracked him across the face with a club and he dropped instantly. Nobody helped him up. Hell, nobody even looked at him for more than a second. Everyone was just keeping their heads down and trying not to get noticed. They shoved us all out into the corridor and chained us together, then they marched us out of the holding pens and into the Cathedral.

You all wanted me to talk about layout details so you could figure out where exactly I'd been taken, so here's what I saw. Once we left the holding cells the tunnels widened. The stone walls gave way to these huge iron support beams. There were a bunch of metal pipes and cables hanging overhead, and everything looked like it had just been bolted into the wall without any kind of rhyme or reason.

We were marched through the hallways for a bit before we came out to the wide open space and there was this massive pit in the center of this huge room. Massive and huge don't really do it justice, and I'm struggling to really explain what I saw here. Imagine this giant vertical shaft that is carved deep into the earth, and the whole thing is wide enough that you could fit a couple city blocks inside it.

When we got to the edge of the pit I looked down and couldn't see the bottom because everything was covered in this blue hazy smoke. The walls of the pit spiraled downwards with catwalks and work platforms stapled everywhere. I spotted a few lifts with these rickety old chains, and there were a couple cranes parked around the edges of the pit. Floodlights glowed through the blue dust, and everywhere I looked people were working.

I couldn't get an accurate count of them, but there had to be thousands of slaves there. They were lined up with picks and hammers and they were smashing into the walls. Other slaves were hauling carts or dragging sacks. I can't really describe the sight of it all. It was a shock, seeing all those people chained up and forced to work. But nothing I can say can really drive home how shit the place is. But I can talk about the sound of it and how horrifying it all is. People were coughing and people were moaning.

Guards were shouting. Chains were scraping together and pick axes were slamming against the wall. Some of the guards were barking out this horrible laughter. At one point I saw a worker collapse to the ground and he was surrounded by this pile of blue dust. His body was jerking like he was having a seizure or something, and the guards all stood around him yelling at him to get up while also laughing hard at the fact that he couldn't. When he didn't move, one of them started kicking him.

Another slave tried to help him and got beaten down too, and the laughter from the guards became even worse. None of the other nearby slaves tried to help them out. They just kept mining at the blue chalk stuff. They marched our group down maybe four or five levels, but it was hard to tell how many because all of the levels look the same once you're in the pit. Then they dumped us at a work section of the pit where part of the wall had been carved open.

The guards tossed these rusted picks at our feet and anyone who didn't grab one fast enough got hit. Then we got to work. The Veylstone doesn't really behave like normal rocks. When you hit it, it sometimes splits off in these neat little slabs that you can pry loose. Other times it crumbles into dust and you've got to get down on your hands and knees and sweep up the stuff into a small pile and shift it into these baskets. That's the worst part, because the dust gets everywhere.

It hangs in the air and drifts about the place like smoke. It's hard to see too deep into the pit because there's this constant blue fog that covers everything. It coats the railings and the floors and the walls and the guards and the workers. Everyone was soon sporting the faint blue skin that I saw back in the holding pens. When the dust got on my skin, everything went numb for a few seconds. My hands were coated in blue and I couldn't feel anything from them.

I was still swinging the pickaxe but I couldn't really feel the handle. It was like I was swinging with someone else's hands. Halfway through the day I noticed that my palms were torn open and bleeding. My blood was mixed in with the blue dust and caked my hands in this ugly paste… but I didn't feel that either. At one point I tried to wipe some sweat off my face and my cheek started to feel like it belonged to someone else.

But what was worse was that whenever I breathed in too much of the dust, my thoughts started to slow down. It wasn't like I was dumb or anything. It was more like everything was muffled, like I was trying to think through a heavy blanket. I don't know if that even makes any sense. I'd lose track of time and forget what I was doing for a half a second. Then I'd "wake up" and realized that I'd been staring at the wall for who knows how long.

I kept waiting for the guards to notice and beat me for slacking, but either they didn't notice, or they didn't care. It probably happens a lot. I don't know if all that's normal for the exposure I had, or maybe I've been slowly poisoned by it. None of the guards seemed to be as affected as me or the other workers. They all had these cloth wraps that covered their mouths and noses, so I'm guessing that they know exactly what this stuff does.

What little I could see of the rest of the Cathedral was just as insane as the mine. The Black Teeth had built an entire city there. Above the pit were these chambers and alcoves and loading docks. And inside the alcoves were rows and rows of vehicles. There were cars and trucks and buses and flatbeds and anything else that had an engine and some wheels. Some were up on mechanical lifts with crews underneath them, while others were idling off to the side with people fixing armored plates to their sides.

I saw a group of Black Teeth trying to finagle a gun mount on the back of a jeep, and even more Black Teeth trying to weld metal teeth onto the front of a bus looking thing. One massive machine that I spotted looked like three vehicles had been fused together, and it had a ton of Black Teeth just hanging around it. The Black Teeth are everywhere in the Cathedral. They've got armored guards keeping watch over us, along with mechanics, drivers, lookouts, and whatever else.

There were people gambling in small groups, people sleeping on catwalks, and people eating while they watched us work. The worst were the bored ones. A few of the Black Teeth would wander through the workers. They'd come across someone they didn't like the look of, drag them out of line, beat the hell out of them for entertainment, and then shove them back into place laughing. We worked for hours, but I couldn't tell you how many. Eventually, they chained us up again and marched us back to the cells.

Someone tossed some food at us through the bars and we all rushed to get it. Now I'm seated in the corner of the cell. My whole body hurts. My hands are blistered and my lungs feel achey and my brain is only just now starting to work again. So… is that enough info for you guys? SignalLoss Hey Zeke. Good news and bad news. Good news: we know where you are. Bad news: we know where you are. You're in the Chapel Pit. Z3ke (Original Poster) That means nothing to me.

ReCoil44 (Primary) Then allow me to remedy that ignorance. Zeke, you have not been taken to some mere holding site or a provincial labor camp. You have been delivered into the very heart of the Black Teeth empire. The Chapter Pit is where slaves become labor, labor becomes ore, ore becomes wealth, and wealth becomes war. It is the industrial heart of the Black Teeth. It is their ceremonial center. It is proof positive that barbarism, when sufficiently organized, can turn into an empire. JimothyTheBarber Story…

you wanna help out Zeke a bit? StoryLeech?? Is that my job now? Being the ReCoil whisperer? Hey Zeke. You landed in Mordor. It's very bad. GnomelandSecurity (Proctor) Zeke, that's one of the worst Cathedrals you could've ended up in. Probably the worst. It's a major Black Teeth stronghold, and it's where all of their convoys and caravans come back to recharge and resupply and pick up more gear and weapons. There are a TON of Black Teeth clans present.

Even if you manage to escape from your holding cell, and get out of the Cathedral, and get past all the guards, you're still in the middle of the desert. Frontiers lore says that the Chapel Pit used to be this industrial borehole before the Fracture. Also, you being exposed to the Veylstone can be pretty bad. It causes a mental fog and reduced magical sensitivity. Too much exposure to it can mess people up. From here on out, cover your mouth when you can. Keep using your storage carefully.

You don't need to look for an exit or anything, because we can actually give you a pdf of the entire Cathedral. Give us some time to come up with a plan. Uh… it might take a bit. You don't really have the necessary skills to be getting out of the Cathedral. Maybe try to make friends with some of the people in your cell and then let us know if any of them have some skills that might help out. And also, don't piss off the guards.

We don't want you getting beaten constantly to the point that you're in no shape to escape later on.