2018-09-23: Deep in the Coils of the Serpent
- Log: Deep in the Coils of the Serpent
- Cast: Janus Cascade, Maya Schrodinger, Seraph Ragnell, Talia, Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: Serpent's Coils
- Date: 9/23/2018
- Summary: Gwen was never one to turn down a request for assistance from a childhood friend (or three), even if that 'friend' was Janus. What's a little bit of ruin exploring between friends? Especially ones that definitely have darker motives in mind?
=============================<* Serpent's Coils *>============================== The Serpent's Coils are named for a ruin dating back past the Day of Collapse, which curls around a rocky outcropping not unlike a serpent. The sands have buried this ruin, but the interior is nonetheless evocative: many inscriptions and murals decorate the walls, while the pillars are carved in intricate forms. Statues of knights, warriors, and other heroes can be found inside. However, wildlife have breached it, and some have evolved into strange forms after being trapped inside of this palace of the damned. Still, the chance for ancient artifacts reward the brave. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD2s1kx8ONQ
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ==============<* CHALLENGE - Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again *>=============== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The Serpent Coils are overrun. Some power here is causing something new to emerge from the dark caverns that lay beneath the dungeon. Demi-human creatures with pig snouts and swords, wobbling, aggressive slimes, armed and armored lizardmen and even the very sand beneath your feet coming alive to grasp you; all these things have populated the halls, formerly occupied by more common Filgaian threats. There is only one real solution to get to the deeper layer quickly: Run past everything in your way like a maniac. The path deeper down is obvious enough, when you find it: A rupture in the Serpent Coils' brickwork, leading down to long caves...and much, much older bricks. =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Janus Cascade has, through the power of personal visits and a couple fishing posts at Adventurers' Guilds, which for some daft reason still let him in the premises despite HOLDING A KING HOSTAGE THAT ONE TIME, assembled a crew of people to accompany him down into the Serpent Coils. They were already a dangerous place, of course, but now...
They don't scream so much as they chitter, cackling, obnoxious voices flitting out of the confounding halls. Janus takes in a long breath, leaning over to consult Romero's notebook as the nonja holds it up for his assessment. It's got a map. "Alright," he says. "Doorway to the new layer is down on the third floor. We gotta get past...."
Something seeps out of the floor, a green, bug-eyed creature shaped like a teardrop starting to wobble toward them. "....all sortsa shit." He rolls his neck to one side until there's a satisfying crack.
"So book it!"
Then he charges, rushing forward heedlessly.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
SCHRODINGER RESIDENCE
BEFORE
"Yes, I am sure milady will be refraining from any further poorly-planned excursions in the future, after the fiasco at the gardens." explains the eternal dupe and retainer to the Schrodinger family, Todd Dukakis, to a telephone receiver on a big oaken desk with gold trim and all that nonsense. A pause, and he chuckles richly. "I quite agree. It -is- about that time for the pair of them, isn't it? Short notice as it may be, surely a civilized dinner with fine company would hardly be asking too much of her."
Somewhere in the same study, a young boy with hair of finely-spun gold is perched over an old compounding textbook full of notes in the liners. He is currently pinching the bridge of his nose and wondering how their caretaker manages to distance himself ever-further from reality with every dawning day.
The click of a phone back on the handle, and a suave hum as the afro'd historian glides from the study to the master bedroom to rouse the Mistress of the house. Ho ho, for once, he'll be the one putting them back on a more sensible path to success. Yes, of course.
Todd's knuckles hit the door to knock, and it in fact, glides open to reveal an open window and billowing curtains.
lmfao todd
SERPENT'S COILS
NOW
Y'all a fool if you think Maya Schrodinger, tempered by exposure to a limitless fount of horrible things in the world, is going to sip wine and date some icky boy instead of shoot guns at ancient horrors and search for riches and/or facts mortal minds were never meant to know.
Getting ahold of her really is that easy - just dangle the premise of terrible disaster or unlimited riches, and see which one works best.
"Was it -always- this crowded in here?" asks the sunshiney gunslinger as she axe-kicks open the wrong door entirely and has to turn around to face the right way. The Cascade way. "Or did these lovely pals all crawl out of the woodwork just for you?"
Maya's fancy footwork (or lack thereof) to get past the opening salvo of strangely creepy & crawly dungeon-denizens is kind of lacking, maybe that dress isn't that easy to dodge around in after all. A rock spat by an odd, bubbly, octopus-shaped monster nearly collides with her golden crown, but we could swear a cat-shaped shadow flits past and makes it disappear. How weird.
DG: Maya Schrodinger has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again. DG: Janus Cascade has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Fun facts: Ragnell has never actually made it to the end of the Serpent's Coils in the sense that she found a proper discovery. The best she's done is make it to those pure-water lakes towards the bottom. So speed-running through the whole thing, when she has never actually been through the whole thing, is, uhhhh. An Experience.
Luckily Janus has a map, so it's not as much of An Experience as it could be, but Ragnell has a mouthful of chocolate rusk anyway as she dashes over and past green bug-eyed creatures. "Ihh uhff hee fwhw ghhhs," she says ("says") to Maya, which could be translated as 'Where's your girlfriend and why aren't you wearing your hotpants today,' which is completely inaccurate in terms of words used but absolutely dead-on in terms of spirit.
She eyes a certain cat-like shadow that magically knocks aside a certain rock, then shrugs and jumps off a wall to round a corner with a few extra seconds clipped off her run. Gotta go fast.
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Chocolate Rusk toward her party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia knows, really, that she should not trust Janus Cascade.
But, the request didn't shock her. Janus, of all the former mercenaries who helped destroy Lastonbell's walls, was the one who showed the most sense. He fled the situation before it could spiral out of control. It makes it easier to not dismiss him entirely. In the end, she decided, it was best to tag along. She left Ammy a note about having something to check into.
And thus, she set out.
She finds herself here now -- standing next to Maya and Ragnell. Her eyes turn to the blonde-haired gunslinger; then, her lips quirk up into a smile, and she shakes her head. "It seems either is possible, no?"
She looks sideways at Ragnell, then, and blinks once. "That does look rather good. Have you been by the Festina Lente?"
She throws Mirage. The blade skewers through one of the insects, and her body splits into shadow, before she reappears. "It is a new bakery in Adlehyde! Everyone should come by!"
DG: Talia has used her Tool Mirage toward her party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Serpent Coils. Gwen's done this place at least twice now, so how hard can it be to get to the end? Just do some balancing, be aware of some dangers, clean up some monsters here and there, maybe run into some neat fossils. It should be a piece of cake! A delicious one.
Cake sounds good, about now.
"Soooo." She looks down the hallway. "Man, this place has changed."
There's sure a lot more monsters here. The place was tough, but for seasoned folk, it was just right. Now, it's just. Uh. "It wasn't, if I remember right," Gwen answers Maya.
She looks ahead to the team leader. "So, uh, Janus. Y'know... what I said about if somethin's off I'll have every right to shut things down?" That may have not been at all what Gwen said, but she's going with it. "Yeah, so, like, if we get to the end of this dealie, n' things ain't what they're supposed t'be like-"
WHAT IS THAT THING. Gwen just stares at the bug-eyed creature beginning to wobble towards them, and just raises her hands. "Shoo, shoo."
It's worth a try. "So, Janus, you agree?"
oh he's running
"I'll say he said yes."
DG: Gwen Whitlock has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Not that long ago, Gwen mentioned that she and Janus Cascade were going to engage in a cooperative venture. Gwen made the mistake(?) of mentioning this in front of people who consider her a good friend, and are interested in her continued health and well-being. Ida was one of them.
NOW
"I don't remember them," Ida says, to Maya, as she outpaces the green gelatinous thing bobbling aggressively at her ankles. "There were slimes, yes, but not quite like these..." She can smell something strange, too--something at the periphery of her spiritual senses. She takes a moment to stop and catch her breath, but not for long. (Not doing regular cardio for months has taken its toll.) As the group comes up on that giant drop, Ida raises her gauntleted right arm, unfolds the trigger mechanism from the side of her hand, and fires. A dart shoots from behind the palm with a thunderous bang, embedding itself in the ceiling. Ida gives it a few tugs to make sure it's secure, then swings way out over the edge, descending towards the pool below. A series of cunning weight-distribution straps keep her arm from being wrenched out of its socket.
And everyone else has a lovely climbing rope!
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Line Launcher toward her party's challenge, Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ==============<* CHALLENGE - Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again *>=============== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The Serpent Coils are overrun. Some power here is causing something new to emerge from the dark caverns that lay beneath the dungeon. Demi-human creatures with pig snouts and swords, wobbling, aggressive slimes, armed and armored lizardmen and even the very sand beneath your feet coming alive to grasp you; all these things have populated the halls, formerly occupied by more common Filgaian threats. There is only one real solution to get to the deeper layer quickly: Run past everything in your way like a maniac. The path deeper down is obvious enough, when you find it: A rupture in the Serpent Coils' brickwork, leading down to long caves...and much, much older bricks. =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 1 *>=============== ================< Results - Do The Whole Serpent Coil Again >================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 0 --(5)--> 5 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 0 --(5)--> 5 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Chocolate Rusk 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Mirage 3 Agility Effects: Fanfare ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Line Launcher 2 Agility Effects: Quicken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 0 --(5)--> 5 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 0 --(20)--> 20 Pass Conditions: Slow(2) Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Corrupted Lagoon *>====================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The vast crystalline cavern complex opens up into a tremendous underground lagoon. Once, this place glistened with the enticing purity of underground, unsullied water. Drifters who visited the upper layers of the Serpent Coils may even have caught glimpse of that, on their way out of the caverns. Those times are over. The underground lake now sits thick, pulsing with some foul internal light. This isn't Malevolence, but the taste of it is frustratingly similar, as the thick air swirls with motes of purple light around you. There are a series of platforms that will let you leap from here to another outcropping, which leads down to a deeper floor. Touching the sludge this water has become is not immediately deadly, but it's DEEPLY uncomfortable, and could burn badly if you stay in too long. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Janus does not in any way voice an agreement to Gwen's prompting.
The group rushes, by Janus' prompting. "It's a bit different, eh?" Janus calls to Maya, laughing. "Change is good! Keeps things interesting! Hell if I know what these things are, though," he grunts, idly firing a shell into the skull of some bare-headed, horned goblin.
He does not seem openly murderous but then again, it's Janus and he never really does.
"Wonder if I'm still wanted in Adlehyde," he muses idly, to Talia's free advertising. "Not a lifestyle that gets us a lot of bread, ya know?"
And then they get to a rift, deep down into the Serpent Coils. "...was hopin' for more of a hole in the wall," he muses, but Ida helps lead the way downward. Janus grips the provided rope and starts to slide, slowly bringing into view a large cave complex, the far walls glowing dimly with a faint blue internal light. But the water, rather than pure or clear, is a thick, noxious muck, glowing with a neon radioactive purple-pink.
Dario, at about this point, screams "YEAAAOOOOWWWW" as he rope burns himself in about 4 seconds and proceeds to fall of the rope a distance that would probably kill a normal person, but Dario Nicolodi has so much knockoff hooch in his system that he could survive even death.
But not rope burn. Stings, you know.
Janus touches down while Romero is fishing Dario out of the drink. 'The drink' in this case being a horrible pool of....tar? Muck? Hatred?
"Burned m' hair clean off!" Dario whines, shaking out the arm that fell in. "What is this stuff!?"
Janus grunts. "An obstacle. Didn't I hear somethin' about water down below the Serpent Coils...?"
He glances back to the group as they descend, then jerks his head. "Way out is through," he says. "See over there?" He points, to where the natural rock has been carved to mount ancient brickwork and a clear doorway. "Looks like there's some islets we can jump across to get to another door."
...he doesn't go first because he's hoping someone else will drop a rope again.
DG: Janus Cascade has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
The votes are in and mmmmostly unanimous: something is weird as hell in the Serpent's Coils, and it's almost unanimous. Good to know it isn't just Maya.
Maya, who pinwheels her arms frantically as she slips on a living pool of sand and skids down a too-sleep slope while Ragnell motors past in a chocolate-fuelled nitro burst. The Seraph is a familiar and comforting sight, especially in this moment of panic. She should've known better than to follow known kidnapper and statue-destroyer Janus Cascade into this place! "I don't think so either," she hollers back to Ragnell while completely misunderstanding what the Seraph asked in the first place, "But why would you bring a beach outfit -here-!?"
Sure.
Before Maya's feet can give way from beneath her entirely, she swiftly grabs hold of Ida's generously-placed rope and kicks only -slightly- as she swings free of the many threats below her feet. Before she can swing entirely past the entrance to the next layer, another strangely cat-shaped shadow pitches a kunai-shaped shadow at the rope and an orange blur plummets deeper into the dungeon with a not-actually-that-alarmed expression upon her face.
So that's how the self-styled gun-toting princess of Bledavik comes to be perched on top of a giant crystal overlooking a lake of glowing sludge. She opens her mouth to say something, but the taste of purple light fills her every sense with a feeling like television static held next to an open mic. Ugh, can she take a subterranean trip -without- suffering some kind of debilitating spiritual feedback?
"I've got some spare rope here," Maya calls back to her scattered pals after finding her tongue, clambering up onto shaky feet and trying to decide which path forward is going to give her the least exposure to sludge. "Just gotta... ... get across first..."
(technically it's ida's rope anyway)
DG: Maya Schrodinger has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
When Talia remarks on Ragnell's snack, she blinks at the assassin and swallows. "The Festina Lente, huh?" she says, before popping another rusk into her mouth. She does not offer any to anyone else. Admittedly, it's a little hard to run and eat at the same time. The bit of free advertising, though, gets her a slight smile. "D'you work there or somethin'?" She pops a third rusk into her mouth, then tucks the rest away.
Meanwhile Gwen is trying to manipulate Janus into a particular answer; it goes about as well as you might expect. Ragnell eyes her kind but somewhat dumb human friend, then shakes her head and takes Ida's rope down through the rift in the brickwork towards...
Oh. This is unpleasant.
Ragnell swallows her mouthful of chocolate rusk while making a face at the sheer... *guh*-ness of the polluted lagoon. "So much for the pure waters from before," she mutters. This gunk isn't... exactly Malevolence, but it has a similar feel to it, and getting close is like trying to shove her hand onto a hot oven. Double unpleasant. Maya calls back to her; she looks up, looks Maya up and down, and then says succinctly, "Eye candy."
Which is absolutely necessary with the likes of Romero around.
Regardless, she, too, doesn't take point on hopping across this foul lake, even after Janus points out where they need to go. Once someone else has lead the way, she'll move forward too. She *does* eye Janus when he remarks about having heard about water under the Coils, but she doesn't remark.
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Chocolate Rusk toward her party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Once her feet are on solid ground again, Ida presses down on one of her gauntlet plates, deploying the blade inside and cutting through the rope with a satisfying thunk. She grips a crystalline protrusion with armored fingers. Her face twists into a grimace as she looks at the oozing, fetid pool that was once a crystalline lake. "This isn't Malevolence," she says. Her face creases with worry. There's no emotional nuance, no sign of any sort of dissonance. She looks up at Ragnell, but says nothing; presumably she knows to watch herself.
Ida raises that gauntleted arm again, and once again a loud bang echoes across the cavern walls. The dart flies, buries itself in the cavern ceiling. Ida waits for passengers, grips the line as tightly as she can, and swings across the hate-choked waters.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Line Launcher toward her party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"I'm..." Talia considers her present company for a moment, especially given that Janus just asked if he was still wanted in Adlehyde. "...friends with the owner, no? Katherine Weaver, if yopu've ever met her?" She winks at Ragnell.
She slides, a little, as they come to a cavern. A cavern leading into a lagoon is not, really, what the sellsword expected. Her booted feet slide to a stop, as she looks down. Her jaw opens -- as she gets a look at the lake. It pulses with a foul light, but not the sort she expected. This isn't the Malevolence that she grew accustomed to on Lunar. This is...
Her nose wrinkles.
"...This doesn't look right," she concludes. "Something wrong with the water, no?" she asks. She steps forward -- and then she nods at Janus. Her jaw sets, before she turns, and grabs ahold of Maya's rope. "I'll start."
She doesn't see a good purchase point for throwing Mirage. So, instead, she takes a running leap forward -- and tries to jump to the next platform.
And duck away from Ida's dart, as it passes.
DG: Talia has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
It wasn't a mistake that Gwen mentioned it in front of Ida. It was a, uh, calculated strategy. Yes.
... Okay, let's just say Gwen was running out of people she could think of that didn't simply go 'you're nuts, screw that guy' and leave it at that. Thankfully(?), Ida didn't.
Thankfully.
Because now they're all going into the deep depths of the Serpent Coils, descending into some sort of terrible rot that's accumulated underneath. A spiritual rot, almost like Malevolence, but not. LUCKY IDA AND LUCKY RAGNELL FOR COMING DOWN HERE. And lucky Talia for doing so like a proper Drifter! AND LUCKY GWEN. There's *so much luck* here. They're practically standing in it.
Like they're standing in this lake, which used to be some pristine clear water, a valuable commodity in the Badlands if there was ever any. Now, it's polluted, through infested with something foul and glowing, hot like nothing that color should be, and in a way Gwen's senses should not be detecting. Climbing carefully down on Ida's supplied rope, Gwen opts for one of the platforms, swinging her rope until her boots can land securely on its surface. "This isn't Malevolence, is it?" She looks at Ragnell and Talia for confirmation. "I mean, it kinda feels like it, but then it doesn't."
She'll try again.
"Janus, hey. There was a rumor I came across. Like, somethin' weird, though I ain't sure it's got anything to do with this, so like-"
And then Dario's yammering about how his hair got burned clean off. "Guardians, what *is* that stuff?"
The way out is over there, says Janus. "Okay, uh, yeah. But before I forget, Janus, there's a myth my auntie said was similiar when I told her that story you told me. About a Demon King who got-"
Ida brings out the big guns. "Oh, thanks, Ida!" Gwen thumbs up. "Let's get goin'!"
DG: Gwen Whitlock has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Corrupted Lagoon.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"Not Malevolence," Ida says, to Gwen, through clenched teeth. "Far too blatant. Don't touch it."
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - Corrupted Lagoon *>====================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The vast crystalline cavern complex opens up into a tremendous underground lagoon. Once, this place glistened with the enticing purity of underground, unsullied water. Drifters who visited the upper layers of the Serpent Coils may even have caught glimpse of that, on their way out of the caverns. Those times are over. The underground lake now sits thick, pulsing with some foul internal light. This isn't Malevolence, but the taste of it is frustratingly similar, as the thick air swirls with motes of purple light around you. There are a series of platforms that will let you leap from here to another outcropping, which leads down to a deeper floor. Touching the sludge this water has become is not immediately deadly, but it's DEEPLY uncomfortable, and could burn badly if you stay in too long. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 2 *>=============== ========================< Results - Corrupted Lagoon >======================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 5 --(15)--> 20 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Chocolate Rusk 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Line Launcher 2 Agility Effects: Quicken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 20 --(20)--> 40 Pass Conditions: Exhaust(1) Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - Failing Floor *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You barely get ten feet into this long room's dirt floor before someone's foot punches entirely through the floor. Recovery from that one is easy enough, but it's clear the floor is bad here. You'll have to walk carefully....or, run like hell and hope the ground doesn't crumble until you're no longer standing on it. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
It's definitely not Malevolence, though it's easy to see why someone who didn't understand it well might think it were. Malevolence has nuances, subtleties. This stuff just....burns. Maybe there's more that could be discovered about it with familiarity.
Or maybe it's just miasmic death.
The once-pure waters here now burn with some horrible inner light as the party makes their way across. It's slow going, but lake of malicious muck aside, there's been worse pickles to find yourself in. There's probably a door to Uzda Il-Jam around here somewhere if you want a real bad time.
Gwen, though, ends up slipping, and experiences a brief splash in the goop. It burns, though without honed spiritual senses it is mostly like a dunk in extremely fetid water than the burning Ragnell and Ida feel; very unpleasant, burning like acid, but far from immediately deadly.
....but perhaps it's just not strong enough to kill you at a touch, yet.
Regardless, the party gets through to the next door. "Probably the source o' whatever's down here, ya think?" he muses, as they step down into a room of mostly stone. The bricks here can't have been maintained in hundreds of years, and yet they appear in fine shape as Janus leads the way forward. "Huh. Nothin' in this one," he says, and then the ground goes *KRAK* under his foot.
Janus nearly throws himself back, as the ground he'd stepped on gives way. He slams into the ground ass-first, the least gainly he's ever been as he watches, and takes another look. Beneath that floor there's....darkness. Just...silent, yawning abyss.
Maybe don't fall in that.
Romero leans over, poking a few stones with his hand. "Huh," he says. "Think there's some safe spots? If yer careful you can probably walk it, think I see enough to make it across to th' door--"
"GWAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
The man with the bandana over his face does not visibly grimace but you can see it with your heart. You know it within your soul. "Or ya can run across and hope Granas preserves ya like Dario's doin'," he sighs."
"I TRUST MY LIFE TO THA LORD CHRIST," Dario cries as he charges dead off across the gap, floor tiles falling out from under him with every step.
"Works for him more often than you'd think," Janus notes, having stood up at some point and resumed having composure. He opts for the careful approach.
DG: Janus Cascade has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Failing Floor.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
"Not sure how much I want to know about whatever's pumping out that glowy lake of sludge outside," Maya offers to Janus as the gang finally re-assemble and make their way further down as some kind of cohesive whole again. "I mean... I can't imagine it's on purpose, so what could even be going -on- down here that gives that stuff off as a side-effect? Yeech." and she turns her nose up at the whole affair, just in time for the blue-haired bandito to nearly plummet into the infinite blackness below. It becomes quickly evident that there's actually not a whole lot between the drifters and what might as well be outer space, down there.
In this regard, at least, the pretender of many roles can be helpful. She catches the jacketed guy who once tried to kill her over another dude's bounty before he can damage his ass-bone. Or at least, she tries, it's not up to me if it works or not. "Careful, now~." Maya offers with a certain feline quality of amusement to her tone. Oh, yes, certainly this place is amusing and not terrifying, if you're an idiot psychopath. "This seems like a very common trap! Let's take it slow and test the--"
No, nevermind, a dude with his pants split open and a 10-gallon hat is sprinting across the tiles and they're spiralling away into the abyss beneath now. Plan ruined. Maya flat-facedly looks at the rest of the group and ruffles her own hair in frustration. "--or just... do that."
A cat-shaped shadow in the corner of the camera sweats profusely as the young Schrodinger scion gingerly teases a nearby tile with a booted foot. Will it fall? Will it hold? "So--if you don't mind my asking," she begins, squinting momentarily as she looks back at Ida and Ragnell in particular, "What makes the stuff back there so different to that malevolence? It's purple and makes my head go weird."
DG: Maya Schrodinger has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Failing Floor.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
There's a splash, and Gwen shrieks, much like Dario was doing just minutes before. Scrambling to safety, the courier latches her fingers to her scalp, a look and sigh of relief when she finds her short crop of curly hair still there. "I'm a-okay!" she announces aloud, presenting a thumbs up to anyone who happens to be looking.
"Ah, yeah, about that." The dumb human friend of Ragnell's is going to try again, it seems, opening her mouth when a distinctive, crisp *KRAK* of breaking tile makes her halt. "Whoah, Janus, you okay?" Maya, thankfully, is closer, though whether she'll be close enough is another question. Sliding carefully towards where Janus and Maya are, Gwen glances past them and into
nothing
Just, nothing.
".... Guardians..." Gwen murmurs, lapsing into a stunned silence.
It really throws things into perspective.
"Hey, uh. Lemme just come out clean with it, for everybody's sake." She soberly offers Janus a hand, if he's still down on the floor. "We may not be findin' treasure down here, or any sort of nice power source. But, whatever it is, it's--" She tries to wring out more of the foul, acidic-seeming liquid from her clothing as she continues. "--not at its full strength, maybe. Like, whatever it is, maybe it woke up, real recent. We get down there, we convince it to go back to bed one way or another, n' we all get t'be big damn heroes and go out drinkin' in a pub. And if we get some treasure, that's just icin' on the cake. Does that sound good? I mean, we're already down here n' all."
Romero might have a way to get past. "Good thinkin'! Maybe you can chart out a good path?"
Or, maybe, they can just all pull a Dario.
Looking up, Gwen watches in stunned silence as Dario just charges dead on ahead, managing a whistle when he gets to the other end. "Didn't know Dario was a spiritual man..."
DG: Gwen Whitlock has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Failing Floor.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
At least it was Janus who almost fell, Ida notes, her pragmatic streak rearing its head once again. It doesn't stop her heart from leaping against her ribs, as through trying to escape. Ida watches as Romero pokes at the ground, as if trying to see how much weight he's putting on it--if there really might be safe spots, or if he's just making it up. "Well," Ida says, as Dario goes dashing off, the ground falling away behind him. "I doubt the ceiling is any more stable." Which rules out the line launcher. She takes a moment to steady herself, counting breaths--which is when Maya asks her question. "It's... a very different beast, Miss... Schrodinger?" She glances sidelong at Maya, checking to see if she got the name right. "Malevolence feeds off emotional and philosophical contradiction. It hides itself. It's most common in areas with human presence, whereas this substance is..." Her face scrunches up again. "Vile in a way that Malevolence isn't. It feels like acid." She looks at Gwen, then. She wants to believe that everything Gwen just said will come true.
She breathes out, and the chi within her flows down into her legs. She starts to run, each footfall as light and delicate as she can manage.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Failing Floor.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell makes her way across the miasmic lake without incident, though once again her dumb human friend does something dumb. She just shakes her head again good-naturedly. Meanwhile, if there's a door to Uzda Il-Jam somewhere around these parts, she doesn't point it out. Maybe if they weren't looking for something specific in these particular ruins.
Once they're all across and through the door. Ragnell doesn't stride forward with Janus, instead surveying the room with a hand over her eyes. "Sludge as a side-effect... Hard t' say," she remarks to Maya. "If it *is* a side effect, then we might have a better idea o' what's makin' that happen at the end of this part o' th' ruins." What's different about it and Malevolence, though? Ragnell opens her mouth to reply--
Then there's a CRACK and Janus LAUNCHES himself ass-first backwards, and Ragnell bursts into guffaws so hard she nearly cries. "You know what, your friend's all right," she tells Gwen in between laughs, slapping her shoulder. This probably doesn't endear her to Janus any.
She's only just starting to calm down when Dario then LAUNCHES HIMSELF across the collapsing ground at speed. Ragnell once again breaks into uproarious laughter. Gwen may be making a serious statement about what to do about whatever's at the end of these ruins, and Maya still has a question that needs an answering, but Ida's kinda-sorta taking care of both of those things, so Ragnell just says cheerfully, "Looks like fun. Race you losers!!"
Then, totally at odds with the cautioun she displayed back there with the lake, Ragnell breaks into a sprint and dashes across the crumbling stone that leads into a pitch black abyss with at least equal speed and enthusiasm as Da "I TRUST MY LIFE TO THA LORD CHRIST" Rio.
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Chocolate Rusk toward her party's challenge, Failing Floor. [OOC] Seraph Ragnell blu-ray *caution
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"It doesn't seem like the sort of thing to just leave alone, no?" Talia asks Maya.
Still, she looks up and stares as Dario bolts across the floor. The floor that, she realizes, is collapsing. She starts to sprint, then -- and the ground begins to collapse behind her. Chunks fall away; she still listens, however, to Gwen. She mulls it over, and leaps towards the end, before she skids to a stop -- and hopes she evaded it all.
The former assassin turns, to give Gwen a brief look. "...Something that woke up? I'm not bothered by this, but... do we know what it might be?" she asks. "It would affect how we, er, convince it to turn back in for the night."
DG: Talia has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Failing Floor.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen turns to Talia and raises one finger. "The leftover malice of a really pissed off demon king."
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
You'd think that Maya 'loved a Hellion' Schrodinger would know the mechanics of Malevolence a little more than that, but there you have it. "Ah." she echoes in the tone of one who is suddenly listening hard to see if the time-bomb's tick is audible to her now. "Of--of course."
It isn't until everyone is halfway to safety or damnation that she's reminded to confirm for Ida: "Er. Yes, that's me." as if surprised anyone not in the immediate circle would actually recognize her. This is why it's probably better to -be- famous than to pretend.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"I, um." Talia pauses for a moment. "I feel I have more questions than I started with."
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - Failing Floor *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You barely get ten feet into this long room's dirt floor before someone's foot punches entirely through the floor. Recovery from that one is easy enough, but it's clear the floor is bad here. You'll have to walk carefully....or, run like hell and hope the ground doesn't crumble until you're no longer standing on it. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 3 *>=============== =========================< Results - Failing Floor >========================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 20 --(0)--> 20 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Chocolate Rusk 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 40 --(20)--> 60 Pass Conditions: Hesitate(2) Effects: Cleanse ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ===================<* CHALLENGE - A Fairly Well-Lit Room *>=================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The door slams shut behind you. There's no intricate design on the ground, no elaborate markings around the door you came in through or the door on the lefthand wall you'll presumably leave through. The monsters are minor nuisances at best, a few bats and some kind of jumping slime thing. But nothing's opening. There's no keyhole, no cracked wall....although, it's a little weird that those braziers aren't burning. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Fast or slow, the group does get through the 'maze' of deadly floor tiles soon enough. Nobody falls to their horrible mega-demise! Hooray!
Janus grunts at Gwen's input. "'s a myth," he says, giving her a crooked look. What's he thinking... "A thief from a long, long time ago who stole the power of the gods and took over the whole world with it. The treasures he won before he was defeated are still out there, somewhere..." He grins, just a bit more excited as he saunters into the next room. "Buried so deep not even his ghost would be able to find 'em. Though, yes, it looks like his Malice showed up as well...that's interesting..."
Before he can say anything else about that, the door way, which until now has had no sign of having still-existing doors, suddenly groans and releases a solid iron...it's less a gate and more like an interlocking blast door, slamming shut. No trap begins. No poisonous gas or noxious muck. A few stray bats screech and try to draw near. One of those slime things from before, largely harmless other than sheer grossness, drops out of the ceiling and starts hopping toward Ida. ....wait is this the same slime thing?
Regardless: "Trapped," Janus mutters, scanning around.
Romero, though, has pulled out a little notebook full of scribbles, and is wandering around, muttering to himself. "No acid vent...I don't smell anything...." mutter....mutter.........mutter........
Then he bumps into one of the large braziers, large elaborate stone structures meant to hold flame and keep it alive for long, long periods. Four of them are placed around the room, one in each corner. He looks down at it.
Then looks around at the room, which is lighted from above by what look like everburning torches or some other similar magic. He frowns. "They could keep the upper lights on for a zillion years, but not these?" he mutters.
DG: Janus Cascade has used his Tool Romero's Notebook toward his party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Janus Cascade explains himself. The more he says, the less Ida likes what Gwen has gotten herself into. The way his eyes light up when he describes this thief and his treasure--there's something there that transcends ordinary greed. A cold shiver works its way down Ida's spine, and then the door slams shut.
Squelch, goes the green blob, as it lands from an unseen hole above. Ida frowns at it, draws her duster aside with one hand, and then seems to think better of shooting the blob unless it somehow becomes more than just an inconvenience. Janus points out the torches. "Hmm," says Ida. She reaches into a pocket, pulls out a small metal block, and unfolds a spark-striker. A moment's rummaging produces one of the little wax fire-starters she uses when out in the wilds. She sets it down in the middle of the brazier, and strikes the fire-starter.
Click, click, click. The gel bobbles after her. It will take longer for it to get there than it will for Ida to light the fire, but it's trying.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Multitool toward her party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia glances sideways at Janus. "Is the treasure why you're here?" she asks. "I admit, after Lastonbell... I figured you must be here for profit, no? Quite the difference from Miss Whitlock."
She steps into the room a little after him. She jumps, though, when the door comes crashing down behind her. A door that she didn't see was there. Her eyes widen, as she gets a look at it: a blast door, for all intents and purposes. "Sturdy," she mutters. She shakes her head once, and then she sighs. She reaches down to her side.
A small, well-worn Kislevi field manual is pulled from her belt. She flips it open. "Maybe this will have some advice," she says. "Though--could we light one of the brazi--"
She spots one of the bats. Talia swings Lily's old notebook, trying to smash the bat to the floor. She groans, and then she looks sideways. She regards Ragnell for a moment. "Are you a Seraph? I think I only spoke to you, ah, briefly--" And during the attack on Lastonbell by that Fell Dragon.
In retrospect, that may not be a thing to bring up. Ragnell was rather upset.
DG: Talia has used her Tool Lt. Keil's Notebook toward her party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
Perhaps with comical subtlety, compared to the danger lurking at every turn, Maya peers over Janus's shoulder as he recounts a curious tale. "Now hold on, I don't think that story rings a bell. Does this old fable have a name?" she asks of the ever-trustworthy expedition leader. She pauses, eyes to the ceiling, thinking of her ragtag knowledge of uncovered truths of the world so far.
"I remember another ancient, pissed-off king's catacombs... but I think that was a different tale entirely. And it was a hell of a long way from here, too."
No good.
In the meantime, a particularly spherical bat lands on Maya's shoulder without her either noticing, or minding. "Uh--" she pauses, a hand to her forehead as the doors close and ideas start flying to and fro. Questions about demon king malice and ancient thieves stealing the power of the Gods will have to wait. "--those little recepticles probably don't mean anything, if the lights in here still work." she offers. "Maybe they were just ceremonial or something."
Mr. Bat glances sidelong at the blonde in quiet disgust.
Luckily, Maya is largely quiet after that. Save for another lingering question. "Wonder where the old kingdom in this myth supposedly wound up, anyway? You'd think there'd be more of it around if he had the whole dang world under his thumb... I guess in those kinds of stories, it kinda sinks beneath the waves so nobody can argue, huh."
DG: Maya Schrodinger has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"WOOO!" Gwen lets out a shout of triumph as she makes it to the other end, a quick glance over to make sure everyone made it. Then, she lets out another whoop, firm in her knowledge that they *all* survived.
But how are they going to get back across? Oh well, they'll figure it out then.
"They're both myths," Gwen agrees, to Janus's comment. "Annnnddd we'll figure out what's what when we get to the end. If the myth I heard is true, we need t'get rid of it, mostly on account of a terrible blight it'll cause if it gets to full strength. And how we do that is..." She makes a thoughtful face, swaying idly from foot to foot. "We'll figure it out!" ... Gwen Whitlock, future savior of Filgaia.
She doesn't miss that spark in Janus's eyes, however, her gaze moving to try to catch Ida's and Ragnell's, maybe evn Maya and Talia, if she can catch their gaze. Maya would know a little bit more, at least, having socialized with Janus in a semi-positive way, and Talia, well, may be the person most likely to survive all this.
'See', her look pleads. 'Something's -different-.'
She couldn't leave him to his own devices.
But right now, they need to figure out this room. "I think it likes you," Gwen comments to Ida, smiling at the blob creature. "It's kinda adorable, in a weird wobbly way. Maybe it's not wantin' to attack?"
Gwen is helping, she swears.
DG: Gwen Whitlock has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Hooray indeed! And Ragnell's in a good mood after all that! That probably means good things! Probably.
She gives Janus a sidelong look when he explains the myth. Gwen has already told it to her, but it's worth hearing from the one pursuing the treasures of which it tells. He looks excited about it, but what's that say, really? The end result will be the same either way. She shrugs at Gwen when Gwen tries to catch her gaze and saunters into the next room with the rest of the group.
Door slams shut. Ragnell sighs, rolling her eyes, and pulls her harmonica from her travel packet. Before she starts to play a melody while the others figure out the puzzle, though, Talia asks her a question and stops short of bringing up unpleasant memories. "...Yeah, I am," she replies, looking back at her. She knows what she avoided saying. "And you're a friend o' Katherine Weaver's, hmm?" She gives her a half-smile, then leaves it at that for some strange reason.
A bat dives at her. Ragnell swats it aside with a lightning-summoning gesture, then gets on playing that harmonica melody. Completely by coincidence, this will cause a slight breeze that will help breathe life into the fires Ida's attempting to set in the braziers.
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Tarnished Harmonica toward her party's challenge, A Fairly Well-Lit Room.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ===================<* CHALLENGE - A Fairly Well-Lit Room *>=================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The door slams shut behind you. There's no intricate design on the ground, no elaborate markings around the door you came in through or the door on the lefthand wall you'll presumably leave through. The monsters are minor nuisances at best, a few bats and some kind of jumping slime thing. But nothing's opening. There's no keyhole, no cracked wall....although, it's a little weird that those braziers aren't burning. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 4 *>=============== =====================< Results - A Fairly Well-Lit Room >===================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Romero's Notebook 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 20 --(0)--> 20 Pass Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Tarnished Harmonica 2 Wits Effects: Stalwart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(0)--> 0 Fail Lt. Keil's Notebook 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Multitool 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 60 --(20)--> 80 Pass Conditions: Hesitate(2) Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ===================<* CHALLENGE - A Door With A BIG Lock *>=================== |Type: Climax |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- This next chamber terminates in a massive door in gold and red. Although the colors and materials seem like the chambers of a king, the door is also blocked up and barricaded as though to keep something terrible inside. There's no knocker, no magic puzzle: Just a single great big keyhole. You'll need to find it somewhere else in the dungeon. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
"I'm a Drifter, ya know? Secrets interest me," Janus chuckles, toward Talia, while Romero does all the work, because apparently delegation also interests him. "But yes, I'm hopin' for a payday out of this. Gold'd be nice. Ain't seen gold in a while. Heard the ancients used it in a lot of their tech? Not somethin' I'd know much about."
Maya peering over his shoulder doesn't earn her anything but a look. "Heard it from an old man on the road," he says, offhandedly. "I don't even know if it's been written down anywhere. Maybe not the most reliable source, but..." He motions, vaguely, back the way they came. "Well, somethin's goin' on, anyway."
The last brazier is lighted and the doors at both ends of the room immediately open. Mr. Bat knew what was up the whole time.
Talia winds herself a little by smacking a bat rather than attempting to conjure flame.
Janus leads the way to the next chamber with a nonchalant spring in his step. This one is large, and barren, a wide chamber that perhaps was carpeted once, but now wears no garb but stone. At one end is a massive door set into the archway, locked tight with a golden lock and chained shut. Janus grimaces. "No shootin' through construction like that," he mutters. "We..." ...he looks back. "We didn't find a key, did we," he sighs.
"There's a couple other paths from the lagoon," Romero pipes up. "Maybe down one of the other paths?"
Janus groans, and spins on his heels. "Maybe we'll get lucky and we just missed a really obvious extremely big treasure chest somewhere!"
DG: Janus Cascade has used his Tool Romero's Notebook toward his party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Mm-hm," Talia answers Ragnell, deliberately. She doesn't explain more. She changes the topic, slightly. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, no?"
Then, she glances back at Janus. Her head tilts for a second -- and then she nods. It checks out. She swallows, though, and then sees the door lift up. Only, it seems, to find another locked door. She wrinkles her nose for a moment. Then, she flips open her notebook, and flips through a few pages. Maybe something will trigger her memory. She quietly curses herself for not making a map.
"One of the paths by the lagoon makes the most sense," she says. "I should imagine... hm. There are some notes about something similar. But--a key this large?"
She looks up, peering at all of them. "Is that really something they made?"
DG: Talia has used her Tool Lt. Keil's Notebook toward her party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida doesn't trust Janus, period. That he seems deeply interested in the legendary treasure of a powerful king only makes things that much worse. At least she's vindicated! She keeps the multitool in her hand, running her thumb along the smooth metal as the group proceeds.
Ida lets out a soft, put-upon sigh at the sight of the enormous door. "Or perhaps it's squrreled away somewhere?" As the group backtracks, Ida traces out the walls in each chamber, examining the brickwork closely and tapping at it with the multitool in places that look different. Hidden switch? False brickwork? Something? Please?
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Multitool toward her party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
Janus heard the tale from an old man on the road, he says. If such a claim is meant to deflect interest, alas, it does the opposite. "Hm~m...?" Maya echoes, eyebrows soaring. "Sounds like a long, involved story for an old man to share on the road. Especially if it's actually a hot tip like this seems to be." but, like most times she carries on this way, that's as far as she's willing to press the issue. It drops, with tactic acknowledgement that she thinks this is all very fishy. As if it mattered.
On the other side of the room, Gwen is catching the blonde's gaze with her own and trying to silently communicate something. If nothing else, this successfully shuts the Bledavik gunslinger up for a few seconds as she tries to unpack the body language. Maya scrunches her nose up in obvious confusion, and glances back Janus's way. Alas, too much is lost in translation, and there are no empaths here. The most that probably makes it across is "suspicious????" with one or two question marks of margin for error.
Two gloved hands clap together. "Oh, please. If it's a big lock, that just means it'll be easier to pick. Or that the key will stand out like crazy. Makes sense, right?" Maya points out, perhaps in some vain hope to lighten the mood. "But--we didn't see anything that would fit on the way here, so it must be hidden, so..."
A pause, and then a steel-toed boot swiftly shatters a nearby pot. Maybe the key was in there all along, right?
DG: Maya Schrodinger has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell chuckles at Talia and her deliberate vagueness. "As long as you stay good t' Kathy, it will be," she says of acquaintances made and the pleasure thereof. ...Wait, did she just implicitly threaten her?
A door opens up once the braziers are all lit. Ragnell strolls in, harmonica still in hand although she's stopped playing for the moment, only to be met with another door on the other side with an enormous lock. She peers close before leaning back. Ida's tapping at brickwork, Talia's questioning what they see before them, Maya's kicking pots in... and Team Cascade (like Team Rocket, but dumber) suggests doubling back.
"Cool," Ragnell says of heading back to the lagoon to check out the other branching paths. "I'll jus' stay here an' play a ditty while y'all get on that, then."
And back to harmonica-playing she goes.
...At least the jaunty melody will make it easier to concentrate, maybe...?
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Tarnished Harmonica toward her party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"An old man who gave you a really fine ring, I should add."
Oh, don't worry, Ida. Gwen's not all that keen on completely trusting Janus either. She's just...
... she really just wants to believe Janus might change his mind. That he won't-
Oh, look at this giant door with this giant keyhole!
".... Well, I'll be darned." The courier studies the door, thoughtfully placing her chin in her hand.
In some ways, Gwen is glad there's a giant, unknowable door between them and whatever else is on the other side.
In other ways, she's actually irritated. All this effort, and this is what they get? Talk about a huge letdown.
In the end, Gwen shrugs. "Doublin' back sounds good."
Wait. The ring.
She plants her fist into her other hand. "Hey Janus, you think that ring's a clue? Take it out for just a sec."
Wait, no, she's supposed to *not* help him get to the demon king. Or should she? Or... damn it, maybe Janus can just show everyone his neato ring.
DG: Gwen Whitlock has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Door With A BIG Lock.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ===================<* CHALLENGE - A Door With A BIG Lock *>=================== |Type: Climax |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- This next chamber terminates in a massive door in gold and red. Although the colors and materials seem like the chambers of a king, the door is also blocked up and barricaded as though to keep something terrible inside. There's no knocker, no magic puzzle: Just a single great big keyhole. You'll need to find it somewhere else in the dungeon. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 5 *>=============== =====================< Results - A Door With A BIG Lock >===================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 5 --(0)--> 5 Pass Romero's Notebook 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 20 --(10)--> 30 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Tarnished Harmonica 2 Wits Effects: Stalwart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Lt. Keil's Notebook 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Multitool 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 5 --(10)--> 15 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 80 --(0)--> 80 Pass Conditions: Exhaust(1)|Hesitate(1) Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has passed this challenge! The party gained 0 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== =============<* CHALLENGE - Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma *>============== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The great double-doors open up into a huge cavern. The ceiling disappears into darkness above. There's a skittering, clacking sound from those shadows, before a tremendous creature, a spider bigger than most homes on Ignas flips down from the ceiling and SLAMS into the dirt before you, shrieking. A single huge eye gleams from between two massive shielded arms, which move with nimbleness to block any attack on that central eye. Its carapace in yellow and green glistens, before it jabs forward with a massive claw! You'll have to hold those shields down somehow before your attacks will do any damage at all! =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Janus glances over to Gwen, producing the ring in question - a white-silver color, with a large blue stone set in it, it seems to glimmer the way the very most plot-important objects do. "This?" Janus prompts, and briefly holds it up toward the keyhole. Then he palms it again. "No, I don't think so," he says. "I think this opens a different kind of door..."
AND SO everyone scatters across the dungeon. Fortunately it actually turns out to be just a small room tucked away on a different path of islets across the Corrupted Lagoon, requiring a brief jumping sequence to get to a chamber with a treasure chest damn near the size of a carriage which contains a key near the size of a man. ("Holy shit!" Janus gawps, because he has some emotion.)
The group rallies back up at the boss^h^h^h^h Big Key Door, and Romero and Dario, who got stuck lugging the key around because they matter the least, heave the key inside. It turns with a resonant CLICK, and the door begins to slide open seemingly on its own.
"Aww," Janus laments. "Just when I said I hadn't seen gold in a while, too..."
By 'seen' he might mean 'acquired for later sale.'
They step into the room - a tremendous cavern, the sort that only nature could conjure. Perhaps it was a temple of some kind, once, but the ceiling disappears into darkness, now, and whether the things above were stalactites or pillars is now long irrelevant. "Well that's a heck of a thing," Janus muses, walking in. "Wonder if..."
And then a LASER BEAM fires down from above.
"HOLY SHIT," Janus yelps, throwing himself to the side as the ground explodes under his feet. The source of the blast hurls itself down, spinning with decidedly implausible agility midair to land on all of its eight legs. It skitters forward - chitinous, with two forward arms bearing what appear to be natural shields, massive things that Janus' return shots bounce off of harmlessly.
A single eye blinks, behind those shields, an eye pulsing with power. One of its legs slams forward, aggressive.
Then it screams.
DG: Janus Cascade has used his Tool Dario's Flask toward his party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"W-Well, I am sure you..." 'Sis Ragnell,' Talia reflects. She opens her mouth, closes it, and then opens it again: "...have nothing to be concerned about, no?"
She laughs a little nervously. She does, though, glance briefly at Gwen. In the end, though, they have the key. The door slides open; they walk in, and Talia is a little behind Janus. She jumps backward when the beam of light slashes across the ground. She rolls, and then starts to rise up.
Gohma slams into the ground hard enough to shake it, knocking her to her knees instead of a three-point stance. She yelps, and then she stands back up. She looks up at the huge, armored, one-eyed arachnid. Her jaw hangs open again.
"Does... does anyone have a clue what this thing is!?" she yells. Then, she starts running to the side. Talia swings an open palm out for it. A magical circle flashes in front of that extended palm. "Blah blah, Althena's grace, freezing stuff, something frosty, brrr, FREEZE LANCER!"
A spear-shaped icicle rockets away -- the magical circle whisks away, and then the lance of ice tries to ram into the thing's eye. Or, maybe, the armored plates around it.
DG: Talia has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.
There's a lot that Maya Schrodinger does not know. And thankfully, more that transpires beyond the reach of her senses. The gleam of Janus's ring escapes her notice, which is good, because the jewel-junkie would probably remember it in frightening detail. But now, we don't have to worry about a certain glory-hound taking someone else's lunch on the matter. What really boggles her mind is why anyone would make a key that big, as it seems really difficult to carry. And turn. Maybe the demon king was really big.
Anyway.
"We knew this place was big when we saw that room with the tiles, and the bottomless pit, but now I really can't place the layout..." she grouses as they enter a cavern which seems endless in size. Disappearing into yawning, inky black swathes. "Doesn't look like the same kinda construction as the fancy ruins that shot us to the moon, either..." the musings continue. If only she had a camera. Something to capture the moment. Alas.
The moment refuses to wait for capture, with that said. A coherent beam of luminiscent power pierces through the infinite darkness, Heaven and Earth rumbling asunder with its impact. Maya is caught off-guard, of course, flailing one arm out to catch herself as the explosion throws her from her feet and the beam rakes up the cavernous path, missing her by inches. Glowing cinders whisper on the breeze, all that remains of a particularly errant length of ribbon from Maya's hair.
Speaking of moments: a moment's panic also passes. No time to make a very complex plan, only to act. The gunslinger leaps to her feet and picks up speed, sprinting past the still-glowing crater while rummaging in her satchel while the beast screams bloody murder at the intruders to its nest. "No!" she calls back to Talia with a shout, "No idea! -Probably- not a magical golem!" she produces a perfectly spherical black bomb, which I have referenced before this dungeon so it's totally canon. "Probably!"
Maya lights the bomb's fuse on a slightly-melted slag of rock, and hefts it like a baseball. "Hold it still, I'm gonna keep it from frying us with another blast!" she hollers, then bogarts a ride atop one of those flying lances of ice with a somersaulting jump, and hurls the homemade explosive at the titanic beast from her new vantage point. Wait, the lance is going to crash into it. Look, this worked out better in her head.
DG: Maya Schrodinger has used her Tool Schrodinger Special toward her party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida just stares at the giant chest, and then the giant key, for a good minute or so. Who would devise something like this? Why would someone feel this needs to exist? Nevertheless, the Big Key is duly hauled back to the Big Key Door, inserted into the lock, and turned. The odd, barricade-looking things retract into the wall, and Ida frowns. "Keep your wits about you," she says, in a low tone of voice, as Janus and his two partners step into the cavern beyond. Ida follows, craning her neck upwards to get a better feel for how far underground they are, but she can't tell.
Then a beam of searing death races at the group with absolutely no warning. It misses Ida by less than a foot, coming close enough to singe a few stray hairs. Adrenaline floods her system. Her hand darts around to the small of her back, where a custom-molded handgrip all but leaps into her hand. Ida pulls her ARM free, the demonbone barrel of Devil's Due gleaming in the light. The weapon looks different than it did before Lady Harken destroyed it at Lacour--bits of it are clearly of Demon origin, but not the sort of Demon material that's laid dead in the ground cor centuries. Other bits are identical, but newer, less time-worn.
Dario charges in, while Talia and Maya try and break the other shield the old-fashioned way. There isn't any cover here, so Ida simply charges the beast, gun cradled between her hands. Glittering golden chi flows out with each puff of breath as time around her seems to slow down. She searches for an opening as the others lay into those shielded pincers, and the moment she gets one, she pulls the trigger, again and again. Giant arachnids get bullets right in the god damn eye.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
A jeweled ring comes out. Ragnell gives it a lingering look and a low, "Hmmm..." It is not the answer to the puzzle, though; the eventual giant key is. Hm. Then she smiles widely over at Talia, whom she has successfully made nervous. Talia assures her she has nothing to worry about; Ragnell. pats her once on the shoulder. "For your sake," she says pleasantly, "there better not be."
The group enters beyond into an ENORMOUS cavern. "Well, would ya look at that," Ragnell comments, peering up at the ceiling so tall that the lanterns below cannot reach through the darkness that shrouds it. This neatly hides a giant monster, which reveals itself with a GIANT LASER, making Ragnell bellow and dive to one side in a rolling leap. When she comes up, it's landed and is now screaming vengeance at them. Why vengeance? Maybe they stepped on one of its brethren on the way in, who even knows.
"A giant ugly monster, what else d'you need t' know!" Ragnell shouts over at Talia. She doesn't especially mean that--knowing what's up with, say, those armored forelegs would be useful information--but sometimes (often (frequently)) she just can't resist the snarky answer. The others move, but Talia in particular seems to be preparing an ice spell. Well, it just so happens that Ragnell knows that big hard things tend to become brittle when superheated, then rapidly cooled, so before that ice spell goes off, Ragnell calls up a, "Shock Lancer!"
After all, lightning is significantly hotter than mere fire. Maybe that'll do the trick in lieu of a million fire artes? There's also Maya's bombs, Ida's gunplay, Dario's direct charge, and Gwen's--wait, what is Gwen doing?
DG: Seraph Ragnell has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"A different kind of door, huh." Gwen folds her arms. "Well, it was worth a try, eh?" At least everybody gets to see Janus's sweetass ring. Look, she likes pretty stones, okay
---ONE EXHAUSTING TREK LATER--
"Guardians, who thought this was a good idea?!" Gwen complains, her cheery persona slipping under the weight of a giant goddamn key that they just had to haul back over *everything*. Thankfully no one fell, or got scorched by the hate lake, or... whatever else.
The door opens, revealing, of course, a giant room. Gwen scratches her head. "Just how far deep in are we?"
Such mysteries will have to wait. "HOLY SH-" The courier's curse isn't too far off from Janus's, the blast from the GIANT CREATURE DESCENDING FROM ABOVE cutting through any critical investigations at this juncture.
Ah. This must be the Demon King. Or the Demon King's malice. Or, just simply-
"A bigass giant armored spider," Gwen answers Talia, very plainly.
And now, they have to fight the bigass giant armored spider.
And what is Gwen doing?
"Hold on, I'm gonna try t'shoot one of those pillars over it, so get it into place!"
She's being Gwen.
DG: Gwen Whitlock has used her Tool ARM-ored Fist toward her party's challenge, Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== =============<* CHALLENGE - Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma *>============== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- The great double-doors open up into a huge cavern. The ceiling disappears into darkness above. There's a skittering, clacking sound from those shadows, before a tremendous creature, a spider bigger than most homes on Ignas flips down from the ceiling and SLAMS into the dirt before you, shrieking. A single huge eye gleams from between two massive shielded arms, which move with nimbleness to block any attack on that central eye. Its carapace in yellow and green glistens, before it jabs forward with a massive claw! You'll have to hold those shields down somehow before your attacks will do any damage at all! =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 6 *>=============== ===============< Results - Parasitic Armored Arachnid: Gohma >================ Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Janus Cascade 5 --(100)--> 105 Pass Dario's Flask 2 Brute Effects: Strengthen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gwen Whitlock 30 --(100)--> 130 Fail ARM-ored Fist 2 Brute Effects: Strengthen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seraph Ragnell 0 --(100)--> 100 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talia 0 --(100)--> 100 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ida Everstead-Rey 0 --(100)--> 100 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maya Schrodinger 15 --(100)--> 115 Pass Schrodinger Special 2 Brute Effects: Strengthen ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Janus Cascade 80 --(10)--> 90 Fail Conditions: Weaken(2) Effects: Strengthen(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: Janus Cascade is too exhausted to continue! DG: Gwen Whitlock is too exhausted to continue! DG: Maya Schrodinger is too exhausted to continue! DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Janus Cascade has drawn a new Challenge.
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ==========<* CHALLENGE - Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma *>=========== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- Gohma shrieks and whips its tail around, scattering the party away from it. It then leaps back, talons batting about to keep people away from it. You have just a moment to catch your breath before a group of smaller, but still dog-sized spiderlings rush in with the same massive eye, galloping toward you to claw and bite! You'll have to wade through the little ones to get back to the big spider and finish this! =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Dario tries to hold one of those shield arms down. "Think it's a fuckin' corpse!!" Dario roars to Talia's question.
"No, right now it's a spider," Janus corrects him, calmly, ARM up and lining up a shot on that eye. "If we can blind it, we can take our time with the rest!" Janus, apparently the kind of guy who pulls the wings off butterflies.
Not that he's ever seen one of those....
Talia, Maya, and Ragnell team up on one of the shields, burning it then cooling it, and when Maya's blast goes off it explodes, shattering the shield in its entirety. That lets Janus take his shot, and Gwen's pillar fall down, crushing the thing, satisfyingly shattering what is probably its spine while Ida follows Janus' idea and shoots it in the eye a few times.
...Wait. It's some kind of monster scorpion. It probably doesn't have a--
Gohma SHRIEKS and whirls about with unimaginable dexterity, a massive tail BATTING the whole party away. It leaps back the distance of a football field, as a dozen or so spider pups suddenly emerge from the far corners, shrieking and skittering forward.
This isn't cute or a moment of respite. They gallop forward with full and total murderous intent. If you take them lightly you will die. And maybe then you can do something about Gohma, whose eye is currently blazing with a deeply troubling light...
MEANWHILE, JANUS:
sprawled out flat on his back, groaning. "fuckin' hell," he groans.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"It isn't yet!" Talia cries.
The tail slams into Talia. The cracking noise is several of her ribs, while she is thrown back across the battlefield. She slams into the wall, and then falls -- but lands in a three-point stance. She lets out a shaking, unsteady breath. Her eyes dart about the room. She takes note of who is still standing; of who might be able to help here.
Then, she draws Mirage. The grey-and-blue blade glints in the dim light of the room, and Talia goes charging forward. "We hurt it!" she yells. "We just need to keep the pressure on...!"
She comes to the first smaller spider, then the second. The blade slashes across them, before she spins on a heel. Her teeth grit together. She ducks under the chomp of a spiderling's mandibles -- and Mirage spins, flying free across the room. It slams into Gohma's head, burying itself harmlessly into armored plates about the eye. Strands of shadow form, then separate, and launch after it. Talia reforms, clutching Mirage's hilt with one hand.
The other hand has a magical circle glowing before it and hoarfrost forming on her fingertips. Talia cries out, wordlessly, and then shoves it right towards the eye.
She sends the freeze lancer loose the moment it forms.
DG: Talia has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen's aim is true, slicing through the pillar with exact timing. As crazy as the idea was, Gwen waited for the exact moment where she could judge the safety of those who'd possibly be underneath it, as well as the angle of her shot. There was also the charging, which, well, took some time. It isn't like Gwen to really relish the point where that spine(?) shatters, a wince of sympathy clouding her face.
The recoil of her shot, however, displaces her boots' grip on the ground, leaving her at a disadvantage when that tail comes whipping around. It *SLAMS* into the courier, sending her flying against a wall, and momentarily dazed. "... gh...."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida sees that tail move a moment too late. Gohma lashes it at them like a bullwhip; the chitinous limb slams into Ida's torso, knocking her clear off her feet with an audible crack. Her breath rushes from her lungs, and a familiar pain stabs through her chest as ribs take the brunt of the impact. She lets it carry her, rolling with the motion rather than trying to resist it, but Devil's Due flies from her grip. The ARM hits the sandy floor and skids, even as Ida goes tumbling. She comes to a stop on her back, her chest shuddering up and down in what might be attempts to breathe. She rolls onto her side, reflexively reaching into her pocket for a Heal Berry, which she chews and swallows without any further thought. She doesn't even appreciate the taste anymore--just the analgesic properties.
The room stops spinning. Ida hears a high-pitched skittering noise, and the moment she gets a decent breath in her she heaves herself to her feet. She needs to buy time. She fumbles the multitool out of her pocket with one hand, while the other pulls a metal cannister off her belt. She lights the fuse, and tosses the flare grenade at the skittering spiderlings. They're mostly eye, after all, so perhaps...?
Ida looks away from the eruption of light, and then rushes to where Devil's Due has fallen, kicking a spiderling that gets too close in the legs. She snatches up her ARM, takes aim, and fires, repeatedly, at the swarming spiderlings. "Hurry!" Ida cries, mainly to Talia. A spiderling skitters towards Gwen's prone form, and promptly takes a bullet center-mass for it.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Flare Grenade toward her party's challenge, Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell snorts in amusement at Janus's correction. The rest, well...
There are fights that've gone better. There are fights that have gone worse. Gohma LEAPS backwards, and a million miniature versions of it stampede forward with intent to MURDER MURDER MURDER MURDER. Fortunately, Ragnell has something just for these occasions.
"LIGHTNING IN THE HOLE!" she roars, chucking a plasma grenade overhead at the spot where she predicts the littler spiders will converge, i.e. where they'll be thickest, oh, five seconds from now. "Don't like that glint in its eye! Carve a path through the little ones after the grenade blows 'em up and stab that motherfucker in the face 'til it dies!"
Easier said than done, perhaps, but a loud KABOOM rocks the cavern as the grenade explodes, unleashing a massive wave of plasma lightning in all directions. Hopefully no one on her side was in the way.
DG: Seraph Ragnell has used her Tool Plasma Grenade toward her party's challenge, Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
also that tail-whalloping hurt like hell, but any fight you can get up from while not getting devoured by a million chittering little spiderlings, eh
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== ==========<* CHALLENGE - Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma *>=========== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- Gohma shrieks and whips its tail around, scattering the party away from it. It then leaps back, talons batting about to keep people away from it. You have just a moment to catch your breath before a group of smaller, but still dog-sized spiderlings rush in with the same massive eye, galloping toward you to claw and bite! You'll have to wade through the little ones to get back to the big spider and finish this! =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
==============<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils - Round 7 *>===============
============< Results - Extremely Upset Armored Arachnid: Gohma >=============
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Janus Cascade 105 --(X)--> X
Effects:
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Gwen Whitlock 130 --(X)--> X
Effects:
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Seraph Ragnell 100 --(0)--> 100 Pass
Plasma Grenade 3 Combat Effects: Embolden and Liabilit
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talia 100 --(0)--> 100 Pass
Fight 0 Combat Effects: BASIC
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Ida Everstead-Rey 100 --(0)--> 100 Pass
Flare Grenade 2 Combat Effects: Embolden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maya Schrodinger 115 --(X)--> X
Effects:
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Janus Cascade 90 --(25)--> 115 Pass
Conditions: Save Point(1)|Weaken(1)
Effects: Embolden(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: You have overcome the dungeon's trials! This run is a success! DG: The party led by Janus Cascade has successfully explored Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils!
===================<* Binding Depths of Serpent's Coils *>==================== =====================<* CHALLENGE - Pendant of Courage *>===================== |Type: Discovery |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 3 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- With the beast slain, the room grows quiet. With time now to explore, you find your eyes drawn to a mural on the wall. Time has worn it down but it bears icons of a tremendous, red-maned beast, tusks like a boar's thrusting up from its lower jaw, looming and screaming at...something. The image is decayed. But the beast is surrounded by a circular design, and at three points about the circle, describing an equilateral triangle, there are slots for something to be fitted. All three are filled, but two are filled with dun, useless rock. The third, though, contains the prize: A polished, bright green stone, the size of a child's fist, marked with an unfamiliar icon. PENDANT ICON: https://dreamchasers.space/images/d/da/Green_pendant.png And upon seeing it, Janus Cascade laughs. Then you hear the hammer cock on Dario's pistol. Please schedule a battle with Janus Cascade as soon as possible. =Dungeon Conditions: Vault====================================================
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Gohma's....children? Maybe? are slaughtered en masse. It does not seem to particularly care, remaining toward the back and charging some massive version of its eye laser as Talia, Ida, and Ragnell tear through the littler creatures and charge toward it.
And because it is preparing an attack, it is pitifully easy to strike that weak point. It screams with every hit, roaring with rage. It jabs out with claws and bashes with that shield it has, but in the end...
In the end, it falls. It screams; it collapses.
And then light shines from within - bursting, blasting out in every direction in a violent self-immolation, ending in a tremendous...perhaps sublimation is the word, as it erupts into cliouds of smoke and vanishes.
For a time, not much happens. No further attacks come. This room doesn't feel like the core of much of anything, although it does feel like that sense of malice from earlier is here...watching, inasmuch a formless impulse to destroy can do anything but that thing.
On the far wall, directly opposite the door, you find a mural. It is ancient, but in surprisingly good condition; like everything else here, maybe every ruin on Filgaia, maintained across centuries in defiance of all odds.
It depicts a screaming monster; the silhouette of a man, but for a mane of bright red hair that reaches its knees, and set against a building that barely reaches its hips, for scale. It screams; it roars, mouth open. It has a piglike snout and boarlike tusks, and in each of its hands it holds a blade the size of its upper body. Of course, who knows how well ancient artists attended to scale...
Surrounding it, in a pattern describing an equilateral triangle etched in a circle, there are three slots. Two of them contain useless, dun stone; but the third, at the lower right, contains a bright green stone, marked with an unfamiliar icon of circles expanding out from a single origin. It does not feel particularly spiritual, though it may perhaps be magical...but that icon is no Symbol anyone's ever seen here.
"And there it is," Janus Cascade says, with a chuckle. He should be out cold from that hit earlier, but he's up.
He's behind the group at the mural.
And Dario just cocked his pistol.
"Kindly put your hands up, friends."
TO BE CONTINUED...
DC: Ida Everstead-Rey switches forms to Chained Devil Stylist Ida! DC: Talia switches forms to The Charming Sellsword! DC: Seraph Ragnell switches forms to The Free!
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
LAST TIME, ON DREAM CHASERS:
The mural depicts a screaming monster; the silhouette of a man, but for a mane of bright red hair that reaches its knees, and set against a building that barely reaches its hips, for scale. It screams; it roars, mouth open. It has a piglike snout and boarlike tusks, and in each of its hands it holds a blade the size of its upper body. Of course, who knows how well ancient artists attended to scale...
Surrounding it, in a pattern describing an equilateral triangle etched in a circle, there are three slots. Two of them contain useless, dun stone; but the third, at the lower right, contains a bright green stone, marked with an unfamiliar icon of circles expanding out from a single origin. It does not feel particularly spiritual, though it may perhaps be magical...but that icon is no Symbol anyone's ever seen here.
"And there it is," Janus Cascade says, with a chuckle. He should be out cold from that hit earlier, but he's up.
He's behind the group at the mural.
And Dario just cocked his pistol.
"Kindly put your hands up, friends."
AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION...
If anyone takes a moment to look, Romero has finished up tying Maya Schrodinger to a rock he found, and is now looming over Gwen, rope in hands and moving to truss her up. Janus and Dario are near the group, splitting around them with weapons drawn and trained. Despite the beating they just took from the monster spider, they're both smiling with the thrill of the bandit. "Sorry, y'all," Janus says, in the voice of a man who is not remotely sorry. "But this here is a prize I won't risk."
DC: Janus Cascade switches forms to Cascade Gang!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"What in Althena's name is..."
Talia murmurs that softly, taking a couple of steps towards the mural. Her eyes are locked onto the triangle, and then the slots. She opens her mouth as she looks over the little green icon. Her head tilts.
She hears the cock of a pistol.
Her head snaps to the side, as she spots Dario's pistol is aimed towards her. Instinct takes over, first. It is almost shocking to her, how quickly that instinct comes back to her. Her hands start to come up, raised up. But then she steps back towards Dario. She doesn't try to disarm him. That would be a mistake.
She tries, instead, to ram the back of her arm into his throat and crush it. She doubts she will; she relies on the element of surprise, though, to buy her some time.
"I should have known!"
GS: Talia has attacked Janus Cascade with Elbow Crush! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen's really sorry to do this to Romero. He's not a bad guy, really. But in the span of time it took for Gwen to complete that arduous journey from 'concussion land' to 'conscious, but still in concussion land', a proper mess developed.
"Y'really can't help yourself, can ya, Janus?" An unconscious Romero is now slumping against Gwen's stretched hands as she stands, a light crackle of leftover energy radiating down her exposed right ARM. Carefully laying the unconscious blonde bandit ninja on the ground. she eyes the rope, but. Eh.
Kind of too late for that now, since she's announced that she's wide awake.
"I mean, there's somethin' to be said about a man who's predictable, but c'mon. Y'care t'explain what you haven't been tellin' anyone?"
She darts forward, her fist held back, aiming for Dario while he's still trained on someone else. "Or am I gonna have ta force it outta you?!"
Sure, she was nice to Romero, but Dario's of sturdier stock. He'll be fine. This is just Little Twister for 'hello'.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Janus Cascade with Special Delivery! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has entered a Reflect stance! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida knows better than to assume she and the others are in the clear now that the monster is dead. She turns on a heel, and slides the second fresh clip of the evening into Devil's Due just in time for Janus Cascade to execute his sudden (but inevitable) betrayal. Her ribs ache with each breath she takes, and her eyes flick between the Cascade Gang and the mural behind them. She doesn't recognize the iconography. The tripartate triangle is significant, maybe connected to the slots in the mural, but it's a side observation at best. How the hell did they recover that fast?
"Liar," Ida says. Her face is splattered with sticky, drying blood--both hers and the monster's. Her breathing is ragged. Very deliberately, she slips Devil's Due back into its holster, and starts raising her hands--
And then Talia and Gwen give Ida precisely the opening she was looking for. Chi reserves flood into Ida's body, speeding her steps as she surges towards Janus, who is (hopefully) reeling from having his backup incapacitated. Golden-white light boils off the palm of her hand as she drives it at his sternum, trying to knock him clean off his feet!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Janus Cascade with Open Palm! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell had figured that this all was a wild goose chase, an old man's tale to a Drifter too greedy to realize he was being had. There are two things that change her mind: the mural and its porcine representation, along with the green pendant embedded in the wall; and, more importantly, that lingering sense of malice that, now that the Gohma is dead, feels as though it's watching them. She notes both with a frown as she casts a healing arte on herself to mitigate the wounds taken during that last battle. Either one by itself might be enough, but the two together say something powerful about the validity of this random rumor that Janus happened to pick up.
"Say, Janus," she starts, hearing him speak and so understanding he wasn't as knocked out as he looked, eyes lingering on the mural even as she starts to turn around, "would you mind tellin' us about that old man what told you 'bout the--" *Click*. Ragnell stops, shuts her eyes, counts to five, and then faces the Cascade gang with hands on her hips. She frowns at each one in turn, from Janus going sorry-not-sorry, to Dario holding them all at gunpoint, to Romero having tied up Maya and now making his way to Gwen. Then she rolls her eyes. She knew this was coming, but it's still annoying.
"I'm tempted t' shoot this fuckin' pendant to smithereens, just to spite your sorry ass," she says. Talia darts forward at Dario; Gwen cold-cocks Romero; Ida charges right for Janus. "Think I'll you an ass-whuppin' first! *Blitzstrahl*!" A hand goes up, a Seraphic glyph forms at her feet, and a bolt of lightning drops down from just above Janus to attempt to give him the shock of a lifetime. Or of about 40-50 HP, either or.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Janus Cascade with Blitzstrahl! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Talia's Elbow Crush for 85 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Special Delivery for 158 hit points! GS: Jam! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Open Palm for 62 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Seraph Ragnell's Blitzstrahl for 123 hit points! GS: Disrupt! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Quick! Statuses applied to Seraph Ragnell!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Or of about 120-130 HP, either or.
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Most people held at gunpoint don't IMMEDIATELY START SHOOTING. Maybe they should rethink this considering how well it goes!
Talia zips to Dario, elbowing him hard and staggering him. "Hwoof!" Gwen dropping Romero off and then swinging in and acing him across the jaw sends him whirling, his head spinning around on his neck cartoonsihly as he groans nonsensically. He looks like he's about to topple, which works out since it's about when Ida rushes him. But if she's expecting shock from him, instead she just gets him batting her fist aside, the impact rushing up his arms but far from debilitating. "Oh, I wouldna done that," he declares, and then rears his bayonet back and SLAMS it into Ida's gut, a horrible thrust with that mighty spear to rip her open. "Who's lyin'?" he quips, to what he fully intends to be a corpse.
Fortunately, before he can follow through, Ragnell blows him over with her lightning blast, the man jolting back and ripping his ARM free of Ida, screaming in surprise as the lightning passes through him.
Then, that grin still slashed across his face, he snaps the weapon up for Ragnell. "I met a wizard on the road," he chuckles, and there's a thundrous report from his rifle as a bullet roars toward her. "I do that more than you'd think."
"Dario, zip your fly! We got work to do you damn fool!" Janus cries, working the action on his rifle to slot another Cartridge, then levels his ARM up and fires - a beeping shell flying into the air, fluttering skyward. It beeps once, assigning Gwen; beeps again, assigning Talia.
Then it erupts, blasting both a wave of birdshot!
Janus glares for Gwen amid the confusion. "You want answers, do ya?" he says. Despite the group arrayed against him he seems largely unconcerned.
Dario, meanwhile, zips his fly, and positively glows with purpose.
GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Janus Cascade with Dario zips his fly!! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has entered a Reflect stance! GS: Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Janus Cascade's Dario zips his fly! for 0 hit points! GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Heretic Stab! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Bolt Action! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Talia with Multiblast! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Multiblast! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Talia takes a glancing hit from Janus Cascade's Multiblast for 72 hit points! GS: Cripple! Statuses applied to Talia! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Janus Cascade's Heretic Stab for 119 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Janus Cascade's Multiblast for 119 hit points! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a glancing hit from Janus Cascade's Bolt Action for 71 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"We need to find out what it is!" Talia calls back to Ragnell, having overheard that. Even if she is, really, tempted to do the same.
Janus's shot rings through the air. She sees the blast of birdshot coming, and she can't quite get away from it. The shrapnel comes raining down for her -- and she tries to dive left. Some rips into her left side, slashing her arm and waist. She hisses softly -- and her blue shirt and armor are staining red.
"Damn it--" She looks up, and she spits. "Of course we do! You must want it for some reason! And I doubt this one is for some damned high and mighty noble!"
Talia decides she needs some space. She still has Mirage in hand, after the fight with the Gohma. She throws it -- and it slams into the stonework near the ceiling, with a spray of sparks as it strikes stone. Then, Talia vanishes; strands of shadowstuff whirl and twist, before she reforms, high up above the room for a moment.
All the better to try to get the drop on one.
GS: Talia has attacked Talia with Warp Point! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Talia's Warp Point for 0 hit points! GS: Quick! Statuses applied to Talia! GS: Riposte! Statuses applied to Talia!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida was expecting betrayal. She also underestimated the man she expected to betray her, allowed herself to think that Janus and his gang were less capable than the others. Even after she saw a gleam in Janus's eyes that went beyond simple greed, she thought she could handle him with no trouble at all. She pays for it when Janus very nearly impales her on his ARM's bayonet.
Ida twists to the side, spinning on a heel in the direction opposite Janus's thrust; the bayonet skips off her stomach, cutting through skin and nearly punching through chi-infused muscle. It is agonizing, but it's at the wrong angle to punch through. That said, from the back--with all the blood splattering--it looks like Ida got stabbed. She steps back, sucks in a breath, focuses the chi in her palm into a tight, angry little knot at the tips of her fingers. She jabs that hand at Janus's shoulder, while stepping to the side to try and circle him.
If it connects, that burning flame of chi is going to sink into him, and make his life very unpleasant until it burns itself out.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has spent 1 Combo on Disease, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Janus Cascade with Burning Infusion! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
"Do we? Do we *really*?" Ragnell calls back to Talia. She doesn't really mean this; her heart is ruled by curiosity. But acting otherwise might make Janus sweat a little, and her heart is also ruled by, if not quite spite, then being an asshole.
Janus is jolted away from Ida just in time to save her life. Ragnell's good-ish deed is rewarded by a bayonet bullet that tears open a hole on the side of her left arm. It'd be even worse if she hadn't dodged to one side; this is merely painful as hell, rather than crippling or, say, fatal.
"Boy, every third Drifter is a wizard," she drawls in spite of it. "That don't mean you *or* that old man, if there really was one, special." He doesn't seem to be quick to give any answers, despite Gwen's demands. Ragnell isn't too surprised by that. She'd be the same in his shoes. Of course, she would've chosen *her* sudden-but-inevitable betrayal with better care, or so she tells herself. She raises her pistol in the air and fires a charged shot, shouting, "Squall Shot!" An instant later, it hails down around the Cascade Gang in the form of a torrential thunderstorm, complete with needle-line rain and lightning bolts.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Janus Cascade with Squall Shot! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Talia's here, Ragnell's here, Ida's here. But where's Maya? Gwen glances around after she draws back from Dario, looking around for- ah. Tied up and unconscious.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Talia's here, Ragnell's here, Ida's here. But where's Maya? Gwen glances around after she draws back from Dario, looking around for- ah. Tied up and unconscious.
... Wait, did they defeat that bigass giant demon crab?
Why is she thinking about that only now? Why is the sky exploding? Why was she unconscious anyway? Did she get a concussion or something?
Birdshot explodes over Gwen's head, propelling her back with a grunt of pain. But that can't compare to what Ida was feeling, over there. "... Should've convinced more people t'come," Gwen wheezes, under her breath.
And Janus is still grinning, his expression only seeming to slip when he looks towards her. Does she want answers. "Yeah. I do. You're outnumbered and you *still* had your gang draw their weapons on everybody, just t'get a pendant only you seem t'know the true value of. Either you really like the color green, or you're wantin' that thing so much you're willin' to risk you and yours gettin' diced up by several very capable Drifters. So, we can do this little dance n' get everybody even more sore n' bloody, or you can explain yourself. Though..."
This time, she ducks towards Janus, dipping low in order to jam her right fist upwards, square into that proud jaw of his. "I don't mind roughin' y'up first!"
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Janus Cascade with Rocket Punch! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Burning Infusion for 0 hit points! GS: Janus Cascade suffers Infect, extending negative statuses by 1 turn each! GS: Janus Cascade has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 damage, and burn off all temporary hit points! GS: Disease! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Squall Shot for 54 hit points! GS: Riposte! Statuses applied to Seraph Ragnell! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Rocket Punch for 43 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade!
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Janus is no fool, though this time he does somewhat underestimate Ida's reply. He grits his teeth as that hit comes; he can't dodge that one. It sears through him and he can feel it in his veins. "Oh, you're one of those," he hisses out, and then rears back and jams his foot into her stomach, where he stabbed her earlier, kicking her the hell over.
While he's doing that, Gwen suddenly finds herself with a problem as Romero, whom she thought quite unconscious, suddenly slithers around her, binding down one leg with a leg lock and then jabbing a knife hard into her ARM arm, seeking precious joints. "Don't think I'm just the help, Gwen!" he snarls, perhaps a bit stung by her treatment.
Dario, for his part, recovers from the beating he's been enduring enough to snap his gun up and crack off a few blind shots toward the ceiling, fishing for Talia's very shootable body. As for Ragnell...
"Well, it's everythin' it looks like, innit?" Janus chuckles. That's more directed at Gwen but the combat flow demands certain things of us all. "This ain't where the Demon King is. This is just one of the seals. Three of them, guarding his tomb! Trials of virtues not even the Guardians remember!" He grins wide, drawing attention.
Then Romero swings across the distance, leg extended to biff Ragnell across the face. Janus holds up his gun, allowing Romero to slam his feet into it and vault into the air, pirouetting into position, slamming down in a clean three-point stance as Dario and Janus slide up to either side.
Rallying, defensively. They smile, each of them ready to fight.
GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Grind the Wound! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 3 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Talia with Gillius TH12/23 Magnum! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Romero Assassination! GS: Janus Cascade enters a Counter stance! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Cascade Gang Cooperation! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has completed his action. GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Janus Cascade's Gillius TH12/23 Magnum for 172 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Grind the Wound from Janus Cascade!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia had hoped being up on the ceiling would keep her from being hit. The rather opposite occurs. Dario draws a bead, and his ARM's bullet is buried into her side. She screams when she gets smashed back into the wall by the gunshot. Then, she drops down. She wrenches Mirage free as she drops. She throws the weapon down. It goes spinning in towards Dario.
It doesn't strike the big man, though. It smashes into the flagstones next to him -- and Talia stops dropping to disappear into shadow. Then, she reappears, in a crouch.
Her feet sweep out, hard, trying to catch Dario in the ankles and drop him.
GS: Talia has attacked Janus Cascade with Sweep Kick! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock critically Guards a hit from Janus Cascade's Romero Assassination for 21 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has lost 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Ragnell completely evades Cascade Gang Cooperation from Janus Cascade!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida circles Janus, her breathing ragged but growing steadier. The bleeding is starting to slow of its own accord, and the pain in her cracked ribs is growing bearable. Janus turns to face her, but as he drives his foot towards her--attempting a strike that would definitely knock her down, and widen the wound further--she twists, steps to the side, allows Janus's momentum to carry him past her. It's a near thing.
Ida's right hand darts for her thigh holster. The revolver within clears leather without conscious thought. Ida allows the flow to take her, circling around to Janus's back as though the two of them were dancing. She aims at the back of Janus's thigh, and pulls the trigger in a single, lightning-fast motion.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Janus Cascade with Chi Bullet! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Shocking a person unconscious is a tricky, tricky process. It's not like Gwen can practice it very much, and while the stakes are high if she puts in too little, the stakes are even higher if she puts in too much. Death isn't the only thing that can happen if electricity is rudely introduced to a person's body.
The other downside is, in this case, there's no telling when someone may get up. Romero may have a smaller, lighter frame, but he isn't some wilting daisy.
"Gh!" Gwen feels that sharp prick of Romero's searching knife and struggles against his hold, battling him away while her ARM, barely nicked, nonetheless grows heated from Romero's expert aim.
And Janus is *still* grinning as he finally answers her question.
... One of three seals, sealing off the demon king. "... What the *hell* are you yammerin' about, Janus?!" Gwen suddenly snaps. "Do you go daft or somethin'?!" She feels sick, and it's not entirely due to the way her head pounds.
"... It ain't that, is it." Misery creases her face, blotting out whatever jovial thread of thought may lie in her head.
And then, at the last second, she forcefully assembles it all back together, and says a complete lie. "You wanna pass the trials, and beat the Demon King. Wanna be the big damn hero on your own terms, n' get all the praise n' wealth." It's better than what she's really thinking.
As her ARM grows hotter, Gwen steps towards Janus, her pace picking up until she's right at his face again, trying to shove all that heat straight at the young man's smug, smiling face.
Because how can someone like Gwen even parse how to deal with a person like Janus, when it comes down to it?
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters a Counter stance! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Janus Cascade with Return To Sender! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Janus Cascade has activated a Force Action! GS: COUNTER! Janus Cascade strikes at Gwen Whitlock with a counter attack! GS: Janus Cascade takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Return To Sender for 91 hit points! GS: COUNTER! Gwen Whitlock strikes at Janus Cascade with a counter attack! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Janus Cascade's Counter Attack for 147 hit points! GS: Cripple! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Janus Cascade! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Counter Attack for 107 hit points! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Talia's attack becomes clear! GS: Janus Cascade critically Guards a hit from Talia's Mirage Edge for 28 hit points! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has lost 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Chi Bullet for 76 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia's feet slam into Dario, but she isn't done.
She lunges upward. Mirage reaches out. She slashes for his side, but it catches the pistol. A former Divine Arm and a most terrestrial ARM meet, sparks flying as blade strikes barrel and her weapon goes off-kilter. Talia's eyes widen as she hops, realizing that she didn't manage the strike she wanted. So, to throw him off, she tries something else.
Her off-hand snatches out.
She grabs the brim of Dario's cowboy hat, and she hops back, then puts it on her head. "This," she says, "is mine, now." Then, she turns and looks at Janus:
"SEE! DOING THAT SORT OF THING MAKES YOU AN ASSHOLE!"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
"You," Ragnell intones to Janus, "are gettin' played for a sucker. I can feel it in my bones." Never mind that she doesn't *have* bones. A legend that nobody had heard of until now, told to just the right kind of Drifter by a strange old man, leading them to actual treasure that apparently seals away some Demon King, whose malice is actually watching them right now... It stinks to high heaven of a greedy human getting manipulated by powers much older and more cunning and malicious than he. Why now? Well, why not? Who knows what might've gotten jostled or what have you by the recent changes Filgaia's undergone? Whatever polluted the lagoon might well have been what released that 'wizard' that whispered temptation into Janus's keenly-listening ear. Maybe they're even somehow one and the same. Hard to say for sure.
Gwen assumes the best of Janus, that his intent is to defeat the Demon King and become a Big Damn Hero. Ragnell, who has a lower general opinion of humanity, clucks her tongue. "So--an' I'm just checkin' here--do you know anythin' about this Demon King beyond what that wizard told you? Do you know what'll happen if he gets unsealed? Are you certain, absolutely *certain*, that you're gonna get what you think you'll get outta the deal instead of a violent an' early death?" she calls to him and his companions. "An' if you are--why are you so sure?"
Romero leaps at her foot-first to attempt to kick her in the face; she turns with the kick, the air of his passage whistling by her ear as he goes. As he dashes back to rejoin his compatriots, Ragnell takes advantage of the lag to call up another Seraphic arte, this time, with a longer chant: "O darkened stormcloud, run my enemy through!" She extends a hand, the glyph beneath her flashes, and a blade hurls down towards the trio from above. "Thunder Blade!!"
A powerful wave of electric force emanates from the blade the instant it buries itself in the ground. A moment later, it explodes with concussive force in all directions, forming a wide circle of electric discharge to catch anyone who'd been stunned by the first blow.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Janus Cascade with Thunder Blade! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Thunder Blade for 84 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
They call him fool and foul. Hardly the worst he's heard.
Well, they don't quite manage to manhandle Ragnell very well, but nonetheless, the group assembles. Gwen is the first to act on that, charging in and - socking him across the jaw.
He takes it head on...and then his lips split in a wide grin.
Romero leaps over him, slamming heels into Gwen's skull. Dario charges inward, smashing his fist into her face. A brief scuffle proceeds between the three of them while Janus spots a blade coming in fast - but he doesn't have to intervene, Dario covering himself capably against the weapon despite the mismatch of types. Dario yelps. "M'hat!!" he yelps.
"Yeah," Janus says, to Talia's taunt, eyes slitting, but his grin unmoved. "Reckon it does. Figure the murders did that first, though."
Ragnell breaks it down while Janus is shifting his weight; he can't dismiss Ida's attack but he does land it on a stronger portion of the armor in his clothes, dulling the potency of the hit. "Hah. A sucker? Played? You don't get it."
Ragnell blasts all three of them, the thunder crashing down...but Romero and Dario leap back into position, the three of them guarding each other from the worst of those blows. "Down here in the dirt, we have a little thing called contractin', sweetheart! DARIO! ROMERO!"
Then they all move. Romero lunges for Ragnell - apparently all three can see just fine, now, or at least well enough for Romero to slam his foot into her neck. Dario bull rushes her soon after, while Romero dances over to Talia, kicking her wrist to dislodge the Mirage just before Janus appears next to her to smash his ARM's butt into her jaw. Dario whips his gun up to fire twice at Ida, just before Romero appears next to her, jabbing a needle into critical chi flows only she, perhaps, would appreciate the fact he even knows.
And Janus handles Gwen, leaping at her, slamming her across the back of the head, kicking her over and then he and Dario both fire into her back. Bang bang.
They slip away, gathering back up closer to the pendant, each dropping into a confident pose.
There is an explosion behind them because that was super cool. "So tell me true...how did you like our Trinity Avenger?" he taunts.
GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Trinity Avenger! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Trinity Avenger! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Trinity Avenger! GS: Janus Cascade has attacked Talia with Trinity Avenger! GS: Janus Cascade has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has completed his action. GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Ragnell completely evades Trinity Avenger from Janus Cascade!
GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Janus Cascade's Trinity Avenger for 207 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Janus Cascade has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Trinity Avenger from Janus Cascade!
GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Janus Cascade's Trinity Avenger for 116 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia's smile flickers, then fades into nothing. That careful, measured expression that comes back to her so easily, when she wants to hide what she thinks. "The murders make you worse than an asshole, no?"
The look in her eyes is slightly empty. She looks back at Ragnell, though -- and her eyes widen for a moment. Someone who was hiring them? She narrows her eyes, and then she looks up in time to see Romero rushing for her. Mirage is slammed backward, out of her fingers. The short sword clammers to the ground, as she starts to fall.
And then the butt of the Sniper Shark slams into Talia's jaw. There is a loud crack, and while the bone isn't broken, her lip is split. Talia stumbles backward, and she falls down against the wall in a heap. She falls to the ground, unconscious.
She misses their confident pose.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen thought she had properly accounted for just how desperate-seeming that gleam in Janus's eyes was. What she did not account for was that terrible thread of hope in her chest, that selfish want to be able to convince Janus that, somehow, it was worth it to continuing living, enduring in a crapsack world that had carelessly snuffed out the lives of people he had cared about.
She never even *thought* about what she could say to convince him, because she dreaded even thinking about just how low Janus could go.
She was wrong. And people are going to pay for it.
"Talia!" What was Gwen going to say? 'Stop hurting Talia' or 'she's got some swell moves, please don't kill her'? Really, Gwen should probably focus on herself.
Well, alright, for a moment, Gwen can't really focus on anything much at all except punch, stab, kick, bang bang, PAIN.
So. Much. Pain.
'How did you like our Trinity Avenger?' Janus asks.
Bleeding and lying on the ground, Gwen delivers her answer. Propping herself up on her left elbow just enough to squeeze out her right ARM, pointing that rapidly pulsing palm towards the three as they triumphantly pose. She fires, a searing white blast slicing through the air.
Someone's always got to be a critic.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Lock On! GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Gwen Whitlock has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Janus Cascade with Corona Discharge! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida backs away from Janus, widening the circle-walking motion. She's still close enough that he could go for her with the bayonet again if he wanted to, but there's both wariness and anger in her eyes now. And it's just as well, because the Cascade Gang collectively demonstrates that it's more then capable of coordinated action. Dario and Romero start double-teaming the others, and as Talia crumples to the ground, Ida's focus finishes shifting into overdrive. She watches Dario whirl on her in slow-motion, twists, circle-steps out of his line of fire as he raises the gun. It's a near thing. Bullets tear into the floor behind her with a solid crunch, and if she'd been half a second slower, they would've ended up in her stomach.
Motion from behind her. Ida had no idea that Romero was that fast. She whirls on the man, chi blazing off her right hand as she curls it into a fist. There's a certain minimalist artistry in the way she twists away from the needle, and drives a punch at him. First there's an audible rushing sound, as though the air were trying to get out of the way. Then, the billowing corona condenses before Ida's knuckles. Then, the punch itself.
Then, a shockwave of force more than powerful enough to send Romero flying.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Janus Cascade with Unbroken Lotus Fist! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
The Cascade Trio charges at Ragnell, and it seems indeed like all three of them can see her. Mostly, anyway, as Romero launches a kick that only slams into a few stray grey-and-gold hairs rather than her neck, and Dario bull rushes into thin air as Ragnell leaps upwards twice as high as he is tall, twirling in midair and landing on his other side with grace. This doesn't help the others any, especially Talia, and perhaps that's good enough for them as the Cascades regroup and brag about their Trinity Avenger as explosions go on. It's now them next to the pendant...
...but ultimately, Ragnell's only stake in this is that Gwen asked her for help, and there are other ways this could go down. "Contractin'? You mean like an agreement between two or more folks to cooperate? You mean like we all had, before you backstabbed us once the goal was in sight? You mean *that* kind o' contractin'?" Ragnell calls lightly towards the trio. "So what you're sayin' is that you think you're immune to the medicine you dish out, is that it? Goddess, but y'all are dumbasses." She stands up and considers them for a moment. Then she shrugs, holsters her gun, and strolls on over to Talia's prone form. "You know what? I changed my mind. The pendant's yours, far as I'm concerned," she drawls, picking up the fallen assassin. (She wouldn't care, normally, but if she's a friend of Amaranth's, her little-big sis will be so upset if she just leaves her for the dogs.) "I'm actually real curious to see how deep you can dig this hole you've got goin' on, an' if you can pull yourselves out by the end--"
She hefts Talia in a fireman's carry over one shoulder, scarlet gaze turning towards Janus. "--or if you'll exist solely as a challenge for Gwen to overcome." She shrugs with her free shoulder, then strolls on over to Maya. She doesn't have her survival knife anymore, but she *can* shoot the ropes off her before lifting her up. "Either way, Gwen, don't you lose sight o' what you need to do, y'hear?"
Oh and Ida too or something. Ragnell guesses she's there too.
GS: Janus Cascade has activated a Force Action! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Corona Discharge for 91 hit points! GS: Janus Cascade guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 99 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
Trinity Avenger works excellently. Talia falls; Ragnell parts with cutting words that don't seem to flutter Janus in the slightest. All that's left is Ida, who is well off but can be ganged up on in a moment, and Gwen.
....Gwen.
Janus cracks his eye at her after his question. Her response slams into his chest; sends him flying backward, away from the mural with the pendant. He slams into a spot in the middle of the room, winded, bleeding, seared, growling. "You--"
....then he stops.
His hand stabs into his jacket, drawing out that silver ring. He glares at it the way a man looks at a letter he doesn't want to read.
"Fine," he spits. "You can have it. About time I move along anyway. Gather up, boys!"
Dario and Romero scamper over from where they fell as Janus holds the ring forward...and a pillar of light forms around him. He chuckles, low. "Told you, Gwen. That door wasn't the one this ring opens. You enjoy your prize."
His grin slices wider. "I'll be by for it later."
And then Dario, Romero, and Janus all disappear in puffs of light, and the flickering column of the exit portal dies back down.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen really wasn't thinking about it when she did it. She was just pissed.
Wordessly, in the quiet Janus and his crew leave behind, Gwen gets up, her blouse still soaked with blood. She sways from the sudden vertigo then corrects herself, stepping towards the mural. "... Let's see what this mess is all about, then."
Hesitant, she touches the fingertips of her left hand to the green stone set against the wall. "...." Does she take it? What sort of trial was she supposed to pass, exactly? What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to overcome?
A cold fear runs and pools in her stomach, the sort that comes at those lone moments when she realizes that the ARM attached to her is, in fact, not exactly inert material.
Carefully, she palms the medallion in her hand and takes it, raising it up towards the scant light to better examine it.
She squints. ".... Y'think this thing has any teleportin' properties? That'd, uh, be real swell 'bout now..."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida sags to the ground as the Cascade Gang vanishes. Janus's words seem to linger in the air, even after the man himself has left the scene. "We wouldn't be so lucky," she says, through gritted teeth. "Keep it close. If Cascade wants it that badly..." Gwen can fill in the details.
<Pose Tracker> Janus Cascade has posed.
The medallion is a stone the size of a fist. Although not a jewel, precisely, it is of a beautiful, polished-smooth stone, with an emblem of three circles, one growing from the other, splashed across its surface. As Gwen puls it free, one curiosity quickly presents itself - it's actually already mounted as a pendant, complete with a golden chain that should be unfathomably ancient and tarnished beyond all recovery.
It shines brightly, defiant of time itself.
The teleportation pathway Janus just used flickers and sputters, like it were trying to spring to life, but finally with a ZPAK noise, like some distant system had shorted entirely, it gutters out, useless.
You're walkin'.