2018-04-14: Way to Weylish

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  • Log: Way to Weylish
  • Cast: Seraph Ragnell, Lemina Ausa, Layna Manydays, Seraph Lanval, Loren Voss
  • Where: Weylish Ruins
  • Date: April 14th 2018
  • Summary: Ragnell and Lemina decide to explore the Weylish Ruins, with Layna and Lanval in tow (in his bottle). Loren drops in and ends up tagging along. Mild party tensions ensue. A few facts about Seraphs become known.

DG: A party led by Seraph Ragnell is now entering Weylish Ruins.
DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Locked Vault Door *>=======================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The foyer of the Weylish RUins ends in a large vault door. Clockwork
 mechanisms run across the entire thing, helping to lift it up into the
 ceiling when it opens. There is a series of dials to one side, which look
 particularly complex...

 ...and moreso because the writing on the dials, saying what the letters are,
 is in the ancient language used by the scholars of the Asgard Empire. Which,
 in all likelihood, you do not know.
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    It's been some time since Ragnell was this far east. The Weylish Ruins stand out in wide, sweeping plains known as Aifread's Hunting Grounds, considering there's little else that can be called civilization out here. Having eventually found Lemina during her recent visit to Vane, she'd asked her to come adventuring with her (albeit after she checked up on things over in Lastonbell), then met up with her in the Hunting Grounds to now approach the Ruins.
    
    "Hmmm," the Lightning Seraph murmurs, dressed in Lunar-style gear with some Filgaian flair. She glances to one side at the dials. "Says here we gotta turn these dials accordin' to what the letters are on the door. Can you read Ancient Tongue, Lem?"
    
    It's okay if she can't, though, because Ragnell can. She opts to not say that *just* yet, though, in favor of pulling out her harmonica and playing a laidback melody as she reads the rest of the instructions.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Tarnished Harmonica toward her party's challenge, Locked Vault Door.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

"Not really," Lemina says, with a small frown on her face as she's asked. "I think my mom does, but I wanted to get as good at magic as I could before I set out! So while I'm mega-great at magic..." She trails off, with a big frown on her face, as she looks to the dials.

Oh well.

She pops her reading glasses on, looking at the mechanisms next to the door. "Hm. I don't know if we need to be able to read the instructions for these, anyway... this wasn't working last time I came here. The worst that happens is we turn it into a big mess that opens and shuts mega-fast."

She starts fiddling with the dials, heedless of everything, ever.

DG: Lemina Ausa has used her Tool Reading Glasses toward her party's challenge, Locked Vault Door.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna had gotten into some...trouble, near the capital the other day. This might end up causing some problems. Most people, after this, would have decided it was a good time to find a change of clothes and lay low for a little while.

Layna was not most people.

She's gone right back to her adventuring ways. Originally she was going to make another pass through Aifread's Hunting Ground, but along the way she saw someone familiar heading into the Weylish Ruins and decided to change her plans.

She slips in sometime after Ragnell and Lemina enter.

The last time she was here, she found a rather sizeable haul. She wouldn't mind finding more...but a part of her couldn't help but be curious about this place, as well.

"Quite the fascinating device, aye?" Layna asks, offering a wave to Ragnell in Lemina with one hand. In the other hand, she's carrying a bottle. Surprisingly for Layna, though, she doesn't appear to have been drinking out of it.

Bizarre!

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Locked Vault Door.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    "Hmm~ ahhh.... what'sh thaaaat?"
     AAAAAH THE BOTTLE TALKS
     For most, this may be surprise. For another, more specifically, the one carrying the bottle, this is going to be one of a list of many disappointments - that whoever or whatever they're carrying has absolutely no idea what they're looking at or what to do with it, as evidenced by the bottle's question.
     ...
     Why would a bottle be expected to know anything about doors, though? They're bottles! Also bottles don't tend to talk.

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Locked Vault Door.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Loren, conversely, hasn't been this far east yet on Glenwood at all, his assignments largely taking him to Meribus or the perimeter of their crash site but little in between.

    Some data readings to the east had apparently caught the eye of someone further up the food chain than him, and since he had been back to resupply and check in at just the right time, well...

    His abilities -- the parts where he's able to patch himself up, augment defenses, and other supportive skills -- make him an apparently solid choice for site investigation. Get in, evaluate situation, get out, submit data... let someone else take the actual glory.

    There are vaults of stone, high above the foyer to the Weylish ruins. Previous investigation of the door itself had proven a bit of a no-go (at least to the degree that he didn't feel like poking at it for hours, guessing various combinations), so he'd taken to higher ground, in the hopes of finding another path. Hitching himself to a vine that proves sturdy enough when he tests its strength, he inches along a length of stonework. Right over there, if he can make his way across, there's something that looks promising. At least in terms of getting more out of the site than 'couldn't get through the door, sir' for reports.

    It should come as no surprise when the stone crumbles underfoot seconds later, sending him plummeting downwards with an involuntary yell.

    This is what the line was for, hooked to the harness he wears. For a few seconds more he hangs there... before the vine -- treacherously -- snaps, sending him crashing into the floor far below.

    He lies there, unmoving. Is... he dead?

    No, not really, as a low groan suggests soon after. Pulling up into a crouch, he stares dazedly over at the door.
    The door, surrounded by people.

    "Oh, wonderful," he comments, readjusting his decidedly askew glasses.

DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Locked Vault Door.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Locked Vault Door *>=======================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The foyer of the Weylish RUins ends in a large vault door. Clockwork
 mechanisms run across the entire thing, helping to lift it up into the
 ceiling when it opens. There is a series of dials to one side, which look
 particularly complex...

 ...and moreso because the writing on the dials, saying what the letters are,
 is in the ancient language used by the scholars of the Asgard Empire. Which,
 in all likelihood, you do not know.
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
=========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 1 *>==========================
========================< Results - Locked Vault Door >=========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      0 --(10)--> 10                 Pass
Tarnished Harmonica                 2   Wits    Effects: Stalwart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       0 --(15)--> 15                 Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      0 --(15)--> 15                 Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         0 --(15)--> 15                 Fail
Reading Glasses                     2   Wits    Effects: Resilient
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          0 --(10)--> 10                 Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              0 --(10)--> 10                 Fail
Conditions: Stupify(2)
Effects: Resilient(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Ragnell chuckles. "That so? Well..." But before she can tell Lemina that she can read the Ancient Tongue just fine, and thus this 'challenge' is actually totally unnecessary, a pirate, a bottle, and a jerk in glasses arrive. Ragnell turns to blink over at them as Lemina says something about it not working and starts futzing with it anyway, then crooks a smile at Layna. "Yo, Captain," she drawls. "Yep, although that's not the best these ruins have to offer--"
    
    The bottle talks. Ragnell raises eyebrows at it. She'd probably be more surprised if Lanval weren't an old fr... budd... pa... hm. Acquaintance. Yes, let's go with that. If Lanval weren't an old acquaintance of hers, she might be surprised by a talking bottle. As it is, she shrugs and says, "A door. What's it look like, Lanv?"
    
    Okay, time to get this door open. While it would be funny to let Lemina deal with this by herself, they can't be standing out here all day--or so Ragnell tells herself when there's suddenly a YELP and then a THUD somewhere at their back. Ragnell turns around again to see Loren land several feet away. Is he dead? No, apparently not. What a shame. Ragnell strolls over to him and prods him with her boot.
    
    'Oh, wonderful,' he says.
    
    "My sentiments exactly," she drawls dryly. "Lem! You got that door open yet?"
    
    Apparently not, though apparently Loren's landing had jarred something in the mechanisms. Once Ragnell returns and turns the dials, it actually opens for them--though that took longer than really any of them would have liked, one's sure. Still! The way before them is open! Time for adventure!!

DG: Lemina Ausa has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
=======================<* CHALLENGE - Hellion Skeleton *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Periodically, corpses can be seen inside of Weylish Ruins. Here, you find
 the scene of an old battle: a group of human skeletons, clad in decaying
 leathers and armed with rusted weapons that mark them as hunters from
 Aifread's Hunting Grounds. However, they are clustered around a strange
 Beastman's corpse: vaguely canine, with sharp claws, which lay against the
 wall. It seems the victor was the Beastman, who died of their wounds later.

 The human skeletons rise after a moment. Those who can see Malevolence watch
 as cloying purple light animates them -- yet none touches the Beastman's
 skeleton, and even shies away from it. The skeletons turn and look, with
 burning eyes, then charge forward!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright, Wound============================================
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

The sudden fall startles Lemina; the bottle, on the other hand, doesn't -- she's... pretty used to Seraphim. She's had the resonance necessary to see them for more than a decade. Layna gets a small wave shortly before the mysterious man plummets into the floor -- at which point Lemina stops everything with a startled "Aaaa!"

Ragnell fiddles with the door, and once it opens, Lemina turns her attention away from the possible corpse. "I was just about to do that," she insists, before they advance into --

-- a room full of skeletons. Lemina steps lightly, but it's to no avail; within moments, most of the skeletons -- the human ones, anyway -- start to stir.

"NOPE," Lemina says, before spraying ice shards everywhere from her staff after a very brief chant that might as well be 'blahblahblah ICE MAGIC.' "NOPE NOPE NOPE!!"

The skeletons do not seem particularly bothered by cold damage, and begin to advance.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hellion Skeleton.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    "I dunno, looksh like a door..." Lanval the Bottle, newest Sonic the Hedgehog Modern Game Cast Member (editor's note: NO) answers Ragnell's rhetorical question like he's not in on the joke. He probably isn't. The bottle shudders in surprise when someone drops like it might be doing the anatomical equivalent of jumping and cradling in Layna's powerful, comforting arms!! Except it's just a bottle.
     "...Ragneeeeell?" The Seraph in the bottle drags that name out, like it's a surprise to encounter her out here. He wonders for a moment if maybe it is safer to just be out and about in Glenwood than he first thought. Ragnell looks like she's doing just fine...
     Then Lemina takes point in a room full of Skeletons, a room full of the purple stuff, just moments before Lanval thinks to show his mug outside of the bottle outright. There's a startled shock and recoil, followed by pure, clean, sparkling water spewing out everywhere with such force that it might inadvertedly take Layna off balance.
     But it is a lot of water. Maybe it will slow the horde of Hellitons. Skhellions?

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Hellion Skeleton.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Corpses aren't an unfamiliar sight in ruins. They're old, and sometimes explorers lose their way, get caught in a trap, or killed by monsters. Sometimes there's a clear story around the body (usually just bones by the time Ragnell happens across them). You usually don't find corpses that tell such a vivid story around them, though. Ragnell takes a moment to admire the Beastman who took out a bunch of humans singlehandedly before the human skels begin to stir.
    
    Not just stir. That's Malevolence rising up from them. Her eyes narrow... but it looks like the Beastman is still clear. In fact, the Malevolence is *avoiding* that one's bones. Huhh. Curious.
    
Then the Skellions charge, and Ragnell responds by chucking a plasma grenade at them to blow them the frick up. NO MERCY. It might be extra-effective with all the water and ice getting spewed over them.
    
    "CHILL OUT, LEM, THEY'RE JUST DEAD HUMANS," she yells back over at Lemina. It's hard to tell if she's being facetious or not. To Lanval's drawling of her name, she calls, "Yeah, Lanv?"

DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Plasma Grenade toward her party's challenge, Hellion Skeleton.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    What does he get for his trouble? A boot (prodded) in his side.

    Indignant, his gaze rises to meet Ragnell's, locks there.
    ...He hadn't been able to see her before, had he?
    He can definitely see her now. But though he squints as he regards her, he doesn't say anything else.
    At the moment.
    And instead, he rises to his feet, apparently brushing dust off his long jacket (punctuated with a brief wince as his quick rundown of his body turns up a few less-than-great-but-still-functional areas) before stooping to reclaim his line and stow it loosely in his bag. The harness he leaves be.

    "So, what, are the lot of you exploring this place?"

    Their collective exit through the door when it opens might be the answer there.
    He heaves a sigh, shrugs, and apparently-- invites himself along.

        SYSTEM: Thomas (?) has joined your party!

    By the time he's through the door after them, it's already clear that things are afoot. "More of these things?" he asks, watching for a moment as the skeletons begin to advance. He rolls back a step, digging into the depths of his bag. "...Fine. Listen, just use these," he says, hurling forth a handful of what apparently passes for the local spot-healing supplies.

DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, Hellion Skeleton.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna...doesn't actually help with the door, as it happens. She just kind of stands there, watching, up until the point a man falls right out of the sky. She winces as he hands light in front of them, unmoving.

"...Poor lad." She says...and then he starts to stir. "Well, wouldja look at that. He's not dead."

It's about this time that the door begins to open. With a grin Layna begins to start through the door.

Lemina's the one who spots the danger first, freaking out and sending ice shards all over the place. Lanval also freaks out from within the safety of his bottle, sending pure water flying everywhere.

"Wh-whoa there! Calm down, lad!" Layna calls out as she takes a moment to regain her balance...and decides to use this to her advantage.

She directs the torrents of water toward the nearest skeleton to knock it off balance, before lunging in with a punch with her free hand.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hellion Skeleton.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
=======================<* CHALLENGE - Hellion Skeleton *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Periodically, corpses can be seen inside of Weylish Ruins. Here, you find
 the scene of an old battle: a group of human skeletons, clad in decaying
 leathers and armed with rusted weapons that mark them as hunters from
 Aifread's Hunting Grounds. However, they are clustered around a strange
 Beastman's corpse: vaguely canine, with sharp claws, which lay against the
 wall. It seems the victor was the Beastman, who died of their wounds later.

 The human skeletons rise after a moment. Those who can see Malevolence watch
 as cloying purple light animates them -- yet none touches the Beastman's
 skeleton, and even shies away from it. The skeletons turn and look, with
 burning eyes, then charge forward!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright, Wound============================================
=========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 2 *>==========================
=========================< Results - Hellion Skeleton >=========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Plasma Grenade                      3   Combat  Effects: Embolden and Liabilit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       15 --(5)--> 20                 Fail
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      15 --(5)--> 20                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         15 --(5)--> 20                 Fail
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Solarian Medical Kit                1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              10 --(15)--> 25                Pass
Conditions: Fright(2)|Stupify(1)|Wound(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Embolden(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Skeletons, it turns out, are not that hard to scatter. Lemina's just having a hard time.

"YES THAT'S THE PROBLEM *RAGNELL*!!!" Lemina shouts back at the Seraph, before replying to 'Thomas,' "Yes! We're exploring this place! I've been here before but last time I ended up with more questions than anything else!"

She's a little nervous about the whole skeletons thing. Don't mind her.

Speaking of which: While Lemina has a hard time, and Lanval's sparkling water doesn't do that much except slow the skeletons down, everyone else does great. Ragnell's grenade scatters the bones, and Layna turns the initially-unsuccessful wave of water into a force multiplier on her own strikes.

No one walks away unharmed, but 'Thomas's' medical supplies get an appreciative smile from Lemina, at least. "Hey, thanks," she says, before thinking to ask: "So why're you here? Also exploring this place, or what?"

DG: Loren Voss has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
==================<* CHALLENGE - Desperately Sealed Passage *>==================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The hallway that you enter does not have many of the clicks, clangs, and
 whistles of the rest of the Weylish ruins. There are a few whines of metal
 on metal, as if the clockwork underpinnings have broken. Ahead, you can see
 why: there is a pile of rubble, which has collapsed and blocked the way
 forward. However, there are also skeletons in that rubble. They wear the now
 faded red of Rolance's Imperial Knights, and their bodies lay in broken
 heaps. They look to be a couple of decades old. Still, this grisly work must
 be done, to continue ahead.
=Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck, Overzealous====================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    His current assessment of those arrayed before him runs something as follows:
    Layna, he knows -- perhaps should make use of since it would seem she bears the Church no fond wishes.
    Ragnell, meanwhile, he doesn't... and he's not even going to touch the matter of the bottle, which he'd swore had just talked.

    Lemina, though... It's her. That girl with the odd powers he'd met back on Filgaia, apparently daughter of the guildmistress of Vane. So deVriesse had been right -- she'd come home.
    Too bad, he thinks fleetingly. That squashes one potential bargaining chip. Still, if Vane is perhaps not doing as well... perhaps there's something they can use there. As he'd suggested to deVriesse, perhaps there was an angle.

    But for now, he displays at best vague interest, muted beneath his faintly weary deadpan expression. Also, there are, well, skeletons to handle, some which advance a little too quickly for his liking. "That's-- Malevolence," he utters, falling back as the skeleton's blade draws blood.
    Fortunately, he's up to date on innoculations.

    In the peace that follows the confrontation, he stoops to investigate one of the discombobulated bones, tilting it this way and that in the light. "Fairly old, huh..." Forensics isn't his area of expertise but even an idiot could see the yellowing.

    He stands, carelessly tossing the femur aside as Lemina addresses him.
    '/Also exploring this place, or what?', she asks.

    "Yes," Loren answers, unhelpfully. "Why? Do you know something about this place?"
    A question intended to gather more information for them, itself.

    Investigation quickly turns up a particular hallway as the only possible route... and said hallway soon terminates. The reason why is plain: either they tripped a trap, or someone deliberately dropped half the hallway onto these knights, once upon a time.

    Briefly digging into the wreckage, Loren pulls back a scrap of cloth a sad shade of red. He squints at it for a moment or two, then down at the half-buried remains of the knight that grins back at him. His brow furrows. "...Hyland was red, wasn't it," he mutters, tucking the aged scrap into his bag.

    Whatever conclusions he's drawing, he doesn't appear to be inclined to share.

    "...Looks like we'll have to dig through this," he says, resting his hand against the wall.
    Shifting his focus and will into the foundations, then back up and through the rubblepile before them. His only intent is to loosen things up and lighten the load, as it were.
    There is, briefly, a rather mild tremblor as a result, but surely it's just coincidence that it happens now.

    "Come on," he urges, stepping up to shift rock (and bone).

DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Desperately Sealed Passage.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval doesn't stop gushing water out of the bottle until the threat is cleared. It makes the ground wet and slippery and that much muckier, and also threatens to lower the lifespan of the inner mechanisms that much more. But that's a problem for the future generations that wish to explore the depths of Weylish.
     Things calm down - sort of - as one starts investigating the bones. The bottle's tip leans forward a little towards 'Thomas,' as though something about them were suddenly very interesting. But then the bottle puts it at the back of their mind. If they have a mind. Bottles don't have minds. They have drinks. Put it in the back of their drinks?
     This metaphor is going nowhere good.
     "Do ya... do ya run 'round placesh like thish often?" The bottle asks Ragnell, belatedly, as everyone else does the heavy lifting of actually physically moving debris and dead bodies. "Mmmph. Never been shurrounded by thish much Malevolenshe before~"
     Understandably, he might be a touch off balance by being around these parts. It also probably paints an unflattering picture of his actual level of life experiences!
     While the occupant of the bottle is making nice with dialogue, they are also indulging in the ancient art of Not Helping Anyone Move Debris and Corpses, which must be a carefully honed skill only able to be mastered through centuries of... not... helping anyone move debris and corpses until that can be confidently listed with pompous capitalized first letter prompts.

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Desperately Sealed Passage.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

"Whew. Well, that happened, aye?" Layna comments with a grin, then glances down to the bottle. "You okay, lad?"

She proceeds forward along with the others, at which point they encounter a hallway that appears to have broken down. Among the rubble appears to be the corpses of Rolancean soldiers.

...Layna doesn't actually care all that much.

"...This is gonna take some time to get through. I'm gonna set you down for a sec, okay, Lanval?" Layna asks. If he seems okay with this, she'll slip his bottle into one of her pouches then moves in, cracking her knuckles.

"Careful, sounds like some of the mechanisms are still trying to get goin'. Watch they don't get ya, aye?" She suggests to the others, then begins to move things aside.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Desperately Sealed Passage.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Oh. So Loren can see him now. Ragnell narrows her eyes at him while lifting her chin just enough to let her look down her nose at him. "Hmmmm..." she murmurs, slow and assessing.
    
    And then she turns around and ignores him in favor of the ruins and the battle. What!
    
    "There's dead humans 'round all the time though!" Ragnell protests at Lemina, though judging by the quirk at the side of her mouth, she's mostly arguing to be an ass. "It's not like they can give you th' dead just by touchin' ya! What's the worst they could do, gang up on ya an' tear ya limb from limb?!"
    
    That would be pretty bad, actually.
    
    Regardless, the Hellions are blown to bits, and the group is able to move forward. Lemina questions Loren, and Ragnell keeps an ear on that while looking over at Layna and the bottle--or rather, the vessel--she carries. "Lanval, are you gonna stay in there this whole time, or...? You're not *that* scared o' Malevolence, are ya?" She glances up at Layna. "Surprised you agreed to cart 'im around like that, too. You're surprisingly patient, huh, Captain?"
    
    A look back at Lanval when he responds. "Yeah, pretty much," she replies. "I like the thrill o' battle, an' these kinda a ruins are sick with strong monsters." That's not the only reason, but she's not in a mood to share more with 'Thomas' present. Sorry-not-sorry, Thom.
    
    The group stops. Ragnell turns around to see the reason why: the hallway is blocked up with stone and bone. Those scraps of red clothing tell her these were once members of the Imperial Knights of Rolance. Sucks to be them. When Loren mutters about Hyland as he pockets some of that cloth, Ragnell glances at him with eyebrows raised, but doesn't bother to correct him.
    
    "Sure does," she drawls instead of having to dig through the macabre mess. She pokes the rocks with her boots, and a moment later it trembles... She sideeyes Loren, sensing that magic of his, but decides not to comment on it... for now.
    
    "Too bad I powered up my grenades," she laments aloud, reaching for one of those bony arms and, in a blatant display of total disrespect for the departed, yanks it off to make herself a makeshift pick-shovel-thing. "If I used 'em here, I'd probably cave the rest o' this passage down on our heads rather'n clearin' out this debris. Ah, well." She then proceeds to use the arm bones to, well, shovel through the rocks and dirt and dead.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Desperately Sealed Passage.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

"Just that they were doing something with the Black Star. The, uh, New Moon." Lemina tends to give both names now, just to be safe. "I don't really have enough ideas for what it could've been -- something with, like... beastmen, maybe? It's... mega-weird."

Lanval gets a nod. "Pretty much all the time! And I think I've seen her," a gesture to Layna, around places like this pretty much all the time, too."

Ragnell gets a dull, flat look. "YES, ACTUALLY," Lemina says. "That's exactly what they could do and it'd be pretty awful!"

As they finally turn their attention forward again toward the rubble and corpses, Lemina... watches Ragnell with a certain 'yikes' expression on her face.

... on the other hand, her plan seems to be 'detonate the whole thing,' so maybe those in glass houses shouldn't throw bones.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Desperately Sealed Passage.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
==================<* CHALLENGE - Desperately Sealed Passage *>==================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The hallway that you enter does not have many of the clicks, clangs, and
 whistles of the rest of the Weylish ruins. There are a few whines of metal
 on metal, as if the clockwork underpinnings have broken. Ahead, you can see
 why: there is a pile of rubble, which has collapsed and blocked the way
 forward. However, there are also skeletons in that rubble. They wear the now
 faded red of Rolance's Imperial Knights, and their bodies lay in broken
 heaps. They look to be a couple of decades old. Still, this grisly work must
 be done, to continue ahead.
=Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck, Overzealous====================================
=========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 3 *>==========================
====================< Results - Desperately Sealed Passage >====================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      15 --(20)--> 35                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       20 --(20)--> 40                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      20 --(20)--> 40                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         20 --(20)--> 40                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          15 --(20)--> 35                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              25 --(5)--> 30                 Fail
Conditions: Bad Luck(2)|Fright(1)|Overzealous(2)
Effects:
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    ...What was that about? Thus more or less runs Loren's thoughts on the matter as Ragnell leaves him behind.

    Things otherwise progress as they do -- particularly the part where Loren's effectively convinced the bottle is checking him out, a thought that causes the hair at the nape of his neck to stand on end. He glances back over his shoulder but, alas, it's only a bottle.
    ...A talking bottle. He heard that this time and it was definitely coming from the bottle. He wears, briefly, the expression of someone who is trying quite hard to not acknowledge that he's seeing what he's seeing, and forces the bulk of his attention on the task at hand, which is moving ahead and towards the hallway.
    ...Maybe he should reconsider that psychiatric evaluation.
    ......No, at this point they'd just take him off duty altogether if he came in talking about a bottle with the power of speech.

    Though, the fact that they're all having a conversation with the bottle, and so on... has led him to suspect that perhaps the rules are a little different here with regards to what counts as a 'person' on Lunar. He's listening as he investigates the pile of rocks before them and the human remains interposed within, a fact of which Ragnell is rightly suspicious.

    Local politics though, perhaps, are not his forte, but that might be expected from someone who has transported here from another world... and been more or less put on assignment on a different continent. Hopefully for the sake of his reporting, he works this one out before he submits an expedition summary that makes him look like an idiot.
    Other members of Gebler have, after all, already been hard at work compiling information about Glenwood.

    "Yes, let's try not to drop the hallway down on our heads," he remarks instead, at Ragnell's lament on her grenades. "I have the distinct feeling it would be extremely unpleasant." He is, of course, being openly sardonic.

    The earth pitches, just a little bit. The placement of rocks against rocks receive a bit of a readjustment.

    Up in front, Layna and 'Thomas' work to move rock and bone; he's not particularly careful about where he hucks either. "I can hear it. It sounds like it's broken. I wouldn't worry about it."

    Sometimes, there are things that are best catalogued under 'famous last words'.

    Already a little destabilized from the pulse of earth ether, and being increasingly made so as Loren and Layna and Ragnell dig, the detonation -- briefly punctuated by a wordless shout from Loren as the explosion unfolds upon the rubble pile -- is the last straw. The pile collapses in a wash of rock and bone, spreading in a wave and (technically only halfway) burying the crew.

    (Only Lanval is without sin.)

    But on the plus side: the way before them is also technically halfway clear! With some difficulty it's possible to get through the hallway and to clearer ground.

DG: Seraph Lanval has drawn a new Challenge.
==================================================<* Weylish Ruins *>===================================================
==========================================<* CHALLENGE - A Cog in the Wheel *>==========================================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
-----------------------------------------------< Challenge Information: >-----------------------------------------------
 When you enter this room, the floor suddenly begins to lift upward. It moves
 with jerks and pulls, rather than smoothly -- following the movement of an
 immense gear on the other side of the room. The floor is also rising above
 the door on the other side of the room -- and towards the ceiling. If you
 can stop the cog from turning, and quickly, you can keep the floor from
 rising up past the way through.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Injure===========================================
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval's vessel sits cozy in one of Layna's pockets while everyone else deals with the consequences of there being so many debris and corpses. He is one of the lucky ones, outside of being hip-deep in a clockwork ruin with Malevolence swirling about in such quantity that he seems uneasy about it.
     "Ahhhh," the bottle sighs aloud, as though finally having an answer for Ragnell's teasing in the wake of all that just happened around him. "I'll be jusht fiiiiine, don't ya worry." Then maybe he should manifest himself already and stop being such a giant fat bearded lush baby! Which he probably is! And it's so easy for him to say when he just narrowly avoided having any debris crush the contents of the pocket he's been put in!
     ...Things move along through the pile, through a very, very tall door. Much too tall to be a door. Maybe they're about to enter some kind of grand hallway together, full of exposed clockwork gears? The door on the other end seems a lot shorter in height.
     "Hmm, I'm shure thingsh'll be okay from heeeere~"
     The floor underneath them jerks a few times, as a series of great large clockwork gears turn by one of the nearby walls. At first, there is a short drop - enough that one might not stay on their knees, but at least they're not going to fall down a great bottomless pit or anything. That's... okay, if that's the worst of it.
     "Ha ha... okay, tha'sh not sho bad," the bottle's voice slurs.
     Looks like it was intended to drop the lot of them much further down than it actually does, as it's now starting to 'retract' and threaten to overshoot the assumed 'rest' position of the entire thing - it could overshoot that door at the end of the hallway, if they can't get to the other side fast enough or find some way to jam the mechanism to halt its ascent. (At that point, that becomes the least of their problems.)
     ...
     "Huh? Are we goin' up? That'sh weird, 'caushe there'sh a sheiling theeeere... why would we need to go up into a sheiling? Huh? Huuuuuh?"
     The bottle continues to do what it does best, do nothing. Well, there's other things bottles do, but they aren't historically known for fixing problems regarding malfunctioning elevators or trap doors or whatever the original intent of this set of clockwork doohickeys is!

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, A Cog in the Wheel.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna chuckles and shrugs toward Ragnell.

"Well, he can't drink all my booze like this, so the situation's okay with me." She replies with a grin. ...Of course, if anyone could figure out how to, it'd be Lanval. "Besides, he's made himself useful, so I might as well. ...And it's much easier to take 'im places."

The excavation...does not quite go as they anticipated. In the end Layna ends up halfway buried and a little dazed, while Lanval is safe, sound, and comfy in the pouch she'd stuck him in.

She's just a little jealous.

She's beginning to pull herself out of the rubble when suddenly the floor starts to go up much more than it should.

"Dammit! I'll keep us from movin', the lot of you try an' do somethin' about the rest of this, aye!?" Layna calls out. From her things she draws for an arm-mounted drill, which she slams into the middle of the gear and sends it in reverse at high-speeds. With any luck, that'll be enough to fight back against the turning, at least until one of the others can think of a better plan...

DG: Layna Manydays has used her Tool Arm-Mounted Drill toward her party's challenge, A Cog in the Wheel.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    "Yeah? That was the implication? An' thusly the reason why I *didn't* use one?" Ragnell drawls at Loren, raising an eyebrow. "Do you, like, enjoy repeatin' what other people say back at them in new ways t' try to make yourself look smart? 'Cuz it doesn't actually make you look smart, it makes you a toolbag."
    
    Unfortunately, sassing Thomas means less careful digging, and while it wouldn't be so bad if it were just Ragnell, the pile here has already been destabilized by that use of Ether... Consequently the pile collapses and washes forward in a wave of rock and bone to half-cover the crew.
    
    On the plus side if you're named Ragnell, the initial yelp of surprise soon gives way to whoops of fun, which then dissolves into laughter. "That was a hoot!!" she crows, diagonally slanted and half-buried in rock. It's possible that she may only have this perspective because being buried in rock wouldn't actually kill her. "Y'all dead? No? Then c'mon, let's get goin'!"
    
    She nods to Layna, chuckling. "An' hey, he *makes* some pretty good booze too. May as well make 'imself useful if you're gonna babysit 'im, huh?" She shuts one eye, and although her tone is mostly light and jovial, there's a hint of warning in her next words: "...Jus' make sure you take good care o' his vessel. Can't imagine how much he'd bawl if it got broken, yeah?"
    
    Meanwhile Lanval *still* won't manifest himself. Ragnell shakes her head. "Goddess almighty, an' I think Edna's lazy sometimes. You really take the cake, Lanval." The 'oh well' is audible in her tone--which is just as well, because the group reaches a certain room with lots of clockwork--and the floor suddenly moves. Ragnell drops to one knee, a hand down to balance herself, as she looks up and around sharply. Then the floor begins to move them upwards...
    
    "Hey, Lem! Give us a big ol' block of ice, on the double!" she tells her companion, apparently deciding to forget all about her morbid teasing from earlier. Though really, it's Lemina who needs to forget about it. "I'll try t' bust up the mechanism!" With that, she draws her twin pistols and opens fire and attempts to straight-up wreck the rising mechanism before the floor gets all the way to the ceiling.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Cog in the Wheel.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Everyone gets covered in debris and corpses. Lemina hates it!

'Thomas' gets a dirty look after the fact, as Lemina says, "You mega-completely jinxed us! You can't complain about bad things before they happen! Then they happen!" Her nose scrunches up before they start to proceed.

Lemina's nose scrunches up at Lanval's... Lanvalling, at the lot of them. "Yeah, we're going up -- and, uh, I think we might not be stopping..." Ragnell makes a request, and Lemina immediately obliges. Thrusting her hands out, she summons forth a big block of ice, sure enough. Hopefully it's big enough to either weigh the machine down enough to arrest their momentum... or stop it from pushing them too far up.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Cog in the Wheel.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He arches an eyebrow as Ragnell tells him off. "So we're reducing this to insults now? Clearly, you possess the height of wit," is his response on the matter, before he pitches a disarticulated mandible to one side.

    Loren remains (largely) silent as chatter unfolds around him behind his back, largely concerning the subject of the bottle.
    ...The bottle, which notably chimes in on the matter of itself.
    There are things he doesn't understand, there are things that he doesn't have the information to begin to understand, but he's slowly beginning to assemble the pieces of this particular puzzle... even if a number of the important edge pieces are still missing for him.

    There's always a time and place for bluntness:
    "So, what are you, anyway?"
    A pause.
    "The bottle," 'Thomas' clarifies.

    Of course, the hallway sort of half-collapses in on itself soon after, so this may be a question best answered (if at all) at a later point.

    "Excuse me? What are you talking about? If something unfortunate's going to happen, then there isn't a thing you can do about it," he replies to Lemina shortly after their escape from the complete disaster into the strange room awaiting beyond.
    "Something's weird about this," he comments on the room, before shaking some dust and lingering debris from his hair.

    And the floor drops out below him, sending him to his knees.

    "...An elevator?"

    Thus he states, as the floor starts to rise. Which is itself followed by a glance Lanval's way and a: "Don't tell me you can see in there."
    Which is followed by a glance upwards, and the dull grim acceptance that settles over his face as they keep rising towards the ceiling. "...Okay," is Loren's comment on their current fate, before levering himself up to his feet.

    Still rising. Who's to say they're in the elevator car? They might be on top of the thing.
    Still rising. His gaze turns towards the array of gears on the wall, and a certain calculus is made.
    This isn't where he wants to die, honestly.

    There's still enough dust and rubble scattered across the floor here to pull together and make as an array of missiles; reshaped, they're sharp and accurately aimed from across the room, his will enough to drive them on.
    But will they have enough force behind them to make any difference?

DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, A Cog in the Wheel.
==================================================<* Weylish Ruins *>===================================================
==========================================<* CHALLENGE - A Cog in the Wheel *>==========================================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
-----------------------------------------------< Challenge Information: >-----------------------------------------------
 When you enter this room, the floor suddenly begins to lift upward. It moves
 with jerks and pulls, rather than smoothly -- following the movement of an
 immense gear on the other side of the room. The floor is also rising above
 the door on the other side of the room -- and towards the ceiling. If you
 can stop the cog from turning, and quickly, you can keep the floor from
 rising up past the way through.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Injure===========================================
=============================================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 4 *>==============================================
============================================< Results - A Cog in the Wheel >============================================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      35 --(25)--> 60                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       40 --(25)--> 65                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      40 --(15)--> 55                Pass
Arm-Mounted Drill                   3   Brute   Effects: Fanfare
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         40 --(25)--> 65                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          35 --(25)--> 60                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
-------------------------------------------------------< Party >--------------------------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              30 --(5)--> 35                 Fail
Conditions: Bad Luck(1)|Injure(2)|Overzealous(1)|Weaken(2)
Effects:
===================================================< Dream Chasers >====================================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    "Huuuuh? Me?" The bottle seems to tip a little from where they are currently held and stashed, vaguely in Lor-- 'Thomass direction. "Jusht a humble shervant of the Goddessh~" So humble that they have done virtually nothing helpful or reassuring in spite of Layna's testimony to the very contrary that he previously has. Unless his job is to keep the Goddess company by reassuring her that whatever she's drinking isn't going to go straight to her hips, or something, or... there's more pressing matters.
     They go about it with all they got. Seraph gives the mechanisms quite the jolt. Lemina moves to freeze it all outright. Thomas reshapes and stuffs dirt missiles throughout. They all appear to catch just fine, as Layna moves in for the decisive save - applying the drill directly. She seems to have the drill tip grip on correctly, as she rapidly reverses it...
     This is good! This is very good.
     "Ahhh, I don't know 'bout... lazshy," the bottle's contents makes hiccupping noises as they do very little to rebuke Ragnell's teasing of a telling truth of tardiness in a time of trouble. "Good boozshe... ha ha ha! Yesh! I know all 'bout that--"
     The floor starts to descend back towards where it originally was when they got here. This is also fine.
     "--but you shee--"
     Then it keeps going down. Might be worrying...
     "You want to make shome of the besht ever, well--"
     Then it just drops out from under them outright.
     That's bad. Though maybe that it shuts up the bottle from talking about something the Goddess outright forbids at present might be good? Doesn't outweigh the bad.
     They fall far too far to climb back up to any of the two prospective ways out of here. No choice but to see just how far down the clockwork rabbit hole this goes...!

DG: Layna Manydays has drawn a new Challenge.
=============================<* Weylish Ruins *>==============================
====================<* CHALLENGE - Clockwork Guardians *>=====================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 You enter a large, two-tiered room. Although catwalks run above you, along
 with stairwells leading up, those may be hard to reach. After all, ahead of
 you, you can see a quartet of suits of armor. Their insides are clockwork
 constructions, which whirl and click as they stand to face you. They block
 you from the exits -- both above and below -- as they lift swords and
 warhammers to oppose you!
=Dungeon Conditions: Wound, Injure============================================
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

"Aye, aye." Layna says with a nod and a grin. Her grin doesn't lighten even as a warning creeps unti Ragnell's words. "Don't worry, I'm takin' good care of him, aye? I wouldn't let anything happen to it."

One might wonder whether 'bringing him into an obviously dangerous ruin' would count as taking care of him...but hey! It did to Layna.

As she's trying to keep things steady, her drill is rapidly whirring...it's doing so a little too much, and it might even start to overheat a little bit. Layna winces and powers through it, and eventually the floor starts to descend...

...much, much further than anyone of them wanted or might anticipate.

They're most likely somewhere near the bottom of the Weylish Ruins, by this point. Layna sighs and removes the drill from the gear and stores it away properly. She flexes the hand experimentally. Her arm is looking just a little red from the heat, but it still seems to be functioning just fine. Just to be safe, though, she decides to carry Lanval's bottle in that hand instead.

"Well, we we ain't dead...might as well see where we ended up, aye?" She suggests, and moves forward.

The next room is rather large chamber, with two tiers. Catwalks run up above them them, and the floor around them is littered with bits and pieces of junk. It looks like if something falls from up above, this is where it usually ends up...

The guardians here have seen better days, as well. The clockwark constructs ahead of them begin to whir to life as soon as they step into the room, but they've clearly fallen into a sort of disrepair. One of them can only move one of its weapons, another appears to be halfway smashed up, presumably from a fall...

Despite this, however, they seem no less dangerous than their more intact counterparts. In fact, the disrepair they've fallen into seems to have disabled any kind of safety mechanisms they might've had, and when they begin to charge at the party with sword and warhammer alike, it's with a dangerous, unstoppable zeal.

Layna curses, ducking away from a downward swing of a warhammer. Last time she was in a chamber like this, she was able to steal away their parts and prevent them from moving...in her current state, however, she was in no condition to do that.

Instead she backpedals. The bracer on her free hand begins to shine and spark before a flame roars to life around it. With a quick incantation some winds are whipped up, taking the flame into itself before being launched toward one of the constructs in a blade of air and fire both.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Clockwork Guardians.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    "That shoundsh loooooud," so comments the denizen of the bottle who continues to be a massive wuss in the heart of one of many interesting cavities of caverns within Glenwood, far from the safety of Her boundary. The clockwork constructs whir to life in their various states of disrepair - but with no less clarity of their function in the process - and he may or may not be able to appreciate the delicate handiwork that Layna employs to keep him safe while fighting back against the wretched things. He's quiet. Too quiet...
     ...
     Wait, something's happening! From where Layna holds the bottle as she tries to navigate pitched battle with a damaged clockwork automaton, the mouth of the bottle makes contact with some other item within Layna's possession...! As the hand holds it moves, from deeper in Layna's possession is a brightly-colored bottle whose light pierces the dreary darkness - the ever-common traveling luxury, a Holy Bottle! This might be a help... and yes! The top somehow pops right off as the vessel-bottle and the Holy Bottle's mouth own meet and interlock in some unfathomable coincidence of differences in bottle neck sizes...!
     The Holy Bottle turns upward, and slowly empties its contents within the other bottle. The other bottle, decidedly not as holy other than being the present vessel for a Seraph, takes in its contents and yet they do not carry this same shine. No, it seems to... disappear... somehow.
     The Holy Bottle falls off.
     There's a belching sound.
     ...
     ...They could've used that Holy Bottle, but nope, the other bottle just... drank all of it... and let the contents roll freely across the floor, maybe in the way of one of the constructs' moving feet.
     (That doesn't count as helping!!! Is he really going to take Layna's helpfulness for granted?!)

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Clockwork Guardians.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    '"Jusht a humble servant of the Goddessh,"' says the bottle, and under more normal circumstances, Loren would assume the Church, perhaps a priest or even perhaps someone higher in the ranks (as strange as that might seem to him, based on current evidence).
    Instead, Loren quite visibly has his doubts, levaling a gaze at the bottle as if he could win this staring contest.

    But before he can ask more pressing questions like, for example, 'so what's with the bottle' or 'yes, but what are you', there are indeed most pressing concerns at hand.

    The elevator stops short before they make any terminal collision with the ceiling.
    The elevator's rise begins to reverse itself.
    Loren allows himself a sigh of relief.

    He regrets doing so seconds later, as the elevator continues to descend, faster and faster and fasterandfasterand--

    Hope is a terrible thing, he thinks, as he falls.

    Light -- flickering in around him and, yes, everyone else here -- perhaps dampens the effect of the impact outright. Abilities like this are probably one of the reasons he gets assigned to these sorts of jobs: when you can soak most hazards thrown at you and patch up from the ones that make their way past...

    In any rate, at the bottom of the shaft, amidst the wreckage, Loren just stares upwards as if begging the intervention of a kind and loving god, closes his eyes and puts his head in his hands for a moment.
    The headache's back.

    "...Not dead yet, anyway. Ugh. Well, it isn't as if we can go back the way we came," comes his response to Layna, dropping his hands away before turning to head into the next room.

    "--Enemies," he utters, as soon as he sights the clockwork constructs dead ahead. Wheeling back on a heel, he rolls out of the way of an initial and unexpectedly swift jab of a blade, following it up with a kick towards the back of what passes for its leg...

    ...and uses that momentum to propel himself away from it, delving deep into his bag and the array of 'local goods' he's added to his kit.
    It helps to not waste proper restoratives on the undeserving. It would also raise a lot of questions.

    "Catch!"

    These, however, probably will work just fine.

    And in tossing the healing items out, he notices one very plain and simple fact transpire, across the room:

    Loren has now seen a bottle drink the contents of another bottle.

    If there's one word that describes his expression, it's this:

    'Why'.

DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, Clockwork Guardians.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Hey, Layna's a competent fighter. As long as she doesn't let the vessel break, Ragnell doesn't mind if she brings it around with her into ruins. Lanval clearly doesn't mind the change of scenery anyway, or he would be protesting a lot more, too. So, when Layna agrees, Ragnell gives her a crooked smile and a nod back. "Good, then."
    
    The group does their best to stop the mechanisms raising them into the ceiling. They succeed! ...A little too well. Before Ragnell could even hope to respond to Lanval talking about booze and laziness, the floor goes careening down...
    
    Ragnell isn't quite so masochistic as to cheer *this* on as fun. When the room stops moving, she groans and stirs and picks herself up off the floor, one gloved hand on her hat. "May as well," she chimes in after Layna, getting to her feet.
    
    They move onwards into a two-tiered room, catwalks above them, floor around them junky. The junk turns out to be more or less ambulant, and wholly antagonistic. Ragnell pulls her pistols and opens fire with a stream of bullets at the attacking monster, then caps it off by holstering her weapons and *heaving* another plasma grenade towards it.
    
    "Eat this!" she yells--then catches the healing items that Loren then tosses out. She raises her eyebrows at the item, then at Loren--then snorts in amusement at his expression at Lanval. Still, hey, free healing item. She won't spit on that.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Plasma Grenade toward her party's challenge, Clockwork Guardians.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Strictly speaking, Lanval is probably better-off with Layna than alone. The rest of them may or may not be.

As the platform plummets all the way back down, Lemina looks up with a plaintive sigh. "Well -- it's probably not the only path up and down... right?" she half-asks, half-mumbles. Ruins are really just the worst.

As they head forward into that large chamber, Lemina looks around, assessing the clockwork guardians before her. Drawing her staff again, Lemina hops back from Ragnell as she tosses a grenade; she does not take a healing item just yet, owing mostly to pride.

Instead, she gives her staff a quick twirl and a quicker chant, and starts to work on doing what she's pretty sure is the best option she has: melting down the clockwork constructs before them.

Lemina does not see a bottle drink another bottle, and would be quite relieved to have missed this particular hellscape nightmare event.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Clockwork Guardians.
=============================<* Weylish Ruins *>==============================
====================<* CHALLENGE - Clockwork Guardians *>=====================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 You enter a large, two-tiered room. Although catwalks run above you, along
 with stairwells leading up, those may be hard to reach. After all, ahead of
 you, you can see a quartet of suits of armor. Their insides are clockwork
 constructions, which whirl and click as they stand to face you. They block
 you from the exits -- both above and below -- as they lift swords and
 warhammers to oppose you!
=Dungeon Conditions: Wound, Injure============================================
========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 5 *>=========================
======================< Results - Clockwork Guardians >=======================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      60 --(5)--> 65                 Pass
Plasma Grenade                      3   Combat  Effects: Embolden and Liabilit
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       65 --(5)--> 70                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      55 --(5)--> 60                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         65 --(5)--> 70                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          60 --(10)--> 70                Fail
Solarian Medical Kit                1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              35 --(15)--> 50                Pass
Conditions: Injure(2)|Weaken(1)|Wound(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Embolden(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The fight begins in earnest.

Loren rolls out of the way and kicks off one of the clockwork guardians, propelling himself away to give him time to pass out curatives. Layna's hands are a bit preoccupied, either injured from her actions before or with fire, so she does the next best thing - catching it in her teeth and sending a muffled 'thanks' his way.

She's a little too distracted to notice Lanval's little party trick, however. If she wasn't, she would be both amazed and afraid for her supply of alcohol. But fortunately for Lanval, she doesn't...which means that she won't worry too much about leaving his bottle alone with her alcohol. He also doesn't accidentally get the two bottles stuck together, which would be just simply awful to deal with.

Loren, however, isn't too distracted. This may not bode well for his sanity.

It turns out, however, that fire is a good choice against these constructs. Or, more accurately, heat. They're not quite up to the same quality as other deeper into and higher up in the ruins, so they melt quickly and easily. Whether it's Layna's fiery air blades, Lemina's own brand of true fire magic, or Ragnell's Plasma Grenade, the constructs cave quickly to the heat brought to bear against them. Delicate machinery melts and gets fused together, and soon they're reduced to immobile hunks of metal incapable of standing in their way.

DG: Seraph Lanval has drawn a new Challenge.
==================================================<* Weylish Ruins *>===================================================
==============================================<* CHALLENGE - Cave Bats *>===============================================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 1          |
-----------------------------------------------< Challenge Information: >-----------------------------------------------
 Some of the newer residents of the Weylish Ruins have come into the
 underground lair to escape the hunters above. As you step into the next
 room, you hear a blood-curdling 'SKREE!' Then, a colony of angry and hungry
 bats descend from the ceiling for you!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    SKREE! It seems the recent skirmish has bothered a colony of bats that were trying to roost and rest far, far above the battlefield. Agitated as they are, they swoop down and start to swarm at the whole lot of them. The color of the ruins tends towards neutral, rustic hues. These bats change the color composition of the location once they're all in motion to something more blackish-blue.
     The bottle in Layna's hand makes hiccupping noises, producing a vibrant bubble that flits up. It seems to cast a light too bright, too shiny for the local environs as it floats up higher and higher towards one of the divebombing bats.
     Then it explodes in a great popping burst, as though said bat were just ground zero for a shotgun-strength blast of water.
     OK. That counts as helping. But that's just one bat. There's a lot of bats. They aren't Malevolent terror-horrors or half-functional clockwork warriors, but they are bats. They're kind of self-explanatory unto themselves as they step up to bat in everyone's everything.

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Cave Bats.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Just as the constructs fall in the wake of the group's aggression, what should be stirred up by the battle but a bunch of BATS? These, at least, aren't as strong as the metal contraptions, so it's just as well that Ragnell is out of grenades to pitch at them; instead, as the bats close in, she draws her pistols again and opens fire upon them, unleashing bullet after lightning bullet on the annoying creatures.
    
    Though at least Lanval is helping this time. Sort of. Seriously though, what's with humans and being so upset about paltry things like bottles drinking other bottles? This is why they're so weak of heart. (Really, Ragnell? Really??)

DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Cave Bats.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It also doesn't bode well for his continued safety. Staring at anything while in a battle is a rookie mistake -- and Loren has been deployed a year too long to be making rookie mistakes. It's the clanking and the tell-tale shiiing of a blade that snaps him out of his reverie; he rolls his body, light spills for a moment around his left forearm -- would it have been in time? too slow? -- before--

    Well, the construct just explodes, sending shrapnel around him in a fiery cascade.

    "Well," he comments at last as the embers shower down, lowering his arm and dispelling the shielding evocation utterly.
    "Alright."

    It is not, in fact, alright.

    SKREE.

    In the manner of someone longsuffering, Loren glances upwards. "Oh, of course. We disturbed a bat nest."

    Closing his eyes briefly, he slips a hand into his bag and pulls out a glass bottle.

    "Alcohol," he says, as if this explains it. ...Then adds, as if explaining something basic: "Shoot it with a fire spell and it'll explode. Get ready!"

    And he hurls it upwards, into the mass of bats.

    (He's... trying not to pay attention to the bottle. Trying very hard.)

DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, Cave Bats.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

It looks like it wasn't just Hellions and constructs that took up residence here. Before they can even recuperate from their fight, an entire colony of bats is upon them. With a grimace Layna quickly downs the restorative she'd caught, gestures at the bats and recites an incantation.

A heavy wind begins to stir, intended to make continuing their flight that much harder. It might also send more than a few of them flying into the nearby walls, if they aren't careful.

Even if she could punch them, she wouldn't - there were far too many of them to deal with them individually, so she might as well take care of as many of them as she could at once. Of course, this might end up just making them harder to aim at...but hey! That's how it goes sometimes.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Cave Bats.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

As the bats descend on the group before they even have time to recover from their misadventure with the constructs, Lemina... actually /doesn't/ squeak and/or scream in response. They're just bats. Instead, she looks up toward the descending creatures, considering her options --

-- oh, who are we kidding. It's Lemina against a swarm. There is in fact only one solution here, and it's going to be messy, harrowing, and potentially delicious.

Lemina points her staff straight up, says a few words, and then there's fire. ... A lot, of fire. For good measure, she gives her staff a big twirl, and the fire twirls with it -- into a mighty tornado of flame that joins with Layna's own wind.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Cave Bats.
==================================================<* Weylish Ruins *>===================================================
==============================================<* CHALLENGE - Cave Bats *>===============================================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 1          |
-----------------------------------------------< Challenge Information: >-----------------------------------------------
 Some of the newer residents of the Weylish Ruins have come into the
 underground lair to escape the hunters above. As you step into the next
 room, you hear a blood-curdling 'SKREE!' Then, a colony of angry and hungry
 bats descend from the ceiling for you!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
=============================================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 6 *>==============================================
================================================< Results - Cave Bats >=================================================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      65 --(5)--> 70                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       70 --(5)--> 75                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      60 --(5)--> 65                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         70 --(5)--> 75                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          70 --(5)--> 75                 Pass
Solarian Medical Kit                1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse
-------------------------------------------------------< Party >--------------------------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              50 --(20)--> 70                Pass
Conditions: Fright(2)
Effects: Cleanse
===================================================< Dream Chasers >====================================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    The bats stand no chance. They have numbers, boy, do they have numbers. That is the only advantage they can put forth. Between alcohol igniting on fire, wind stirring all around, lightning shots roaring in everyone's eardrums, and MEGA MAGIC FIRE to make the alcoholic set-up that much more devastating, there is another series of SKREE noises as they all disperse.
     They don't all disperse. Many of them die in charred, gross heaps that may or may not be diseased.
     "It shure doesh light on fire, yup." So says the bottle, as it seems to tip its neck imperceptibly along towards Loren's direction. "Hmmmm~ shaaaaaaaay there, ya got any moooore? Ha ha ha...! Can't let that aaaall go to washte~"
     That bottle's probably had more than enough to drink!! Loren might need some for himself later.
     Now, let's see what was beyond those constructs before the bats interrupted.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
========================<* CHALLENGE - A Hidden Cache *>========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 As you move down a hallway, you spot a large stone brick in the wall that
 sticks out slightly. It is quite heavy -- and quite large -- but if moved
 out of the way or destroyed, you can find a small cache of food hidden away:
 well-preserved dried meat.

 In fact, all of it is meat...
=Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    The bats get burned, electrocuted, and otherwise mauled to a crisp! Inedible crisps, unfortunately. THANKS LEMINA. Still, this frees up the group to press forward.
    
    "Lanval, you are a *mess*," Ragnell comments with dry amusement as he requests Loren given him some more. "You know that shit turns humans blind, right?" Still, regardless of whether Lanval acknowledges that, the coming corridors are at least nice and quiet, if a bit samey as they turn this way and that. However, *because* they all look so much the same, when they pass by a brick that sticks out a little bit, that little bit may as well be a flashing neon sign. Ragnell slows down as they approach, then stops and peers at it once they're there.
    
    "Hm," she murmurs, prodding the brick. It's big, and heavy... she prods some more, this time to test the mortar. It looks to be loose... "Hey, y'all think somethin' might be hidden behind this thing?" she asks the others, intrigued. "Layna, you're pretty strong in th' arm, right? Come help me drag this thing out. Lems, maybe slick it with some frost so Lanval can soak it an' make it easier to slide out."
    
    She doesn't bother saying anything to Loren. It's hard to imagine this as anything but a deliberate snub. It's... prooooobably personal. Sorry, Loren. Use your own discretion on how to help?

DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Hidden Cache.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    There's an explosion. It's even a little pretty, as explosions go.
    Less pretty is perhaps the stench of the roasted bat fragments, but we can't have everything in life.

    More pressing, though, is the commentary from... the bottle, of all things. Loren glances with trepidation over and down at it.

    It makes a proposition.
    His expression levels out into the tight calm only present on the faces of the very angry.
    "That. Was. Rubbing alcohol," he explains to, yes, a literal actual bottle, as if he himself were on the verge of an explosion himself. "What is wrong with you?"

    But at least there is progress to be had, without the wages of further disaster and/or more bats.

    Something's strange about the bricks here, though.
    ...And Loren knows an actual snub when he sees one (and many that aren't actually there, but so it goes). He regards Ragnell in a stony silence for several moments before, with body language that's calculated to speak out loud a statement of 'suit yourself', leans against the wall and folds his arms over his chest.
    He's 19, and he's got a petty streak. Perhaps it can't be helped sometimes.

    'Turns humans blind', though, he reflects, now that there's a fragment of interesting information. Clearly the bottle isn't a person, no, but the way in which she'd said that...

DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, A Hidden Cache.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

It's fine, they probably had diseases. Lemina has done everyone a service!

"Yeah, but we used to offer it all the time in Vane. We kinda had to figure out brewing on our own, I guess? So sometimes a batch would end up too strong, and we'd give it to the seraphim, because they could handle it..." Lemina laughs a little at that, saying, "So I dunno if he's that much of a mess!" But then -- Ragnell would probably know better, wouldn't she?

Lemina looks at the brick in the wall. She considers it thoughtfully for a few moments.

She does not, in fact, attempt to detonate it. Instead, she looks to Ragnell again, and says, "Actually, lemme do you one better!" Her magic flares, and Ragnell and Layna both start to feel... well, totally ripped and sweet.

'Thomas' gets a bit of a sympathetic look. "She's just... like this," Lemina offers, a little awkwardly.

DG: Lemina Ausa has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Hidden Cache.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    "Reaaaally? Hm, then maybe I should take... goood care of it... ha ha ha...!" By which he means 'properly dispose of it.' By which the narrative means 'drink it, all of it.' But, on the plus side, for being blatantly worried about the higher ambient levels of Malevolence outside of the Boundary, he seems to be having an all right time being carried around and coddled and barely even helping while everyone else risks life, limb, and possibly their own humanity in the process.
     "Huh? What'sh wroooong?" The voice trails, annoyingly. Without facial language to go by, it is irritatingly vague if that's teasing or genuinely concerned as Loren finds his emotions being stirred by an unreasonably carefree talking bottle.
     ...
     "Ahh, shorryyyy~" The bottle... is still largely motionless but somehow it gets a bit more somber? "Don't get too worked up... that'd be... y'know, baaad."
     Beat.
     "Sho I'll let ya drink it! Cheers! Ha ha ha!" DID HE NOT LISTEN TO WHAT RAGNELL JUST SAID ABOUT IT CAUSING BLINDNESS IN HUMANS why are bottles so stupid
     ...
     "Uhhh... oooh, oh. Right. Shorry, Ragnell, I can do that for ya~ ha ha ha! Aaahh. It'sh been sho long since sho many talked to me!" Depending on the qualifiers, this could've been as recent as 'some hours ago' after some scolding about just how much of the Quartermaster's Brew he's made disappear again. But, it sounds like he's enjoying himself.
     So maybe he'll come out, show himself, and maybe do a little more than just spritz more sparkly clean water against the loose brick as Ragnell suggests and asks? Nah.
     He does the water spraying part, at least.

DG: Seraph Lanval has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, A Hidden Cache.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The air is filled with the smell of burning. Layna doesn't really mind it, instead opting to just move on. She does smirk slightly about Lanval being a mess, though. He kind of was, but hey! Who wasn't, really?

From that point forward, there's a whole lot of nothing. No surprising brushes with death, no puzzles to solve...just a whole lot of identical corridors. Lemina brings up something interesting.

"Really now! Y'wouldn't still happen to sell any of it over there, aye?" She asks curiously. It's around this time, though, that Ragnell points out a pretty distinct brick. Layna eyes it for a moment and nods.

"Aye, I'd wager so." She says, and then grins. "I like to think so."

First she directs Lanval's bottle to the brick, letting him spray water over it, before moving in herself to try to pry it away. With Lemina's help, she even has a bit more strength behind it! The mage gets a grin of approval from Layna.

Loren doesn't, though, but he's probably used to that.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Hidden Cache.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
========================<* CHALLENGE - A Hidden Cache *>========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 As you move down a hallway, you spot a large stone brick in the wall that
 sticks out slightly. It is quite heavy -- and quite large -- but if moved
 out of the way or destroyed, you can find a small cache of food hidden away:
 well-preserved dried meat.

 In fact, all of it is meat...
=Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
=========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 7 *>==========================
==========================< Results - A Hidden Cache >==========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      70 --(20)--> 90                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       75 --(20)--> 95                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      65 --(15)--> 80                Pass
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         75 --(15)--> 90                Pass
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          75 --(15)--> 90                Pass
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              70 --(10)--> 80                Fail
Conditions: Fright(1)|Save Point(1)
Effects:
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Loren very nearly blows up at a talking bottle. Seeing his near-boiling wrath, Ragnell grins and snickers, loudly. If Loren looks over at her, she even makes direct eye contact while laughing at his plight. No wonder he gets petty a minute later. This doesn't stop her from laughing at him even *more* blatantly and saying, "Wow, are you just not capable of doin' somethin' if no one explicitly tells you what t' do? That's just sad!"
    
    By this point, people might be wondering what Ragnell's deal is. She's being a lot meaner than usual to this one guy. If only they knew what she's seen...! Meanwhile, Lemina talks about the brews Vane has made and offered to the Seraphim and how Lanval probably isn't *that* much of a mess. Ragnell inhales as if to speak, hesitates, then presses both hands in front of her mouth. Lanval weighs in, and she just sighs with a rueful smile and shakes her head. To Lemina, she kindly says, "Yeah. Maybe so."
    
    ...The way she treats Lemina compared to Loren really is like night and day.
    
    Regardless, Lemina BUFFS UP Ragnell and Layna, while Lanval provides some watery goodness to help slick the brick. With effort, the two of them manage to slide that oversized brick out, and...!
    
    A family of rats looks up, freezing, from where they are gnawing on wallmeat.
    
    Ragnell frowns, face scrunching up.
    
    "Yeah, hard pass," she announces, then strides away. The rats promptly take every single piece of meat and *scarper*. Better move out of their way because they're not stopping for anything or anyone.

DG: Lemina Ausa has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
==================<* CHALLENGE - The Underground Clock Face *>==================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The heart of the Weylish Ruins is where work was unfinished. As you step
 inside of the chamber, you find a huge white clockface. It seems that it was
 never lifted to the top of the tower that once rested above the ruins, for
 it sits here, pristine. And yet, it is working: the clock hands move and
 turn, and all of the machinery here has led to this: a working clocktower
 clock, which has never been placed for the world to see.

 There are also scores of corpses here. The skeletons of a whole lance of
 Imperial Knights lay in repose, bodies decayed over the last two decades,
 and garments rended and torn by some great claws. There is, it seems, a
 doorway that the knights never made it to, in the clock face.

 The door has a complex series of dials on it: a combination lock, not unlike
 the one that blocked the entrance. The correct combination must be entered
 -- a time of day, it would seem, judging by the dials.

 Do look out for the clock hands, though. Some of them swing low enough
 periodically to hit a person standing at the door.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Wound, Injure====================================
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina may still have a bit of a rose-colored view of Seraphim, even after interacting with Ragnell repeatedly. This is a terrible mistake and also mildly confusing on reflection.

"Yikes," Lemina declares, as the rats eat the wallmeat right out from under them. "Let's... let's just go. I think. I think we should just go."

With a long, theatrical sigh, she moves along, with a glance back toward Layna. "I dunno -- probably? I think you might be underestimating, uh, how strong we're talking. I mean, it's just made out of potatoes, but still..."

They come upon the same clock face that they came to last time; Lemina tries to remember what, exactly, the solution was... it was -- was it prayer time? High noon...?

"Ugh, clocks are the worst," Lemina says, before moving to the dials. "Ragnell, come here and help me figure out what time the clock's supposed to read." Ragnell is... probably the only one Lemina trusts to have any sound guesses, unfortunately.

Loren, meanwhile, is ticked at aggressively and menacingly by the second hand of the clock. Hopefully that's the only time it does that!

DG: Lemina Ausa has used her Tool Reading Glasses toward her party's challenge, The Underground Clock Face.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval doesn't beg for scraps from the rats. Maybe he has some kind of standards after all? They're just substandard standards.
     Ahem.
     The group comes along to the clock face. Lemina looks to Ragnell for direct help on what time they're supposed to set the thing to. Then there is more laughter. Unwanted, loud, distracting laughter.
     A blue light shines from the mouth of the bottle, leaving it in a sparkly sphere before it manifests into the form of...!
     A 5'9" scraggly silver-bearded fellow in ragged blue clothing with a noted lack of shoes. Morbidly obese in form, the blue tips that reach the end of his hair part in ways they seem to resemble small streams going down his belly.
     NOW he shows himself.
     "Don'tcha worry...!" The middle-aged(?) wastrel slurs. "Wait 'till ya shee what I got~"
     What does he have... on his face...
     Oh, no.
     It seems Lanval found a pair of those dumb novelty swirly-lens glasses from somewhere! He's laughing and carrying on as he staggers about the room of ruin. This situation bears absolutely no resemblance, to anyone's recollection, as to any of the exceedingly small amount of circumstances in which Lanval is anything more than a loud, obnoxious, lazy, useless drunk along for fun rather than expending any useful effort in seeing themselves through a dungeon.
     The way he turns his neck, one can see that the swirly lens are made of the bottom of beer bottles. He's drunk, and those bottle bottoms aren't really made for seeing through.
     Are they?
     "Jusht watch... ha ha ha!" He staggers and swerves about the spinning clock hands like they were in the presence of a carefully practiced physical comedy act. Every time it seems like he should get conked or cut by them, he just... doesn't, by some virtue of twisting or tripping about the construct, laughing death in the face.
     Until one scoops him up by his pants, hefting him up, up, up and around as he hoots, hollers, and has a grand old time until he falls off at the apex, ungracefully rolls down the clock face, and slaps a hand up against one of the dials. He lets it hang there before gently rubbing it down a few numbers.
     He starts to snore, one of the glasses lens fractured in the silliness. That's... maybe... sort of... helping? Let's be honest, if he did just set a dial correctly, that must be a complete accident.
     Right?
     

DG: Seraph Lanval has used his Tool Amber Tinted Glasses toward his party's challenge, The Underground Clock Face.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "It's medical," Loren stresses, inching further towards the edge. Also toxic, but somehow he's not certain at all what counts as 'actually harmful' for a... bottle. "It's for medical treatment. What part of that don't you understand?"
    He's aware, dimly, that he's arguing with a bottle (a... remarkably chill bottle) and should probably quit while he's ahead.
    I'm in hell, he more strongly thinks instead.
    "--No, I'm not going to drink it!"

    he really should stop now

    Perhaps there's more than reason why he opts to lean against the wall and duck out of the current challenge the group is facing down.

    "Really?" This is towards Ragnell as the two lock gazes and have apparently a sort of a showdown, a battle by the eyes alone. "Fine, think whatever you want. It's not my problem," he determines at last, settling in against the wall and finally turning his gaze away.

    "Hmph." This, apparently, is Loren's commentary on the matter of Ragnell and her opinion towards him, his blue eyes flicking once Lemina's way as she explains away the other woman.

    Thus does he end up watching on in silence as the rats escape the wall and scamper off into the distance down the hallway.

    "Huh," will have to settle for his thoughts on the matter.

    They press on, without any wallmeat.

    What awaits them is a clockface.

    This, apparently, draws Loren's attention; he approaches the face to squint at it, rounding about in front of it as if to take it -- and its still functional mechanisms -- in.
    He also narrowly evades a sudden forward 'tick' of the clock's second hand, and promptly reconsiders his positioning by the door.

    "Hmm. It's similar to the mechanism at the front door. Perhaps there's a connection," he says, readjusting his glasses in thought. "Noon... that's probably too easy. Six-thirty, too, unless the creators were idiots. I suppose we could also rule out three-forty-five and nine-fifteen. Would they have tried something like ten-ten or three-thirty-three..."

    Thinking out loud, it's the sudden flare of blue light shining along a clock hand that disrupts such musing and prompts him to turn around.

    "What," he says, flatly.

    Loren doesn't entirely have all the clues in hand to fully assemble the puzzle, but he's just learned another important thing about Seraphs.

    Backing out of the way as Lanval staggers past him, he watches on as the man is caught by a clock hand and promptly tumbles down the whole face of the mechanism.

    Slowly, with painstaking care, Loren lifts a hand to his face.

DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, The Underground Clock Face.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

It really must've been difficult for the rats to get any kind of food down here. Good for them, really! Layna has no intention of trying to take it from them. They can keep it. Just, all of it.

"Aye." Layna agrees with a nod, and then moves on...before sending Lemina a grin.

"Lass, you're just selling me on this more and more. Unless it's more potent than the Goddess's Breath, I should be fine!" She replies. 'Goddess's Breath' being the name of a very potent Lunarian alcohol - named so because those who drink it tend to collapse and swear they looked into Her face for a brief moment.

She might be chuckling at Loren a bit, too.

Eventually, they reach a rather familiar room. They took a longer, more circuitous path than she took last time, but it was definitely interesting to see more of the ruin. She remembers this room well, so she knows to stay well clear of the clock hands, since she probably isn't going to be any help figuring out what they're supposed to set it to.

She wasn't actually paying attention the last time...

This does mean she's treated to the full view of Lanval's antics. ...The glasses get a good long stare out of her.

She had to admit, it was pretty impressive how he managed to dodge through everything...up until the point he falls down. Layna winces.

"...Lanval? Y'okay over there, buddy?" Layna calls out. He's probably okay.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Underground Clock Face.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    Lemina's so cute that way. Ragnell just wants to pat her on her cute little head.
    
    "Potato liquor, huh?" Ragnell drawls, glancing over at Lemina, who also rightfully decides that rat meat is not great. "Come t' think, they made that in Wayside too. That was some *good* stuff. Don't s'pose y'all still make that on the sly?"
    
    Loren tries to stare her down and ultimately dismisses her opinion as unimportant. Ragnell's grin only gets sharper as she continues to snicker at him, and doesn't otherwise respond. Maybe she's just trying to be annoying? (She's definitely trying to be annoying.)
    
    They reach a clock. It is surrounded by more complicated dials and possibly also corpses, but Ragnell doesn't mind them either way. She's about to step forward to join Lemina in cracking the case when--Lanval Interrupt!!
    
    "Oh, so ya decided to join us?" she says, looking over his way. "...Wait, did you always have those glasses--?" But then he bids them all watch, and gets into ... Ragnell just roars with laughter at his sudden antics. Inspired, she pulls out her harmonica and plays a wild, happy, goofy ditty while he fools around with the clock, dodging this way and that until finally a clock hand scoops him up and drops him down, leaving him to tumble into a few numbers, then... fall asleep. Ragnell finishes up her ditty, and goes right back to laughing.
    
    Helpful!

DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Tarnished Harmonica toward her party's challenge, The Underground Clock Face.
==============================<* Weylish Ruins *>===============================
==================<* CHALLENGE - The Underground Clock Face *>==================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The heart of the Weylish Ruins is where work was unfinished. As you step
 inside of the chamber, you find a huge white clockface. It seems that it was
 never lifted to the top of the tower that once rested above the ruins, for
 it sits here, pristine. And yet, it is working: the clock hands move and
 turn, and all of the machinery here has led to this: a working clocktower
 clock, which has never been placed for the world to see.

 There are also scores of corpses here. The skeletons of a whole lance of
 Imperial Knights lay in repose, bodies decayed over the last two decades,
 and garments rended and torn by some great claws. There is, it seems, a
 doorway that the knights never made it to, in the clock face.

 The door has a complex series of dials on it: a combination lock, not unlike
 the one that blocked the entrance. The correct combination must be entered
 -- a time of day, it would seem, judging by the dials.

 Do look out for the clock hands, though. Some of them swing low enough
 periodically to hit a person standing at the door.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Wound, Injure====================================
=========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 8 *>==========================
====================< Results - The Underground Clock Face >====================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      90 --(10)--> 100               Pass
Tarnished Harmonica                 2   Wits    Effects: Stalwart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       95 --(20)--> 115               Fail
Amber Tinted Glasses                3   Wits    Effects: Fanfare
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      80 --(20)--> 100               Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         90 --(10)--> 100               Pass
Reading Glasses                     2   Wits    Effects: Resilient
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          90 --(20)--> 110               Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              80 --(0)--> 80                 Fail
Conditions: Injure(2)|Weaken(2)|Wound(2)
Effects: Resilient(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: Seraph Lanval is too exhausted to continue!
DG: Loren Voss is too exhausted to continue!
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell 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.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina cracks up. Looking at Lanval with her own glasses on her face, she finds it all but impossible to take the moment seriously, and starts cracking up at the absurd-looking man with the silver beard with the dumb, dumb novelty glasses.

The laughter gets more intense as Lanval gets ownd by a clock. Lemina watches him get carried up, and up -- and then summarily dumped off the clock onto Loren.

In the time this takes, Ragnell manages to finish setting the dials, and Layna... well, Layna can at least check if their idiot friends are dead (mercifully: no).

Lemina takes a moment to compose herself, and turns to Ragnell. "Huh? Oh -- uh, yeah, or at least, I think so. Even if we don't, I know there's some tomato wine kicking around..." Which sounds nasty but really does not taste any different from wine made from other non-tomato objects.

DG: Layna Manydays has drawn a new Challenge.
=============================<* Weylish Ruins *>==============================
====================<* CHALLENGE - The Clockwork Golem *>=====================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 3          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 The inside of the clock face is a massive room, where gears, chains, and
 clockwork mechanisms make the machinery work. The room itself has an office,
 with a wooden desk and crates. It is in a serious state of disarray: much
 has been knocked over, and there is a secret door in the wall that leads to
 a tunnel one must crawl through.

 An armoire catches your attention. It is immense, a huge thing of wood and
 steel and brass against one wall. The armoire has been opened, and is
 knocked to the side, some of the insides spilling out: silver glints. The
 reason, however, is a twelve-foot tall clockwork construction. It lumbers
 out, with armor that is cracked and chipped; it hefts up a claymore.

 Then, it rushes in!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    ...And promptly gets hit by the tumbling Seraph.

    "Gah--"

    Pinned to the floor, Loren proves that he's very much not at all dead as he struggles in vain to free himself.

    "Get off me!"

    ...Unfortunately, Lanval has fallen asleep, it seems, and there is in fact such a thing as an immovable object. Loren can struggle as much as he wants, but he's not moving a step from this point, at least not quite yet.

    "Someone-- just move him already!"
    (Help, for various reasons, including what lies beyond the clock face, is probably not IMMEDIATELY forthcoming.)

<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The door opens into a massive room. Layna's interest is with the office she knows is somewhere inside. Sure enough, after stepping over some chains and around some gears, they find it. It's...about what she expected to see - all in disarray and with an immense armoire. ...This time, however, the thing has been knocked over.

The culprit is still in this room. The culprit is in fact almost as big as the room, or at least the office. It's a huge clockwork construction, Unlike the guardians they encountered earlier this one is in good shape, though it's armor bears the cracks and chips of time. It's weapon - a massive claymore - is in prime condition, however.

It moves toward them, swinging the weapon in a giant arc towards them. Layna ducks underneath it, igniting both of her bracers. Lanval's bottle has been stored away someplace safe.

She lunges forward, delivering a punch to the golem's mechanisms.

DG: Layna Manydays has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Clockwork Golem.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    And then Lanval lands on Loren, and Ragnell laughs even harder. Somehow, through her laughter, she manages to help Lemina solve the puzzle to allow those who remain through. And when Loren yells for help--once again, Ragnell makes direct eye contact, grins broadly, and gives him a sassy little two-fingered salute... before sauntering further inside.
    
    That's the opposite of helping Ragnell
    
    Loren might be lucky though, really. On the other side of the clockwork face is a massive room with an almost-as-massive clockwork construct. Ragnell's out of grenades, having used them up on smaller constructs. She finds herself kinda wishing she hadn't been so careless, and dives to one side to avoid its weapon arc before opening fire on the massive construct, first with base attacks, then with hidden artes aimed for its potentially-vulnerable joints.

DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Clockwork Golem.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina, as she turns to see the massive clockwork creature with a claymore, considers her options. She could try something mildly silly and almost guaranteed to fail, like a venom dart. ... oooooooooor...

She reaches into her pack, withdrawing a pair of seals and affixing them behind each hand. (They're very cute. They look like palm-sized shields!) "Okay -- let's see about this..."

Taking a breath, Lemina goes for a much longer chant than she has up to this point -- either she has Big Magic in mind, or she's just... taking it a little more seriously. It's hard to tell.

... at least, it's hard to tell until she finishes, "Maiden of ice who sleepest in silent forest, grace my enemies with your pure smile and offer them thy bosom!" Lemina turns away from the clockwork monstrosity as she sweeps her staff to one side, crying, "Final Embrace!"

Then a giant spike of ice and stone rises straight up through the golem. That's not very embracey at all!

Both crests are glowing as she finishes. ... she's just using them for extra damage. How lazy.

DG: Lemina Ausa has used her Tool Crest Combo toward her party's challenge, The Clockwork Golem.
=============================<* Weylish Ruins *>==============================
====================<* CHALLENGE - The Clockwork Golem *>=====================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 3          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 The inside of the clock face is a massive room, where gears, chains, and
 clockwork mechanisms make the machinery work. The room itself has an office,
 with a wooden desk and crates. It is in a serious state of disarray: much
 has been knocked over, and there is a secret door in the wall that leads to
 a tunnel one must crawl through.

 An armoire catches your attention. It is immense, a huge thing of wood and
 steel and brass against one wall. The armoire has been opened, and is
 knocked to the side, some of the insides spilling out: silver glints. The
 reason, however, is a twelve-foot tall clockwork construction. It lumbers
 out, with armor that is cracked and chipped; it hefts up a claymore.

 Then, it rushes in!
=Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
========================<* Weylish Ruins - Round 9 *>=========================
======================< Results - The Clockwork Golem >=======================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Ragnell                      100 --(100)--> 200             Fail
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seraph Lanval                       115 --(X)--> X
                                                Effects:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layna Manydays                      100 --(100)--> 200             Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lemina Ausa                         100 --(100)--> 200             Fail
Crest Combo                         3   Combat  Effects: Resilient and Liabili
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loren Voss                          110 --(X)--> X
                                                Effects:
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Seraph Ragnell              80 --(5)--> 85                 Fail
Conditions: Fright(2)|Injure(1)|Weaken(1)|Wound(1)
Effects: Resilient(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: Seraph Ragnell is too exhausted to continue!
DG: Layna Manydays is too exhausted to continue!
DG: Lemina Ausa is too exhausted to continue!
DG: The party has failed this challenge! All party members are now Exhausted. This attempt is over.
DG: The party led by Seraph Ragnell has been fully Exhausted by Weylish Ruins!
DG: The party will now draw a conclusion.
=============================<* Weylish Ruins *>==============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - The Memory Stone *>======================
|Type: Landmark    |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Your efforts to uncover the truths of the Weylish Ruins have ended in vain
 -- but not in total loss. Though the secrets of the great clock are not
 apparent, you find a massive black stone among the treasures, and unscarred
 by the battles that occurred here. It has names written upon it, in modern
 language, like some of the notes you viewed.

 At the bottom is a hand-carved message: "May they be remembered. May our
 failures be forgiven. Know that we tried. Know that we love you still."
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna rushes forward, delivering a devastating barrage of fiery punches. Ragnell attacks from afar, with a barrage of artes. The golem still continues to swing, however. No matter what they throw at it, it doesn't seem to slow down.

Finally, Lemina completes her spell - ice and stone rips up through the ground, piercing through the very center of the golem. ...Even this doesn't appear to stop it completely, however, but it does immobilize it.

It fights against the ice piercing it, attempting to continue with its preprogrammed instructions. ...It won't keep it there for long. There won't be enough time to investigate the armoire tipped over behind it, but there will be enough time to go back, grab Lanval, and get out of there.

And maybe also Loren?

Maybe.

As they're leaving, however, they encounter a massive black stone among other, miscellaneous treasures. This stone is carved with many names in a modern language, and bears a hand-carved message at the bottom.

Layna frowns and stares at it for a moment. She had to wonder just who these people were...

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    MEANWHILE

     Lanval continues snoring while chaos reigns a ways ahead.
     Under the dumb novelty glasses, one of his eyes open up. "Hmmmmmrrrrrrmmm." He thinks aloud, giving way to coherence.
     "Ahhh... ya should shtay thereeee~" Lanval grouses as he stretches, struggles, attempts to roll to get up as he grabs the rope to a drinking gourd. "Shoundsh pretty bad in there. Ya shee~"
     Before Lanval can say anything, Layna has already come back for him. That look in her face says enough - he'd better just ride out the rest of the way out back inside his vessel in full. What was he about to say to poor Loren?
     At least he didn't take his rubbing alcohol.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    The construct is immobilized but not defeated. It doesn't look like they'll be able to pierce its armor easily, and while Ragnell wouldn't mind keeping up the battle, she suspects that it wouldn't end up well. Too bad Lanval took himself and Loren out, but so it goes.
    
    She stops by the black carved stone as Layna does, reading the names and message inscribed there. It's sweet... but it's also irrelevant to the Seraph. Upon noting it, she moves on with the others.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "So you've decided to rejoin us," Loren comments once Lanval awakens. He struggles, mostly to make a point to Lanval that all is not well and that the Seraph should consider moving.

    "'Stay here'? What are you talking about? Move--"

    The crashing inside the room does, after all, underline the Seraph's point.
    "..."

    Which is probably roughly the point where Layna comes rushing back out again, and Lanval at last blessedly vacates his presence. He has himself enough time to glance back into the room once he's back on his feet (with a wince) before shaking his head and hurrying after them.

    He has in the end enough time to consider the black stone and read a handful of names, but little else; he's not inclined to discover just how far that construct is intent on chasing them down.