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9,179 checks

A suburb of Almina al-Azraq. Green bushes, knee-high, stretch across a plateau. Boys with skirts woven into nets pluck small white flowers from between the leaves, pinching just beneath each bud.

The smell is ecstatic, overwhelming.

As much as 75% of the world's commercial jasmine is produced in this vast field. Children as young as five work alongside their parents, wiping pollen and pesticides from their cheeks.

Advanced dog technique.

They'll bloom again tomorrow morning, so long as the sun is out.

A hangover massages your skull. The sound of a blender makes your eyes itch.

Voice was strong. Good. Ignore the twisting in your stomach.

Maybe you didn't want to see it.

If he did, he moved fast.

Upside down, the planes of the bathroom wall and floor form alien geometries. It's hard at first to tell what exactly you're looking at.

Throttling it. As though it had betrayed him.

An abrupt loss in hand-eye coordination -- in Ramses, who had the hands of a surgeon.

The horror of bodily disobedience. The self turned other.

Light flickers with the singsong iridescence of open flame. Candles.

The Party lives on.

Overhead, something stirs. It has been waiting.

THE PARTY LIVES ON.

You'll need your flashlight to compensate for your pathetic fleshy corneas.

That's way too fucking boring to remember! We've already forgotten it again.

She's made the exchange with your opposite number on your behalf.

You'd be trapped here.

The kind of gäng pile-on you don't come back from.

Awful waste management. The ex-pilots did know what they were talking about.

The dark ones are galvanized steel. Threaded joints, auxiliary lines for overflow -- a major upgrade.

A Wachbann door. Double-skin boron-alloy, tungsten-carbide backing, sixty millimetre core. High-end prison-grade.

Between that and the intercom, Hauzmann wasn't kidding about recent security upgrades.

A forking road, then. Above, you'd have to blend in. Below, you bask in the shadows, and hope trouble doesn't await beyond the door.

You still don't know what the building above contains. Maybe there's an easier way in.

You have so far gone unnoticed. You may spoil that by exploring other routes.

Hauzmann mentioned recent security upgrades. That'd be one of them.

Quite the investments in security, between that door and the intercom.

Quite the investment in security.

That, and the intercom. The heartless man in the bar wasn't kidding about security upgrades.

The heartless man mentioned recent security upgrades. That'd be one of them.

Knows you're probably lying. Lets it slide, like always.

A lurch in your stomach at the sight of the drop.

Your fingers itch for grip.

Wet cloth and iron dust. Foul. Chemical.

A sneaky way in, far from prying eyes...

Looking out over the canal, a thought surfaces: that of PSEUDOPOD's soiled, wet trousers.

It's not about the canal. It's what's built around it.

We're sniffing around here for a reason, right?

Like the one over there, to the east.

And it seems the GM is no longer blocking the door...

There's a small room to the east. Might be worth a look.

In all likelihood, that's the door the GM is guarding.

Minor additions won't compromise the bag's usability. You may proceed.

What about a cat? Cats roll deep. Lurking in dumpsters, owning streets and rooftops, ruining ecosystems.

Recall the emblematic cigarette. Mystery, composure, lives lived on borrowed time -- an homage to your craft.

You could just leave it as is. Restraint's also a choice.

9,179 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 180 of 184