"--I'm out of pearls, Subz is aggro pearling on me, it's over." His helmet's about to break; he tries to throw down some xp. Subz appears in front of him and, yep, there goes his totem. "Subz just popped me. Yeah, it's over. GG."

Mapicc was slain by ItzSubz_ using [Deliverance]

"Crap. Okay, Fit, we need to retreat--let's head to the nether, we can go back to Zam's old base to regear. We should be fine, I think we got them down enough that they won't want to keep going. Sorry for dragging you into this."

Mapicc's still on vc. "That's stupid, don't be sorry, if he hadn't joined you'd be dead too. It'll be fine, I'll meet you there. Castle or Eclipse base?"

"Castle."

(Mapicc and Roshambo are of Team Awesome, slash Leviathan, who dislike Zam because he betrayed them. Also, apparently relatedly, they use his base. Bases? They know where the Eclipse base is? His mental map gains a few new bullet points.)

Fit will let Ro lead to the castle, as if this was a choice he could have any other decision about. "Yeah, this isn't something to be sorry for," he says, siphoning more experience into his armor. He's getting low. He's glad he's being basically tutorialized on this. "Think about it this way. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. The fight was pretty fun, even though we lost, right?"

"Exactly. Fit gets it."

Mapicc traps the portal behind him when he comes through, just in case. The castle is partially but not mostly blown up; Mapicc makes a vague noise of disapproval while checking the chests. But it still has a fancy potion-brewing setup and some villagers, if not all of them.

Mapicc goes through his ender chest; he's got lots of spare pearls and golden apples, which he offers to Fit for a restock, but he doesn't even have enough potions to fully restock himself. Well, that's okay, that's why they came here. He isn't confident he can work the potion brewing setup Zam has but he can just open the brewing stand directly. Cool. While that's brewing he checks on the villagers--yep, there are still a couple clerics who he can buy out of xp. 

Eh. Fit mostly sits this one on the backseat. He replenishes his stacks of pearls and gapples; he didn't use a lot of them. Already, he's starting to consider rations, especially if this armor is technically Mapicc's... that Spoke gave to him. Hmm.

But what he's really lacking are exp bottles. So Fit posts himself up against a wall that keeps the villager trapped, waits his turn, and watches Mapicc until he's doing something not-that-delicate. "What happened here?" He asks. "What's the story?" With a little levity: "You guys ran a prince out of his castle, right?"

Snort. "Yeah, pretty much. And the base after that, and the base after that... I don't like it when people betray me."

Ding! New mental note added.

"What'd he do? To betray you two, I mean."

"Took all our dupe stashes and burned them. Well, most of the dupe stashes."

Hmm. He files away wait, you can dupe on this server for another conversation-- maybe with Spoke. But this seems like small potatoes, if it's just over duping; especially when Mapicc and Ro still have duped items. (This armor is Mapicc's. This armor is probably duped. Eh, whatever.) 

"Was this premeditated? Was he jealous?"

"No idea, I think it was impulsive but who knows. Uh, definitely not jealous, he was against duping. Thought it was, like, unfair. Which is fine but he didn't actually say this to us, I would've tried to figure something out with him if he didn't steal and burn all our stuff and then try to kill us."

Against duping. ...Okay, he can kind of see why. But not really.

"Sounds like a bad teammate," says Fit, and he even kind of believes it. "If people don't talk, the whole team falls apart. That's just-- what'd he think was gonna happen?" Wait. He looks up at a crater in the wall of the castle. Okay, maybe he thought that was going to happen. ...Could he talk to this Zam guy? He did just engage in a fight against him. He loves when the plot thickens. "He seems pretty resilient if he's able to bounce back after having three bases found and griefed."

"Yeah, it's like, kind of his whole thing. The bouncing back, not the being a bad teammate. Well. Sort of also the being a bad teammate."

Respect regained. "It happens, it happens."

...He pats at his pockets, a couple times, and finally realizes: he doesn't have any emeralds for even getting exp bottles in the first place. But logic follows; where there's villagers, there's ways to get emeralds. So he nods respectfully at Mapicc, excusing himself, and goes to rummage around.

It's very obvious this place is uninhabited, now. The pattern of items in the chest is patchwork, spotty, like someone's already been here and picked off carrion. Worst comes to worst, he can grab the rotten flesh and trade it back to the cleric, but judging by the rest of the villagers with professions, that's not how Zam made his emeralds. He traded... coal? Iron? Iron. There's an iron farm. Mystery solved. He loves investigating. He comes back to the villagers assembled with iron lining his metaphorical pockets, but swings over to Roshambo first, floating hands and everything.

"It's a pleasure to be here," he starts. "Is this a-- normal day for Lifesteal?"

Roshambo is brewing more potions since Mapicc got distracted by villager trading. "It's a pleasure to have you! Um, it's a bit more active than normal? It helps that it's Friday and there's a new person. But yeah, pretty much."

Duly noted! He nods. "Well, it's a thrill!" He can sort of even see why end crystals are banned, now. They're quick. Fights are not fun when they are quick. But god, there's such a spectacle to them. "Is Leviathan normally equally-matched with Eclipse?"

"It depends, honestly. When we can get there first and stop time, it's not equally matched. Or when not everyone's around and one of the teams outnumbers the other. ...Or when Spoke's there. In a fair fight, right now--I'd say we're pretty evenly matched. Most fights aren't fair."

Stop time. Right! Right. Feels sort of a pedestrian thing to forget. He lets his interest seep through in his face, just enough to look impressed, not jealous. Most fights aren't fair. Notes, notes, notes.

He's not going to ask why the fight even started. It just sort of happened, out of the corner of his eye, and when it started happening it wasn't going to stop. It wouldn't be wise to ask is Mapicc always like that, not with him in earshot. "Has this been going on for a while? Leviathan versus Eclipse?"

"I'd say so? Depends when you count it as starting. A few months, I think."

"Well, when would you count it starting?"

"Uh, Zam betrayed us... four months ago? More stuff started happening around probably a month or two after that, Zam started--rallying people, getting people on his side against us."

So Zam's a rallyer. He can respect the hustle. The mental map grows ever-onward, but something's bugging him. Let's see if we can just...

"And when did you build the, uh..." Fit wiggles his hand, as if looking for a word. "The tower? The time-stopper."

"Uhhhh. Early January? It's, um, early March now, Zam betrayed in, I think, late November?"

The lag merry-go-round early January, Zam betraying before that. Not connected, unless people hold grudges for that long here. ...Well, seeing how Mapicc is still acting, it's not out of scope with reality. Maybe Mapicc really is just like that.

"Do Eclipse have that sort of technology? Like the tower?"