2020-03-18: Growing In Silver

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DG: A party led by Riesenlied is now entering Jarnvidr.
DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
=================<* CHALLENGE - Into the Glittering Forest *>=================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Even a Gear could get lost in this place.

 Before you stands an impossibility: an iron forest on an elephantine scale
 in the ice, stretching even now for the heavens and the touch of the sun. Is
 it still growing?

 A problem faces you even before you set foot into the iron forest: there is
 no safe footing below where a Gear can walk. The trees are densely packed at
 the forest floor and only begin to grow and spread as they extend upwards.

 So to get anywhere without hitting a literal iron wall, youll have to go
 upwards too. But this involves a rather literal snag: too many interlocked
 iron branches. Too many places for a Gear or otherwise to get this or that
 caught on a twisting section of tree. A certain finesse may be necessary.

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/northernLightsDroneGenerator.php
=Dungeon Conditions: Maim, Exhaust============================================
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    It has been a while since the Outreach has gotten together -- Noeline and Riesenlied have been, in the wake of the events of Macalania, gotten separated from the rest of the group and have been travelling through Aquvy and reconnecting with old friends and, in Riesenlied's case, penpals, who she's never met before.

    Recently, some of the Outreach have reconvened in the Veruni Control Zone town of Honeysday where bandits attacked -- but with the Fereshte missing, and much of the Wayside workforce absent, they've had to recruit local help to shore up their numbers for restoration efforts...

    And that means money!

    Such is the premise for the Dig today -- with the news of a strange iron forest on a scale that dwarfs that of the most towering Drifters, surrounded in the ice and reaching to the heavens and seemingly even the sun.

    *STOOMP STOOMP*

    Riesenlied is mounted onboard a familiar face today--

    "Muni ni!"

    That is to say, a certain Magical-- no! --Munitekal Armour, kind of tiny compared to most gears at a remarkably uniform 12.5 feet much like Big Shal or the Tonberrian, as she presses her hand to her chest uneasily.

    "I sense... something in here... but... what?" Riesenlied shares with the group. "Something is calling..."

    But before they can even go anywhere, the entranceway is the first thing they have to deal with -- for the sprawl has gotten so dense that there's no way to go but... up.

    Muni-Muni chirps, "Muni ni ni!" (tn. Don't worry Riese! I practiced just for this occasion!)

    The Munitekal Armour takes in a BIIIIIIIG breath, and--

    *FWOOMP*

    --gets... gets rotund and full of air enough that she starts... floating upwards...?

    "Muni! You've become so round!" Riesenlied exclaims, full of wonder.

DG: Riesenlied has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Ordinarily, Kaguya would rather specifically avoid the Outreach, for a wide variety of reasons. ...But this isn't exactly ordinary. She agreed to help out on her way out of the area, making use of a Gear she claimed is 'pretty normal' and offering her expertise when it comes to a forest. She--

Okay she basically just invited herself along for her own mysterious purposes, in addition to helping.

Regardless here she is, in a Gear designated Queklain, that fairly obviously to eyes familiar is a salvaged Gear that's been restored and re-outfitted, wide and with very large armoring at the arms, legs, and shoulders, the perfect places to store a whole lot of armaments. The thing is loaded with compartments and all sorts of stuff, and of course, it's in green.

"Definitely taking some samples," Kaguya comments. "A forest of metal... Definitely reads interesting. I'd want to investigate the effects its presence is having on the locality in the ocean..." Kaguya is thoughtful, as Muni chirps, and--

She is not going to say that's adorable. She's not. But she might be thinking it. Instead...

"Here, I've got a booster mix that should soften up some of the outgrowth if I vent it while we're moving. Might wanna turn on your internal air supply for a few minutes, it probably wouldn't get through your hulls anyway but..."

The Modified Gear Queklain sails upward, venting from its exhaust ports a strange green light... and fog.

DG: Kaguya has used her Tool Barium Salt Shaker toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    Noeline has done the unthinkable - she's not automatically riding on board Muni, but instead has contacted some friends at the Thames for assistance, borrowing a Gear of her own for the trip. Unfortunately, it's not so much as Gear as a loading vehicle, little more than a platform with legs and an engine on the back, its cockpit a shell that's practically open to the air.

    But to be honest, that kind of suits Noeline just fine. It lets her stick close enough to Riesenlied to remain in contact with her via their link, it leaves the wind in her face, and it... doesn't have a whole lot of controls for her to mess up. She might know all the technicalities of piloting a Gear, but it's been a very long time since she actually tried it.

    And it gives her a better look at the iron forest and its swirling shapes and twists and turns, watching it go by with a solemn frown on her face and what is briefly a surprisingly stony silence. Her thoughts drift back to a bandit town under assault from liquid metal, and a Hyadean researcher set on growing a place to live. Part of her quietly and desperately hopes that Kalve hasn't done something incredibly foolish. "... well," she lets out a sigh, and nods to Riesenlied. "There's only one way to find out."

    Drawing in another breath of air, she looks up, carefully nudging the simplistic control stick from side to side as she fine-tunes the ascent. Her loaned-out Gear is not the fastest thing in the world, but that does at least work to her advantage here, the slow ascent giving her time to adjust her position carefully. Above her, a small rotund pod zips to and fro, beeping in warning if a branch gets too close - and in one particularly close shave, just taking matters into its own hands and ramming the control stick.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

There's a special guest along for the ride today! Jacqueline might not be an official member of the Wayside Outreach, but she and the Caravan Kinship have worked together with them on plenty of endeavors, so it likely isn't too strange to see her here along with them. She was curious about the strange iron forest that had appeared, and since she had been in the area and heard they were going to investigate asked if she could tag along.

And so, here she is!

"Something is calling... do you think it might be whatever is at the center of all this?" Jacqueline questions. She's safe within the cockpit of her Gear, the CK-01 Jaeger, as they approach the forest. "It reminds me of a similar forest that appeared in Ignas... do you think there's a connection?"

There's one problem, though - the approach is all clogged up, and even with a Gear getting anywhere is difficult. If they tried to go in on foot, they'd be completely out of luck.

"Let's see, maybe if I..." Jacqueline considers. She slots a Crest Graph into a slot on the dashboard. In response, two symbols of Geo light up on the console and, with a gesture of the Jaeger's combat rod, a pillar of earth starts to spring up from the ground. With any luck, it'll punch a hole through the canopy for them to ascend through - or at least make it a little easier.

"...A-ah, what are you doing, exactly?" Jacqueline asks with some concern as Kaguya enacts her own plan. She, of course, immediately shuts off external vents and activates the internal air supply, just in case.

<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


"Ready Avril? Bet we can make it through here and get back before Dean's stomach even starts growling."

Rebecca taps the controls for her viewscreen to zoom in on Riese's position, with her Munitekal Armor. And then FWOOMPF. "Well that's one way to do it."

Flipping a series of switches, she waits for it to announce on the screen as she listens to Jay's speculation. "Could be. Only one way to find out though right?"

>Activating High Speed Resp Circuit. Switching to Manual Control. Sensitivity Maximum.<

Yet before she can act, she bangs down on her Gear's internal air supply, and hastily grabs a mask from her pack. "That's REAL REASSURING - THANKS, KAGUYA!" Does she sound muffled? Maybe it's because she just put on an actual gas mask.

Grasping both handles of the controls, her Gear begins to make a series of leaps into iron branches, involving multiple aerial turns to adjust for landings that seem downright daredevil for the mass of the Gear that she's piloting.

Juking it suddenly so that she lands on one foot, she quickly rebalances so the other Gear's foot will get footing, bounding off before she'd fall on.

And as she goes - she tries to take out her sidearm at certain points - attempting to blast parts of the Branches away to make for easier passage. Purple tracer lined shells smash into the iron growth.

"I'll clear a path for heavier gears! Think you can grapple your way up now Dean?"

She teases - with a hint of a friendly challenge. Then as if remembering something, backpeddles.

"... Um actually - noone push themselves too hard when there's gear-melting toxins in the air!"

THANKS KAGUYA!

DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Acrobatic Piloting toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
DG: Jacqueline Barber has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
DG: Noeline has used her Tool Strife toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Dean hasn't hung out with Riese and Noeline in a while! And it's always great to go on outings with his best friends, Avril and Rebecca. And he's always up for reconnecting with other friends like Kaguya and Jacqueline! ...those two really probably shouldn't be associated together like that. REGARDLESS, the Wayside needs cold hard $$$, and Dean is more than happy to help earn some for the team. Plus it's an excuse for him to ride his Gear (which aren't nearly as cool as Golems but are still pretty neat), which he doesn't do nearly often enough. Plus plus there is a forest of steel to be explored, and that sounds... metal.
    
    "Wowww," he breathes, tilting his Gear's head back so he can get a good view of the trees all the way to the top. "This is so cool!" Cool, and not very accessible, which he realizes when Riese bids ArMouni to float to reach the top. Then it occurs to Dean that there's no way for a Gear to get in normally.
    
    Fortunately, his Gear comes standard-loaded with grappling wires for exactly this sort of situation. "You know it!" he tells Rebecca cheerfully as he fires them, then begins to climb. Hopefully this'll keep him ahead of Kaguya's toxic gas...? However, it's out of a sense of adventure than fear of danger that prompts Dean to add, "Race you guys to the top!"

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Grappling Lines toward his party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    "Hmm, if that is so," she muses, at Rebecca's challenge to her, moments prior to their arrival proper on the site.

    "Then, I shall accept your challenge, Rebecca. We will venture through this place before Dean has a chance to become hungry!"

    Their focus remains on assisting the people of Honeysday, by whatever means they can provide. So far, this means raising funds -- the people need to replace a building after the bandit attack, and other things (like part of a building's facade, and apparently an applecart) were broken.
    And then there's the matter of the fields and barns, burnt by the bandits' Gears. The soil may need remediation, among other things, as well... and new crops need to be planted, the sooner the better.

    Avril may wonder still at the identity of the ones behind the attack -- a plausible culprit had been raised, though precise motive and aim remain mysteries -- but she can wonder while she works to obtain what they need.

    "Oh... that is quite large, is it not?" Avril observes, from within Skadi. The inside of the Gear may remain a comfortable temperature -- this small island is not part of Sielje proper but lands close enough to the region -- but she has also taken the step of 'dressing for the weather'.
    Just in case.

    She blinks once, her gaze flitting towards Riesenlied astride none other than Muni, and hesitates.

    "I feel..." she murmurs, her gaze hooded.

    "I do not... feel anything."

    If it is the Ley that speaks to Riesenlied, should it not speak to her as well? Her awareness of what is yet to happen, at times, must surely stem from the same source. But...
    Or perhaps, it isn't the Ley that reaches out to Riesenlied.

    "Riesenlied, please be careful," she cautions, as they approach the entrance.
    As Muni inflates.

    "There is something that..."

    Not a premonition. Not a sense she has been here before. But a sense of foreboding nontheless.

    She turns her attention, then, over towards Kaguya and-- that Gear.
    Her heartbeat accelerates.

    "You came here in... that?" she begins to hazard, before Kaguya's exhaust ports glow a sickly strange green.
    Here, familiarity (both from immediate experience and not) takes over. Avril hits the big red button in the Skadi marked 'TURBO'. Now is the time to get in front of Kaguya.

    She is aware in the moment afterwards of speed, and a blur of grey glittering metal.

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Turbocharger toward her party's challenge, Into the Glittering Forest.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
=================<* CHALLENGE - Into the Glittering Forest *>=================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Even a Gear could get lost in this place.

 Before you stands an impossibility: an iron forest on an elephantine scale
 in the ice, stretching even now for the heavens and the touch of the sun. Is
 it still growing?

 A problem faces you even before you set foot into the iron forest: there is
 no safe footing below where a Gear can walk. The trees are densely packed at
 the forest floor and only begin to grow and spread as they extend upwards.

 So to get anywhere without hitting a literal iron wall, youll have to go
 upwards too. But this involves a rather literal snag: too many interlocked
 iron branches. Too many places for a Gear or otherwise to get this or that
 caught on a twisting section of tree. A certain finesse may be necessary.

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/northernLightsDroneGenerator.php
=Dungeon Conditions: Maim, Exhaust============================================
===========================<* Jarnvidr - Round 1 *>===========================
===================< Results - Into the Glittering Forest >===================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Turbocharger                        3   Agility Effects: Rally
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Acrobatic Piloting                  2   Agility Effects: Resilient
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Strife                              2   Agility Effects: Stalwart
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Grappling Lines                     2   Agility Effects: Quicken
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              0 --(5)--> 5                   Pass
Barium Salt Shaker                  2   Agility Effects: Cleanse and Sacrifice
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  0 --(20)--> 20                 Pass
Conditions: Exhaust(1)|Maim
Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1)|Resilient(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied 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> Dean Stark has posed.

    When Rebecca and Avril challenge each other to finish exploring the steel forest before he can get hungry, Dean jokes, "I don't think anybody can explore a place THAT fast!"
    
    But that was a bit ago.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    "I'm glad you're with us," Riesenlied shares to Kaguya, just feeling a little glad that no matter what's happened between them, as well as the strained relationships between the Outreach and the Veruni-Guard coalition, that she can spend time with her daughter.

    Kaguya deploys a strange green light! She mentions something about internal air supply, but Muni doesn't have a shelled cockpit!

    It's okay.

    Riesenlied puts on a little face mask, complete with cucco prints on it. Problem solved! (?? Does it work that way ??)

    She admits, she was kind of looking forward to sitting with Noeline, but... they do have a Dig to think about, and Noeline bringing in another Gear, no matter how basic, does help.

    "Let me know if the Gear is acting up, okay?" she says encouragingly, flourishing extra-bright under their link. "Also, you should think of a name for it. Perhaps it can be like... 'Mischief'! To go with Trouble and Strife."

    (riese that's a pizza name)

    Jacqueline slots a Crest Graph and uses the power of Geo to spring earth up, trying to counteract the spread of the metal forest -- and with a *THOOMP*, she succeeds in creating more footholds for the team.

    She mentions a similar forest. "... I remember Kalve was manipulating ferroflora," she shares. "But... this feels different. This feels... older, somehow. And on a much bigger scale..."

    Rebecca speaks on up with her prowess, flipping and hopping up with the Eurydice with seemingly little effort for how huge and heavy the machine is!

    And Dean's along for the ride too, using his grappling wires to lift himself up where Kaguya's softened some of the branches, and Jacqueline and Rebecca both have created footholds and knocked some over.

    "Ah, a race?? No fair, Muni is leisurely," Riesenlied pouts. *woob woob woob* ... the Munitekal Armour is certainly taking her time. Unlike the Skadi, who's NYOOMing ahead!

    Avril mentions she doesn't sense anything -- and tells her to be careful. Riesenlied nods in turn, speaking, "I will keep an eye out... and be careful too."

    Once they get to the top (results of the race to be determined), Riesenlied lets out a relieved breath and smiles. "It has been a while, Dean, Rebecca. I'm so glad we're all together again! And, I brought snacks just in case, Dean..."

DG: Kaguya has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
===================<* CHALLENGE - The Nuts and Bolts of It *>===================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Some 'normal' trees produce fruits and nuts. These trees may be metal, but
 they are a fair enough facsimile of the 'real' thing that one might be
 brought to wonder: would they bear some sort of metal fruit?

 A small spiked metal object falls and lodges in the tree limb upon which you
 tread.

 Above, you can hear a sort of 'gong' sound as higher branches are rattled in
 the wind.

 And then, in the rain, a whole lot of the small spiked objects begin to
 fall, as if they were acorns shook loose by a storm.

 ...Perhaps that's your answer. And now also your problem.
=Dungeon Conditions: Injure===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Just some chemistry! Some of the components in the gas bond with the material in the forest and dull the sharp edges, if I guessed right. Otherwise I just made the air crappy for no reason but it'll dissipate in a little while." Pause. "What?? It's better than being torn up on the approach, right??"

No one appreciates a little mad science these days. But at least there's racing. Kaguya does not join in the races for perhaps obvious reasons, bringing up the rear. But Rebecca's caution makes her--laugh. "It's not that bad," Kaguya says, "Just toxic to humans if you swallow it." As they talk about Dean getting hungry. Well:

Kaguya doesn't address that! Instead as they reach a point at which they can get into the forest, the group starts moving down into more of the trees. "Yeah, metal flora like this makes me think Hyadean, I admit," Kaguya says, as a gentle wind moves through the trees. "And... well, it is kinda nice to be along, mom." The metal cuts the air with a sureness that ordinary leaves cannot,k and so there is a beautifully strange soundd through the trees.

And then GONK. Metal fruit falls. It's pretty, and pretty dangerous.

"Ah, that's not great," Kaguya says, as the rain comes down and gets looser. Kaguya does not deploy more of the strange compound she was using--instead, "Evasive maneuvers!" Pause. "Oh but if any get stuck to your Gears I'll take them as samples!!"

Kaguya mostly steers away from Riesenlied and Noeline so the fruits don't bounce off of her Gear onto the smaller, more exposed targets, but they've all got something to worry about now.

DG: Kaguya has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Jacqueline... doesn't have an answer to that, the idea of it being better than getting torn up. She's not sure there is a proper answer. 'Toxic to humans' sounds pretty bad to her, considering she happens to be a human!

"'Ferroflora'... is that what that was?" Jacqueline questions, as Riesenlied offers some explanation. "But, older... I see. Now I'm even more curious. But, like Rebecca says, only one way to find out!"

A race, though... the Jaeger isn't really cut out for races, either. Its stability and handling is fantastic, but not so much on the speed.

Still, they manage to make it up just fine! Jacqueline can't help but smile as she listens to the family get along. There was no shortage of cute moments around this bunch - but then, she hears something 'thunk'ing to the ground next to her Gear, bringing her back to reality.

"What... are these things? Seeds, maybe? Fruit?" Jacqueline questions. She moves to try and avoid the second wave of them, but it isn't easy. "Are they attacking or, or did we just come at a bad time...?"

DG: Jacqueline Barber has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


Rebecca finds herself in a cheerful mood all the same as they go up, perhaps on Avril's acceptance of her challenge. Though as Dean speaks up, "We can dream Dean!"

The way Avril talks about this place though, Rebecca tries to prompt when she stops, more seriously. "What are you feeling about this place - Avril?"

As Avril charges past though and Dean keeps up the heat despite the warning, she finds herself hastily trying to keep up in the sudden race, despite her earlier warning not to push themselves too hard.

Perhaps the atmosphere is simply that infectious for her...

"It was inevitable we'd see you again Riese." She says, as she tears off her gas mask. "And hey - talking snacks is like saying I lost the challenge already." She teases, before one can hear the sound of her eyes rolling over the radio. "Oh is that all! Nothing for us to worry about then! Hey maybe I should get out and catch it on my tongue like its snow..."

She jabs back sarcastically as her Gear leaps, and then metal fruit falls.

Suddenly Rebecca swivels in mid-air as a single booster rocket turns on, and she fires off a shot that deflects off a fruit falling her way from her Gear's sidearm, landing with a skid on one of the branches as she diverts its trajectory enough that it stops being a direct hit.

Rebecca finds herself in a desperate run of leaping and shooting, trying to cover who she can, but there are too many and she has too few shots at a time.

"Days like today - I can see the appeal of a higher firing rate."

It's mostly grumbling, since she knows she'd trade a lot of stopping power and accuracy for that.

DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Acrobatic Piloting toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    As everyone reaches the top, Dean reflects thoughtfully on Riesenlied's reminder that Kalve was working on ferroflora. He *had* thought that a steel forest seemed familiar, but had been unable to place it. Now that she mentions it, though... "You're right. You don't think he had anything to do with this, though?" He can't really say he can tell a difference between the age of this forest and the age of... the stuff Kalve messes around with. Perhaps that's the effect of youth.
    
    He brightens when Riese mentions snacks, though. "Really?? Awesome! You're the best, Riese!" he enthuses. "'Cuz actually, I'm already getting a little peckish... Kidding! Kidding!" he adds at whatever look and/or quip Rebecca inevitably slings his way. "But okay, Riese, we don't have to race." Since she's right, it's not fair with a ride like Muni.
    
    Dean makes a face at Kaguya's science talk. He can't say he understands what all she's saying either, but at least the 'making air crappy' part gets through. As well as the swallowing part. "Why would you swallow that??" he wonders, because that's honestly the easiest part to unpack.
    
    Thunk. Thunk. Thonk. "What in the--are those chestnuts??" Dean wonders as spiky seed-like pellets start falling. Jay suggests they may be fruit; Dean adds, "Do you think we could eat them?"
    
    (dean no you can't eat metal)
    
    Either way, it's time for evasive maneuvers! ...Good thing Dean still has his grappling line out, because dodging is not really super his thing. He's more the protecting type, which he also tries to do for those less heavily armored, like Riese and Noeline. He might be biting off more than he can chew. "--What d'you mean, you don't feel anything?" he wonders to Avril as he works the Gear's controls.

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Grappling Lines toward his party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    Riesenlied does have, somewhere, a little memo that says 'study up on some chemistry!' in the way she's done some studying of astrology to match her interests to Lydia's. This is probably going to wind up about as useful as her own understanding of the stars, which is entirely cucco-based analogies...

    Before long, several giant-- fruit falls?

    "Hyuu..."

    Riesenlied looks worried all of a sudden. "Muni?"

    Muni's eyes are gleaming.

    "Hyuuuuu...."

    Muni is sniffing! Muni has detected the scent (?) of something tasty!

    "Oh no!"

    *bomf bomf bomf*

    Rather than... attempt to evade or do anything like fire at the incoming fruit, Muni-Muni heads along, mouth open--

    *NOM*

    "Aaah..." Riesenlied sags a little, looking every bit like the owner of a pet who's entirely enamored at something out of her control. "We-- we might be a teensy bit delayed... e-ehehe. That's not what I mean, though, Rebecca! I just mean I brought supplies when we need to take a break."

DG: Riesenlied has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    "I'm not terribly sure I can get into a whole lot of Mischief on this, but I do think it's a good name," Noeline responds with a quiet but pleased laugh to Riesenlied's comment, relieved that the steps Jay created are enough for her loading gear to hop upwards. Between the bright presence of Riesenlied in her thoughts and the very fair point that this forest feels much too old for Kalve to have done it, she feels herself brighten, straightening up a little as she renews her focus, sending an answering pulse of reassurance.

    The trio's attitudes are refreshing as well - she can't help but bark out a brief laugh as Dean and even Avril race forwards, though perhaps for very different reasons, and hums in pleasant contentment as Riesenlied admits it's heartwarming to be alongside Kaguya again. "Is this where we should pepper you with questions, I wonder? Have you been eating right? Staying safe? Have you properly settled down with anyone yet?" she adds, rapidfiring the questions with a slightly toothy smirk.

    "I'm definitely thinking that there must be some sort of core, at least," she muses to Rebecca's suggestion. "Think of it as-- the seeds or bulb of a plant. Somewhere from which this all started. The question is how far down it is, I suppose." Her own worries are briefly reflected in Dean's comment, and she shakes her head after a pause. "Kalve is not the sort of person to do something this wild and unrestrained, I can say that much."

    She jolts her Gear to one side as the first of the seeds thuds against one of the metallic branches next to her with a loud sharp scrape of metal against metal, then flicks her head upwards. She's definitely not made for speed right now, but manages to evade a couple - and when it looks like she can't she simply gives up the controls to Strife, her sword flashing into her hands quick enough to smash the flat of it against the next fruit, sending it off to one side.

DG: Noeline has used her Tool Strife toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Moments before she had charged, in an attempt to evade quite literally eating Kaguya's dust, Rebecca had asked her something important:

    "...Nothing," Avril answers. "I do not feel anything about this forest."

    Now, the Skadi comes to a stop... over a period of a few yards, swerving out of the way of a sudden ('sudden') metal tree trunk that presents itself as it does so.

    "Whew..." Avril breathes, easing up on her grips on the controls for a moment and permitting herself to sag back in her seat, her eyes closed.

    "...Is everyone alright?" she ventures after a moment, reorienting herself with regards to the rest of the group and taking in the strata of forest in which they have found themselves. She catches part of Kaguya's own observations:

    "Oh, I see... yes, I do sense a particular resemblence, " she notes. "Ferroflora... But, it does not seem entirely akin to it, does it?"

    She giggles, when Dean mentions he's getting hungry, the lighter mood at the moment serving her well in contrast to recent events. It's almost a little like those earlier days when they were traveling together, that she had begun to think she could not--

    Something falls from above, wedging in a (metal!) branch with force. "Oh? Do they make fruit, then?" she wonders.

    GONK.

    GONK.

    GONKGONKGONKGONK

    "--Hurry!"

    She hits the smaller-scale thrusters, to both conserve fuel and not plow headlong into the rain of falling spiked objects or, like, a tree trunk, and moves as quickly as the lighter-framed Gear can manage.

    An answer to Dean's question -- similar to Rebecca's earlier -- might have to come at a bit of a delay.

    She notices at a slight remove that while the others are running, Riesenlied seems to be a bit delayed. "--Ah? Muni is...?!"

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Nuts and Bolts of It.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
===================<* CHALLENGE - The Nuts and Bolts of It *>===================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Some 'normal' trees produce fruits and nuts. These trees may be metal, but
 they are a fair enough facsimile of the 'real' thing that one might be
 brought to wonder: would they bear some sort of metal fruit?

 A small spiked metal object falls and lodges in the tree limb upon which you
 tread.

 Above, you can hear a sort of 'gong' sound as higher branches are rattled in
 the wind.

 And then, in the rain, a whole lot of the small spiked objects begin to
 fall, as if they were acorns shook loose by a storm.

 ...Perhaps that's your answer. And now also your problem.
=Dungeon Conditions: Injure===================================================
============================<* Jarnvidr - Round 2 *>============================
=====================< Results - The Nuts and Bolts of It >=====================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Acrobatic Piloting                  2   Agility Effects: Resilient
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Strife                              2   Agility Effects: Stalwart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Grappling Lines                     2   Agility Effects: Quicken
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  20 --(20)--> 40                Pass
Conditions: Injure(2)
Effects: Quicken(1)|Resilient(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied 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> Kaguya has posed.

"Right??? Exactly! Dean gets it!" Is Kaguya's answer to the matter of how bad it is to swallow the toxic chemicals.

Seeds, or fruit? A visual examination on Jay's part suggests the latter, though it's hard to look in any detail while trying to avoid them. Round-ish and covered in spikes, at least Muni might find them tasty. But Jacqueline is able to avoid the second wave through careful maneuvering; Rebecca takes a different approach, not only leaping around but also shooting the fruit out of the air in the first place. Sure, she can't get all of them, but she can get a lot of them.

...But that's just as well because it's sure that Muni would be sad to be denied a few snacks. The ones even vaguely in front of the pair cease to be a problem. "Um... Well, Muni can eat them..."

Dean's protective nature does everyone but particularly the more lightly-armored Riesenlied and Noeline both some good, but so too does Noeline's speed; with the smaller size of her loading machine Gear, a quick sword arm does a lot to keep her safe.

"Aaah, questions," Kaguya counters Noeline. "Yes, no, and no," she answers. "Or well, I was eating pretty well on Lunar anyway. I had a staff who kind of insisted." She pauses. "...I mean, maybe we should talk later, about how some of that all went..."

"Anyway uh--yeah, Avril, it doesn't seem exact at all." And speaking of Avril--her smaller scale thrusters are definitely the right call. The lighter frame makes it easier to avoid them, and so in the end, when the sudden wind passes and the forest grows more still for the moment, the group is intact.

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
=====================<* CHALLENGE - The Name of the Rose *>=====================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 There are flowers here. An odd thing -- one would think that if there /were/
 something that would pollinate a metal flower, it would be higher to the sky
 and not nearly secreted down here in the semi-dark maze of trunks and
 branches.

 Even odder, they appear at regular intervals, in a particular array of
 colors. Is there some deeper meaning to this -- are they some sort of
 strange sign that indicate which way you should be going?

 Or do they reflect something else -- something perhaps more sinister and/or
 misleading?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify, Reckless========================================
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Muni is having a snack, apparently.

    Avril is -- well, she can't quite stop on a dime, but it takes her far, far less time to cut power to the thrusters and slow her pace in order to stop than it did in the wake of the turbo boost before.

    "It seems that we are all unhurt," she notes, come to a stop as the tangled metal braches up here lead inward, and into a yet darker place than before.

    "I... had tried to see if I was able to feel anything, similar to Riesenlied," she explains at last to Dean, her gaze on the screens within as she scans their immediate surroundings for anything out of place. "...But it seems I can sense nothing. Whatever it is that is calling out to her is something that only she can hear," she continues, before heading on along a particularly thick twine of trunks and branches.

    "If we head further and further inwards, perhaps..."

    Like a seed, Noeline had said, moments ago.

    Avril thinks of Muni again, and can only think 'like an onion...'

    "...Oh?"

    There is a pale pink flower here. Metal, by what little light there is here (from their machines and from above). "I wonder whatever might pollinate a metal flower."

    The path diverges after a short time.

    There are two flowers here. pink and a particularly bright green.

    "Two, now... But I wonder why here?"

    Then diverges again, shortly after. Pink, bright green, orange... and a palest yellow.

    "Hmm... I wonder..." Avril muses, considering the paths.

    And considering the language, perhaps, of the flowers.

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    'Kalve is not the sort of person to do something this wild and unrestrained, I can say that much,' Noeline remarks.
    
    Dean makes a face, remembering the time Kalve made a metal vinebush thing that grew so thick and fast that it destroyed a Guardian statue before he and several others could cut said bush down. Still, Noeline knows Kalve better than Dean does--by several centuries, even--so he just replies, if with a certain amount of dubiousness, "Hmm, if you say so." A beat, and he adds, "Who d'you think *did* make it, then? Any ideas?"
    
    Perhaps a bit of bias on Dean's part--but it's hard for even him to imagine that a forest like this could have just sprouted up all on its own.
    
    At least Muni's metal-munching mischief gets a hearty laugh out of him. "Hey, they *are* eatable!" he observes of the rotund dragon. Good thing they aren't racing anymore. Kaguya saying he gets it gets a snort out of him. "That's just common sense!" Of course, arguably so is not spraying metal-corroding material when you're piloting a metal mech, but that, fortunately for everyone, does not occur to Dean.
    
    "I'm fine--are *you* okay?" he asks Avril then. It does look like everyone's okay, at least, which he notes with a smile. He falls silent when Avril explains what she meant earlier, how she was trying to sense... *something*, like how Riese is. "Huh... Is that a bad thing? Or a good thing?"
    
    Nothing for it but to go in further. "Right! Maybe you'll hear something if we get closer!" Dean says encouragingly. "Let's keep going, Avril!"
    
    And further they do go, until they reach colorful metal flowers at intersection after intersection. Others may contemplate how flowers might bloom in a forest of iron; they might ponder the meaning of the colors; they might wonder why the blossoms multiply with every divergence; or any other number of things.
    
    Dean, however, just says, "Ooh, pretty!"
    
    ...Yeah, that's about his only takeaway here. Fortunately, his Gear has smarter programming than he does, and when a flashing light on his dashboard draws his attention and makes him press a corresponding button, a scanner scans the flowers and then begins to analyze them. Hopefully it'll come up with something useful!

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Analysis Scope toward his party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    *urp*

    "Come on, Muni, you have had enough to eat...!" Riesenlied begs, ever the image of a pet owner who is sometimes more led around by the pet because she can't bear to impose too much discipline.

    Muni-Muni bounces upwards and shines just a little bit!

    Muni's Health has increased! (maybe)

    "Mmm..." Riesenlied ruminates on the nature of Avril's lack of being able to sense something. "That is rather unusual for you, is it not? Usually... you would have a 'hunch'." Before she can wonder why that is, though...

    She chuckles a little as Noeline asks the more motherly questions of the team, and mms quietly as Kaguya mentions talking about how some of that all went.

    "I would be open to it," she admits, knowing that eventually they might need to clear the air. A part of her heart feels weary at that, though, knowing they might not be able to skirt around each other forever...

    Noeline mentions a 'seed', a core to the forest. "Perhaps..." Riesenlied says, a little distractedly. "It is... hard to sense what may come. Unlike Fossils, there is a lot more noise."

    Avril arrives first and witnesses the metal flowers, and she comes up soon enough on Muni-Muni as she tromps along.

    Dean ponders who might've made the forest, if not Kalve. It's a good question. "I wonder if we are seeing a remnant from when our people first landed from the stars, a thousand years ago? But... to be honest, it is premature to even say Hyadeans are involved."

    "I will try to sense a path, but... I make no promises."

    Riesenlied draws her breath and puts all her efforts into focusing -- the light of the Dragon's Tear begins to shimmer...

    Can she sense these flowers?

DG: Riesenlied has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"I-I wouldn't try it!" Jacqueline advises quickly, as Dean wonders if they can eat them. She can't tell if he's just joking, or if he would really consider it... but it's better to be safe sometimes.

Thankfully, they manage to endure the shower of fruit without taking too much damage!

"Is everyone alright? Did anyone take any damage?" Jacqueline asks. Thankfully, that seems to be the case. They start to head further in... but, Avril notices something.

"Flowers?" Jacqueline says, taking note of them. Dean comments on how pretty they are, and inside her machine, Jacqueline nods. "...Yeah, they are. They're beautiful - I didn't expect to see anything like this here. The metallic texture - the way the light plays off it serves to help magnify the colors and make them shine..."

Was this a remnant, of when the Hyadeans first arrived...? Did they try to make something beautiful like this? Jacqueline considers this for a moment... and then, reaches for her Gear's manual, flipping through the pages.

Looking at these flowers... it makes her think of Lunata. Maybe she should try and take a recording of them to show her later...

Unfortunately, Jacqueline will be busy with this, so she may not be a direct help - but if she figures it out quickly enough she might be able to offer some helpful advice.

DG: Jacqueline Barber has used her Tool Maintenance Guidebook toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


"Dean don't you dare fib-!" Dean however indicates he's kidding and Rebecca grimaces at how easily she fell for it, "Well whatever - even without a race we'll still beat your stomach."

Rebecca tends to rely on Avril's instincts a great deal. Sure earlier she said she'd felt nothing, but then there was something in her tone... that made her wonder, in how she didn't finish what she was saying, whether something had changed. Even with the explanation shedding light on it. "That's... pretty troubling..."

Rebecca says mildly, but internally she's a lot more worried than she lets on.

"... usually you can sense these things."

Suddenly she wonders if something is trying to manipulate Riese here.

"Well guess we'll have to hope it's more exciting than roots..." Rebecca comments to Noeline, as onward they go.

As metal flowers sprout, suddenly Rebecca finds herself paying attention to the flowers. "Real pretty..." And then Avril's comment...

Slowly Rebecca takes out her poetry journal. And begins jotting something down...

metal bee metal flower

Rebecca pauses, staring at it.

"Maybe..."

She says, without realizing the comms are still on. While it sounds like she might be delivering some great insight, instead it turns out she's trying to make it work.

if I am a metal flower you are my metal bee

"... maybe Metal Demons would think its cute?"

She says to herself in wonder... not really contributing to the challenge other than perhaps confusing everyone on what she's doing inside that Gear of hers.

DG: Rebecca Streisand has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    "You know, it's no fun when you answer so bluntly," grumbles Noeline to Kaguya's just as rapid-fire handling of her questions. "Parents are supposed to make their children's lives hell, last I heard anything about it." She doesn't reply directly to the last part of Kaguya's comment, just offers a quiet nod, feeling her partner's trepidation and her own in kind.

    Noeline does at least recognize that Kalve might not be the most-liked of Hyadeans around, and her response to Dean's question is, initially, a light huff under her breath. "That is a very good question, and I really wish I knew. I do have to admit, it crossed my mind at first, but as Riese and Avril say, it feels too-- old. Perhaps there was something horribly dangerous sealed in a ruin and then the seal broke. That seems to be a Filgaia special."

    For her own part, her examination of the flowers is a little more analytical; her eyes flick from flower to flower as she remembers the colours, checking them against their path. It seems odd to suggest the colours might mark the way, but she can't help but focus on them anyway, wondering if the changing hue might be something to do with the proximity to the core.

    ... never mind that there even being a core is just a supposition right now.

    She snorts at Rebecca's sudden comment, halfway through her deliberation. "... I can only speak for myself, of course, but I feel like roses have already occupied the 'pretty with sharp edges' slot. And this forest feels... too empty and silent," she finds herself saying with a frown. "It's hard to reach cute when I keep thinking that."

DG: Noeline has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"See any metal bees?" Kaguya wonders of pollination. "This is too extensive to think someone is doing it by hand or even by your average machine..." She steps her Gear closer, though, as the path divrges. Then, again... and again. It's...

"They're beautiful," Kaguya mentions, and an attentive ear might hear the sound of something shuttering repeatedly; she's taking images. ...In fact, after a moment, she presses a few buttons on her controls and a hatch on the Gear opens, bringing out a smaller floating machine.

To Noeline she comments as she works the controls, "Haha, I think my other parents covered that one... Besides, blunt is my favorite way of answering!" But she can't say too much, because she feels a certain amoun t of the same trepidation they do in the first place. Or perhaps a different kind.

Regardless she mentions a moment later, "The K-781 Mk. IV Drone! A design of my own. It has a suite of sensory tools and can get much closer than a Gear's clumsy hands." It will perform some analyses, too. Though...

"Hmm. Well, you'd know. I think it's kind of pretty but also kind of eerie. Doesn't have the same heart... So far. I'm keeping an open mind."

DG: Kaguya has used her Tool K-781 Mk. IV Drone toward her party's challenge, The Name of the Rose.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
=====================<* CHALLENGE - The Name of the Rose *>=====================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 1          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 There are flowers here. An odd thing -- one would think that if there /were/
 something that would pollinate a metal flower, it would be higher to the sky
 and not nearly secreted down here in the semi-dark maze of trunks and
 branches.

 Even odder, they appear at regular intervals, in a particular array of
 colors. Is there some deeper meaning to this -- are they some sort of
 strange sign that indicate which way you should be going?

 Or do they reflect something else -- something perhaps more sinister and/or
 misleading?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify, Reckless========================================
============================<* Jarnvidr - Round 3 *>============================
=======================< Results - The Name of the Rose >=======================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Maintenance Guidebook               1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Analysis Scope                      1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
K-781 Mk. IV Drone                  2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  40 --(20)--> 60                Pass
Conditions: Injure(1)|Reckless(2)|Stupify(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied 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> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    "A lot more noise... hm," Avril echoes, pensive now within the cockpit of the Skadi. "I wonder why that would be?"

    'Usually you can sense these things.'

    "Yes," she answers. "Yes, usually I can... but it is as if I am blindfolded. Nothing feels..."

    Familiar, the way most things feel familiar.

    Dean's scanning system picks up something interesting about the flowers: they're mobile. That is, they shift nearly imperceptively in spite of there being no wind or outside mechanism involved. Like they're alive -- well, alive like an animal, perhaps, instead of alive like a plant might be.

    If these are metal flowers, what pollinates them?

    Rebecca may, if she watches, get a chance to witness something similar soon at hand.

%R
    As Kaguya's drone approaches the pink one--

    Anthers shoot out of the flower, attempting to snare it!
    It's the same story for the others.

    And Riesenlied, with the spiritual eyes provided to her by the Tear...

    They feel...
    ...like living metal. Like kin to it, at the least -- like metal beasts, if far more alien even than those lifeforms.

    There is no mind here. They are restless. They stir, as if agitated, then settle into an equally uncomfortable torpor once the drone passes them.

    "Perhaps," Avril ventures, taking into consideration in particular Noeline's statement, "we should consider giving them some distance."

    If the path here diverges before them in the forest, perhaps they should take the road less flowered*.

    But once she finds out how the Gear takes images, at least, Jacqueline will be able to get some good pictures after adjusting for the light.

    (*I am so sorry)

DG: Dean Stark has drawn a new Challenge.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
======================<* CHALLENGE - A Puzzle of Flesh *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Most of the forest at the very least superficially resembles a natural
 woodland and behaves much like it too, if without much of the rest of the
 ecosystem that went with it. Consider if you will a forest that was only the
 trees, and made of metal.

 The metallic branch you are on now and twining oddly inwards is steadily
 becoming less and less branch-like. It flattens out, turns in time into a
 tunnel, line with silvery vines that become increasingly vein-like as you
 progress.

 The walls, you may realize after a time, /pulse/. The confines of the
 'catacombs' you have guided your machine into have become undeniably akin to
 metallic flesh and riddled with those silvery vein-like vines. The 'path'
 continues to twist onward and inwards blindly, ahead.

 Much like a living being, the confines you are now in do not sit still. How
 will you find your way through?
=Dungeon Conditions: Reckless, Bad Luck=======================================
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    "Muni already ate them all anyway," Dean tells Jay, further muddling whether or not he was joking about eating those metal chestnuts. It's just as well that he won't be doing that.
    
    To Rebecca, he laughs. It's not often he gets her like that! ...Not that he was trying to get her get her, but--either way. "We'll see about that!" At least if he *does* get hungry, there are the aforementioned snax.
    
    Dean doesn't... *dis*like Kalve, exactly? He recognizes that he's not a bad guy, not really. He's just not so sure that this is something Kalve wouldn't do. That being said: "Yeah, that seems pretty likely," he says of the Filgaia special. Though Riese's suggestion that this may be a remnant of when the Hyadeans first came to Filgaia seems like a pretty solid theory, too.
    
    When Noeline later remarks that the forest is too empty and silent, though, Dean pauses, then looks up and around. He hadn't really noticed at first due to being inside his Gear, but again now that it's been mentioned-- "Hey, yeah, you're right. There's nothing *but* these big metal trees," he observes. A laugh at Kaguya's question, and he adds, "Definitely no metal bees!"
    
    Avril remarks that she feels like she's blindfolded, that nothing at all is familiar. "Are you okay?" Dean wonders in concern. "Hopefully it's no big deal." And if it *is* a big deal, hopefully it's something they can handle.
    
    That aside, when the scanner comes back with its results, it shows that the flowers are moving. "Huh. That's weird," Dean remarks. "My Gear's scanners are saying the flowers are kinda... twitching on their own?"
    
    Not just the flowers, but the branches themselves as the group moves on and deeper in. First nearly imperceptible, then with greater and greater fluctuations until the veins of the vines are writhing, turning the branching paths into a labyrinth. Just traversing them won't be enough, either. Dean grits his teeth amidst all this metal from within his Gear, which once again sends out its scanning light to analyze the twisting, turning paths. "It's moving... but how do we stop it?!"

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Analysis Scope toward his party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    Riesenlied hears Avril speak of how it feels like she doesn't feel anything, like she is blindfolded. "... let me know if it gets to be too much, okay?"

    Noeline and Kaguya speaks a little back and forth, chuckling softly as she says, "I know a little about that." A pause, "Ah, not literally. But father was a worrywart deep down, in that sense, back then..."

    She doesn't let herself drift into memories, because yelps as she suddenly feels an influx of movement through her senses, and is forced to disrupt her own concentration that she might not be overwhelmed.

    "Dean?" she gasps, as he mentions how the scanner is saying the flowers are twitching.

    Riesenlied's breaths get a little more audible and strained as her focus takes up a lot of her power -- Muni is whining quietly as she remains still, so that she at least doesn't rock her rider.

    "It is living metal... or... perhaps -- something very similar," Riesenlied admits not knowing fully. "They are more like Metal Beasts, but... even more unusual to me than the usual kind. But--"

    She breathes a little harder.

    "... I will try to use more power."

    The Hyadean focuses further, her palms pressed gently to either side of the Tear and the Medium grafted at her neck as she makes it shine softly.

    "Oh indefatigable life effulgent...
     Bring forth the flow of the world!
     I call upon your name now,
     as Heritor of our tribe..."

    She strains further, but-- holds her hand up as she calls--

    "Material!"

    There is a spark, little at first, but *ERUPTING* large as something that some people may not have seen since the horrible days at the Photosphere occurs.

    "Odoryuk!"

    Data cubes blink into existence, and the blue, almost disrupted holographic image of Odoryuk, the Life Guardian, comes to life as he shines a light upon the writhing labyrinth!

DG: Riesenlied has used her Tool Heritor's Regalia toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    "No, it is not..." Avril hesitates, as if thinking how to describe it. "It is not... difficult. Merely strange." The background buzz of awareness -- of familiarity -- that she usually possesses is completely absent. It feels like she is flying solo, for the first time in...

    Avril hesitates again, deeply uneasy without having the knowledge to really know why.

    "Perhaps, if this place is truly composed of living metal, it resonates best for you and not for me?"

    It is the best explanation she can manage. The alternative, right now--

    Is no explanation whatsoever, the worst possible option.

    And it is hard to deny that this place in which they now roam is strange.

    Is... alive.

    Which only becomes more apparent the deeper they go.

    "Dean...?" Avril ventures. "Rebecca? ...Riesenlied? The vines are..."

    They're moving.

    The branches, perhaps the trunks, maybe even the whole of the forest is now twisting about them, a slow churn and writhe that makes it hard to know where they should go, which way they should turn.

    Riesenlied calls upon the Guardians, for the first time in so long--
    Avril's heart, or so it feels to her, feels stuck in her throat.

    At an utter loss -- a raw fear gripping her now that she has never (before?) felt -- she draws forth her own Medium, and, bowing her head and clasping her hands above it...

    Prays to the Guardian Lucadia.

    "Please... help us find our way..."

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Within the cockpit, Jacqueline beams. She got some good pictures! She'll be pleased with this for a while.

Noeline comments on the emptiness and silence of the forest... but before Jacqueline can say anything, it's almost as if the forest itself begins to come alive.

It starts to move and shift about in an unsettling fashion. It's unsettling to look at, too - she decides not to take any pictures of this part. But if the sight wasn't bad enough, the way it undulates certainly doesn't help - especially when it comes to moving forward.

"Th-this is making me feel a little ill..." Jacqueline comments with a shudder. She pauses, though, thinking quickly - she picks up her manual again and flips through the pages. She adjusts some settings on her dashboard... and then sighs, as the ill feeling slowly starts to subside. "I'd recommend re-tuning your stabilizers... it'll help you keep your footing while the forest is fighting against us. And it'll help deal with the nausea, too."

DG: Jacqueline Barber has used her Tool Maintenance Guidebook toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    Noeline makes an audible hiss between her teeth when the flowers first reveal that they're quite animate and apparently hungry; she was nearly making for one of them at the time for a closer look, but is very quick to veer away from it before anything unpleasant can happen to her, muttering something indistinct under her breath about her choice of Gear.

    In a way, from that, she's already ready to expect the worst. But the worst becomes even more terrible than she expected when the forest shifts and warps further in. The idea that it might form a structure makes some amount of sense to her, but the thought that that structure might be alive, pulsing and writhing, is not one she'd thought could happen in the midst of the silent forest.

    "Yes, yes," she mutters - apparently to herself, sounding rather aggrieved. "Me and my big mouth, I am perfectly aware, thank you." Her Gear seems to be fine, but there's a persistent and mildly panicked fear that there's every chance the plant life or even the floors and walls they're near could start eating into the metal of their Gears... or worse, in the case of the Hyadeans.

    And that thought, and the burst of light from Riesenlied's Material summon, makes her desperately wish she were sat on board Muni next to Riese right now.

    Instead, she wrenches her controls to one side, pulling herself towards the centre of the passageway, forcing herself to slow down and watch the movement of the walls for any indications or changes that the rest of the group's efforts might be having.

DG: Noeline has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


Rebecca jolts at Noeline's comment, "Ahaha... haha... yeah - what was I thinking? Definitely..."

That doesn't stop her though. Rebecca draws little hearts on her page around the words.

"...not cute."

Little flowers and little bees too, buzz buzz. You know they're metal by the shiny lines she draws by them.

"Like a new experience?" Rebecca prompts Avril, as if trying to figure out what this 'strangeness' is like for her.

"Your Gear's scanners...?" Rebecca takes notice at Dean's remark. There are times Rebecca regrets that the Thames crew helped her upgrade her targetting computers at the expense of the scanners. This right now is one of them.

And then Avril points further to more than the vines...

"So they're moving. Great. So either an attack is coming or the path is..."

Rebecca wants to simply say that they should just blast a path through, but it being alive, it moving - rather puts it into perspectives.

"...shifting."

Rebecca finds herself finding a strange moment of piety in Riesenlied's show of power followed by Avril. To her the Guardians on this journey have been mostly about what they could do for her - for them. Tools.

Sometimes she considers them more.

Right now lost in a path of living metal is one of those times.

"Give her this. Please..."

Rebecca finds herself mumbling to herself, as they try to guide themselves about.

DG: Rebecca Streisand has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Rude," kaguya comments on the flower trying to ensnare her drone. "But that explains how they get sustenance down here under all that cover, too. It's interesting." Kaguya will reclaim her drone in short order, though she pauses after that as she thinks. "That's a good point, Dean. You'd expect more, but there's none of the associated ecosystem here."

Kaguya considers the 'blondfolded' way Avril has described it, as the others check in on her and caution her. "I wonder," she says, "What that means." She says it quietly, though; she may not entirely realize she has the comms on as she does.

"Moving? Okay yeah, Dean. Gonna try the drone again, with these surroundings I think we need all the information we can get." Kaguya deploys the adorable (she'd call it adorable) K-drone once again, this time to take tiny samples of the 'flesh' where it can as well as images and temperature data. She is not calling this 'interesting' unlike the last point, though--not in the first place, and not after she makes a vague discomfited noise at the brilliant light of Odoryuk shines.

"It would make sense for living metal to resonante more with Riesenlied than Avril," Kaguya admits, "But for nausea... Don't worry, Jay. If goes badly, we have more than enough firepower to bust out of here, worst case. Though we'd want to skip anything too explosive in here."

On her monitor, she keeps Noeline in particular in-window as much as is possible, considering her quiet. Just in case. She has thought of how this could go wrong, too. Much, it seems, as Rebecca did...

She says nothing about the Guardians one way or the other, though. Not here and now.

DG: Kaguya has used her Tool K-781 Mk. IV Drone toward her party's challenge, A Puzzle of Flesh.
=================================<* Jarnvidr *>=================================
======================<* CHALLENGE - A Puzzle of Flesh *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Most of the forest at the very least superficially resembles a natural
 woodland and behaves much like it too, if without much of the rest of the
 ecosystem that went with it. Consider if you will a forest that was only the
 trees, and made of metal.

 The metallic branch you are on now and twining oddly inwards is steadily
 becoming less and less branch-like. It flattens out, turns in time into a
 tunnel, line with silvery vines that become increasingly vein-like as you
 progress.

 The walls, you may realize after a time, /pulse/. The confines of the
 'catacombs' you have guided your machine into have become undeniably akin to
 metallic flesh and riddled with those silvery vein-like vines. The 'path'
 continues to twist onward and inwards blindly, ahead.

 Much like a living being, the confines you are now in do not sit still. How
 will you find your way through?
=Dungeon Conditions: Reckless, Bad Luck=======================================
============================<* Jarnvidr - Round 4 *>============================
========================< Results - A Puzzle of Flesh >=========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Maintenance Guidebook               1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Heritor's Regalia                   3   Wits    Effects: Rally
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             5 --(5)--> 10                  Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
Analysis Scope                      1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              5 --(0)--> 5                   Pass
K-781 Mk. IV Drone                  2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  60 --(20)--> 80                Pass
Conditions: Bad Luck(2)|Reckless(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied 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> Dean Stark has posed.

    The walls shiver and quiver. The closer and longer Dean looks at them, the more it looks like... like *skin*. But that can't be. Right? It's a forest, and moreover, it's made of metal. It *can't* be flesh. Right??
    
    It's a good thing Dean doesn't scare easily because this is honestly pretty freaky.
    
    "...Right!" Dean says to Kaguya, as if he understood what an ecosystem was. Rebecca remarks on the movement itself, and he replies, "Yeah, that's weird, right?" Then: "More unusual than usual?" Dean echoes to Riesenlied. "I don't get it. What does that mean?" A pause as her breathing grows more strained and shallow. "Hey, don't push yourself, all right? You don't have to answer if concentrating is putting you out..."
    
    So naturally Riese, fatigued as she is, uses more power and summons the Guardian of Life to shine light on this skinful maze. But then, who better than Life to make sense of life? Avril, too, prays to Lucadia--and if Odoryuk takes offense to the presence of the once and future Veruni Queen, they're courteous enough to not comment on it as they shine, Lucadia's light adding to the mix. Jay gives good advice to those who might be sickened in a more physical way by the undulating maze, Noeline mutters to herself about her big mouth while slowing down to try to observe the maze's movements, Rebecca also mumbles to herself as she follows suit through the twists, and Kaguya sends out the drones to gather more information. Between all of them, they soon manage to navigate through the veiny walls until they make it out of that part of the labyrinth.
    
    "*That* sure was creepy," Dean remarks once they're at the other side. Of course, what greets them once they make it that far might not be much better...

DG: Noeline has drawn a new Challenge.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
========================<* CHALLENGE - Suffocation *>=========================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 3          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Where are you?

 Everything has gone dark.

 You can't see anymore -- no light filters and shines through the gaps in the
 metal trees. Even any sensors you have go wild, reporting impossible
 coordinates or looping your last known degrees of position.

 Any lights you have fail to return anything except the dulled shine of the
 trees around you, engulfing you. There is nothing else here.

 Except the sound you can hear, droning and incessant. Unrelenting. Empty.

 As your surroundings bear down upon you.

 You need to get out of here.

 Even if it means you're going to have to tear your way out of here.

 You need to get out of here!

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/oblivionSoundscapeGenerator.php

 (OOC: The GM for this round may want to wait for the next card draw before
 resolving!)
=Dungeon Conditions: Overwhelm================================================
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    Noeline is visibly on edge throughout the labyrinth, her body stock-still as she maneuvers the Gear through the pulsing, living labyrinth. It isn't until they finally emerge into a brief period of open air that she allows herself enough the chance to straighten up and relax - but even then she's obviously still tensed, her Gear hovering close to Muni and Riesenlied out of both an overriding concern and sheer habit.

    It's not that she doesn't believe Dean and share in his relief - but she has a distinct feeling that the forest isn't going to let them go so easily, and history has taught her to trust in those instincts when they warn her to prepare for the worst. Her tongue is thick in her throat as she swallows, because a single look around the clearing they've emerged into proves those suspicions right.

    It is a sphere of space, and what few ways out are rapidly closing as growth covers them, the light dwindling away with it. More and more branches slither across the walls of the enclosure in the gloom, tightening around the walls to bind them more thickly and reducing the space within to pitch blackness. What few sounds there were - the wind whistling through the trees and the thrum of Gear engines - start to give way as their surroundings become more oppressive and distant, a sea of emptiness filled with a constant, unrelenting, sussurating sound.

    Noeline grits her teeth hard enough to grind her fang against her lip. Disoriented, she reaches for her link to Riesenlied, the feel of it much too thin and reedy all of a sudden; that makes fear leap into her throat, and it's only with a distinct effort that she forcibly takes a hold of it and tries her best to shove it back down. There are too many raw memories and fears here - of loss and regret and a frantic, panicked dive into a poor girl's mind as the battle of the Photosphere rages around her.

    That brings her back, and her eyes flash in the darkness as she grabs hold of the power tucked at the back of her mind, letting out a low roar as she pulls from it as hard as she can. "--I have faced down a hell of a lot more than a bunch of hungry trees!" she yells in what she hopes dearly is not hopeless defiance, the shape of the darkness twisting around her as she brings Duras Drum's power to bear in an attempt to tear the shadow apart.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    "I--I am sorry, Dean," Riesenlied murmurs, remembering of all things a conversation with Ragnell a long time ago about the difference between saying she'll try to not overdo things and actually doing it. "I thought it would be the best thing to do right now..."

    Does it, perhaps, bother her that her Material summoning still feels so fraught and-- synthetic? Like there is still a difference between the world and herself she cannot quite bridge...

    But eventually. Eventually, Odoryuk once said to her. We can overcome these differences.

    Fortunately, it isn't just her -- Avril gathers the power of Lucadia as well. She glances to Kaguya for a moment and murmurs a, "Sorry... I know how you feel," as such a thought is still at the forefront of her mind.

    But she's not the only one with fear in her heart -- she senses Noeline's disorientation and fear as well, as well as what she's feeling -- that dive to the heart, so long ago.

    (destati)

    "Not this time... Noeline!" Riesenlied wearily exclaims. "We will do it together this time."

    She doesn't have enough power for a second summoning, and should not, more imperatively -- but she can do what she can... without having to tax herself!

    ...

    ...

    And that, apparently, is to shine a light--

    (BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t072_mGWUc4 )

    --by equipping the construction helmet with a flashlight that she's gotten so fond of?!?! It's bright yellow and has the words SUPER NEWBIE in plump rainbow font on it.

    ...

    This is supposed to be a dramatic moment, Riese...!

DG: Riesenlied has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

There is a brief reprieve from the labyrinth of living flesh. In many ways, it's like the calm before the storm as, suddenly, they're surrounded on all sides. The forest itself closes in on them, chasing out all external light and leaving them hopelessly trapped and lost. The only light remaining is that of their instruments in their cockpits - even as their system start to go berserk. Even sound begins to disappear.

It'd be pretty easy to lose one's mind here. It's... frightening, in a way their previous experience wasn't. Jacqueline takes a deep breath. She pauses, gathering herself.

"...It's alright, everyone. We're here - together. We'll get through this, as long as we stick together." Jacqueline says, trying to reassure them all. "Stay strong, okay!"

She can't really see or hear it, but from Noeline's words, she has an idea of what she's trying to do. Namely, break the hell out. Right now... that seems like a pretty good. It takes some fumbling with the controls, but Jacqueline draws the Jaeger's sidearm.

"Watch out, I'm firing!" She warns, before taking aim and firing. Her Breaker Shells, as the name implies, are specially made to break things - will they help to break them out of here, too?

DG: Jacqueline Barber has used her Tool Breaker Shells toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Maybe it's some resonance between the Mediums. Maybe it's just the simple act of reaching out to a higher power, whether or not they may listen or even answer.

    But Avril's uneasy heart is somewhat becalmed; she takes a breath and straightens in the pilot's seat.

    And continues on, into the unknown.

    It's strange. It doesn't 'feel' as if something is amiss as it usually is for her. Like an awareness, like a muscle memory.
    It feels that something is amiss on a deep and physiological level. Like something's amiss.

    Like something is working against them here.

    Like something--

    "Ah--"

    Everything goes dark. Reflex kicks on; Avril reaches out to click on the Gear's external lights.

    It's completely enclosed here. They've become entombed. For a moment, all she can feel is that awful raw sick feeling, of being lost, and trapped, and...

    "..."

    "...No. We cannot give up!" she shouts, as much to herself as to the place that now entraps them. She reaches out to touch the panel on the dashboard, the one with the magical array inscribed upon it.

    "Jacqueline! I, too, am firing!"

    Perhaps 'icing', if it weren't a word for something else altogether, might be the better choice of term.

    Glittering arrays of ice crystals erupt outwards in a semi-snaking line for the nearest wall she can reach, her magic made monumental through the spell converter.

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Magic Converter toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Don't worry about it," Kaguya transmits to Riesenlied.

It was creepy. Now it is creepy. In the open air, such as it is, Kaguya lets her thrusters keep her in place and looks through her monitors, checking the cameras in various directions and seeing the same darkness. Growth covering the ways out, reducing the space--Kaguya had just spoken of trying to bust her way out, but being faced with it gives her pause. She doesn't like it.

"...Right!" Kaguya answers on the heels of Jay firing. "Should've brought bigger bombs..."

Rather than drawing forth anything particularly awful, Kaguya concentrates. Something not quite Ether blooms in the air around her Gear, and the temperatures drop--

As Kaguya channels raw icy power through her Gear's fists, throwing blast after blast of killing frost towards the point at which Jay is firing. It is not so massive as Avril's ice--but it reinforces it almost too well.

DG: Kaguya has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


If Riese wants to push herself when she's tired, Rebecca isn't going to gainsay her. The way she sees it its... the adult thing to do. To push past exhaustion to get the job done.

Then...

A primal feeling overtakes her. A sudden fear. Like that of the monster under the bed. The creature in the dark. The shadow crossing your vision out of your periphery - before it's gone.

Then it becomes moreso, the walls closing in. The room getting smaller. The air smothering.

That realization that they needed to go. To run. To...

"Out of our way."

Rebecca says, as she slams her hand down on her Artificial Medium, that's loaded into the Amplifier.

She's not a little girl anymore. She's willed herself not to cry in so many times when she's felt like she needed to, because she's trying to be the adult in the room. And she'll be damned if she's going to cry now.

It begins to shine immediately. As her Gear draws its sidearm. Holding it out - as energy gathers from various points from around the Eurydice, streaming out of the Gear from various points, before joining again in mid-air, right in front of the barrel of her Gear's gun. Into a pulsating orb, with a runic ring that forms in front of it of coruscating, alternating violet and blue.

"I'll go next Avril - Firing!" She joins in the chorus, "JUDGEMENT RAY!"

As her Gear thumbs the trigger, the sphere collapses into a riotous column of Magical Energy that smashes into whatever bars our way.

DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Medium Amplifier toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
DG: Noeline has used her Tool Trouble toward her party's challenge, Suffocation.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    "Hey, you don't have to apologize. Summoning Odoryuk wasn't a bad idea at all!" Dean tells Riesenlied bracingly, because he's a softer touch than Ragnell by far. "As long as you're not pushing yourself past your limits. And hey, even if you do, we're all here to look out for you and watch your back!" ...by far.
    
    Unfortunately, though, while Dean and company might be done with the labyrinth, the labyrinth is not done with them. Just when it seems like they've made it to the exit, the trees close in overhead and envelope everyone in darkness. "What the--?!" he utters, looking around. Thankfully, Riese shines another light in the darkness--it's rainbow-colored, too!--while Noeline roars her defiance, and while she might still have fear in her heart, Dean is too hotblooded for that. Jay's reassurances get a firm nod as well. "Yeah!! We're not getting trapped here, you dumb roots! Or whatever!"
    
    Jay and Avril fire into the darkness, and Kaguya and Rebecca pour on the firepower in turn. "Right behind you guys!" Dean calls. "Let's give this everything we've got!" *Cachink, cachunk*, go the Gear controls, and Nimrod's left hand transforms into a drill, which begins to spin with a great, whining whirrrr.
    
    "Take this! MEGA! DRILL! BREAKERRRRR!!!" he roars as he thrusts that drill into the closest metal wall. They will pierce through this strange underground, clear to the heavens!!

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Drill Fist toward his party's challenge, Suffocation.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
========================<* CHALLENGE - Suffocation *>=========================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 3          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Where are you?

 Everything has gone dark.

 You can't see anymore -- no light filters and shines through the gaps in the
 metal trees. Even any sensors you have go wild, reporting impossible
 coordinates or looping your last known degrees of position.

 Any lights you have fail to return anything except the dulled shine of the
 trees around you, engulfing you. There is nothing else here.

 Except the sound you can hear, droning and incessant. Unrelenting. Empty.

 As your surroundings bear down upon you.

 You need to get out of here.

 Even if it means you're going to have to tear your way out of here.

 You need to get out of here!

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/oblivionSoundscapeGenerator.php

 (OOC: The GM for this round may want to wait for the next card draw before
 resolving!)
=Dungeon Conditions: Overwhelm================================================
===========================<* Jarnvidr - Round 5 *>===========================
==========================< Results - Suffocation >===========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    5 --(5)--> 10                  Pass
Magic Converter                     2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   5 --(5)--> 10                  Pass
Medium Amplifier                    2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   5 --(5)--> 10                  Pass
Breaker Shells                      2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          5 --(5)--> 10                  Pass
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Trouble                             2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          5 --(5)--> 10                  Pass
Drill Fist                          3   Brute   Effects: Rally
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              5 --(10)--> 15                 Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  80 --(0)--> 80                 Pass
Conditions: Overwhelm|Reckless(1)
Effects: Strengthen(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied 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: Riesenlied has drawn a new Challenge.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
===================<* CHALLENGE - Reaching for the Light *>===================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 You can see a light, as if seen through an assortment of branches.
 Glimmering in the distance in the darkness above you, it seems nearly an
 illusion.

 But it is there.

 The forest presses in around you, threatening to trap you a second time in a
 tomb of metal.

 Persevere, then!
 Break through what stands before you!

 The light awaits.

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/twilightSoundscapeGenerator.php
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    In her heart, Riesenlied can well sense Noeline's fears... but also, how infectious that drive of hers is -- that roaring defiance as Duras Drum's power channels through her Adept-style, and the flames of illusion wick away at the darkness.

    Jacqueline locks and loads! She's got her Breaker Shells, and indeed, those do really good at breaking things!

    Avril follows up, where Jacqueline uses force, with ice -- crystals that shatter to the wall and weaken it; and Kaguya, too, brings on the ice as she couples that with the once and future leader of the Veruni's.

    Then comes judgement...

    ... a judgement that is coupled with a drill that can stand tall and shake the heavens. (What? It's supposed to be 'pierce the heavens'? Xenogears is a theme here, not that other one!)

    They shatter through--

    And the forest *ROILS* hard and threatens to trap them a second time.

    "Not enough, but..." Riesenlied breathes hard. "You are right. We are not alone! And that also means... Muni-Muni!"

    She closes her eyes as she gathers power and channels it through to Muni-Muni, who opens her maw with an indefatigable wellspring of light. There's a *THROOM* noise and...

    "Munitek Missile!!"

    The Dragon lets loose with a singular bolt launched with devastating (and munitekal) force.

DG: Riesenlied has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

They work together, and break through!!

"Good work, everyone, let's-" Jacqueline pauses, watching as the forest rises up around them, trying to trap them once more. "Well... I hope you all still have some energy left over - it looks like the forest is asking for an encore!"

Jacqueline watches as Riesenlied channels power to Muni-Muni, who releases it in a great beam of light that can't be darkened - certainly not by a place like this.

"I'll have to give it my all this time..." She says. She inserts another Crest Graph into her dashboard, this time lighting the console up with a pair of Fray symbols.

The Jaeger draws its combat rod, red lines starting to run up the sides before sending a gout of flame forward with a gesture to heat up the living metal that's looking to consume them.

"And then...!" Jacqueline says, taking aim and firing once more at the spot that's glowing red!

DG: Jacqueline Barber has used her Tool Breaker Shells toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.

    It's fair to say that Noeline's mind positively claws for Riesenleid's presence, at least until she's secure that the other woman is alright and at her side. Her defiance and drive might be stronger than Riesenlied's at times, but it could be said that her foundation is a little more shaky - at least, at times such as these.

    But once she's found Riesenlied's presence, it's as if a switch is flipped; she manages to catch a hold of the darkness around them in a way she hadn't before, tearing it aside and asunder as if it were a physical thing. Setting her jaw, she draws in a shaky but relieved breath, and pulls her power around her once more in the wake of her assault, this time focusing on their link - channeling what she can to Riesenlied, and with it to Muni in turn.

    "I am going to have to thank the Thames for this hunk of junk, but-- something with a half decent weapon would have been nice," she mutters as she once more leaves the controls up to her pods. Her sword, when she brings it to hand, flickers with the shifting half-light of Duras Drum - and while she cannot match the magnificence of Muni's ray or the other attacks, she can at least bring the rest of her strength to bear, sweeping lines of force in the air that explode upwards.

DG: Noeline has used her Tool Trouble toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Her hand is still on the panel on the dashboard as the metallic trees' enclosure breaks, revealing a still too-distant light, shining above them.

    She doesn't move a muscle, still gazing up at the light above.

    Some 'life' in the forest reacts, perhaps -- it snakes forth about them to attempt to lock them deep into the darkness and oblivion within, once more.

    "No," Avril says to the iron wood.

    "You may not."

    Her fingers splay out along the glyph on the dashboard; Avril draws a breath.

    "Everyone, let us do it once more, together!" she calls, and in this moment--

    It's as if the uncertainity that has plagued her in this place has vanished. No, not because she has somehow been able to regain her 'sense' about this place.

    Because she has found a course of action in which she can be certain.

    Icy mist fills the air around her Gear, bits and pieces of it coalescing into hardened spikes that let fly like missles for whatever trailing edges of the forest seek to trap them.

DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Magic Converter toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Yeah no, do what you gotta do," Kaguya says of summoning.

As they all work together, though, Kaguya works to do the same. With the ice she's using not quite up to it, Kaguya decides to take a more direct approach. One pauldron rotates in order to allow a large weapon to emerge and fold downward, locking into place shortly after. It's a cannon of some kind, apparently, one that glows green as it first takes in lights--

And then starts firing pulse after pulse of green energy for the spot glowing red.

"I can put some guns on it!" Kaguya volunteers for Noeline as she mutters, because of course she hears that. She keeps firing in the meantime, each blast lighting more of the shadow.

...If Kaguya happens to be focusing on the part of her screen including readings from other Gears, though, that's obviously for good and normal reasons.

DG: Kaguya has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.


Rebecca's Artificial Medium glows brightly enough that she's worried it or the Amplifier might overheat.

(IS THAT A THING MEDIUMS CAN DO? FIND OUT LATER.)

"Come on - come on..." Rebecca says, as she flips a few switches to try to vent some of the excess heat out of the amplifier. Which releases it in a cloud of steam and bled off energy.

The moment passes though.

And the light peeks through.

But as she watches Muni launch a missile with devastating force.

If Riese can power through, then so can she. She tells herself, as she puts her hand back on her Medium and feels out the Leylines.

And the Leyline they're on is...

"Once more it is then. We can rest when the job is done." She answers Avril, as the Amplifier on her Gear begins to glow again with a bright intensity, "... NETHERBLAST!"

Hexagonal energy rises up around her Gear, in a flare of boiling energy before...

Purple flame erupts around the the edge of the forest that keeps them in in a mass that looks alive, the flames leaping up then descending back down as if she'd opened a portal to some Underworld.

DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Medium Amplifier toward her party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Dean Hard 2: Dean Harder.
    
    "RRRRAAAAAAWWWRRRGGHH!!!"
    
    The drill pierces and/or shakes towards the light...!!

DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Drill Fist toward his party's challenge, Reaching for the Light.
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
===================<* CHALLENGE - Reaching for the Light *>===================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 You can see a light, as if seen through an assortment of branches.
 Glimmering in the distance in the darkness above you, it seems nearly an
 illusion.

 But it is there.

 The forest presses in around you, threatening to trap you a second time in a
 tomb of metal.

 Persevere, then!
 Break through what stands before you!

 The light awaits.

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/twilightSoundscapeGenerator.php
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
===========================<* Jarnvidr - Round 6 *>===========================
=====================< Results - Reaching for the Light >=====================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur                    10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Magic Converter                     2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand                   10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Medium Amplifier                    2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacqueline Barber                   10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Breaker Shells                      2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied                          10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noeline                             15 --(5)--> 20                 Pass
Trouble                             2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark                          10 --(5)--> 15                 Pass
Drill Fist                          3   Brute   Effects: Rally
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaguya                              15 --(10)--> 25                Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied                  80 --(35)--> 115               Pass
Conditions: Overwhelm|Weaken(2)
Effects: Strengthen(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: You have overcome the dungeon's trials! This run is a success!
DG: The party led by Riesenlied has successfully explored Jarnvidr!
================================<* Jarnvidr *>================================
=======================<* CHALLENGE - Forsaken Pages *>=======================
|Type: Discovery   |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1          |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 You reach where there is light.

 Perhaps this is the heart of the forest in a sense -- this shimmering sphere
 of silvery metal. Whether or not it is literally the heart is another thing
 altogether. As your sensors -- and eyes -- adjust, you can make out signs
 that...

 ...someone built this place, once. Even taking into account the somewhat
 malleable nature of the woods and the rather organic appearance of the
 structure you have found your way into, here there are walls, there below
 are sections of flooring. Strange broken tubing and cracked panels are found
 here and there or line the walls.

 Debris is everywhere. No one has been in this place in quite some time, and
 the forest has not been kind to it. Most of it is outright garbage at best.
 But some sifting on foot turns up something unexpected:

 A scant few pages, to be sure, but among them the title page -- and beyond
 that, scrambled pages of text.

 The name of the book of which the few pages you now have in your possession
 is: De Re Metallica.

 BGM: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/enliaVocalSoundscape.php

 (OOC: Send a +request to staff with any questions, research into the pages
 you have, etc!)
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

    They power through, using techniques both already proven (DEAN HARDER) and new; the forest seems to relent at some unperceivable threshold, as if a great lifter finally ran out of strength and had to drop the great weight upon which they are holding.

    ...

    It is almost too quiet and tranquil, but there is a sense of peace as they come to the heart of the forest... and, indeed--

    It is a sphere of silvery metal, that proverbial seed they were talkinga bout.

    Strange broken tubing; cracked panels, debris everywhere, and a lot of rubbish. Some sort of lab, perhaps?

    But one thing catches the eye--

    Several precious pages of text upon which archaic words are printed, with several diagrams, one involving a very old drawing of a foundry, then another with an almost anatomical chart of a humanoid being.

    "These almost look like..." Riesenlied murmurs. "Metallurgy, perhaps? Yet..."

    The name catches her eye quietly.

    "De Re Metallica..."

    There is a tired exhale, but she smiles as she says, "Thank you, everyone. We were able to make it in the end together... I had missed this."

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Working together, they manage to break out - for real this time. The forest no longer pursues them. Once it's clear that they're safe Jacqueline leans back, heaving a sigh of relief.

...And then, pauses, as Riesenlied notes something.

"...What is that?" Jacqueline asks. "Pages from a book... 'De Re Metallica'..."

She thinks it over. She hasn't heard of this book before - but, considering her interests, she can't help but be intrigued...

"Hm... I wonder where the rest of the pages are...?" She considers. Maybe she should do some research...