Jack rushes down the hallway at top speed only to slip and fall on a tight turn. Thankfully he catches himself and it doesn’t hurt too much. In a flash Jack is back on his feet and running again. It wasn’t until he got to his apartment he realized that his keycard was missing. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he fell! Of course he could over ride the door, but the biometrics were unreliable and it would take several tries at best to get the thing to open. Which is why he preferred to use the card. Hesitating a moment longer before trying he takes a shot in the dark and convincing the soulless machine to open the door to his apartment. Incredulous he punches the panel and turns to run back and retrieve the keycard.
On his way back he meets an elgar who’s examining the keycard and looking at the apartments as they pass them. The elgar’s attention moves suddenly to Jack when he stops breathlessly in front of them. Jack gets the impression that the elgar had just entered his mind, likely for the reason to find if he was friend or foe in approaching so quickly. Instead they find the answer to their question, the small lipless mouth turns up in a sort of mock smile. “5225? I believe you lost this.” They say cooly as if it were only a guess. Jack having been mind prodded before by teachers and others holds out a hand, wondering if he should be more upset with the faulty biometeric system or this elgar’s lack of tact when it came to telepathy. Jack is handed the card and finds his feet carrying him back to the door before he’d even acknowledged mentally what really just happened.
Finally he slips through the door to his apartment and over to his hand made bookcase from a Serveus elder tree. A knotty dark wood that was historically known for being able to retain magical charge of items within it for decades. None of that really mattered to Jack as he was the source of magic for the object he was retrieving, his wand. He stuffs the slender magic channeling device into his belt and rushes from his modest apartment.
What seemed like a quarter hour later but in reality was only a couple minutes Jack arrives at a horror scene outside of engineering. His heart stops momentarily when he sees Voxel on the ground in terrible shape. He notes a rifle that was just outside of the half dog’s reach and the open door inside of engineering where other downed figures of his teammates. There were also broken panels, systems and some exposed wiring. Absent from his own body he seems to just appear at Voxel’s side. Jack wasn’t trained in medical nor had he learned and magical healing, which in this short lived moment he was furious at himself for.
A second later he’s blind sided by what he was almost certain was a parkilu. A three legged medium sized creature with eyeballs around its neck and a long tongue, suddenly the whole Lime made more sense. They were breeding exotic color parkilu and he was supplying the new energy and infrastructure to house them. Which would have been fine if he knew, except the fact his thoughts were interrupted by the stomping from the creature on his ribs into the metal floor beneath him.
Taking Damage
Taking damage is fairly common in any type of adventure game. Unlike most games even something as simple as taking damage requires strategy, thought and adds a tension to the scene unlike any other game. At least that’s the goal.
The parkilu does a total of 6 damage to Jack, right now you should have 5 cards in your hand. To resolve the damage done to your character you’ll need to discard a card or set of cards valued at 6 or higher. The strategy to this is, perhaps you have an ace in your hand and the rest of your cards are lower than 6. You could discard that ace valued at 15 or discard two cards for this example we’ll say two 3s. Remember that suits are also important for technique chains, in some cases you may want to discard more cards to keep an important suit or a high card for your action next turn.
Something else important to remember about discarding damage is, since your hand is also your health pool you’ll be unable to refill your hand completely until healed or rested. A good example is, if you discard one card your new “current hand size” is 4. Meaning at the end of your turn you’ll only refresh your hand up to 4. This limits your character’s ability to retaliate and function at full capacity. If you discard two cards this will make your new “current hand size” 3 and you’ll need to be healed for “two cards worth”, this is true even if you only took six damage and discarded two cards valued at 3. If your current hand size reaches zero your character is unconscious.
This is a great time to mention that you can always play the last card out of your hand and remain conscious unless otherwise stated by an effect. You only are unconscious if you discard your last card as damage.
Its important to remember how damage works and how much strategy can go into something so simple. We aren’t just tracking numbers on a paper but actively making you to think and be creative to find new solutions. Feel free to review this section and as always, reach out if you have questions.
After you’ve discarded card(s) valued at 6 or higher, lets continue to the next page where Jack will play magic(♢) against the parkilu. This is a hint that might sway your choice of what to discard, if you’re confused by this or hesitant just ignore this paragraph and discard 6 or higher without worry, you’re still learning.
Abide Asteria 