2018-11-08: Into The Place Of Fear
- Log: Into The Place Of Fear
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac, Leah Sadalbari
- Where: Baskar Colony
- Date: November 8th 2018
- Summary: A small group, consisting of two Solarians and one 'assistant' investigate an apparent upwell of Malevolence in a Baskar holy ground. They find that the corruption has set its roots deep indeed.
DG: A party led by Loren Voss is now entering Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual. DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== =================<* CHALLENGE - Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground *>================= |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- There are many mausoleums in these hills. Generations of Baskar slumber within this valley of the sacred dead in eternal communion with the planet. However, this one is different; the murals on the weathered stone speak of no storied warriors, no glorious battles or any such things. Instead, they are all warnings and wards, sacred art and prayers beseeching the Guardians for protection. There is something else hidden here, something more than old, desiccated corpses. The awful feeling in your gut tells you for certain that what you're looking for lies within-- as if the deep, bestial scars marring the stonework weren't enough. But even as you search the ruins for a way into the catacombs they conceal, you can't help but feel as though something is watching you--as if some terrible predator were stalking you from the shadows. Best hurry, lest you find your fears confirmed. =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There's always one last call. Even on the eve of preparations to head east, the report had come in about an apparent upwelling of Malevolence, out again towards Baskar territory.
This had probably been the point where someone higher on the food chain had looked rather meaningfully at Loren, and also the point where he quickly got the hint.
He couldn't have missed it if he had been blind. He's more or less been assigned to 'manage' Lan, and on top of that, who had been the one to investigate the last time this had made itself known, almost a year before?
Yes.
On the positive side, he's not here alone, however he might feel about who is providing him and Lan with support this time.
Now the three of them stand outside the entrance to the burial grounds of a particular sect of Baskar.
Malevolence, for those who can feel it, hangs heavy in the air.
"...And the stonework's been scarred by something large and powerful, recently at that." Loren finishes his initial assessment with a sigh. "Lucky us. Well, there's no sense standing around. Let's figure out if there's even an entrance to this thing..."
He pauses, as if hearing something.
Remains so still a moment, two moments, three moments longer.
Then carefully, as carefully as he can, fishes something out of his pocket and slowly peels off the wrapper.
The Nutribar is hurled back the way they'd come.
Just, you know, in the event that 'something' likes the taste of Soylent more than it does human flesh*.
(*yes, we know)
DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Soylent Nutribar toward his party's challenge, Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's good to have friends in strange places! Perhaps even especially helpful to have Lan, who is Baskar and knows a lot of the things you'd expect one to know, like what all the weirdo carvings on the walls are all about. "Whatever it was..." she murmurs, more to herself than the others, though they can still hear her. "Please go back where you came from," she finishes, closing her eyes briefly as if it's a short prayer. Wishes are kind of like praying, right?
The sickness of Malevolence weighs heavy around them. It's not right. "This shouldn't be here," Lan sighs. "It feels so awful. What if they can feel it?" she frowns at the entrance.
The shaman slips a hand into one of her hip pockets, drawing out a pre-folded oracle paper to fidget with. "...Show me," she murmurs to it, this time too quiet to hear.
Perhaps surprisingly, she tries to go first this time. "Come on, let me go first in case we meet anybody."
...Who does she expect to meet down there?
DG: Lan Lilac has used her Tool Paku-Paku toward her party's challenge, Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
The reward for good work is longer hours and harder tasks. Right?
Leah has invited herself along on this mission, though--to all accounts, it may just be for personal interest. ...Maybe, maybe not; regardless, she looks thoughtful, walking to the rear of the group as the slowest. She recognizes many of the carvings herself, many of the symbols...
But she doesn't feel what Lan feels. She doesn't stop to pray, but she remains quiet as Lan does. Only after does she add, "Have some faith, Ren." A beat, "We'll find a door... or make one. We need to get to the bottom of this, after all."
Leah glances to the nutribar, briefly.
"...Lan, you don't think these murals refer to something guarding the tombs, do you?" she asks. "Warnings... Prayers for protection..."
Wait, how does Leah know what they say?
"By all means, you can take the lead. We'll watch your back." With that, the blue-haired woman begins using the butt of her spear to probe the stone, looking for hollow places, tiles...
DG: Leah Sadalbari has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== =================<* CHALLENGE - Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground *>================= |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- There are many mausoleums in these hills. Generations of Baskar slumber within this valley of the sacred dead in eternal communion with the planet. However, this one is different; the murals on the weathered stone speak of no storied warriors, no glorious battles or any such things. Instead, they are all warnings and wards, sacred art and prayers beseeching the Guardians for protection. There is something else hidden here, something more than old, desiccated corpses. The awful feeling in your gut tells you for certain that what you're looking for lies within-- as if the deep, bestial scars marring the stonework weren't enough. But even as you search the ruins for a way into the catacombs they conceal, you can't help but feel as though something is watching you--as if some terrible predator were stalking you from the shadows. Best hurry, lest you find your fears confirmed. =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless=================================================
===============<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 1 *>================ ===================< Results - Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground >=================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Soylent Nutribar 2 Wits Effects: Resilient -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Paku-Paku 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 0 --(0)--> 0 Pass Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Loren Voss 0 --(20)--> 20 Pass Conditions: Reckless(2) Effects: Enlighten(1)|Resilient(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Loren Voss has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
'Have some faith', Leah says. Loren closes his eyes, and, shockingly holds his tongue.
"...Alright."
The bar lands on the pathway in without ceremony. Nothing lunges out of the dark to seize it... but perhaps it might be just because whatever might be back there is waiting, biding its time.
Maybe a compressed Soylent bar -- packed with nutrients! now with extra glucose! -- is more appetizing than human flesh...?
"Go on ahead. If anything's behind us, we'll handle it. ...And honestly, if there's anything inside, you'd know more about it than us," he says, in a startlingly mild statement from him, of all people.
But it is true. And he is the honest type.
And, well, he's glad not to be the first through the door for once.
It doesn't take long for Leah to work out the mechanism -- with Lan's help -- that opens the tomb.
And then Lan steps forward, guided only by her oracle paper, into the depths. No immediate peril awaits her as she steps over the threshold.
After that, though...?
DG: Lan Lilac has drawn a new Challenge.
=======================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>======================= =======================<* CHALLENGE - The Feathered Serpent *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 3 | -----------------------------< Challenge Information: >------------------------------ You enter a dim, torchlit chamber that practically buzzes with power. The atmosphere crackles with barely-restrained energy, as if the air itself had become volatile and incendiary. A relief of a serpent is carved into the stone beneath you, its jaws closing another hole in the earth. The breath of foul wind that had suffused this place flows out from within it. And yet, even with the path ahead within reach, something makes you hesitate. Something is wrong-- And then the beast uncoils. An enormous feathered beast dives out from the darkness overhead. Its once brilliant, prismatic plumage is mottled and filthy, revealing banded scales beneath. The thing crackles with electric arcs and stirs the air around it into a deadly frenzy of storm-wind-- but its mystical properties are only secondary to its massive, bonecrushing coils and fetid, venomous maw. In local folklore, creatures like these are defenders of sacred places, but this one is emaciated, starving and ravenous with rage. What could have happened to cause such degeneration? =Dungeon Conditions: Injure===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"...Thanks," she tells Loren, after a link of something like surprise.
The door leads into a dusty hallway, one that slopes downwards at a steady angle, and Lan wonders if she should hesitate on the threshold. It's not her buried people that worries her, just... "There are a lot more of them than usual on a tomb," she explains, rarely checking the paper again as they pass alcoves full of crumbling pottery and dry grasses. "It was clawed up really bad outside, but it looked like some of the prayers and names survived. But if that's what's on the outside... what's down here?!"
"There's a guardian seal," she notes, moving out of a doorway to let the others see the great feathered serpent carved into the floor. "It's a home for--"
The sound of nearly two dozen claws shifting against sandstone interrupts her, and Lan shuts up, glancing up sharply. "--Oh NO," she groans, and starts into a run for the center of the relief. "Whatever's here, that miasma... it did this?!" Struck by a kind of horror she hasn't felt in quite a while, Lan lifts a hand to her mouth as the fetid 'guardian' bays and wheels sickly in the air. "I'm so sorry," she tells it, voice muffled by her palm. "I'm so sorry, we'll fix it, I promise," she whispers. There aren't enough prayers in her lungs to feed something in that shape. She's going to have to take desperate measures--
"...I need a knife," Lan demands, turning to stare at both of them.
DG: Lan Lilac has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Feathered Serpent.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Are these... all dead bodies?"
It's not the fact of there being dead bodies in and of itself that has caused Loren to shudder, briefly pausing during the descent downwards into the complex. He's been around and handled bodies prior to recycling before, he's seen corpses since he's been stationed on the surface.
But there's still something unbearably creepy about the land-dwellers' habit of taking their dead and putting them into the earth. All of them. Here. Together. Rotting away in the dark.
His shoulders hunch and he continues on. Don't look in the alcoves. Don't look in the alcoves...
"A guardian seal? For one of the--"
Wrong sort of guardian, to start.
Even a look at it tells him it's had better days. "Damn! Leah--"
His gaze flits between her and Lan, already putting distance between them and running towards the guardian giant serpent... giant winged serpent...
That should be illegal.
"Stop running! I can't hand you a knife it you're--" He shakes his head and chases after Lan, taking the time to root in his kit and hurl the first thing that comes to hand at it as a sort of distraction.
The (corrupted) Feathered Serpent takes a roll of bandages to the snout.
DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, The Feathered Serpent.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Whatever is here--they aren't finding out yet. ...As for the bar, it is delicious. So maybe. But for now...
Leah smiles slightly, a small expression, at Loren and Lan's exchange at first. Then, she moves forward. She is not the first to step inside, as she said; she leaves that to Lan. But she is prepared to drag Lan back should it become necessary, as her own heavy steps fall against the stone floor. ...Her gait, as always, is just a little bit uneven. The oracle... And Loren.
"They are," Leah answers Loren. "...In committing a body to the earth, one returns the dead from whence they came; in this way, it's hoped that their spirits can find peace, through the care given by the living to their funerary arrangements." She explains perhaps surprisingly gently--certainly not something average for commander to soldier.
But, "Hmm," Leah answers Lan's assessment of the murals. She glances now and then for anything useful in the ruin, but seems to find nothing worth stopping for. "So whatever is down here was able to overcome the power of the seals," she concludes. But--here is a guardian, after all, and Leah sudddenly shifts forward before saying anything else. Lan begins running, and Leah's steps get heavier, longer, though she is not so quick as the Baskar here. She apologizes, but--
Even Leah can see how ill the creature is. Loren calls to her, and Leah, "On it."
She slides up close, pulling a curious knife inscribed with similar symbols to the tomb's (but not quite the same) from her belt in passing, offering it to Lan without waiting all that long for her to take it. In the next moment she reaches the serpent, and reaches out--
She just moves to grab it. She's not planning to crush it, just hold onto it, her full-metal arm extended first to give it something to bite at. "Hold still," she says to the creature. It... might be soothing?
DG: Leah Sadalbari has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Feathered Serpent.
=======================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>======================= =======================<* CHALLENGE - The Feathered Serpent *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 3 | -----------------------------< Challenge Information: >------------------------------ You enter a dim, torchlit chamber that practically buzzes with power. The atmosphere crackles with barely-restrained energy, as if the air itself had become volatile and incendiary. A relief of a serpent is carved into the stone beneath you, its jaws closing another hole in the earth. The breath of foul wind that had suffused this place flows out from within it. And yet, even with the path ahead within reach, something makes you hesitate. Something is wrong-- And then the beast uncoils. An enormous feathered beast dives out from the darkness overhead. Its once brilliant, prismatic plumage is mottled and filthy, revealing banded scales beneath. The thing crackles with electric arcs and stirs the air around it into a deadly frenzy of storm-wind-- but its mystical properties are only secondary to its massive, bonecrushing coils and fetid, venomous maw. In local folklore, creatures like these are defenders of sacred places, but this one is emaciated, starving and ravenous with rage. What could have happened to cause such degeneration? =Dungeon Conditions: Injure===================================================
==================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 2 *>================== =========================< Results - The Feathered Serpent >========================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 0 --(7)--> 7 Pass Solarian Medical Kit 1 Combat Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 0 --(12)--> 12 Fail Fight 0 Combat Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 0 --(12)--> 12 Fail Fight 0 Combat Effects: BASIC --------------------------------------< Party >-------------------------------------- Leader: Loren Voss 20 --(10)--> 30 Fail Conditions: Injure(2)|Reckless(1) Effects: Cleanse ==================================< Dream Chasers >==================================
DG: The party led by Loren Voss has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
If it helps, Lan would be entirely upset by the habits of skydwellers.
It'd been nice to hear someone speaking kindly to Loren. So maybe he's not as lonely as she'd thought. Maybe he's just awkward with girls, instead.
She wants to believe he can be happy. She wants to believe that she can save the world. She wants to believe she can save a single half-dead protector of her people's past.
The lizard shakes its head furiously, snatching the roll out of thin air and shredding it with a single shake of its jaws. The remains of it bounce into a corner somewhere...
Leah's feet pound on the stone, and Lan takes the knife with clumsy fingers. "I'm sorry," she tells the serpent again, and mutters something that isn't quite a word as she presses the pad of her thumb against the blade's edge. Blood wells quickly, Lan pressing harder, sucking a thick breath in through her teeth.
It plats wet and sticky on the stone, and the serpent thrashes harder, champing at Leah's metal arm and thrashing in jerks of sinew and taxed joints. "... I'm sorry," Lan whispers again, but her cadence has changed.
Killing the serpent is as quick as she can manage. With Leah holding it in place, Lan slashes its throat and holds it as it goes still.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Spirits... huh."
Such a statement does not, as it happens, do much to ease his mind. If anything, the young man seems to sink into a deeper pit of gloom than before. "...Still isn't right..." he mutters, under his breath.
Do they cremate people where he's from, then?
The creature that looms before them is a far cry from the being that's depicted on the mural at their feet. It's sickly, weakned. Corrupted.
He earns then that precious moment of distraction when the roll of bandages smacks into the serpent... and is immediately set upon by it, quickly shredded by the thing's fangs.
He passes a scalpel to Lan, not thinking about what she's going to do with it.
Or what Leah is about to do.
"Leah-- what are you--!?"
I just fixed that!! he thinks, for the moment livid.
Before Lan steps in. Slits her thumb on the blade.
"What--"
And a different Lan, a far cry from the Lan he's seen dance in the rain or complain about card games, apologizes to the serpent.
Before lovingly, tenderly, slitting its throat.
It's not the first time he's been at a loss in his life, but Loren is at a loss now, staring down at the crumpled body of the guardian.
At length, he breaks the silence: "...Mercy, huh."
DG: Leah Sadalbari has drawn a new Challenge.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ========================<* CHALLENGE - Ravenous Walls *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Nightmarish stone carvings cover the sepulchral walls in a gallery of ghoulish facades. Images of evil spirits have been conjured out of local folklore and into the architecture of this place by the tormented hand of their sculptors. It's made worse still by the unsettling pulse of the primal undercurrent thrumming through this place. Finally, the hallway terminates at a dead end, and you think for a moment that you might need to turn back--but then you notice them. There are a number of man-shaped holes in the wall, just large enough for a person to slide into... But even from here you can tell the walls within are jagged and narrow, and the darkness stretches far into the distance. Pushing through will be painful, but the alternative is turning back and finding another way around. And yet... Maybe it's just the wind whistling out of them, but it feels almost as if something is drawing you into those fissures-- as if your destination is on the other end and only something awful is waiting for you back whence you came. This is your hole. It's meant for you. =Dungeon Conditions: Tire=====================================================
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah glances at Loren just long enough, when he mutters. But she doesn't answer, if she heard him. Maybe it's coincidence. But this...
The lizard flies there, and Leah doesn't know what Lan has in mind at first either, frankly. It becomes obvious quickly--just as quickly as Loren begins to ask her a question. Leah keeps hold of the serpent, her single eye staring down the creature. Blood hits the ground--but none of it is from her arm. The serpent's teeth scratch through the leather of her long gloves, but there is no wound. A moment later, however...
Leah continues to support the serpent's weight as Lan holds onto it, as it dies. She is silent, but not in the same way as Loren is, before--satisfied that the danger has passed--she lets go, lets Lan take the creature's body.
"...Yes," Leah answers Loren. "Mercy. ...It's better than allowing madness and sickness set a guardian against the very thing it aims to protect. May it find peace once more."
She does not pray; she is not a Baskar. It is not her Guardian. But she does watch it for a moment, and when she takes back her knife, she wipes off the blood before sheathing it again. Then a beat, and more softly, "...Directing the attack to where I'm most heavily armored is the most efficient course of action, Lieutenant. Repairing machinery is easier than waiting for flesh to heal--or training a new operative ou.yif we lose you."
A pause, "...This doesn't seem like the sort of thing I'd expect in a Baskar tomb," she admits to Lan. She is willing to wait, long enough--if Lan needs to say a prayer, or set the body somewhere. But after that short time, they have to move on.
"If something else comes," Leah directs, "Duck. My weapon has enough reach to protect you from behind, too."
They come soon to a hall with grotesque shapes on the walls; evil spirits, rendered in haunting detail, line the path. Leah does not feel the strange pulse of this place, but she can see danger. ...And eventually, they reach a dead end. Leah considers, thoughtfully, starting to look around. "...I wonder if we'll need to backtrack," she murmurs, but then she sees them. ...The holes. The loose places in the tomb. Pushing through may be difficult. But a draw...
Lan steps towards one, thoughtfully; she can hear its call. After all, she belongs in tombs herself, should be there, should not have lived... Some would say.
She knows otherwise.
Leah pulls from her belongings a bar of dark metal, with a chisel and nail remover both. "...Ren," she says. "I know this isn't going to be pleasant for you. But you can make it through. Remember, you've come through worse."
The softness of her voice is contrasted by the hard tension clear in her form as she steps forward. Leah takes the crowbar in both hands--
And begins to brute-force chisel the path, opening it with raw mechanical power. No human ought to be able to strike with such force into stone. One imagines that it must hurt, to hit something so hard.
Or well, one might. Loren may know otherwise.
DG: Leah Sadalbari has used her Tool Crowbar toward her party's challenge, Ravenous Walls.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"It wasn't always like this," Lan tells Loren, gently laying the creature down on the stones as its body wavers and begins to dissolve. "They're summoned to keep these places safe from thieves or animals. Stealing the offerings are one thing, but some people used to make off the bodies. It's way rarer now, but..." she trails off, before returning the blade to its owner.
She has an idea of what might have happened here, but... well, Lan is pretty sure she'll find out the real answer when if they get to the bottom, either way. When she looks up from mouthing a few words to the serpent's spirit, she meets Leah's eyes with her own gratefully. "Normally, they're fed with prayers and offerings. This one wasn't just starving, though. Something changed it. Either the mist, or whatever's making it. This feels wrong," she tries to explain as they continue. "If this were a normal tomb... It'd be peaceful. Like being in a room with sleeping people, kinda." Maybe for her!!
"But this is..." she trails off again, struck dumb by the appearance of the holes. Those aren't supposed to be here. "What kind of..." she gulps. "How long has it been this bad?" She doesn't know which would be worse, to find out that the people who dug this tomb didn't put the holes here, or that they did.
"...Don't worry, Loren," she tells him, forcing a smile that's more like her carefree self. "I'll protect you." Even if she knows it won't make him feel better to hear it, it'll make Lan feel better to say it.
So when Leah begins to tear her own path through the wall and the sick wantwantwant of the holes in the walls... Lan just offers up a quick, murmured apology to the dead before scurrying after Leah, dragging Loren if he's not quick enough to dodge.
DG: Lan Lilac has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Ravenous Walls.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Maybe it's that 'Malevolence' in the air -- a spiritual toxin in and of itself that twisted the serpent so, or so he understands.
He does have one question when Lan explains, about the guardians. What they're meant to protect: "Why would anyone steal a body?"
Where he comes from, people don't have contact with the dead, or generally speaking, any desire to do so.
"Mm. I suppose so," he allows. He's a combat medic first -- perhaps he might feel otherwise, when it's his job to keep a person going. Just enough to ensure they can return to the fray once again.
But there's the unspoken gift that all battlefield medics are fully aware they possess the ability to grant, for those too far gone to ever save. Even Solarian medicine has a limit.
And sometimes the best thing you can do is ease someone's suffering.
He hasn't had the need to yet. But someday, perhaps.
It's easier to take a comment like that from Leah. Even if he does tense all the same, even if he seems for a moment on edge when she reminds him that her body has certain benefits. This isn't just a relationship born of hierarchy, is it?
"...Understood," he answers, snapping back momentarily into a sort of formality. "It doesn't seem as if your arm sustained damage," he adds, as if somewhat unwilling to let it go.
He'd said something to Lan once, months ago. The leader should be protected, even if the pawns must lay down their lives.
"We should go," he says next; he also is apparently not the type to pray, least of all to a creature like that.
Certainly not to Guardians.
"...Looks like a dead end," he says, eyeing what stands before them in the next room. "So this is new? Those holes aren't big... enough...?"
He trails out, captivated for a moment. Even his breath catches in his throat.
That hole... looks as if it's meant for him.
He takes a step forward. Hesitates. His pulse for a moment seems to roar in his veins.
He should already be dead. Gone and scattered across this wretched land, so far from home.
Back home, there were probably people who would be glad if...
Leah speaks, addressing him.
Even Lan, who says -- in a statement that will rankle him more once (if) he reaches the other side -- that she'll protect him.
He doesn't look away from his hole.
"...Yeah. I know," he says to Leah.
"I'm fine," he says to Lan.
He stopped his own heart and he still came back. He drowned and still came back. This?
"This is nothing."
There's no need for Lan to drag him along. He steps forward, steps inwards. Closes his eyes. Reaches out with his will, feeling forward through the rock and all its fractures and fissures. If he says it enough, maybe he'll believe it.
DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Ravenous Walls.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ========================<* CHALLENGE - Ravenous Walls *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Nightmarish stone carvings cover the sepulchral walls in a gallery of ghoulish facades. Images of evil spirits have been conjured out of local folklore and into the architecture of this place by the tormented hand of their sculptors. It's made worse still by the unsettling pulse of the primal undercurrent thrumming through this place. Finally, the hallway terminates at a dead end, and you think for a moment that you might need to turn back--but then you notice them. There are a number of man-shaped holes in the wall, just large enough for a person to slide into... But even from here you can tell the walls within are jagged and narrow, and the darkness stretches far into the distance. Pushing through will be painful, but the alternative is turning back and finding another way around. And yet... Maybe it's just the wind whistling out of them, but it feels almost as if something is drawing you into those fissures-- as if your destination is on the other end and only something awful is waiting for you back whence you came. This is your hole. It's meant for you. =Dungeon Conditions: Tire=====================================================
===============<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 3 *>================ ==========================< Results - Ravenous Walls >========================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 7 --(0)--> 7 Pass Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 12 --(3)--> 15 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 12 --(0)--> 12 Pass Crowbar 2 Brute Effects: Stalwart -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Loren Voss 30 --(20)--> 50 Pass Conditions: Tire(2) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Loren Voss has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
"Of course," Leah answers Loren. "...I'm not so reckless as to offer the enemy the more vulnerable parts. And they're in good shape." Thanks to the repair work, she seems to imply. ..But she doesn't answer more on mercy for now. Instead, Leah looks to Lan with a nod. "I see. ...So we're dealing with something that's capable of more than simple damage, here. ...Something that can affect a magical creature like one that was summoned..."
The tomb at least doesn't seem to bug her much. Neither does she joke about it though. Instead she answers, "People steal bodies for a few reasons. Sometimes to rob them--sometimes out of the belief that disturbing the grave will harm the dead... or the knowledge that disturbing the grave will harm the living. Sometimes, for magical purposes. ...There are many reasons, few of which you'd probably like to hear in detail."
How long has it been? Leah doesn't know. She could investigate further, but whatever is affecting the place may have disturbed the evidence. ...The matter of protecting Loren, though...
"See that you do," Leah says to Lan about protecting him. But they all make it through soon enough. It is... a harrowing passage, to be sure. Nothing attacks them in the chamber, no ghosts claim their spirits, but--
It's unpleasant. And nerves, shaking... these things make it easy to shift the wrong way, and get cuts on jagged rock down here. Perhaps the dead don't accept Lan's apology; perhaps they do, and take the blood she loses in the passage as payment, a taste of living Baskar that they once were.
...Either way, the Solarians aren't required to pay the same price. This time.
DG: Loren Voss has drawn a new Challenge.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - The Place of Fear *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- It is difficult to describe what is so unsettling about this place. Perhaps it's the incessant and inescapable thrum of spiritual corruption that suffuses the air. Perhaps it is instead the grotesque murals that line the walls and seem to twist about when you stare for too long at what they depict, only to reappear again in memory the next time you close your eyes for too long. Or perhaps it's the vague notion of something hungry stalking you in the shadows. This place is a maze, a veritable labyrinth, and you seem to have found the thick of it. The path ahead becomes a mess of branching paths and awkward switchbacks that make it difficult to tell where you've come from and where you've yet to go. Passages shift and change, stone walls sliding into place where there were once open pathways. What more, the feeling of discomfort-- of primal fear-- seems to only build from its seat at the base of the mind. You feel the desperate need to escape, the notion that you are being pursued, and the fear of being trapped in this maze forever, or at least until you're finally caught and eaten. But you must keep a cool head, there must be a pattern to this, and only by deciphering it will you manage to escape this land of the dead. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust, Fright==========================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She's kind to him, kinder than he'd have thought, after everything. If anyone had a reason to irrationally hate him like the others, shouldn't she...
He lets the thought go. He doesn't want to think about it, not here.
Loren shakes his head as Leah explains about the dead. "It's all so..." He gestures, vaguely. "Ridiculous. Hurting the living by hurting the dead? And the dead are already--"
He stops, a realization of a sort striking home.
He abruptly drops the line of inquiry utterly, not so much as glancing over at Leah. He doesn't want to see what sort of face she has now.
He pushes through, that claustrophic space, with no idea whether something might take advantage of their vulnerability and strike, with no firm knowledge (though the stone tells him there is an ending somewhere) of what might lie on the other end, with the understanding that the walls attempt to drink of their blood and flesh.
But stone is kin to him, sort of, and he's able to turn aside what might cut, until that moment he emerges on the other side. Takes a breath, as if to steady himself.
And quite visibly has a moment where he realizes what it was that Lan had said -- and what Leah had agreed with.
"...What was that about 'protecting' me?" he asks Lan, while shooting Leah a look that might be best subtitled 'why are you doing this'.
At least the Commander or the Major aren't here, or he'd just have to go find a hole and die in it (he wouldn't even have to look very far for a hole...).
Maybe it's that lingering embarrassment that has him before long turn and soldier on into the shadowy path that continues before them.
Into what quickly becomes a branching path. A branching upon branching path.
"...It's a maze," he notes, turning about himself. They're not so far in that they can't find their way--
A stone wall blocks the way from whence they'd come. He's sure of that.
"Great. Of all the mazes we could have walked right into, we've walked into the one that's learning," he says flatly. His gaze then settles on the wall, featuring some headless lady with snakes coming out of the stumps. "...Tell me that's normal," he 'asks' of Lan.
He reaches into his bag and pulls out another one of those wrapped bars and just as before, unwraps it. Tears it into pieces, to scatter along the floor as they walk.
"Use the right hand wall as your guide. Eventually it'll have to lead us out." ...Assuming at least that the maze is going to play fair, which it probably won't, given current trends.
Or assuming that something isn't coming after them, using the maze as a SNARE to trap them and CATCH THEM and EAT THEM...
He shakes his head, as if to thereby shed such irrational thoughts.
DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Soylent Nutribar toward his party's challenge, The Place of Fear.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Is this... how they do it?
The walls of the hole close on her, despite everything. It gets harder to force herself through, even if...
Lan scrapes against the stone as she fights forward, clothes and skin catching. She can't be sure, but she thinks she's bleeding.
Something wet trickles down her ankle, between her foot and her sandal. ...Yep. She's bleeding.
She'll try not to think about it, about being in here, unable to go back, pushing her way through until there's nothing left--
Lan sees 'daylight' and sucks in a breath, wedges herself forward and grabs for the edge. It's not anything as dramatic as 'I want to live!' It's more... basic than that. Just the will to keep moving her body until there's no body left to move.
She pulls herself from the rock and stumbles to a halt, scratched all over, some marks shallower than others. "Ugh. Are you okay? --Oh good," Lan huffs, eyeing the two of them. "You're not hurt. Huh, I would've thought that the... whatever this is now. Curse zone? Wouldn't just want Baskar blood. That makes things a little tricky." This had better not be caused by some ancient mystical enemy of her people or something!!
She wipes the worst of the blood away with the ragged edge of her cloak. It was white, once.
"Of course it's not normal!" she exclaims. "Nothing about this has been normal! This whole place has been warped beyond recognition. The dead should be able to rest in peace, but they can't--" She catches herself starting to shout and takes a breath. "Sorry. The 'smell' in here's going to make me sick. I didn't mean to yell at you." Maybe she'd better use the oracle paper again... That could be quicker.
DG: Lan Lilac has used her Tool Paku-Paku toward her party's challenge, The Place of Fear.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah doesn't comment on Loren's hidden thoughts. ...Neither, however, does she answer his statement about how it's ridiculous, what the dead already are. She turns, just long enough to set a single blue eye on him in silence, expressionless. ...It's for the best that he doesn't see that face; it's a little too expressionless.
Past that, Leah looks to the others. "We're fine," Leah agrees, and considers Lan's words at that. "...I wonder why that is," she says, thoughtfully. "...We'll keep an eye out for you." A beat, at Loren's Look, "And of course we'd want to protect our medic. With you intact, we all stand a much better chance of achieving our objectives safely."
She smiles when she says it. It's entirely too smug not to be total bullshit in terms of her actual answer.
...Stone is not her element; truth be told, one might expect her to have much more trouble down here than she does. The fear, the certainty... Leah has been nearer death than most. She has been trapped, unable to move, in tight spaces, in ruined metal. However...
"It's fine," Leah says simply, mildly, to Lan's yelling. "It's a difficult situation. A certain amount of emotional outburst is natural."
...But she doesn't show any. She's ice cold, in her way--ice wrapped in something soft, to be sure, deceptively so... But she doesn't show that she's feeling anything at all as she walks through the maze, tapping tiles with her spear, not looking back at the Thing that must be pursuing them. Something primal lurks here, something awful, something humans were not meant to face. The images and impulses flash through her mind, her lower processes screaming danger.
...But Leah walks with divine purpose, a terrible certainty deeper than she has revealed. She does not look back.
DG: Leah Sadalbari has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Place of Fear.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ======================<* CHALLENGE - The Place of Fear *>======================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- It is difficult to describe what is so unsettling about this place. Perhaps it's the incessant and inescapable thrum of spiritual corruption that suffuses the air. Perhaps it is instead the grotesque murals that line the walls and seem to twist about when you stare for too long at what they depict, only to reappear again in memory the next time you close your eyes for too long. Or perhaps it's the vague notion of something hungry stalking you in the shadows. This place is a maze, a veritable labyrinth, and you seem to have found the thick of it. The path ahead becomes a mess of branching paths and awkward switchbacks that make it difficult to tell where you've come from and where you've yet to go. Passages shift and change, stone walls sliding into place where there were once open pathways. What more, the feeling of discomfort-- of primal fear-- seems to only build from its seat at the base of the mind. You feel the desperate need to escape, the notion that you are being pursued, and the fear of being trapped in this maze forever, or at least until you're finally caught and eaten. But you must keep a cool head, there must be a pattern to this, and only by deciphering it will you manage to escape this land of the dead. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust, Fright==========================================
===============<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 4 *>================ ========================< Results - The Place of Fear >========================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 7 --(18)--> 25 Pass Soylent Nutribar 2 Wits Effects: Resilient -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 15 --(33)--> 48 Fail Paku-Paku 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 12 --(33)--> 45 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Loren Voss 50 --(10)--> 60 Fail Conditions: Exhaust(1)|Fright(2)|Tire(1) Effects: Enlighten(1)|Resilient(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Loren Voss 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: Loren Voss has drawn a new Challenge.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - The Hall Effect *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Another minute, another hallway. While no less disturbing than all the others in this place, this one at least seems relatively inoccuous... For about thirty seconds. Deep within the maze, something stirs. Thunder roars through the channels of the earth and shakes you to your core. Suddenly, the arteries surrounding you begin to crackle and pop, incendiary sparks leap from vein to vein. The entire corridor glows with electric fury, and you're right in the middle of it. To escape unscathed, you'll need to find some way to dodge the lightning until the storm abates. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He doesn't look back at Leah.
It's too raw a subject for either of them to approach, particularly not here or now.
Lan emerges from the holes significantly worse for wear (compared to when she went in, at least). "You're bleeding," is thus the statement the medical officer makes, eyeing her upon her emergence. "Hold still." Approaching her, he reaches out a hand and takes a breath. This deep in the earth makes it easy to reach out and pull in the strands of Ether he needs -- yes, even in this hall of the dead -- process them through his will and then, in a display marked by a slither of glowing green fractal lines that trace down across her body for a moment...
Enforce his will and instruct her body to close those wounds. It only takes him heartbeats to complete.
It only leaves him a little bit drained. Drawing a vial from his bag afterwards, he downs the contents, even as Leah comments that of course they just want to protect their medic.
The gaze he gives her likely underscores his feeling that that statement of hers was complete bullshit.
It's not normal. These engravings aren't normal. "Then what's going on here--" he starts to shout back, before Leah's omnipresent calm overrides the younger sets' collective outburst.
Aren't you a soldier? Or have you already forgotten what van Houten said? You're being a liability, runs the serpentine thought, and he immediately clams up, draws in on himself.
Van Houten... had accomplished what he hadn't.
Unlike Lan, he still doesn't apologize, instead turning to push onwards, in search of some way through the predicament they're now in. Leaving a literal trail of crumbs as he goes.
There's a story about a man who unwound a ball of thread to find his way through a labyrinth.
That man was fortunate that the labyrinth didn't shift directions while he navigated it, or cut off his thread entirely. Try as he had to have left a trail to mark their passage through the insidious maze, it does little good when the walls slam and shunt sections off from passage altogether. Had they been this way before?
Probably not.
Eventually there's no more bar to crumble away anyway, leaving him with just the maze, his wits, and his companions' perserverence to see them through the winding paths.
Good, clever plan there. Now what do you going to do? Waste more of your supplies while you wander through this maze?
He might want to try harder on the wits aspect.
Something about this place just subverts and twists Lan's attempts to use her oracle. Had she written that on the paper when she crafted it?
The skull.
The knife.
Or the bat.
Death walks these halls, augurs the oracle paper. If such a fact had remained uncertain before, her paper tells her it is now a certainity.
Leah walks through the burial ground, her purpose buoying her though the chill moves to clutch at her, to sink deep into her mind. She should remain here, it whispers. She, a halfdead thing, should be counted among their number.
'Come home, Leah. Come back to us.'
And yet, though the nips and wounds the maze rends in their will, they yet persevere. The claustrophobic wind opens up, widens into a long ornate hallway.
Loren rests hand on the wall here, perhaps taking a moment to collect himself.
Only to wrench his hand away with a shout of alarm. Ozone is redolent in the air, mere moments before the earth below roars in an echo of booming thunder. Snapping from wall to wall mere heartbeats later is the storm, a pure levin fury.
Loren shouts wordlessly then grabs for Lan's wrist, apparently to haul her along as he dashes into a headlong flight. The Ether he works hastily pops and unfolds around them -- around Leah -- moments later, some small effort to speed them through and shelter them from the stoneborne storm.
DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, The Hall Effect.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
You're bleeding, Loren tells her. Lan looks down at her arms and legs, frowning a little. "I guess it was hungry," she remarks quietly. That strange angular magic of his feels strange underneath her skin, but... it helps a lot. "Thanks," she tells him, and means it. Even her thumb is healed up now, which is a relief all on its own.
The oracle paper, though... It's less help than she'd even hoped. Some of the quickly-drawn symbols have... these aren't supposed to be here...
She puts the paper away and tries not to think about it. She didn't bring another, so this one may have to last. Hopefully it won't get any worse. "...We need to try to hurry," she says instead.
Lightning?
And then Loren grabs her hand of his own volition. Her eyes widen in surprise but then they're off, barely keeping pace with--
Lan focuses her will into the silver ribbon tied in her hair. Even if she can't afect anybody else, she can at least make herself a little lighter. Even if Lan doesn't know where she's going, she can continue running...
DG: Lan Lilac has used her Tool Butterfly Ribbon toward her party's challenge, The Hall Effect.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah Sadalbari, raised in the highest echelons of Etrenank's entertainment industry...
...Is very good at bullshit.
But she doesn't dwell on it for the moment. Indeed, she doesn't seem to dwell on much of anything; her air of calm is practically unshakable, her demeanor reassurance itself. Even in the face of an awful maze, with the end of their attempts to keep track of where they were. The maze...
Death walks. Leah hears it, clearly. How much of her is dead already? It doesn't matter. Leah's response to the yawning abyss of fear before them is to stare back, and move forward.
She looks to Lan, now and then. Such as when she says to hurry. "...Yes," she agrees. Leah slows to a stop as Loren does, looking about their new environs, the straighter path ahead.
But suddenly--
The earth is roaring. Under the ground, with stone all around then, the echoes are deafening. Loren grabs for Lan's wrist; he does not grab Leah's. This is good. Because as his Ether moves to shield her, already is she in motion... But a different motion. She cannot move to running as quickly. But she can lift her arm... and...
Focus.
Lightning crashes into Leah's right arm full-bore, but behind, Loren can feel a surge of wind Ether. Instead of driving through Leah's body, seeking the ground, the lightning swirls about her, burning her leather glove to black ash before she points her arm to the wall and forces the lightning there. It's almost too fast to notice, too fast to understand, a use of Ether at incredible height.
Her eyes narrow, as she feels Loren's shield wrap about her. "..." An instant later, she makes a small gesture--and is suffused with a strange field of energy...
At which point she begins to surge forward, flying--No, not flying. Falling, falling forward instead of towards the ground as if gravity itself has changed orientation... Which, Loren might recognize, is exactly what just happened. All her weight sends her rushing towards the end of the hallway, spear back, eyes forward.
...She does not seem, in this moment, like a harmless big sister.
DG: Leah Sadalbari has used her Tool Gravity Module toward her party's challenge, The Hall Effect.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== =======================<* CHALLENGE - The Hall Effect *>======================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Another minute, another hallway. While no less disturbing than all the others in this place, this one at least seems relatively inoccuous... For about thirty seconds. Deep within the maze, something stirs. Thunder roars through the channels of the earth and shakes you to your core. Suddenly, the arteries surrounding you begin to crackle and pop, incendiary sparks leap from vein to vein. The entire corridor glows with electric fury, and you're right in the middle of it. To escape unscathed, you'll need to find some way to dodge the lightning until the storm abates. =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
===============<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 5 *>================ =========================< Results - The Hall Effect >========================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 25 --(0)--> 25 Fail Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 48 --(0)--> 48 Pass Butterfly Ribbon 2 Agility Effects: Quicken -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 45 --(0)--> 45 Pass Gravity Module 2 Agility Effects: Quicken -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Loren Voss 60 --(20)--> 80 Pass Conditions: Fright(1)|Hesitate(2) Effects: Quicken(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Loren Voss 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: Loren Voss has drawn a new Challenge.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ====================<* CHALLENGE - The Lungs Of The World *>==================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Finally, the throb of corruption reaches a grotesque crescendo. A putrid gale pours out from the path ahead, finding a home in your nostrils and lungs and staining both with the fetid scent of rotting flesh and decaying earth. The scent is overwhelming and the wind only grows more intense with each step, but pressing through the roaring, disgusting storm-wind is the only way forward. Only the rhythmic ebb and flow of air through the tunnels brings relief, but for some reason, you find yourself reminded of the heavy, unsteady breaths of some sickly beast. But surely, that can't be right-- can it? The path splits ahead, and every ounce of intuition screams at you to divert, to turn away from the putrescent breath and escape down into the safe, silent depths of the earth. In the distance, you can see flashes of light and the pulse-pulse-pulse of a sickly heart. Your goal is near. And yet, though the unnerving buzz of malevolence is stronger than ever, something else cuts through the static. Something... hungry. =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless, Overwhelm======================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Something's wrong with this place," Loren mutters as he works his magic, bidding her flesh to bind itself together.
A thought that may be all the more amplified by the time they have worked their way out of the maze and out into the hall.
Though, he never does get the chance to dwell on it much. The trap has been sprung, and there's little left for it but to run, in a desperate attempt to outpace the snapping bolts that discharge into the cage of stone they've found themselves within.
Even with the power of his Ether, Loren isn't nearly fast enough.
Not when the rhythm of the bolts suddenly proves they can strike out of the apparent tempo.
He has half a second in which to realize it. He's never been the best at acting under duress as coolly as some of his superior officers might. And yet, here, as he turns his head, sights that beginning of the bolt--
Lan will find herself hauled forward as he combines a pull and a push to send her around and past him, moving to follow after her before the surge of electricity can discharge.
She's light, a blessing of her ribbon. She flies free of this unfortunately-timed surge. A pace yet will see her past the point where the lightning may strike; save for the faint charge in the air that may fuzz her hair, she passes unscathed. Loren, however, doesn't manage to quite follow in her footsteps.
It's often thought that people are flung far when struck by lightning by the force of the blast. This is incorrect. The body itself contains quite a deal of strength in it, and when under duress, can do normally impossible things. Such as move itself, at speed.
He lands in a heap towards the end of the hallway. Though he smolders, judging from the groan he's at least semi-conscious. He twitches.
Leah, further back at first, demonstrates precisely why she has scaled to the heights of authority within the Interior Ministry.
TLightning rips through that glove, revealing that arm for its metallic truth beneath; it swirls around her arm like an etherial crackling gauntlet, now subdued to her command.
She flies like an avenging angel, threading the needle through the loops and arcs of the continuing discharges of electrical fury; she is touched not by the slightest spark.
Loren has pulled himself up from where he'd landed at the end of the hall, in time enough to watch her land.
He looks for the moment stunned. It's probably not just from the shock he'd received.
"I, uh..."
He's already standing up as the door there beside him suddenly slams open. Pulling back a step as if in anticipation of something coming out to greet them, he's met only by the stench of decay from within.
"...It feels like a trap."
He pauses, looking between Lan and Leah.
"But I guess we have to go in."
Inside the door, it only gets worse. The air is absolutely putrid, and even the facemask he pulls from his bag and dons does little to make the situation better. Something died in here. Maybe even a great many 'somethings'. "Is this... normal..." he manages, squinting against the onslaught as he presses on.
But this is not even the worst part of it. The worst part is those few breaths of cleaner air that blow across their. As if they've entered the lungs of some giant, and it's still clinging to life...
Two paths lie ahead. Which way? The urge to turn and run is incredible, down here.
"...Right. Go right."
No intuition guides his choice here. Neither does any observation. It's just the single brute-force thought that comes to him first.
DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, The Lungs Of The World.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan gets only the barest glimpse of Leah's arm, and at first she doesn't realize that there's anything super unusual about it; things are a little crazy right now.
And then Loren senses something, and... Lan's inertia gets twisted and yanked sideways as he turns and slings her out of the way. She floats, not understanding at first, until lightning strikes. "LOREN!"
He lands at the end of the hall, Leah falling after them as if the furious electricity is of no concern to her. Lan manages to avoid the worst of it, whether thanks to Leah redirecting some of it or Loren taking one for the team. She hurries the rest of the way to their sides, kneeling at the medic's side to offer him her shoulder. "What was that about protecting the medic...?" she tries to joke, but follows his gaze to Leah as she alights nearby. Her arm...
Surprise glints in Lan's eyes briefly, before she turns her mind back to the business at hand.
...'at hand'. Ugh!
"It shouldn't be a trap," she murmurs, but it's not to either of them really. "It should be peaceful. What did they seal away down here...? Why, with all the dead...?"
"Thank you both," she speaks up as they hurry into the next chamber, towards the source of the smell. "For, for coming with me--" The stench is eyewatering, this far down. "It's not--" She tries to speak, nearly retches, and pinches the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger until the urge dies a bit. "It's not supposed to be here. Why seal something like this into a tomb... bad enough that Diggers come in here looking for easy treasure, taking the things we meant to carry our ancestors over into the afterlife... Or stealing the actual corpses for 'medicinal purposes' or curiosity--!"
She has to stop talking. It's just making her breathe more. She concentrates on following Loren's direction, because it's not like Lan really has any better ideas...
DG: Lan Lilac has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Lungs Of The World.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Something's wrong with this place. ...That's fairly clear by this point, isn't it? Confirmed, with strong evidence. Even Leah, who can't sense all the differences, can see the effects of what's happened here, see the monsters and feel the stagnant air. ...But as before, she observes, does not stop.
Leah does not have the problem Loren did of acting under duress. She does not move as quickly under her own power, of course, because she can't... But what she does is different. As an angel, she flies, and as an angel she falls, directing herself to stop with a swirl of Wind ether before her acting as a cushion as she deactivates the device, suddenly doesn't have gravity rocketing her downward after all.
...Black and silver are obvious under the fragments of long glove; there is nothing natural about her right arm, even her fingers jointed in a way that cannot be gloves. ...If someone listens, there's a faint whirring from the cybernetics.
As Loren looks at her, "Come on," she suggests, and gives Lan a small, distant smile. ...It's not a very happy expression.
...What did they seal down here? Leah does not answer the murmur, but she echoes the question in her mind.
"...It shouldn't," Leah agrees, when Lan can't speak anymore. "But we'll find out why." In this, at least, she is gentle. She adjusts her grip on her spear, and pulls her crowbar for the other hand. "Right," she murmurs, and closes her eye.
She holds the crowbar up, for a moment, and focuses; water suddenly wells up from nothing, pouring down the sides of the implement as if down rocks, light falling water. ...And the wind makes clear its direction from the way it pushes and pulls at the small amount of water, too.
"...Yes," Leah agrees. "Right. Towards the danger, I think."
"...I'll take the lead this time."
It's not a suggestion.
DG: Leah Sadalbari has used her Tool Crowbar toward her party's challenge, The Lungs Of The World.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ====================<* CHALLENGE - The Lungs Of The World *>==================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 3 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Finally, the throb of corruption reaches a grotesque crescendo. A putrid gale pours out from the path ahead, finding a home in your nostrils and lungs and staining both with the fetid scent of rotting flesh and decaying earth. The scent is overwhelming and the wind only grows more intense with each step, but pressing through the roaring, disgusting storm-wind is the only way forward. Only the rhythmic ebb and flow of air through the tunnels brings relief, but for some reason, you find yourself reminded of the heavy, unsteady breaths of some sickly beast. But surely, that can't be right-- can it? The path splits ahead, and every ounce of intuition screams at you to divert, to turn away from the putrescent breath and escape down into the safe, silent depths of the earth. In the distance, you can see flashes of light and the pulse-pulse-pulse of a sickly heart. Your goal is near. And yet, though the unnerving buzz of malevolence is stronger than ever, something else cuts through the static. Something... hungry. =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless, Overwhelm======================================
===============<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual - Round 6 *>================ ======================< Results - The Lungs Of The World >====================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loren Voss 25 --(100)--> 125 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lan Lilac 48 --(100)--> 148 Fail Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leah Sadalbari 45 --(100)--> 145 Fail Crowbar 2 Brute Effects: Stalwart -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Loren Voss 80 --(10)--> 90 Fail Conditions: Hesitate(1)|Overwhelm|Reckless(2) Effects: ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: Loren Voss is too exhausted to continue! DG: Lan Lilac is too exhausted to continue! DG: Leah Sadalbari is too exhausted to continue! DG: The party has failed this challenge! All party members are now Exhausted. This attempt is over. DG: The party led by Loren Voss has been fully Exhausted by Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual! DG: The party will now draw a conclusion.
====================<* Xibalba - Catacombs of the Nahual *>===================== ====================<* CHALLENGE - The Awakening Ancient *>===================== |Type: Landmark |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- You've taken a wrong turn, somewhere along the way. Instead of making progress, you find yourself wandering, lost in the dark, meandering passageways. For a time, it seems like you might never find your way out, but then the darkness breaks. You find yourself standing on a narrow walkway suspended over a great, murky void. In the distance, a violet light flashes frantically, interspersed with the occasional burst of green. Pulses of pure force ripple out from where the two lights meet, threatening to push you over the edge and into the darkness below...! But if you can steady your footing and press forward through wave after wave of repulsive force, you will eventually find yourselves standing on an elaborate stone platform atop a massive pillar. Arteries of malevolent light pulse outward, creeping across the stone and disappearing into the temple beyond. Carvings writ across the slab's surface twist like the branches or roots of a gnarled tree all radiating from a frenzied, grinning maw carved into the center of the platform. There, sitting cross-legged near the center of this nightmarish mandala, is a being somewhere between beast and man. It's a leonine figure, fur a glorious gold, with electricity coruscating across its body and mantras simultaneously profane and sacred writ in purple light across its limbs. This is the Nahual of Noua-Shax himself, straining mightily against something you cannot see, but which you can sense. It is hunger, deep and undeniable. Before him, hovering over the center of the pillar, a halo of violet light struggles against the growth of a terrible, chartreuse star. This is what you came here to find. But... What is it you have found? (You've found the boss fight! You have the option here of either making it across the chasm, or falling in and dealing with whatever fate is going to befall you down there. Let Cyre know that you drew the Landmark and write your names down in the appropriate row of this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gZR6xQzBnl7vuJWybrJMLxOmJITvtGsFXv_W TFEzFWk/edit ) =Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's not in any condition to refuse assistance; he takes that shoulder when she offers it. He's apparently still suffering some lasting effects from the hit. It was just a glancing strike so quite fortunately he's still able to move, but recovery takes him time.
And uses up more of his remaining Ether, dwindling the pool available to him. At least he still has supplies...
"I'm fine," he insists, moments before Leah alights.
Her arm is exposed. Hopefully whatever comes it won't be something that could threaten the inner workings of the cybernetics -- dust or dirt -- but there's little else that could cause serious harm to her, as shielded as things are there.
'Come on', Leah says. He nods, then moves for the door.
'It shouldn't be a trap'. The look Loren gives her alone might underscore his thoughts on that front, but he still says: "Evidence suggests otherwise."
Yet, into the darkness of the chambers beyond he goes, seeking further into the complex.
'Thank you both', she says; he maintains silence on the matter, a grimace maintained against the putrefaction that seems to want to enwrap everything in its foul embrace.
"And yet, it's here," he remarks, his voice muffled behind the mask.
He still doesn't understand it. Burying the dead. Plundering tombs. Stealing corpses.
Or the thought that, whatever lies here might not be as still and gone as preferred.
If... if they used proper recycling... this wouldn't happen, runs the thought as he slogs on against all logic and intuition.
To the right, Leah's method seems to suggest. He watches the droplets fly, through stinging eyes.
"Let's hurry. I can taste this... whatever it is," he says, with the strong implication that he'd really rather not discover this flavor.
Leah indicates she'll lead. He does not protest this. Towards the danger they go.
Into the swallowing dark.
Light illuminates the path briefly, here and there. Green. Violet.
They're coming from different points.
And more importantly, they reveal that the path has narrowed to a thin needle of a pathway, high above a featureless abyss. One slip is all it will take.
One slip may be easy to come by, as the pulses of light meet and birth shockwaves of force.
One.
Two.
Three.
A heartbeat, perhaps. The pulse of the world?
To here is where they venture, whether they reach the destination or not.