2018-02-23: Start Fookin' Burning
- Log: Start Fookin' Burning
- Cast: Kahm Yugh, Kent Hauch
- Where: Crossbell Mines
- Date: 2/23/2018
- Summary: Having been lured by K.K. into a trap of the knight's own devising, Kahm and Kent find themselves deep beneath the earth in a mine riddled with malevolence. They have but one way out, and a high price to pay for passage.
OOC Note: This scene takes place immediately after To Which All Things Toe
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ========================<* CHALLENGE - Long Fall Down *>======================== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The earth has failed you. With one mighty blow, the ground of Ironbell gives way to the gaping chasm dug by pure desperation beneath you, sending you into utter freefall to the dark depths below. As the sunlight becomes an increasingly more distant thing, finding some way to buffer or control your fall -might- be a good idea -- otherwise, you may well be in for a world of hurt. =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck, Hesitate=======================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 1 *>=============================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kahm Yugh is no stranger to the art of adaptive tactics within battle, the skill to see the shape of thing while you were in roiling center, carefully and patiently guiding events towards a desired conclusion with a mix of measures both extreme and subtle. It was something he had done himself many times before-the hallmark of a mind suited to field command. So, as Kent reclaimed the fight in all his fiery gusto, as bullets glinted off K.K.'s armor and their hands ascended in proclamation, Kahm began to see the shape of Trial Knight's design.
And knew, with the same gravity that was about to betray them, that he had glimpsed it too late.
Know you the mire of the pit!
"Tch!" Kahm guttered, springing forward in futility (his next would find no purchase), choosing to spend that next heartbeat closing on K.K. before the ground vanished before their feat and that last glimpse of the armored enemy became raptly receding memory against the sunset's shrinking light. In those last few moments of clarity he had before the realization that he was falling struck him, the Major pondered over the weight of the enigma's words, and they could have meant.
Do they know who I am?
A glint of light drew his eye in the next tick of time, and Kahm found a small blessing: His blade, having tumbled into the exposed mining shaft alongside him, and perilously within reach. Whirling haplessly into the air, the man made an instant decision the risk losing a hand in favor of his life and struck out to grasp the weapon, half-finding the hilt and securing his grip with the rest. He then used his momentum (and calculated cushion of air ether) to guide him towards wall of the chasm, piercing the stone with blade's nanite-honed edge and attempting to put the brakes on his speed in a shriek of riven stone and sparking steel.
Kahm tucked his legs beneath him and attempted to keep from bouncing off what flimsy purchase he maintained, shouting into the dark, "Kent, handle the landing!"
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
Kahm has to make the assumption that Kent is falling with him - last time he saw the gangster was when they were smashed together, though we can assume the blazing ruin of the tavern was his fault.
Further to the side, and higher up, a spot of angry growing red shifts through the air, creating a new dull glow - a freshly-lit cigar.
Kent falls faster than the burning wood around him, though once Kahm knows where to look, he can be barely glimpsed around their guttering flames. He simply bounces off the side of the chasm, crushing through a cluster of rock without seeming to notice. "Bloody hell," he mutters.
He uses the light of his cigar to squint at Red River's gun, still in his hand, eyeing the dials and buttons on the side of its grip, the controls for its transforming barrel. "'ang on," he calls out, "Don't wrinkle yer tailcoat." The gangster fiddles and flicks the weapon - the barrel elongates and splits into four, which then in turn narrow into curious thin cones.
His barely-visible face looks dubious as he points the gun downward and squeezes the trigger, swinging Red River back and forth. Ribbons of dull lava spray out in a configuration that would be completely useless in a fight but, hopefully, just what the doctor ordered - propelled, it shoots downward faster than they do, hardening into thin sheets of tephra that pile up beneath them like freshly-raked leaves.
It's not... it's still not going to be great.
DG: Kent Hauch has used his Tool Red River toward his party's challenge, Long Fall Down.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ========================<* CHALLENGE - Long Fall Down *>======================== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The earth has failed you. With one mighty blow, the ground of Ironbell gives way to the gaping chasm dug by pure desperation beneath you, sending you into utter freefall to the dark depths below. As the sunlight becomes an increasingly more distant thing, finding some way to buffer or control your fall -might- be a good idea -- otherwise, you may well be in for a world of hurt. =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck, Hesitate=======================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 1 *>============================= ==========================< Results - Long Fall Down >========================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 0 --(10)--> 10 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 0 --(5)--> 5 Pass Red River 3 Agility Effects: Quicken -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 0 --(15)--> 15 Pass Conditions: Bad Luck(2)|Hesitate(2) Effects: Quicken(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has passed this challenge! The party gained 15 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - Malevolent Magma *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Orange glow illuminates this stretch of the pit, the light and pressing heat scratching at the senses. telling you this is where your end will be It's a heat that grows all the greater as you approach the source -- a veritable door of liquid-hot magma, bubbling yellow-orange molten rock creating a series of strange barriers that line the long, man-made tunnel further in. The heat stokes, it agitates -- it sparks the fury. an ignoble end covered in dust and dirt lower than even the lambs above It cannot be breached, not by tools or magic or clever thinking. But the more one gives in to their frustrations and their anger? The more the magma starts to recede, one barrier after another with the telltale sensation of bubbling Malevolence threading through that viscous rock. how dare someone try to make a PIT the end of you they have not yet even begun to see how you BURN So, why not just give in? stoke the furnace further =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Indeed, it's not great.
Kahm hits a mineral deposit of some sort. By some miracle the anemo blade bounces out of it's self-carved crevasse instead of coming to an abrupt halt, where it probably would've been lost forever. This same supposed stroke of fortune sends the major spinning head-over-heels away from the chasm wall, the world becoming a dizzy mishmash of darkness and light as Kent and his red-hot machinations turned in and out of view on Kahm's whirling axis.
It all came to an abrupt, crunching halt as Kahm crashed through several layers of hardened tephra before coming the rest on the chasm floor with a pronounced thud, feeling a lancing pulsar of pain light up along his flank-that'd be the wound he suffered from K.K., still bleeding and untreated. Lieutenant Voss would've had a conniption on him by now.
The man drew slowly to his feet, all too aware that he had to do something about this if he wanted to have any chance of getting back out. A casual glance upwards suggested there was no point in worry about the Trial Knight any further-they had fallen a long way. "Going to need a moment." He murmurs, staring at the naked steel of his sword, invoking and nurturing the ether circuits embedded in it until the blade turned burning shade of orange, as if pulled raw from its stellar forge. Wordlessly, he brought the steel to his wounded side, and pressed.
The next few moments were not so silent.
*****
Later, Kahm limped along the magma-laden path that was their only way out from the landing site, raw pain and searshut flesh still gnawing at the edges of his mind's thought. The way was clearly made by man, but there'd been some other hand in it as well....likely the one of their self-elected jailer. The familiarity of the environment did not escape him, even with an extreme shift in locales, the influence of malevolence was decipherable.
The magma door defied most conventional method of approach easily, and in his raw state the Major gave into the traps urgings rather quickly, unleashing a slew of etheric thunder and fury against it to vent his mounting anger. "Do they take me for a fool?! A prisoner?!"
Azazel's filled his mind. The apostate had called him a slave, little better than the Trial Knight's judgment. He would show them both.
DG: Kahm Yugh has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Malevolent Magma.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
Kent fares a little better at the landing, though it's draining in a different way as he keeps one hand pressed on the stone tablet over his scarred heart.
It's not a landing, he thinks over and over, it's a rejoining. The ground is where you belong.
It kind of works. He shatters through the tephra leaves, robbing himself of some of his mometum before he manages to land feet-first, bones grinding painfully. His Solidity triggers, the impact transferring through his entire body of a piece instead of centering on his feet. Blood trickles out of his nose, his eyes go bloodshot, and a couple bruises swell on his head.
Kent audibly creaks as he stretches back to his full height, hawking and spitting a bloody glob to the side. "Fuck," he mutters, his hands shaking. He feels everything in his body. As Kahm cauterizes his damn self, Kent lifts Red River shakily. "'coulda done that," he grins through crimson teeth.
--
Kent is limping a little as well. It's almost a luxury for him - he could never show himself to be hurt in front of his gang and would just have to go stomping along on the strained thigh. At least it isn't dark.
Never been a fan of the dark.
For the ganger, things are a little different. Aside from the fucking gall of the Trial Knight to keep shoving him around like he's still simply Kent, he's relatively comfortable in this environment. He doesn't mind the sweat so much. In a way, he's usually so angry that the initial prodding of the furious magma is a bit like getting a massive beast to notice a thrown twig.
What Kahm assumes is there, however, Kent can actually see. He crouches down, once again threading his burned hand through a bit of that purple essence, closer to the magma than some would dare dream. He is a little more used to being in grungy situations than Kahm. Kent Hauch has a different kind of dignity that isn't harmed just by being under the dirt.
But... the absolute fucking disrespect to try and stop him with molten heat... something he himself holds dominion on.
The thought plucks into his head, finds a gap, and begins to widen it until Kent himself throws the door open wide, popping the cork on the bottle.
Veins pulse around his right temple - and then erupt from his left, covering most of his bald head.
He growls, deep in his chest, "When we get bloody well out of here I'm going to reduce that popinjay to slag."
DG: Kent Hauch has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Malevolent Magma.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - Malevolent Magma *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Orange glow illuminates this stretch of the pit, the light and pressing heat scratching at the senses. telling you this is where your end will be It's a heat that grows all the greater as you approach the source -- a veritable door of liquid-hot magma, bubbling yellow-orange molten rock creating a series of strange barriers that line the long, man-made tunnel further in. The heat stokes, it agitates -- it sparks the fury. an ignoble end covered in dust and dirt lower than even the lambs above It cannot be breached, not by tools or magic or clever thinking. But the more one gives in to their frustrations and their anger? The more the magma starts to recede, one barrier after another with the telltale sensation of bubbling Malevolence threading through that viscous rock. how dare someone try to make a PIT the end of you they have not yet even begun to see how you BURN So, why not just give in? stoke the furnace further =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 2 *>============================= =========================< Results - Malevolent Magma >========================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 10 --(20)--> 30 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 5 --(20)--> 25 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 15 --(5)--> 20 Fail Conditions: Bad Luck(1)|Hesitate(1)|Save Point(1) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has failed this challenge! The party gained 5 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== =========================<* CHALLENGE - Living Rock *>========================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- It is here, so obvious and thick in the entirety of the Pit. Malevolence threads its way through the very rock itself, having insinuated itself so thoroughly into these mines that they are practically one in the same now. It hangs in the heat haze, it bubbles at the magma that swells up here and there. It infects the creatures. And no where is that more clear than in how it seems to bring uncanny life to the very cavernous walls themselves, as rock bursts all around you in this craggy passage, forming sharp spikes and various other implements of destruction out of minerals that thrust like limbs from the walls around you in an attempt to skewer and smash you -- if you are not swift enough in maneuvering and escaping their violent, fervent wrath. The rocks have come alive -- and they really, truly, honestly want to kill you. Just a little. =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Once Kahm's tantrum is done, Kent does indeed throw the door open like a bottle's cork-with a similar reaction. A rush of hot air sweeps over the two violently, the sensation akin to being for too close to El Pazzo's everfire, where your skin starts to feel the burn just before the lick of the flame.
The door itself simply collapses into a pool of spreading, sloshing magma, making their passage that much more difficult and careful to avoid a more literal joining in the Earth.
"In this we can agree." Kahm lent his voice to Kent's threat, "Whatever mysteries the Trial Knight holds don't justify suffering them to live."
As if in silent answer to their murder-oath, the rocks around seemed to explode and crack with molten challenge. A bolt of fire narrowly passes over Kahm's shoulder, and the Major quickly picked up his speed, avoiding sudden spikes of heated rock and threatening hisses of sulfuric gases from ever errant packet. Either the tunnel had become unstable by some murmur in Filgaia's core, or more trickery had been laid at their feet. Kahm didn't care for the answer nearly as much as he did about getting out, having little more than his preternatural nimbleness to rely on.
DG: Kahm Yugh has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Living Rock.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
@emit
Kent is forced to spring back as the magma (they ARE underground) barrier sloughs away, growling as his weight comes down on his leg. "Aye," he snarls, shifting away from another questing finger of molten rock.
...almost into the path of all-too-solid rock, veined with Malevolence. Only being tuned to it keeps it from punching through his cheekbone instead of scraping his skin. "Dah!"
Kent isn't fast. He isn't SLOW, but especially in a situation like this, he can't just drop Red River and come back to it later. Its burden is what has given him his robust frame - but he's built for endurance, not burst. "Damnit!" He curses a lot as he chases after Kahm.
"You'd think if I could bloody see it I could fookin' control it a little bit! Ain't that basically 'ow magic's supposed to work?" He has to watch the rocks, watch for the cursed power to pulse before a rock shifts and fire at it proactively, thin streams of lava jacked up as high as he can manage without triggering a Core Bullet, trying to burn some of the rock away before it can even get to them.
DG: Kent Hauch has used his Tool Red River toward his party's challenge, Living Rock.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== =========================<* CHALLENGE - Living Rock *>========================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- It is here, so obvious and thick in the entirety of the Pit. Malevolence threads its way through the very rock itself, having insinuated itself so thoroughly into these mines that they are practically one in the same now. It hangs in the heat haze, it bubbles at the magma that swells up here and there. It infects the creatures. And no where is that more clear than in how it seems to bring uncanny life to the very cavernous walls themselves, as rock bursts all around you in this craggy passage, forming sharp spikes and various other implements of destruction out of minerals that thrust like limbs from the walls around you in an attempt to skewer and smash you -- if you are not swift enough in maneuvering and escaping their violent, fervent wrath. The rocks have come alive -- and they really, truly, honestly want to kill you. Just a little. =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 3 *>============================= ===========================< Results - Living Rock >============================ Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 30 --(5)--> 35 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 25 --(5)--> 30 Pass Red River 3 Agility Effects: Quicken -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 20 --(20)--> 40 Pass Conditions: Slow(2) Effects: Quicken(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Bump in the Night *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The miners here dug deep. Too deep. And when the mine was abandoned, all the equipment that made it possible to even function in so ungodly a place gradually stopped working over the long and ceaseless passage of time. Now? Now there is only darkness in this long stretch of cavernous underground, and in this deep dark stretch of the pit, one's sight completely ceases to be useful. Blindness is your companion here, but not loneliness -- the faint sound of claws scratching on rock, of hissing and burbling, suggests that maybe, just maybe, you are not alone -- and that navigating through this area less than whole will require much more caution - and swiftness - than originally thought. =Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Turns out Kahm is fast enough and Kent is tough enough. Although the gang leader lags behind the Gebler operative's speedy pace, the larger man's brutal constitution proves well-suited to his movement. Jets of molten rock and flung, sharp bits of stone may cut at their napes and abound in their wake, but nothing seems to land any sort of purchase that's more than irritating.
"Seeing a thing is far removed from knowing it. Most lives are ruled by unseen forces." Kahm adds, having enough time to apparently be poetic. But he's speaking from a deeper place, having influence and power over a force whose most fundamental mechanics were invisible to the human eye.
The route they take darkens and deepens, until light becomes a memory and the only sensation of being became one's breath and heartbeat. Caution begins to temper Kahm's steps, and his instinct to light an emergency flare is tempered by the uncertainty that it might attract whatever unknown creatures share this darkness with them-if he wasn't just hearing those scratching, clambering sounds in his mind.
"Wait a moment." Kahm will say to Kent, having no idea if the other man is actually there unless he speaks. The Major's eyes close, and gathering his will and imparting it into the air, feeling for currents and drafts that might lead them clear of obstacles and other threats. It was a less certain form of navigation, and wouldn't make them any faster, but they'd at least keep moving forward. "This way." He'll say again, taking a tentative step forward.
DG: Kahm Yugh has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Bump in the Night.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
Hauch takes his scrapes, but he always takes his scrapes. He staggers out after Kahm, straying further and further behind. The hateful rocks seem to grow further incensed when the Gebler officer steps beyond themselves, arranging themselves like a fanged maw, quivering.
"Ah, shite!" yells Kent, throwing himself headlong. The rocks grind together with a horrible thudding finality, scraping piercingly against Red River's tank, digging into the already-damaged longcoat. It rips free, a vital piece of Kent's armor against the dirt he dragged himself up from.
He hits the cavern floor roughly, the cigar bouncing out of his mouth as he crashes and clangs down the sloping path, preceding Kahm into the darkness.
He comes to a halt. Briefly, there is silence in the wake of his calamitous entry. He mutters foul things to himself as he pushes himself up.
Into black.
Kahm can hear him draw in a sharp, uncharacteristic breath. The dark. He despises the dark. Not because of knowing that something might be out there...
...but because nothing might be.
Nothing to burn.
Nothing to see it burn.
"Match, match, match," Kent says, leaving Red River to swing by its hose, which slowly retracts itself. He swats for the pocket of his discarded coat - he's down to just vest and shirt. "Match--!" he hisses hoarsely.
'Wait a moment.'
The world cannot be permitted to see the absolute relief on Kent's face when he hears Kahm, gets that confirmation that he isn't alone again, that there's someone to see him burn - someone to burn, if he must. Both are the same. The gang leader then does the smartest thing Kahm's seen him do in the entire time they've known each other.
"Roight," he says.
He reaches out, putting a hand on Kahm's shoulder, and trusts him. His heart slows, and he can hear the sounds all around them, and forces himself to take assurance from those as well.
DG: Kent Hauch has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Bump in the Night.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Bump in the Night *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The miners here dug deep. Too deep. And when the mine was abandoned, all the equipment that made it possible to even function in so ungodly a place gradually stopped working over the long and ceaseless passage of time. Now? Now there is only darkness in this long stretch of cavernous underground, and in this deep dark stretch of the pit, one's sight completely ceases to be useful. Blindness is your companion here, but not loneliness -- the faint sound of claws scratching on rock, of hissing and burbling, suggests that maybe, just maybe, you are not alone -- and that navigating through this area less than whole will require much more caution - and swiftness - than originally thought. =Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 4 *>============================= ========================< Results - Bump in the Night >========================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 35 --(20)--> 55 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 30 --(20)--> 50 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 40 --(10)--> 50 Fail Conditions: Slow(1)|Stupify(2) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ================<* CHALLENGE - Digging Away the Bad Thoughts *>================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Sometimes, mineshafts collapse. It's a simple fact of life. Sometimes, they're the main shaft, needed to press further on. Sometimes, that shaft just happens to be the one you're standing in front of. Caved in, covered in dirt and dust and rock, this tunnel is the only passage that will carry you further inward. To get further, you'll have to literally dig your own, new tunnel out of the collapsed debris. Debris caked in subtle strings of Malevolence and as you dig further, the air fills more and more with that dust, dredging up terrible, hateful thoughts, spiteful memories, knowledge that no one is less deserving of such a pathetic end than you, knowledge that all of these sad surface dwellers have enjoyed your mercies for far too long and give you only with the bitter disgustingness of this pit in return and none of them can ever be tolerated, knowledge that everything you have is built upon a fallacy and you cannot trust anyone not to try to undermine that fact and take it all from you, not even the one standing right beside you =Dungeon Conditions: Overzealous==============================================
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ================<* CHALLENGE - Digging Away the Bad Thoughts *>================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Sometimes, mineshafts collapse. It's a simple fact of life. Sometimes, they're the main shaft, needed to press further on. Sometimes, that shaft just happens to be the one you're standing in front of. Caved in, covered in dirt and dust and rock, this tunnel is the only passage that will carry you further inward. To get further, you'll have to literally dig your own, new tunnel out of the collapsed debris. Debris caked in subtle strings of Malevolence and as you dig further, the air fills more and more with that dust, dredging up terrible, hateful thoughts, spiteful memories, knowledge that no one is less deserving of such a pathetic end than you, knowledge that all of these sad surface dwellers have enjoyed your mercies for far too long and give you only with the bitter disgustingness of this pit in return and none of them can ever be tolerated, knowledge that everything you have is built upon a fallacy and you cannot trust anyone not to try to undermine that fact and take it all from you, not even the one standing right beside you =Dungeon Conditions: Overzealous==============================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kahm had, admittedly, forgotten what Kent had said about not liking the dark scant moments ago. Even if he hadn't, the Solarian likely wouldn't have processed it accordingly. Fear was an abstract concept to Kahm-an obstacle to duty that had no place in his eschatology of allowed feelings. Chalk it up to effective military indoctrination or a quirk of personal willpower, but the Major saw the darkness as nothing more than another problem to solve.
Or perhaps his fears were just buried somewhere deeper, and darker, than this.
He felt the weight of Kent's hand on his shoulder and was surprised to find that relief was his first sensation; relief that Kent was not going to do something to make this worse. There was a logical sense to keeping awareness of one another like this, so he didn't object....it was certainly better than holding hands.
That next step came to rest on flat, even ground.
Then the tunnel collapsed on them with all the merciless thunder of a mountain cast down by the fist of God. Earth shook, rocks fell, and crimson-colored light splattered across the proceedings as the collapse of the tunnel's roof exposed the chamber to the lava-fueled upper reaches. Not that Kahm could see any of this: he was quickly buried beneath dirt and debris, mind manically searching so solution as his ambient will gathered in gnawing desperation. He'd maintained his calm, but there was no escaping that earth was a difficult element for him to work through, quite near a polar opposite for his talents.
The rocks and soil settled above Kahm with the simultaneous knowledge that this was as low and as far from Solaris as he had ever been. Here, deep in the womb of Filgaia, below even the unworthy heels of 'lambs'.
The Major's fist burst from the earth with all the clawing will of the risen dead, wreathed in a blue aura of energized power that quickly precipitated another, larger explosion that ejected the man and all his woken fury. "I didn't set foot on this forsaken land to die the death of a fucking cud chewer." He frothed, casting wrathful bolts of lightning forward to simply blast his way free of this predicament. He doesn't know (or hasn't noticed) where Kent is in all this, and doesn't seem to care. "Damn them all damn them all damn them all!"
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
There are three kinds of trust.
Kent trusts Fargo Foobach like he trusts his own hand. The Man In White and he have been together for all kinds of nightmares both petty and immense. It has become an easy trust as instinctual as breathing. They can hide almost nothing from each other.
Hauch trusts Ribaldy, Samuelh the Molotov, and Parbody like a master craftsman trusts his tools. Perfect for their purpose. Precious to him. Objects that, if used properly and with care, will always do as intended - well-worn to his grip.
Kent Hauch almost never has the third kind of trust - trust in what he views as a peer. An outreach toward another man who, on an elemental soul-deep level from his viewpoint, owes him and is owed nothing. A trust with no guarantee. A trust a philosopher might consider the most rewarding.
He is rewarded by the spiteful hand of Dinoginos closing around him, the mountain above. An errant step? Too loud a noise? Fate itself? Something else?
Lightning erupts from Kahm, enough to see - if he cares to - that the ganger has yet to arise - until the rocks beneath him begin to glow, a hateful light - the blood of the earth they'd been passing near this whole time but now more insistent, dully furious.
The Guardian appears. Dinoginos in his solid golem aspect, fitful and frustrated, plugged into the ground beneath, hunched in the cave, bound to serve the will of another. Debris sinks down like sand through a dozen hourglasses, thinning out.
Kent Hauch rises as the rock falls from him. The earth has shattered beneath him save for spires beneath his feet that lead into the scattering rivers of lava beneath him, generated not by nature but by the Medium now visible over his heart. The tearing rocks had shredded his vest and much of his undershirt which now hangs open in tatters, scraps pinned to his body by Red River's harness.
The scraps dully ignite in the heat of his summoned magic, burning to soot, exposing his tank-like body and the edges of the flame scar beneath the stone tablet.
"Aye," he mutters, glowering, lit bloody from beneath. "Sometimes I forget you don't know what it's like to suffer down 'ere in the dust, like." A superheated bubble pops with a blast of air, hurling a rock up and over Kent, intercepting a bolt of lightning. "Mus' be nice, being so high above it."
His head tilts, the glow beneath him glancing off one eye. "It's a sorry tale that sets my heart a-burstin'. Must be burnin' you up, dying in this mudhole with this poor convenient -Lamb-. Never mind which'a us had to build all 'e's got and which one's just hacked off about bein' the unluckiest of the lucky."
"Or whatever yer boggle is."
He flexes his hands. The door is wide open to the weather here, free to let in the air.
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
If Kent had been hiding that tablet from Kahm, there seemed to have been no need for it. The appearance of Dinoginos seemed to have no bearing on his mood, which was already foul enough. Kent's words might have jolted him from his prison of violent self-pity in any other environment, but here they twisted and morphed into something else by the time passed through the cloud around the Major's mind.
"Lucky?" He spat, eyes turning on the gang leader with a stormingly pitiless gaze.
"No." He intoned, advancing on the man, one hand aimed to seize him by the strap of his weapon. His touch was charged-discourteously uncomfortable, like grabbing a spark plug in one of Ribadly's latest creations. His vest was in tatters, pants half torn and cake with earth. His left sleeve had torn away completely, and the arm that reached for Kent was freshly bloodied by that last cave-in.
"If you want a sorry tale, learn what your ancestors did. They had freedom. They had paradise. They squandered it with violence, excess, and waste. Now we sit in the shadow their squalor. You, with your throne of dust. And me, with cursed blood."
With his other hand, Kahm fetched a clutch of white material from what remain of his vest and threw at the tunnel's impasse, eyes not breaking from Kent. Another bolt of lightning struck it a second later, exploding with such force that it might collapse the tunnel all over again, pelting them with jagged rocks and worse.
"Think what you want." He said, turning away, "But 'we' don't live free lives. We have you all to thank for that."
DG: Kahm Yugh has used his Tool Plastic Explosive toward his party's challenge, Digging Away the Bad Thoughts.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
It's like grabbing a rope hung off a cliffside. Red River's straps automatically adjust as Kahm pulls on one of them, keeping the tank secure. Kent, with a full grip on his Medium, doesn't budge, though sweat practically pours off of him. Electricity flicks off Kahm's hand and along Kent's skin, causing welts and red burns that Hauch refuses to acknowledge.
"Izzat all that has you people so bunched up?"
"You keep lookin' at the bloody past?"
The lightning from nowhere might have put fear in the man once, but he's become used to it as his partnership with Gebler has progressed. More so... he's come to wield power as well, as have the Black Ties, flourishing under their resources, the strengths of the Suits propagating through them all, making them all more.
And, from this angle, there's a whole lot more Kent than there is Kahm. He draws in a breath, his chest swelling, sweating, bloody shoulders broad and stubbornly unbowed.
His hands lunge up, closing around Kahm's shoulders as the earth continues to shift beneath them, mouths in the earth swallowing bits of the blockage. "What good has the past ever done any of us but hang over us with all its shite? Who the hell cares about ancestors? Dead men and dead mistakes!"
"Why do you think people join me? Why do you think they join any gang? When you become a Black Tie, it's because your past is a wasteland, a burden too bloody heavy, an' you know the best way forward is to throw it all away!" After all, that's what I've done. "To build somethin' new!" Something that can last forever. That must. "Looking back at the weight of every bad bloody thing thass happened to you an' the world just means you'll fall right off the damn cliff of worthless damned despair!" Eyes forward. Always forward.
"So stop whining about how bad yer fookin' lot is whenever everything turns against you and start fookin' burning! Look at yer problems and burn 'em! Look at what you want and burn anything in the way!" Kent roughly turns Kahm toward the last of the blockage, his body shaking as he reaches out toward it, skin paling as he strains at his link to Dinoginos. "Burn, burn, BURN!"
With a herculean effort of will, he attempts to take the wall before them and open up the ground under it, to drag the remains of the rock into hell. To burn so bright they can't see the ash mounting around me.]
DG: Kent Hauch has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Digging Away the Bad Thoughts.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ================<* CHALLENGE - Digging Away the Bad Thoughts *>================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Sometimes, mineshafts collapse. It's a simple fact of life. Sometimes, they're the main shaft, needed to press further on. Sometimes, that shaft just happens to be the one you're standing in front of. Caved in, covered in dirt and dust and rock, this tunnel is the only passage that will carry you further inward. To get further, you'll have to literally dig your own, new tunnel out of the collapsed debris. Debris caked in subtle strings of Malevolence and as you dig further, the air fills more and more with that dust, dredging up terrible, hateful thoughts, spiteful memories, knowledge that no one is less deserving of such a pathetic end than you, knowledge that all of these sad surface dwellers have enjoyed your mercies for far too long and give you only with the bitter disgustingness of this pit in return and none of them can ever be tolerated, knowledge that everything you have is built upon a fallacy and you cannot trust anyone not to try to undermine that fact and take it all from you, not even the one standing right beside you =Dungeon Conditions: Overzealous==============================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 5 *>============================= ==================< Results - Digging Away the Bad Thoughts >=================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 55 --(5)--> 60 Pass Plastic Explosive 4 Brute Effects: None -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 50 --(10)--> 60 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 50 --(20)--> 70 Pass Conditions: Overzealous(2)|Stupify(1) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ==================<* CHALLENGE - Terrorized by Terra Firma *>=================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Nothing here wants you to go. Everything wants you to be a part of this place -- a part of the Pit. Like it thinks you belong. Like it KNOWS you belong. And so the very earth conspires against you as you trudge through this passageway: magma oozes and BURSTS from the walls here in superheated, spider-web patterns that rapidly cool down into layers of igneous rock that must be smashed through or otherwise demolished in order to proceed further -- and those layers -keep- forming the more you push deeper and deeper, to exhaust the body and the mind and force you to literally -fight- your way through this entire passage. See? Everything loves you here! =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kahm struggled pointlessly when Kent literally took him for a captive audience, truly unable to contest the man in a direct force of physical strength. Grabbing him was about as pleasant as wrestling an electric eel, but it didn't have any effect on the larger man's grip. The Major knew he'd weather it, hissing resentment as the Kent paid homage to his cardinal voice, "Get your hands off-"
The combined effort of Kahm's gadgetry and Kent's taboo shamanry at last see their path cleared, the wall crumbling and shuddering between the dual (if philosophically opposing) assaults, swallowed by the earth in Kent's last forceful exertion of will. For the Major, it evoked a certain feeling of irony, that two men so set against one another in various ways could nonetheless progress forward while remaining lockstep in disunity.
Maybe they both trusted enough in their ability to hate other things (In this instance: Rocks and K.K.) more than the various and sundry ways they managed to irritate one another.
"Forget the past, is it?" Kahm said, brusquely shoving his way free of the gang leader, eyes forward on the path in front of them. It was a blasphemy of sorts, to live only in the present....but he couldn't deny that it had results. "Sometimes it not easy. We're walking in somebody's past right now. I'd say it's trying to kill us, too."
As if in challenging answer, the tunnel ahead of them bursts anew with magma that suspiciously cools, hardening into still more obstacles for them to overcome and suffer through. Kahm was no stranger to them, whatever might be thought of Solaris's lofty existence (by the few enough who knew it).
He'll turn to Kent with a raised brow, "I won't let it if you don't."
And then he was off, left with little recourse but shoulder check and power himself through the webs of hardened igneous rock, conjuring and polarizing electric fields about himself as a shield rather than a defensive force, providing some measure of protection to himself as threw his body against each brittle gate.
DG: Kahm Yugh has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Terrorized by Terra Firma.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
Kent lets Kahm push away. It's easier after he strains what he can do with his Medium - his skin has gone a shade too pale, his grip weakening. Dinoginos's image fades rapidly after.
Kahm looks forward in the end, which helps mask it as Kent nearly falls to a knee, gritting his teeth stubbornly as he pushes himself back up. The Pit is affecting him in a couple ways it doesn't seem to be getting to Kahm. There are some tiny signs - his breath is a little quicker, his eyes a little too contracted or a little too dilated. Not to mention outbursts like that are a little uncharacteristic.
He can't quite decide if he has to get out of here... or dive deeper in.
By the time Kahm looks back at him, however, Kent's steadied himself, back on his feet, rolling his neck until he produces a loud pop. Sweat has ran lines through the dirt and the blood on his body.
He shows his teeth. "Too right."
After all, Kahm should know. He was there. He knows has symbolically - and perhaps literally - burned the spectre hanging over him away.
It was clearly a resolution. Everything else is just someone scratching at a wound that's already healed.
"Iss just tephra," he growls, marching forward, glad for a more physical problem even though he's starting to see the end of his stamina reserves. "Fulla air an' still soft." He pulls Red River's gun and flips it, using its grip like a club. The barrel automatically and obligingly stretches out, leaving it more like a hammer. "If it was punk, well, we'd 'ave us a problem, innit?"
DG: Kent Hauch has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Terrorized by Terra Firma.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ==================<* CHALLENGE - Terrorized by Terra Firma *>=================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Nothing here wants you to go. Everything wants you to be a part of this place -- a part of the Pit. Like it thinks you belong. Like it KNOWS you belong. And so the very earth conspires against you as you trudge through this passageway: magma oozes and BURSTS from the walls here in superheated, spider-web patterns that rapidly cool down into layers of igneous rock that must be smashed through or otherwise demolished in order to proceed further -- and those layers -keep- forming the more you push deeper and deeper, to exhaust the body and the mind and force you to literally -fight- your way through this entire passage. See? Everything loves you here! =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 6 *>============================= ====================< Results - Terrorized by Terra Firma >===================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 60 --(20)--> 80 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 60 --(20)--> 80 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 70 --(10)--> 80 Fail Conditions: Overzealous(1)|Weaken(2) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Dredging the Past *>======================= |Type: Climax |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Corpses are here to greet you, as you come upon the final stretch of the Pit, the draft flowing through the otherwise stale, Malevolence-soaked air the only sign - the only /hope/ - that the end is near. Bodies strewn, here and there, decorate this passage like furnishings. For those with the sight to see it, these bodies can be swiftly identified: Hellions. They all seem maimed to various degrees -- like something had -bitten- off pieces of them. Some even look partially digested. One might wonder why... ... and then you see the light at the end of the tunnel. A dull throb, a soft little 'wub wub wub' of gleaming, radiant light that seems to enthrall and mystify -- seems to demand one get closer to it. It turns so many different, pretty shades of color as it ebbs, closer and closer. And with every pulse, your mind fills with memories. Failings. Frustrations. Moments of anger and violence and regret. Memories of fear. Like something were trying to reach in and pull them out of you in little flashbacks, little snippets. Every flash learning more about you. Every flash threatening to lose you within the haze of your own mind, if you can't keep focused. Every flash growing brighter and brighter, closer and closer, until... =Dungeon Conditions: Overzealous, Stupify=====================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kahm hadn't noticed the small and subtle ways the mine seemed to be having an ever more deleterious effect on Kent, but ordinarily he might have. Something else had thrown the Major's usual sense off, and he was growing more aware of it the deeper they pressed on into the sadistic path the trial knight had laid for them.
He was also beginning to see how K.K. had gained that name. Every single misfortune they'd faced had possessed the character of a test of some sort, and this one was no different: A test of endurance of the body, the willpower the mind. Despite the can-do bravado the Major had displayed a moment ago, the work was rough and taxing even with the benefits of ether (which was not limitless, even for him). Each tephra web shattered felt like another stone piled upon his back, and by the time they finally breached the last the operative felt himself stagger forward, luck enough to brace against the wall before he tumbled on his face. His heart hammered in his chest, sweat drenched his brow-he dared not look over at Kent in this state.
"I...think I see something ahead." He said, using what will he had to stand himself straight, "..just a little further."
Those next few minutes give way to dawning unease as they pick their way over half-eaten corpses, their mangled visages still human to Kahm's eyes....except every now and then he had to blink to convince himself that was the case. "These....I wonder if these are some of the missing that'd been reported." He pondered aloud, wondering perhaps if Kent might recognize his missing Ties amongst any of the bodies.
The light quickly gains his attention however, and in his nigh-exhausted state Kahm is all acceptable to it's mysterious spell. "Finally.." He sighs, taking less and less cautious steps forward, "It must be.."
Wait a minute, this wasn't....
DG: Kahm Yugh has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Dredging the Past.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
"This is thirsty work," Kent growls as he crunches through webs. "Too bad my flask is back in my bloody jacket, yeah?" Trying to keep things a little light. Don't forget to pretend to be a leader, for fuck's sake. "You reckon next time I jes' bring the Glassman and give 'im a boot? Anyone tried a little of the ol' overkill yet?"
His arms and shoulders are screaming. Even through the weight reduction harness, Red River's tank is like a boulder on his back. A tiny breeze drifting over his skin, like that last night in the tent, after the heist. The ganger shakes his head and spits saliva and blood, heedless of the trail that clings to his chin.
Kent puts his hand against the last chunk of tephra web blocking his path, pushing the older kid's face into the side of the wood-burning stove, feeling the rush of power and breaking free and forward.
"Aye," he says, shoving the heel of his hand into his eye, rubbing the fire and the blurry images away as he screams stars and coughs on the smoke of his flesh. "You... you feel that wind? Reckon we're almost out. Never mind that we've been going downhill this whole way." He sounds like he's about to fall over. The accent's slipping. He swings his hand through an irritating cloud of lingering curse brushing away the image of that man on his black horse reaching down to him and thuds after Kahm, until he sees them.
Here and there, a well-tailored vest, sure enough. A few names he remembers. Men and women who were drinking together just a few moments ago swinging flames at each other as final loyalties had to be decided. Kent growls. "Clothes... wear out."
Fargo in his old red shirt after the chaos finally ends. He peels it off and holds it, hands shaking. "I didn't realize there was so much blood," he says.
Samuelh, lounging under a bench as Tie kills Tie, content to see where the coin lands.
Kent claps the giant Beastman on the shoulder as he sits, the body of the former ARMs Meister of the Black Ties in his lap, is second teacher. Ribaldy is staring blankly into space. "Ah, fuck 'em," Kent grins bloodily. "You were better'n him now anyway, innit?"
Parbody has her modified perfume bottle aimed toward him. Kent can see the hesitation in her arm. He has one chance: "You can kill me an' die satisfied, or jes' let me start paying you." Her fingers relax. Another victory.
Another lie you told the world, a brick in a wall you're not meant to be building.
Kent rubs at his eye again. Is he dreaming or thinking? Where is he? He stares down at his burned bloody young dusty hands as he stumbles forward toward the light, stumbling with Kahm, out into the Badlands, young, outcast, no family, no friends, no dreams, no potential, no hope, just survival on two legs.
With an automatic motion, he pushes his hand down on the glowing chamber of Red River, meat hissing painfully.
DG: Kent Hauch has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Dredging the Past.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Dredging the Past *>======================= |Type: Climax |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Corpses are here to greet you, as you come upon the final stretch of the Pit, the draft flowing through the otherwise stale, Malevolence-soaked air the only sign - the only /hope/ - that the end is near. Bodies strewn, here and there, decorate this passage like furnishings. For those with the sight to see it, these bodies can be swiftly identified: Hellions. They all seem maimed to various degrees -- like something had -bitten- off pieces of them. Some even look partially digested. One might wonder why... ... and then you see the light at the end of the tunnel. A dull throb, a soft little 'wub wub wub' of gleaming, radiant light that seems to enthrall and mystify -- seems to demand one get closer to it. It turns so many different, pretty shades of color as it ebbs, closer and closer. And with every pulse, your mind fills with memories. Failings. Frustrations. Moments of anger and violence and regret. Memories of fear. Like something were trying to reach in and pull them out of you in little flashbacks, little snippets. Every flash learning more about you. Every flash threatening to lose you within the haze of your own mind, if you can't keep focused. Every flash growing brighter and brighter, closer and closer, until... =Dungeon Conditions: Overzealous, Stupify=====================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 7 *>============================= ========================< Results - Dredging the Past >========================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 70 --(20)--> 90 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 70 --(20)--> 90 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 80 --(0)--> 80 Fail Conditions: Overzealous(2)|Stupify(2)|Weaken(1) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has failed this challenge! The party gained 0 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Kahm Yugh has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ==========================<* CHALLENGE - The Angler *>========================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- ... until it comes. Massive and rotund, this pale, milky white Hellion looks almost comically fat. With two, short legs and unnaturally spindly arms, it looks like a bulbous head and limbs -- a head filled with countless mouths lined with rows and rows of sharp teeth and strange, glowing sacks that are filled with slowly digesting creatures -- other Hellions, that seem to be just feeding this disgusting beast more and more Malevolence straight from their corpses, making it larger, stronger, more vicious and unstable. Lines of molten lava course through its body as its wide, glassy yellow eyes turn down to regard you. To regard its new snacks. And as it turns, you see the source of that strange light -- an antenna on its head, dangling a tempty lure that looks like condensed, crystallized malevolence. Seeing it that way, however, doesn't last long; that crystal is soon replaced, between flashes until it looks like places, events -- even people, dangling from that lure, dredged from your very memories, knowing you, calling to you, with the cruelty that only -you- could inflict on yourself -- to attempt to distract you as the Angler attempts to make a new meal with the snap of its multitudinous maws. =Dungeon Conditions: Suffer===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
"Might have a hard time fitting the glassman down here." Kahm said absently, unsure exactly how long ago Kent actually spoke that comment as wandered towards the light.
"Eat it, you stupid neph!" The lead boy shouted, starting with a kick to Kahm's ribs he knew would prelude the first of many from the rest of gang. Any other die, he might have taken it. But not today. Not after what he'd lost.
He opened his mouth to shout 'stop', and they did, bodies spasming, mouths frozen in silent screams as the youth's body surged and overflowed with newfound, unrealized power.
"Strange..." He commented, "You're right, we have been going down. Shouldn't be anywhere near the surface.."
"Nephilim." The old, one-eye man repeated the proper form of the curse at him, his good eye looking Kahm up appraisingly, "What does that word mean to you, boy?"
"It means i'm unclean, impure. That i'm helpless against the violence in my blood." Kahm answered, feeling his hands instinctively ball into fists, "Because my mother was a lamb."
"Or was it because your father was one of the elect?" Solus replied, fitting the student with a raised brow, "You say your mother was a soft, kindhearted woman. I don't see a shred of her in you."
"I think I see something up ahead." Kahm spoke with renewed vigor, squinting his eyes, "Seems like....Commander...?"
"Commander!" He shouted, finally able to wrench the cockpit of the ruined gear free. Lieutenant Yugh could scarcely believe there was still a living man inside it. "Commander, i'm getting you out of here. Please don't move!"
"A demon..." Commander Ramses murmured, breath ragged," "It was a demon..."
Their faces. The Commander's, his teacher's, his mother's. All of them seemed to beckon to him at the end of that light, urging Kahm to step forward and join them. He almost did. Ironically, it was the dull, throbbing wound that K.K. had given him that grounded the Major back in reality, allowed him to see-to truly see-what the thing in front of him was.
"....A demon." He grit his teeth, a sonic grenade already in his hand, "Kent, don't be tricked! It's manipulating our memories!"
He threw the Solarian device first, then lead with a ringing cacophony of swordplay and etheric energy, piercing and slashing and the bloated, mouthed monstrosity wherever he could. He had no time to feel horror, revulsion, or even absently consider that this thing was the cause of the bodies they'd seen earlier. His mind was consumed by a single thought.
Survive.
DG: Kahm Yugh has used his Tool Sonic Grenade toward his party's challenge, The Angler.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
The stink of cooking meat blooms around Kent. Snarling, he snaps his head to the side, gathers one of the straps of Red River in his teeth, and bites down.
burn the past
The bestial impulse within him allows his to rip himself free an instant before it's too late.
The Angler bears down on him. Kent Hauch stares into the gaping Malevolent maw bearing down on him. A thrum of blessed adrenaline shocks through his body.
"Slag this," he says.
He steps back, hand coming up to the point on his chest where his ARMs' straps connect, pulling away. They snap into the tank in an instant, the great weight falling away. Simple lava won't do enough fast enough for this - he'll just be giving it more of itself.
The mouth slams closed a mere foot in front of him and he darts forward again, grabbing onto what passes for its upper lip and using it to launch himself back up as it goes for another bite. Kent flings himself higher up on the Angler.
He refuses to look back even as the sonic waves crash out, turning his back on the crystal. Kahm can likely see the unfamiliar flash, the worst moment of Kent Hauch's life.
A man with a few days growth of beard, a wide-brimmed hat, a spotless black longcoat, and the sharpest suit he's seen yet on the surface, all shades of black that match the deep hair framing the right side of his face that comes down to his chin. A cold, emotionless expression as he swings one of Ribaldy's Day of Collapse flamethrowers down below the image's sightline, only for a shotgun blast of white-hot rock to rip into one side of his face.
The image starts to fade as the Kent of the past looks down toward his chest.
When he looks back up, Jack Vantabrack is gone.
Kent is full of rage as he uses a pocketknife to anchor himself on the Angler near one of its lines of lava. His skin is flushed red. "Hey!" he shouts back. "Remember when I said I didn't 'ave a drink left?"
He reaches down into his pants. Whoa!
"I'm a compulsive liar!"
Kent pulls from the inner lining his very risky emergency bottle of Tipple, a small amount of viscous green liquid. It can technically be drank, but the number of Ties who do so can be counted on one hand.
He pulls the pocketknife free, already starting to slip, and slices down at the line of angry red before hurling the Tipple into it. The lava will burn through the glass in a matter of moments before igniting the explosive, blooming into a sphere of verdant flame as Kent falls away from it, spitting curses.
DG: Kent Hauch has used his Tool Molotov Cocktail toward his party's challenge, The Angler.
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ==========================<* CHALLENGE - The Angler *>========================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- ... until it comes. Massive and rotund, this pale, milky white Hellion looks almost comically fat. With two, short legs and unnaturally spindly arms, it looks like a bulbous head and limbs -- a head filled with countless mouths lined with rows and rows of sharp teeth and strange, glowing sacks that are filled with slowly digesting creatures -- other Hellions, that seem to be just feeding this disgusting beast more and more Malevolence straight from their corpses, making it larger, stronger, more vicious and unstable. Lines of molten lava course through its body as its wide, glassy yellow eyes turn down to regard you. To regard its new snacks. And as it turns, you see the source of that strange light -- an antenna on its head, dangling a tempty lure that looks like condensed, crystallized malevolence. Seeing it that way, however, doesn't last long; that crystal is soon replaced, between flashes until it looks like places, events -- even people, dangling from that lure, dredged from your very memories, knowing you, calling to you, with the cruelty that only -you- could inflict on yourself -- to attempt to distract you as the Angler attempts to make a new meal with the snap of its multitudinous maws. =Dungeon Conditions: Suffer===================================================
============================<* The Pit - Round 8 *>============================= ============================< Results - The Angler >============================ Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kahm Yugh 90 --(10)--> 100 Pass Sonic Grenade 2 Combat Effects: Embolden -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent Hauch 90 --(10)--> 100 Pass Molotov Cocktail 2 Combat Effects: Stalwart and Rally -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Kahm Yugh 80 --(35)--> 115 Pass Conditions: Overzealous(1)|Stupify(1)|Suffer(1) Effects: Embolden(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: You have overcome the dungeon's trials! This run is a success! DG: The party led by Kahm Yugh has successfully explored The Pit!
=================================<* The Pit *>================================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - A Virulent Victory *>====================== |Type: Discovery |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- With one final blow, the Angler is laid low; the Hellion lets out a tremulous death rattle, its dying sigh reverborating in the soul. And as it collapses, the multitude of sacks that compose it all begin to burst one by one, as the excess Malevolence of the well-glutted beast propagates into the air in voluminous gushes of infectious dissonance. Without a means to purify, it looks for something new to lace itself through. People, creatures, things. It doesn't matter. The sheer degree of Malevolence from a creature that cannibalized it from god only knows how many other Hellions has an immediate effect on the environment. Entropy overtaps the cavernous ceilings as rock and earth collapses in a cave in of the unstable tunnel grounds. You only have a short time to run to that exit, where one can feel the fresh air... ... and when you make it past, you see it. An exit to the outside world... and another, divergent path that takes one deeper inward. A secret passageway that will carry someone straight into the heart of the catacombs beneath Krosse, the stale air hanging heavy with the lure of Malevolence... (OOC: And there you go! Use this as an excuse to either run the Krosse Catacombs if you want, or a reason to be at the Sunday scene if you're interested in it! It can also just be used as a convenient exit, whatever you'd like! You're free to come back to it later if you're planning on being at the Sunday scene but have other IC stuff going on before then; the tunnel's not going anywhere.) =Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kent Hauch was insane. Kahm had always known this, and that it was a particular type of insanity that worked to their ends, but he'd never quite gripped it as the same sort of insanity that would drive a man to clamber atop a malevolence-infested demon and take it for a ride.
The scream of the sonic grenades rebounds off the cavern walls, forcing the bulbous creature off it's gait as numberless jaws gnash in aimless hunger. The Major see the moment that created Kent Hauch play out before them in the creature's macabre crystal organ. Another thing about the man he'd never asked to know.
Kent call himself a liar, and Kahm doesn't contest it. He sees his opening the moment the gang leader tosses that ominously green bottle, and hurls his sword straight at the creature's center-of-mass like a spear, riding on a peal thunder in it's wake.
The blade pierces (and passes through) at the same time to bottle of hyper fuel explodes, and the hellion ripped apart and deflated under the dual, rocking explosions, unleashing all it's store miasma into the air.
What they knew about malevolence remained precious little-only that it was dangerous, and they ought to get out while the getting was good. Kahm's eyes spy an exit-a real one this time- and quickly runs for it, covering his mouth and waving Kent down, fortunate enough to retrieve his weapon along the way.
"Come on, I've seen enough of the Trial Knight's twisted games!"
He'd need to figure what this meant-for both them and for Krosse-when the gravity of this mess was past them.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.
Kent Hauch drops through the air as Kahm deals the finishing blow. The thing that had consumed so many - no small amount of those, people that belonged to him - erupts apart. The horrific Malevolence spirals away from the shattering Hellion, stabbing through the air all around the gangster.
A thread of it punches into his chest and out the other side on its way to the cave wall. It happens in an instant.
Kent lands on his back with a grunt and immediately rolls not toward the entrance but toward Red River, one battered arm lashing out to grab the ARM and drag it toward him. He slings it to his back, the straps automatically deploying.
His weapon, the symbol of his power and the weight on his back, fastens to him once again with a click.
"Lore," he mutters, ducking away from a falling stalactite that simply blows apart into dust, corrupted beyond the ability to hold itself together. He instinctively lifts his hand to a wide-brimmed hat he no longer wears as he charges forward with abandon on the last of his adrenaline.
There is a pause as they move by the other path. It draws his gaze. He stops thinking about it when his foot slides on a stray pebble, reminding him of his injured leg.
"Trial Knight," he says, battered, bruised, Damaged. "More like..."
He says nothing as they finally get clear, slowing down. "...Cry-al..."
"Nah, fuck it."