View source for 2018-08-24: Complications

*'''Log: Complications'''
*'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Loren Voss]], [[Character :: Kaguya]], [[Character :: Matilda Whitehead]], [[Character :: Elhaym van Houten]], [[Character :: Tabitha deVriese]]
*'''Where:''' Volgran Forest
*'''Date:''' August 24th 2018
*'''Summary''': ''Gebler sends a small team out to investigate Withertallow Keep as certain operations come to a close. Of course, the group aren't the only ones taking a look. Something amazing is discovered.''

----

 DG: A party led by Loren Voss is now entering The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory.
 DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =========================<* CHALLENGE - Living Door *>==========================
 |Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory is well-guarded not only by the strange
  abominations of science which patrol its exterior, but also because whoever
  worked here were very meticulous about security. You make it through the
  guards easily enough (they seem more equipped to keep out the rabble than to
  dissuade hardened adventurers), but the front door is another matter. It's
  certainly a door, with a knocker, handle, hinges and all that, but the wood
  seems to have been carved in such a way that suggests that it's being barred
  by dozens upon dozens of shriveled arms. As you approach, a metal face
  hammered into the wood creaks in a voice that sounds like it could use a bit
  of grease, "Password?"
 
  Password? Nobody said anything about a password! It asks two more times,
  before apparently becoming frustrated with the delay. Its arms suddenly
  unfold, and the door begins striking and swiping at anyone that draws near!
  Anyone that remains far away gets bombarded by fireballs courtesy of the
  metal face. It seems you're literally going to have to break the door down
  to get inside!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck=================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    There's something deeply worrying about Withertallow Keep. Between the biological lab spewing odd constructs of magic science out into the surrounding lands (which Gebler has had to deal with on a couple occasions as they roam afield eating stray soldiers) and the constructs emerging from the other end of the campus so to speak (and while not yet the stranded Gebler's problem in any capacity certainly showing potential on that front) it really only begs the question of what ''else'' the ruin is hiding on its grounds.

    And with things at a critical stage at the former crash site, Gebler can't brook any interruptions.

    This is probably one of the reasons they sent out this particular group to investigate.

    ~&#42;~&#42;~&#42;~&#42;~

    Getting past those things is the easy part. The harder part is the section where their apparent point of entry is a singular door.
    Loren gives the door a good once over. Stares at a particular section of the 'creative' design choice made.
    Then looks away as if to suggest he absolutely cannot believe this anymore.

    "Who carves a door to look like arms," he mutters as if in complaint to everything and nothing.

    He should be happy. He had been certain he'd be benched back to clinic support for certain after he explained what had happened with the wanted posters, but it was as if it didn't even matter.
    They'd given him his assignment and sent him right back out. Something's up, but if it means he's not cooling his heels in medical waiting for someone to get a cold, then he's fine with it.

    He approaches the door and lifts a hand as if to knock.

    He never gets the chance.

    The voice asks for a password.

    "Uh." Loren hesitates a moment.
    Perhaps a moment too long. He gets five right across the face before he can so much as react, which is the point where the living door starts hurling fireballs at all and sundry.

    Digging into the contents of his kit, Loren halfway levers himself up, downs the contents of a vial, then hurls the rest he'd pulled out for his colleagues.

    "Just kill it!"
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, Living Door.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Frankly? Kaguya doesn't care that much about Withertallow Keep. Kaguya has things to do. ...But as she slipped away to get some supplies, she met with Matilda, and happened... to see... Gebler. Gebler investigating, once again, Gebler, who probably own the rumored ship in the woods. Gebler, who include...

Loren. So obviously, Kaguya brought Matilda and just forced herself along with the group more or less pleasantly, walking along and... outright refusing to leave. So it is that now:

"Password? I guess the password is violence--Hey--"

Kaguya, dressed in martial artists' battle attire, scowls at the door, and catches one of the vials and ''downs'' it. She pauses. "...Hey Atida do you think this stuff is dosed right?" Pause. Shrug. "Oh well."

At that, she starts stepping forward, looks at the face--

And takes one of the pikes owned by the guards, breaks it in half, and starts beating the door with it until her makeshift weapon turns to splinters.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Living Door.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Matilda cuts a &#42;very&#42; different figure after a few months on Lunar -- really, between the hair bleach, the armor, and the ... well, whole 'style,' she might be almost unrecognizable. She follows along behind Kaguya, straightening out her armor; she seems less enthused about just sort of attaching herself to a Gebler group, but... such is life. Besides -- she'd follow Kaguya anywhere, honestly.

She's been here before, actually, more than once; she's... not really looking forward to the return trip. On the other hand, the new look it got her &#42;has&#42; gotten nothing but compliments...

... She decides, recognizing the door asking for a password, to just -- let Kaguya handle this one. She occasionally steps forward and lashes out with a sword, but for the most part, her engagement stays passive -- she did &#42;not&#42; enjoy her last experience with the murder-door.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Living Door.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
ELLY VAN HOUTEN is here to justify her paycheck. ELLY VAN HOUTEN is in her green sun-dress of native attire. ELLY VAN HOUTEN sees Loren get smacked in the mouth and remembers the time she kind of laughed at his pain sitting down and feels guilty.

ELLY VAN HOUTEN has a MAGIC MOON STICK.

Elly runs forwards abruptly, where she has been meek and mild during most of the journey. She hefts up the Lunar Rod with a two handed grip as if it were a bastard sword and she actually does a little half-assed jump up in order to try and smash it into the apparent 'head' of the door.

It's not a bad blow, but the real power is...

... -Sleep-.

BGM INTRUSION, POTENTIALLY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdyU_gW6WE&feature=youtu.be&t=2m26s

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Lunar Rod toward her party's challenge, Living Door.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Matilda cuts a &#42;very&#42; different figure after a few months on Lunar -- really, between the hair bleach, the armor, and the ... well, whole 'style,' she might be almost unrecognizable. She follows along behind Kaguya, straightening out her armor; she seems less enthused about just sort of attaching herself to a Gebler group, but... such is life. Besides -- she'd follow Kaguya anywhere, honestly.

She's been here before, actually, more than once; she's... not really looking forward to the return trip. On the other hand, the new look it got her &#42;has&#42; gotten nothing but compliments...

Kaguya asks her a question, and it gets the first meaningful comment from her on the trip. "It -- should be?" she answers, though the presence of the question is enough to make her doubt herself a bit. "... If it isn't, let me know."

... She decides, recognizing the door asking for a password, to just -- let Kaguya handle this one. She occasionally steps forward and lashes out with a sword, but for the most part, her engagement stays passive -- she did &#42;not&#42; enjoy her last experience with the murder-door.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>TABITHA deVRIESE is a HERO and THAT'S WHY SHE KEEPS PICKING FIGHTS WITH MUGGLES.

Tabitha is not in her Solaris bodysuit because despite how much a woman of her proportions appreciates space-age elastics, sometimes you gotta blend in. Perhaps it's good she didn't broadcast her team colors, though, because...''some folks'' turn up. The mission outline doesn't require secrecy, just elimination, so she doesn't feel too fussed. ''She'' has to actually ''work'' with these animals, after all. The blonde in the Etone coats regards new arrivals - One, she's fought before, and doesn't...seem to...care? It's interesting if somehow disappointing. But by the time they're sauntering up to the door, Tabitha has her field notes out, noting down some things in quick shorthand as she glances around. "Somebody who wants a hug?" she offers to Loren, without looking up. "Humans do long for the embrace of others, you know," she chimes, and then nearly gets hit in the face with a fireball. Her foot kicks up - SHOOTING almost from directly down to directly up, a blazing fast crescent kick, snapping the fireball aside. Rather than bother with the effort of something rational like putting her foot down afterward she vaults airward, swinging about in a long curve that brings her into position to open fire with her ARM upon the door. "Hardly neighborly!" she chastises it, before attempting to murder it.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Living Door.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =========================<* CHALLENGE - Living Door *>==========================
 |Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory is well-guarded not only by the strange
  abominations of science which patrol its exterior, but also because whoever
  worked here were very meticulous about security. You make it through the
  guards easily enough (they seem more equipped to keep out the rabble than to
  dissuade hardened adventurers), but the front door is another matter. It's
  certainly a door, with a knocker, handle, hinges and all that, but the wood
  seems to have been carved in such a way that suggests that it's being barred
  by dozens upon dozens of shriveled arms. As you approach, a metal face
  hammered into the wood creaks in a voice that sounds like it could use a bit
  of grease, "Password?"
 
  Password? Nobody said anything about a password! It asks two more times,
  before apparently becoming frustrated with the delay. Its arms suddenly
  unfold, and the door begins striking and swiping at anyone that draws near!
  Anyone that remains far away gets bombarded by fireballs courtesy of the
  metal face. It seems you're literally going to have to break the door down
  to get inside!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck=================================================

 ==================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 1 *>===================
 ===========================< Results - Living Door >============================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          0 --(0)--> 0                   Pass
 Solarian Medical Kit                1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    0 --(0)--> 0                   Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              0 --(0)--> 0                   Pass
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   0 --(0)--> 0                   Pass
 Lunar Rod                           1   Combat  Effects: Stalwart and Rally
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   0 --(0)--> 0                   Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  0 --(20)--> 20                 Pass
 Conditions: Bad Luck(2)
 Effects: Cleanse
 ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Loren looks at Tabitha. It's that sort of half-vaguely horrified, half-vaguely dubious look she probably gets from him a lot.

    "...Hugged by a ''door''. That's a convoluted way to go about things," he says to her.

    Before he does the part where he tries to knock, fails to guess the password, and gets slapped by a hundred-handed door for his pains.

    In other words, this is just about standard.

    He's not even up on his feet again when Kaguya -- and that other girl, the one he vaguely

    ''Matilda''

    that's right, her -- come rushing up. Fortunately he's not in uniform either, but it probably doesn't matter too much at this point since, well, Kaguya's seen him so arrayed. So it goes.

    "''Why'' are you here?" he protests, scrambling back out of the way of an uncoming fireball before vaulting to his feet.

    In the meantime, the following happens to the door:

    It gets slammed in the face by a moon stick. It feels sleepy (?!). The defensive slaps and hurled flames become a little more sluggishly done.
    And then it's charged by a one-two combo of Kaguya slamming (and shattering to little bits) a stolen spear into its 'face' and a jump-and-shoot rush via Tabitha's ARM.

    There are splinters of door. Honestly, Matilda doesn't need to do ''anything''.

    "Looks like it's open," Loren comments, at the complete absence of a door.
</poem>

 DG: Elhaym van Houten has drawn a new Challenge.

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 =======================<* CHALLENGE - Hybrid Hordes *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  Great science needs great reagents. It's a lot like cooking, except
  significantly more important and interesting. Also, instead of peas and
  carrots and milk and honey and all that boring stuff, you get to work with
  much more fascinating kinds of materials! Like monsters. Chimeras are such
  valuable ingredients; their biology is so pliable and malleable, and you can
  often take one apart and bolt its bits onto something else!
 
  Like these things.
 
  A set of capsules nearby suddenly shatter, disgorging a flood of artificial
  amniotic fluid and a horde of shambling creatures with roughly human faces
  and roughly human forms but body parts that can only be described as
  monstrous. Snake heads have replaced arms, leonine faces have been attached
  to torsos; these and other, even more terrible changes have been affected
  upon these unfortunate souls. The hybrid creatures scream in pain and agony
  as they shamble at you enmasse, flailing at you with parts that should never
  have been attached to a humanoid body. But some sacrifices must be made in
  the name of science...!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Wound====================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
So much for the door.

Elly breathes heavily for a moment, and then she looks at the others, and she smiles a little weakly at the others. Sweeping her hair back, she says to Tabitha, "I suppose it's a mystery." In the hallway.

It's kind of roomy... And there's things flanking them. Elly squints at the tubes, which are, in some obscure way, faintly familiar. But she can't blame why it's familiar because the capsules shatter, releasing the amniotic sea with sufficient force to slosh over Elly's boots and give her a horrifying vision. The things stagger forwards, wailing. Bellowing.

How many of these are there? Elly thinks, momentarily vexed, stepping back in astonishment. When one of the lion-gutted creatures comes near her, she swings her Rod again - more with mercy than with force.

Did she just forget how to murder?? Perhaps someone should encourage her!!

"Who ''made'' this place," she exclaims, as if in grief.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hybrid Hordes.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Can Kaguya even tell most humans apart? There's evidence to suggest that she can't. She certainly doesn't seem to notice anything odd for the moment, though she tilts her head watching Elly. ...She would also watch people suffer, though. Loren in particular. It'd happen.

"Eh, it's fine," Kaguya says to Matilda, and then smiles. "You look great blonde you know. I've told you before, but it bears repeating."

...She says this as she's among the ruins of a door, of course. She then glances at Loren and beams at him. "I saw my good buddy headed into danger, and of ''course'' I had to come help make sure nothing happened to him!" ...It's that 'fake sweet' voice that's very, very teenager.

With the lack of a door she shrugs. "Maybe he ''does'' need a hug," she suggests to Tabitha. "You should get on that."

...Kaguya, a very small butch, does not appear to at all mind Tabitha's Etone gear ''or'' ridiculous propotions... though she ends up starting to move back to walk near Matilda at first--

And as they step through, Kaguya blinks at the tubes, and looks... immediately unsettled, as they break. "...Augh that's--what even--"

"I am NOT touching these things," Kaguya says. "--Hey if you don't hit it hard it'll keep coming at you!" Kaguya says to Elly, and helpfully sends a blast of thorny flowers and wind--it ''feels'' like Ether--straight for that one. ...And then for more of them. Blasts of wind with floral scents; eruptions of thorned vines. It's... unconventional, since--

None of the plants she conjures are recognizeable to most in the room.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hybrid Hordes.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>"Oh, dear," Tabitha says, full lips curling up as she peers at Loren with a teasing slant to her eyes. "You can embrace all sorts of things if you've got the mind."

After homiciding a door, Tabitha touches back down like the ground's call were a calling parent - something she could choose to, for a time, dismiss. Her heeled boots touch down and she struts onward, glancing in Kaguya's direction. "Ah, but I would hate to ruin our chaste and pure friendship, you see," she says, and her eyes glide up to Loren in a blatant attempt to measure his reaction to the secondhand tease before she steps onward, into the next chamber, and...

Actually, for once, some of the brightness leaves her face. She reaches for her ARM, yanking back the slide, fussing with some setting thus revealed before letting it cock back in place.

The next thing she shoots screams as an ether blast vaporizes what she sure hopes is its head. "My," she murmurs. "I haven't been properly on the clock in a while."

And then she surges forward, dancing into the air with a flipping forward leap, blasts of ether raining down on the hideous creations. She is, after all, an Etone....a hunter of monsters.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hybrid Hordes.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>"I just followed along with Kaguya," Matilda says, with a placidly pleasant tone that makes the perfect complement to Kaguya's chirping about her 'good buddy.' She, like Kaguya, takes a moment to glance meaningfully at Tabitha's proportions -- then back toward Kaguya without even the tiniest hint of a comment.

She doesn't have time to do much but blush a little at the comment from Kaguya before things immediately go pear-shaped again, as is the way of an expedition. From casual to response-ready in moments, Matilda draws her sword again and starts to sidestep carefully.

"Don't worry, Kaguya -- I can handle it," Matilda -- who grew up on a farm &#42;and&#42; has been here before, and is now relatively inured to a lot of forms of gross nonsense -- declares, firmly. The screams of agony... honestly don't seem to be getting at her that much, either.

Some of it might be just not knowing how to approach the blobs of nonsense, but Matilda has... unusual footwork -- it's not quite Avehan, but it bears some similarities, which means it might &#42;also&#42; look not-entirely-out-of-place with the Gebler crew themselves.

It might be hard to notice given everyone else is &#42;also&#42; concerned with stabbing things that are gross for the moment, though.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hybrid Hordes.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Loren regrets having said anything as Tabitha makes a comment, standing stiffbacked with the sort of dead-inside expression that speaks to the fact that this is his life now and forever.

    Things don't precisely improve after he helps kill a door. Loren pulls the sort of face someone might if worms were dumped onto their dinner plate. "Spare me," he snaps back, going the extra mile and rolling his eyes.

    At least until the point where Kaguya suggests Tabitha give him a hug.
    Tabitha responds just about the way he'd think she would. He more or less marches himself right into the depths of the ruin, with a hissed, "Don't give her ''ideas''," for the Veruni agent. Which is probably about the reaction the Etone-in-training was hoping for, alas.

    This is already shaping up to go so very well for him. He knew he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up about being allowed out on an expedition in spite of his failings...

    Glass shatters, somewhere inside. Loren pauses just inside. That's... definitely a familiar scent to anyone spending time in a medical program in Solaris. He just can't definitively place ''what'' it is at the moment--

    "I've got a bad feeling about this," he utters, squinting into the darkness.

    It comes wriggling forth with a scream of something birthed wrong. Horror flits across his face; he takes one sloshing step backwards as the fluid pools around his boots.

    ''Amniotic fluid'', the unhelpful part of his brain supplies. His gaze snaps over to his classmate as Elly slams at one with her rod and then shouts at her, "Just ''burn it'', van Houten!"
    It's a sentiment that Kaguya seems to echo.

    At another time, he'll consider to himself again just how very much like ether the Veruni agent's technique is. Similarly so for Matilda's footwork. For now, though--

    He fishes in his kit, drawing out a quintet of vials. "Take this!" With a toss, he hurls four of them out for the others here, yes, even the company he's not all that thrilled to have.

    "Fluid's probably contaminated," he explains, clipped. "Just take it if you don't want to get sick!"
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Solarian Medical Kit toward his party's challenge, Hybrid Hordes.

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 =======================<* CHALLENGE - Hybrid Hordes *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  Great science needs great reagents. It's a lot like cooking, except
  significantly more important and interesting. Also, instead of peas and
  carrots and milk and honey and all that boring stuff, you get to work with
  much more fascinating kinds of materials! Like monsters. Chimeras are such
  valuable ingredients; their biology is so pliable and malleable, and you can
  often take one apart and bolt its bits onto something else!
 
  Like these things.
 
  A set of capsules nearby suddenly shatter, disgorging a flood of artificial
  amniotic fluid and a horde of shambling creatures with roughly human faces
  and roughly human forms but body parts that can only be described as
  monstrous. Snake heads have replaced arms, leonine faces have been attached
  to torsos; these and other, even more terrible changes have been affected
  upon these unfortunate souls. The hybrid creatures scream in pain and agony
  as they shamble at you enmasse, flailing at you with parts that should never
  have been attached to a humanoid body. But some sacrifices must be made in
  the name of science...!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Wound====================================================

 =================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 2 *>==================
 =========================< Results - Hybrid Hordes >==========================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
 Solarian Medical Kit                1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
 Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC
 ----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  20 --(10)--> 30                Fail
 Conditions: Wound(2)
 Effects: Cleanse
 ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
The manifestation of strange plants makes Elly glance over for a moment but there is a personal horror here, even leaving aside her memories. Isn't this where Fei found their precious little Chaya? ''Who made that animal''? The plants will linger in her memory but that is because ''everything'' in this ruin no doubt will... and she will take some time to revisit those thoughts.

And it is that horror - among other things - that stays her hand, even if a couple of stunned monstrosities are easily torn apart. Elly's attention flicks over Matilda as she moves with uncanny and familiar grace, and she looks back at Tabitha for a moment, as if to wonder if she is hallucinating, but the two are, in fact, physically distinct in several ways.

Loren throws a vial - she catches one on reflex, drinks it down on the same. She staggers back against an empty but unbroken capsule, narrows her eyes.

The fluid that had been clinging, gloppily, around them, suddenly shimmers to a biologically inert hoarfrost. The creatures - it's hard to tell. Do they scream because of the cold? The touch of the Ether in their twisted body? Or is it simply their nature to scream, and to suffer? Who made them? And why?

Elly has no answers! Perhaps Tabitha is the best person to consult on this one.

After all, she's a woman of God.

Also, the screaming does ''not'' end at the touch of the ice. The cleanup is beyond Elly, but not, of course, beyond the others. Soon enough, almost abruptly, there is silence.

</poem>
 DG: Kaguya has drawn a new Challenge.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =====================<* CHALLENGE - Violent Overreaction *>=====================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 4          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Some chemicals just shouldn't be allowed to mix. Some elemental combinations
  are fundamentally incompatible, and some souls just cannot be made to fuse
  without releasing far too much energy. And the worst thing is that when one
  thing starts going boom, everything else around it often starts going boom
  too! Runaway chain reactions! They're the worst!
 
  Also! One is happening right now!
 
  Something nearby crashes into something else that really shouldn't have been
  there. Two fluids mix and release a catastrophic amount of power. That
  triggers another nearby reaction, which causes another and another and
  another and soon there's just too much power in too little space, and the
  little sub-laboratory-slash-chemical-storage-locker you've found yourself in
  is just too little room. Glass vials rupture, sending shrapnel and plumes of
  flame racing through the air all around you. It'd almost be pretty if it
  weren't so dangerous. Dodge the explosions, the flying bottles and the
  shrapnel shards and you might just be able to make it out of here alive!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Suffer===================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Kaguya beams at Matilda. They're a good team. ...With teasing people, too.

But when Loren hisses at her, Kaguya laughs. "Not your type?" she asks, "Ahahah, if you ask--" She grins to Tabitha in turn. But--

She is not grinning, in all of this. She is noting Tabitha's style, Elly's approach, and ''inside''... Well, there's a bad feeling all right. Kaguya doesn't appreciate much what's happening at all. "Okay Atida!" Kaguya calls, and--continues to stay back. She takes the vial and downs it in an instant, without even bothering to consider whether it's good for her. Instead--

The screaming doesn't stop immediately. But Kaguya reaches out her hands, and sharpened blades made of strange leaves sever what's left of the creatures until they ''stop''. "...Whew--that--"

Nearby, the commotion causes a vial to fall, to crack--and suddenly explosions start happening just as the path behind them is cut off by falling debris.

"Shhhhhit--" Kaguya starts, and ducks down, looking around--

The flames start. Kaguya grabs Matilda as she runs.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Violent Overreaction.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha's consultation results are that they should be shot until death. Fortunately she is able to fulfill this diagnosis readily. While Elly panics, Tabitha walks among the beasts - walks, though with light footfalls upon the frozen goop.

And she murders them. One, two, three to the head if it takes that many. Silent, stone-eyed execution.

She watches the corpse of the last one with something inscrutable flashing across her eyes for several seconds.

Then she whips her gun around her finger and all but flicks it into her hip holster, swirling on her heels with elegance. "Nasty business, beasts like that. Best we be on our way, hm?" she says.

Something explodes behind her in the middle of the sentence. "Heh?" she says, blankly, at the sound of the explosion; the force of it vaults her entirely off her feet.

She thinks fast enough to slap her bracer and cue up a program of some kind, turning her uncontrolled whirl into a rather graceful parabola, which does something it ''definitely'' isn't supposed to do and suddenly flips her into the ceiling. She touches down, briefly, then shoves off again, whirling back down to the ground but still, apparently, light as a feather, as she uses her comparatively monstrous muscle-to-weight ratio to hurl herself at deceptively fast speeds for how sweeping and delicate her motions are.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has used her Tool Graviton Shackle toward her party's challenge, Violent Overreaction.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Matilda catches the vial and immediately downs it; she definitely does not want to get sick. She's already come back from so many digs injured or ill on Lunar -- she would prefer not to do so again.

One extremely exhausting fight later, Matilda lets out a brief sigh and wipes off her blade. "I... &#42;really&#42; wish this place wasn't quite -- so..." There's a vague gesture, and then silence, for now.

... She doesn't have a lot of time to catch her breath. Nor does she really have time to &#42;think&#42;; one moment, nothing, and the next, explosions and fire. Kaguya reaches out for her, and she --

-- decides to just go with it, letting herself get grabbed and scrambling forward. "At least that settles burning the remains," Matilda forces out, breathing slightly ragged as she continues her sprint.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Violent Overreaction.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Is Tabitha Loren's type or not?
    Well, he's not answering that one.
    Then again, no matter his feelings, he probably wouldn't be answering that one anyway...

    It's almost a bit of a relief (theoretically. technically.) when the first thing they encounter inside turns out to be lab-grown horrors.
    It certainly directs the topic at hand away from his (lack of a) romantic life.

    On the other hand, there's still a set of flash-frozen and still-screaming horrors to handle.

    Quite deliberately, Loren approaches one of the fallen things, draws his blade, and stabs it through what passes for a head. It twitches and falls still. More importantly, it stops screaming.

    "Next time, ''kill them'', van Houten," he says, staring down at what passes for the thing's blood on his blade.

    A vial trembles. A vial shutters.

    A vial falls--

    The reaction is, as they say, a chain.

    A Solarian oath slips Loren's lips, against all training and education.
    But in accord at least is the counterpoint reaction, one where he slips a hand into his pocket, and pulls on the ether tuner, gritting his teeth as he focuses his will into and through it--

    The speeding flow of water. Cleansing. Accelerating. A necessary push in the back at an ill-omened time.
    Using these things always feels like he's being pushed through a strainer, but the results are hard to deny.

    He leaps forward, accelerated, pushing through the resultant explosion and rain of shards, the expression of his will upon him hopefully enough to carry him.
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Ether Tuner toward his party's challenge, Violent Overreaction.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Elly is shocked out of her horrid meditations on the induced mutabilities of the flesh and the limitations of the mad science that, surely, will not be surpassed before her eyes at any point - the horrors here which even Solaris could at most rise to challenge - what could be worse than this -

Elly is shocked by something going "thoom."

It keeps her from telling Loren something she was about to say - words along the lines of 'I don't want to any more.' They were forming on her lips. Interrupted... by horrid chemical explosions!

Elly leans forwards, she hastens. Loren's Ether - of all things, to her surprise - guides her. Tabitha leaps ahead and at least demonstrates that there aren't any fatal obstacles to smash into and murder yourself on. Kaguya grabs Matilda -

And as for Elly, she just straight up, flat out runs.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Expedition Boots toward her party's challenge, Violent Overreaction.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =====================<* CHALLENGE - Violent Overreaction *>=====================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 4          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Some chemicals just shouldn't be allowed to mix. Some elemental combinations
  are fundamentally incompatible, and some souls just cannot be made to fuse
  without releasing far too much energy. And the worst thing is that when one
  thing starts going boom, everything else around it often starts going boom
  too! Runaway chain reactions! They're the worst!
 
  Also! One is happening right now!
 
  Something nearby crashes into something else that really shouldn't have been
  there. Two fluids mix and release a catastrophic amount of power. That
  triggers another nearby reaction, which causes another and another and
  another and soon there's just too much power in too little space, and the
  little sub-laboratory-slash-chemical-storage-locker you've found yourself in
  is just too little room. Glass vials rupture, sending shrapnel and plumes of
  flame racing through the air all around you. It'd almost be pretty if it
  weren't so dangerous. Dodge the explosions, the flying bottles and the
  shrapnel shards and you might just be able to make it out of here alive!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Suffer===================================================

 ==================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 3 *>===================
 =======================< Results - Violent Overreaction >=======================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          20 --(25)--> 45                Fail
 Ether Tuner                         1   Agility Effects: Cleanse, Rally, and S
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    20 --(20)--> 40                Pass
 Graviton Shackle                    3   Agility Effects: Rally
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              20 --(25)--> 45                Fail
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   20 --(20)--> 40                Pass
 Expedition Boots                    2   Agility Effects: Stalwart
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   20 --(25)--> 45                Fail
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  30 --(10)--> 40                Fail
 Conditions: Suffer(1)
 Effects: Cleanse
 ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Tabitha? Her strange power that catches looks allows her to move on a field that is away from most, though not all, of the danger. Elly? She may not want to kill, but she can run. Run she does. Loren, Matilda, and Kaguya, on the other hand...

Loren's will carries him, but not quickly enough to escape the debris, the explosions. Matilda sprints--but Kaguya shields her from behind with her body, stumbling as they make it into another room. ...And they do; they burst through ahead of the explosions, and the room behind collapses into nothing, leaving them ahead, looking at...

What is it?
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has drawn a new Challenge.

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 ========================<* CHALLENGE - Steam Vents *>=========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 1          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  This corridor is positively thick with steam pipes. It almost feels like an
  oven, especially considering how perforated some of these things are. The
  pipes are busted and ruptured in spots, venting great gouts of scalding
  steam with definite regularity and almost mechanical precision. Now, that's
  entirely because the brilliant minds behind this lab were careful to make
  sure their inventions were utterly without flaw, but why leave their steam
  supply in such a precarious state?
 
  Pressure is a funny thing. It's rarely ever important for anything, right up
  until it's the only thing that matters. So many experiments require a steady
  source of high pressure steam that it seemed appropriate to pipe a supply
  directly into the laboratory. Plus, if you have a big enough pipeline, then
  there's absolutely no harm in leaving a few holes and relief valves here and
  there to regulate pressure! It's a security measure! Only the truly
  dedicated will brave the danger to find the REALLY important experiments
  that lie behind the Corridor of Steamy Doom!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha is good at getting peoples' attention by her flagrant defiance of several conventional laws of physics and at least two violations of a law of anatomy.

The highflying Etone swings down to the end of the ''continuously exploding'' field, feet touching down with her arms out to catch anyone thrown free from the blast. The room is collapsing behind them, and Tabitha only has a moment to notice that they've exited directly into...a chamber full of undermaintained pipes.

That are sprayin high-pressure, scalding steam.

She tips her head, and produces her field journal from a pocket, flipping it open and making a few quick shorthand notes with a pen she produces similarly. "Where's it getting pressurized, though," she murmurs, tapping the pen to the page a few times.

Then she looks up. "Oh, right, massive structural damage," she observes, as one of the pipes releases a truly horrible groan. "Ahhhh best be moving!" she says, and hops forward. She doesn't totally abuse gravity this time because that thing only has so much battery and she used a bunch not dying back there.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Steam Vents.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Kaguya shields Matilda -- and immediately the adventurer is gone and replaced with... well...

"Kaguya!" Matilda half-shouts, ears still ringing a little bit, as she turns to her protector. She pulls out Freischütz, a relative rarity in itself lately, and immediately starts dumping curatives into it; she's only just gotten back from Meribus, at that, which means she has to make things on the fly that will actually help Kaguya.

It occupies most of her attention for a little while -- but fortunately before long she finishes dumping everything in in the right proportions and can actually literally shoot Kaguya full of healing sparkles.

It's only then that she looks across the section of unstable, high-pressure pipes, with a grimace. "Oh. &#42;This&#42; again? ... Is this the same hallway as we found last time, or..." Matilda murmurs to herself. "If it is, we should be close..."

She straightens herself out, and then starts to carefully move forward. Her shield stays at the ready -- just in case.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Steam Vents.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
The room collapses behind them and Elly slumps against a wall, panting swiftly. Her eyes struggle to focus - and then a hiss of steam almost completely engulfs the immediate area around her. "Awk--!!" she cries out, and the steam, suddenly, impossibly, improbably, flashes to snow.

Much of which melts again almost immediately. This is not going to work out, even with Elly's freakish abilities and her probable willingness to actually oppose steam tunnels. "-- Wait," she says to Matilda. Her eyes widen. "You've been here before? This - but there wasn't any sign of the hallway being full of -"

Horror reaches her. Is this some kind of ''actively maintained'' surgical facility? Who would do something like this, Elly thinks, her gut lurching, as she leans forwards in haste, possibly hoping to ditch out on Loren before he can yell at her again. She may smack into Tabitha in the process, but these are the fortunes of war.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Steam Vents.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    It's the common thread of Loren's life, in the end:

    Good, but not good enough. He doesn't entirely clear the continuing explosion, thus sent flying through the distant door bodily to land with heavily with a thud. The groan comes after; he's ''probably'' not dying.

    The fact that he stands moments after ''that'' -- green light wicking its way across his body in fractal streams (he just doesn't care if either Kaguya or Matilda see him doing it now) -- and exhales suggests he'll manage.

    "Ugh," is his comment on how ''that'' one went. Readjusting his glasses, he lifts his gaze...

    And narrows his eyes at the steam pipes. Venting steam.

    "From the explosion, yes. As things tend to do," he adds on to Tabitha's statement. He glances back at Matilda. "Close? So you've been here before." He squares his shoulders. "...Fine."

    And once again forces his will through the Tuner, gaze unfixed as he's left with the distinct and profound sense that he's going to have one hell of a headache later.

    But at least this should propel them along, the ether that he spends outwards in a haze of blue-white, and protect against any ''lasting'' damage from the steam.
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has used his Tool Ether Tuner toward his party's challenge, Steam Vents.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Kaguya is not a fan of the new room. She does not pull a pen; she does not worry about notes. She just looks around at--

Matilda. Who is helping. "It's fine," Kaguya says, with a cough that definitely spills blood on the floor. She seems to perk up a bit as Matilda finishes though, asks. "...Close?" she asks. She does not sound surprised that Matilda has been here. Instead--

She looks at Loren healing himself, looks ahead to the steam. "Well, this sucks."

A beat, "On the bright side, Atida, you're doing fine, so I don't have to hurt people." She pauses. She looks to Elly who is possibly going to vomit and she sort of winces at her. "Thaaaat sucks. Hey, you okay?"

Of course she shows concern for Elly. In the meantime though...

"So uhhhh... on three. One... Two... Three!"

Kaguya sprints. It's gonna suck.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Steam Vents.

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 ========================<* CHALLENGE - Steam Vents *>=========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 1          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  This corridor is positively thick with steam pipes. It almost feels like an
  oven, especially considering how perforated some of these things are. The
  pipes are busted and ruptured in spots, venting great gouts of scalding
  steam with definite regularity and almost mechanical precision. Now, that's
  entirely because the brilliant minds behind this lab were careful to make
  sure their inventions were utterly without flaw, but why leave their steam
  supply in such a precarious state?
 
  Pressure is a funny thing. It's rarely ever important for anything, right up
  until it's the only thing that matters. So many experiments require a steady
  source of high pressure steam that it seemed appropriate to pipe a supply
  directly into the laboratory. Plus, if you have a big enough pipeline, then
  there's absolutely no harm in leaving a few holes and relief valves here and
  there to regulate pressure! It's a security measure! Only the truly
  dedicated will brave the danger to find the REALLY important experiments
  that lie behind the Corridor of Steamy Doom!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Slow=====================================================

 =================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 4 *>==================
 ==========================< Results - Steam Vents >===========================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          45 --(30)--> 75                Fail
 Ether Tuner                         1   Agility Effects: Cleanse, Rally, and S
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    40 --(30)--> 70                Fail
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              45 --(30)--> 75                Fail
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   40 --(30)--> 70                Fail
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   45 --(25)--> 70                Pass
 Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC
 ----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  40 --(10)--> 50                Fail
 Conditions: Slow(2)
 Effects: Cleanse
 ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
 DG: Matilda Whitehead has drawn a new Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>There are problems with tight, enclosed spaces full of hissing, squirting pipes, you see. For instance, if you are a person of robust characteristic, you may, for instannce....

        ~munyu~

Get stuck.

Tabitha turns sideways to squeeze through a gap between the pipes, chasing after Matilda, and ends up squishing herself to the point she squawks in a rather less teasing way than she usually vocalizes, and then proceeds to get blasted in the face by steam that should probably scald her entire face off.

It does not, thanks to defense stats, but it is a fairly terrible time because several other pipes are also going off, making it uncomfortably hot if not outright burning for everyone stuck in the one-etone pile-up, which is actually everyone except Matilda.

Tabitha eventually wrenches herself free, and has the good courtesy to look very slightly embarrassed about the whole affair. "Ah! well, that was... ... ....heated," she decides to say, because mocking the world is a coping mechanism.
</poem>

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =============<* CHALLENGE - It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge *>==============
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Volatile chemicals produce a lot of vapors and they all have to go
  somewhere. Often times, they end up being funneled up and out of great big
  fume vents, but why would you waste such valuable raw material? Besides,
  it's not environmentally friendly to pump all that stuff out into the
  atmosphere. It's a far better idea to store it all up and reuse it! You
  could find kinds of applications for miscellaneous chemical vapors- stress
  tests, surface cleaning, security systems...
 
  That last one is particularly relevant here and now. Someone steps on a
  hidden panel that suddenly sends heavy security doors slamming down all
  around you. Vents in the walls begin billowing vile, noxious and lethal
  fumes. The good news is that you think you can probably break out, but be
  quick about it! If you can't hold your breath, chances are very good that
  you're going to have a hard time of things. Nobody wants to deal with
  corrupted lungs for long. Fortunately, it's rare that anybody ever does!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless=================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>"... Quite," Matilda agrees with Tabitha, once everyone has their bearings. "And -- ah, yes, I have." That means that &#42;theoretically&#42; she could've provided more warning about the door. She knows this, and is perfectly comfortable with not having done so.

As they head out of the hallway full of pressurized steam, Matilda takes another moment to breathe, leaning up against a wall for a moment and catching her breath. When she pushes back off of the wall, though...

The room starts to fill with gas, and security doors slam down around them. "... Cover your mouths," Matilda says, tone a little more forceful than before; she immediately reaches into her pack and pulls out vials, flinging them for the vents. Rather than melt them away, the chemical sticks to them and expands as a heavy obstruction, hopefully at least buying more time for everyone who's much better at wrecking things to create a path out.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has used her Tool Bubble Lotion toward her party's challenge, It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Heated. "Ugh," Kaguya answers. "That's awful. ''Heated''. Next you'll tell me things were getting steamy or something, I dunno." Kaguya does not seem to be in the mood for puns at the moment. ...Considering all the awful heat, this may not be entirely surprising, because Kaguya is definitely the type to complain. ...Complain, and deal with a bunch of 'being scalded' which totally sucks. But--Forward--

"...Tch--" The doors slam down. Kaguya does as Matilda directs though, bringing a breath mask up out of seemingly nowhere and setting it over her face quickly--at which point...

Her voice sounds more mechanical immediately. "Well, this sucks." ...It's more menacing that way, somehow. Meanwhile she pulls a syringe from a hard case, pops the cap, and ''jams'' it straight down into her thigh. She grits her teeth--

And breathes in, sharply, through the cloth. "...T-think that one's... working..."

Kaguya throws away the syringe and ''moves'' for the doors immediately. She pulls no tools, no weapons.

She just ''punches'' first, and the small young woman's fists dent steel. That's only the beginning.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has used her Tool This Week's Best Guess toward her party's challenge, It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Loren has not yet begun to use the device he holds in one hand when Kaguya proceeds to nearly hack up a lung not terribly far at hand. Blue eyes flicker over and down, taking in the tell-tale spatter of blood across the floor.

    "That," he says, "had better not be contagious. What in the ''world'' do you think you're doing?"

    This is the point where he rounds towards the smaller woman, the only thing that serves to take his attention off her apparent disease the more pressing immediacy of the room that's finished its collapse behind them, and the continued (and increased frequency) of the hissing of steam through the vents.
    Oh good, he could be stuck in here while the whole place blows up. This is precisely how he should have imagined his day going.

    He sprints for it, bolstered by his ether--

    (a pipe explodes on him. it's bad.)

    --it's still not ''really'' enough. Damp, scalded (this is not too bad thanks to ether and his general cockroach-like ability to take a hit and keep on going) and generally in a miserable mood, he's doing himself no favors when he responds to Tabitha thusly:

    "Save it, deVriese."

    He's trailing shoeprints as he makes his way towards the door, which he stands right up against and slams a hand into.

    Hatred worked the one time. Maybe frustration will, too, honed and forced into a vibrational energy and sent shuddering through the door's basic structure.
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
In the end, Elhaym van Houten nearly comes to a bad end because of Tabitha deVriese's often-held-to-be-good end. Fortunately, this isn't GOdannar, so the gap is burst and Elly staggers loose, sweat soaking her green dress. She breathes in air that isn't hot enough to hurt a little.

Kaguya coughs up blood. She gets a Look of Elly Concern (tm, c) but there is not time to worry much about that. She takes a cue from Matilda and covers her mouth, trying to breathe in through her teeth to prolong one breath which...

Is not, exactly, how it works, but perhaps she's cheating with air currents in the flow of Ether. Either way, she continues her regime of relative silence.

It can't get much worse, at least, she tells herself.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha scoffs at Loren's snap, unruffled. Rather frizzed, though, yes. Steam, you know. "It wasn't my finest work, no," she admits to Kaguya with an idle flick of her fingers to the universe. "Though getting steamy would've been better, hm..." She considers, eyes sliding past Kaguya and also Kaguya's bloodstains as she makes some more notes in that log book. She frowns at Matilda's advice, but follows it - yanking up the folded-over neck of whatever that garment is she's got on under everything else (...leotard!?) and tugging it up into a very definitely intentional mask over her mouth. Etone costuming...how practical.

Then she suddenly vaults at the door with an incredibly agile, surprisingly low-wind-up leap, slamming into it with her feet hard enough that the entire ''room'' reverberates like a bell.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =============<* CHALLENGE - It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge *>==============
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Volatile chemicals produce a lot of vapors and they all have to go
  somewhere. Often times, they end up being funneled up and out of great big
  fume vents, but why would you waste such valuable raw material? Besides,
  it's not environmentally friendly to pump all that stuff out into the
  atmosphere. It's a far better idea to store it all up and reuse it! You
  could find kinds of applications for miscellaneous chemical vapors- stress
  tests, surface cleaning, security systems...
 
  That last one is particularly relevant here and now. Someone steps on a
  hidden panel that suddenly sends heavy security doors slamming down all
  around you. Vents in the walls begin billowing vile, noxious and lethal
  fumes. The good news is that you think you can probably break out, but be
  quick about it! If you can't hold your breath, chances are very good that
  you're going to have a hard time of things. Nobody wants to deal with
  corrupted lungs for long. Fortunately, it's rare that anybody ever does!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Reckless=================================================

 ==================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 5 *>===================
 ===============< Results - It's A Gas, Gas, Gas, Gas Challenge >================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          75 --(0)--> 75                 Pass
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    70 --(5)--> 75                 Fail
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              75 --(0)--> 75                 Pass
 This Week's Best Guess              2   Brute   Effects: Cleanse and Liability
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   70 --(0)--> 70                 Pass
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   70 --(0)--> 70                 Pass
 Bubble Lotion                       2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
 -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  50 --(15)--> 65                Pass
 Conditions: Reckless(2)
 Effects: Cleanse|Strengthen(1)
 ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has passed this challenge! The party gained 15 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
 DG: Kaguya has drawn a new Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>The first order of business -- getting out of the room -- goes fairly well. Tabitha only manages to soften the door up rather than actually break it; Loren and Kaguya have a much better time of it, weakening and then shattering the door respectively. The group is allowed to pour out into the next room in short order, at least.

"I assure you, it isn't," Matilda says. "As her doctor I've made a very thorough assessment. It's much closer to an allergic reaction than a pathogen." ... Having to explain this draws Matilda's attention to likely being the foremost human expert on VR Factor, and it's a little bit of a sad thought.

"A -- anyway. Let's... proceed," Matilda says, as the group continues on into purer air. ... for a moment.
</poem>

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 ========================<* CHALLENGE - Ichorous Earth *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 3          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Shapeless, amorphous goo makes a surprisingly effective receptacle for all
  kinds of things. Elemental energy, souls, other forms of shapeless,
  amorphous goo. By far, the most common and readily accessible form of
  shapeless, amorphous goo is the humble slime. But sometimes, when you leave
  enough slimes alone in the same place for long enough, things can get...
  complicated. And violent.
 
  A nearby vessel bursts as you pass near, covering everything-- everything!!
  In a great big mess of acrid-smelling ooze. This would be gross enough, but
  the stuff seems to be hardening as it's exposed to air, gradually
  transforming from a viscous fluid to something substantially more solid.
  What more, you can feel the stuff stinging at exposed skin, digesting
  submerged clothing and armor, and gradually rendering you into basic
  nutrients. If you don't escape quickly, you'll be nothing more than
  fertilizer for a new generation of exceptionally deadly slimes.
 =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
"Oh yeah," Kaguya answers. "Super contagious. You're gonna catch it and you're gonna die." ...She sees Elly's look though and gives her a little 'v' sign. "Not you though!" Her voice remains unsettlingly mechanical through the breath mask. "What I think I'm doing... is getting ready to get us ''out'' of this."

The door breaks. Kaguya glances to Loren, a little impressed, and then laughs unpleasantly. "We could've let him believe it for a bit, Atida. Gone with the gag. Not so bad, right?"

She waits a beat, considers Tabitha after a moment. "...Nice."

Then she ''does'' move forward. She continues ahead, making her way away from the gas... until another vessel bursts--the ooze just ''shows'', and Kaguya starts to feel the burn of it dissolving quickly, the acidic nature. "Aah--"

It sounds... unpleasant, even for someone as apparently resilient as Kaguya is. Her skin doesn't seem to be reacting to it well, and neither is her admittedly light clothing--her arms are bare in the first place. And now--

"Raaagh--!" Kaguya feels it hardening, and she ''shatters'' pieces of it immediately by just forcing her arms out, beginning to throw her magic around in a strange range, wind and leaves rustling around her--

...All it takes is one more syringe. One more, on now-freed skin, before her eyes dilate, and she starts just... wrecking the ''entire'' room. She picks up what looks like a computer terminal, ripping it off the wall, and just--

Well. The sheer level of destruction a Veruni in pain can dish out is good for notes?
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has used her Tool This Week's Best Guess toward her party's challenge, Ichorous Earth.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Elly gives Kaguya a blank but amiable look. What? is the expression on her face. Not the inquisitive, a sort of blank eyed confusion. No doubt Riesenlied would call it 'nepping' after some obscure Metal Demon ritual.

Then they move forwards. "... An allergic reaction to something? Is it common?" Elly asks Matilda, and before she can get an answer a vessel bursts and horrible digestive fluid glops out and completely engulfs her all the way up to the crown of her head.

There is a heartbeat.

Two heartbeats.

At this point Elly is suddenly surrounded by a localized tornado that subjects the slime to an intense assault of aerial pressure. Yes, Elly has mastered an art that she shares with the Flying Polyps resident on long-lost Earth's austral shores; ''the military command of intense winds''. This short-range aerial blender could reduce a mouse to a souplike homogenate, but this protomatter is already one of those, so it just kind of makes it a vapor, whipping her hair around violently as she staggers forwards, the wind distorting when she gets near a wall and leading to her almost being briefly reengulfed.

By the time she gets to the end she is staggering, her skin reddish (if thoroughly exfoliated!) and her hair still kind of gloppy.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Ichorous Earth.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Loren's response to ''that'' is to attempt to hold Kaguya's gaze for a level handful of seconds. "Oh, perfect. Just the sort of capstone I need on my day," he says to her flatly, only holding off on folding his arms because he's still got the device palmed in his one hand.

    And simply just... sighs as Matilda says it's more allergic reaction than infectious agent. "And she's running around like that? Of all the... fine. At least she's the only one who'll die from her own idiocy." He shoots Kaguya a look, for good measure.

    He has a way with people, that's for sure.

    The ether he feeds into the door is charged by his own feelings. It, after all, is easy enough to give them free reign, with only one thought to speed them onwards.

    ''You're just not good enough.''
    ''...Shut up.''
    ''Why do you think they sent you out here? It's just to get you out of their hair. Let's face it, nobody wants to deal with--''

    Perhaps it's not such a surprise that the door is weak enough to shatter the way it does. He trudges inwards, sullenly and lingering behind the others.

    It gives him a good enough glimpse of the monstrous slime amalgamation sliding its way out of the vessel.

    A good enough position to see what Kaguya ''does'', syringe and all.

    Ether bundles. Doing what he does best, Loren begins to focus, apparently intent on supporting his colleagues. "Van Houten! deVriese! Strike at it's--"
    ...Actually, he thinks, as the slime glorfs over Elly, cancel that.

    He instead shuffles his psyche into the flooring and then lets fly with a sudden upwell of rock and stone. There's not quite ''enough'' emotion underlying the etheric art this time, but...
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Ichorous Earth.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>"Ah -- sorry, I'm... well -- I suppose I'm a little &#42;too&#42; professional," Matilda admits, with a faint laugh. "Given the circumstances, though, I'd prefer not to scare our..." ... whatever this relationship is at this point, Matilda mentally finishes, but decides to just trail off. She does answer Elly, though: "Among her people, yes." She does not elaborate further -- though she does give Loren a very insistently upset face.

Matilda will remember that.

The group emerges into shapeless, amorphous goo bursting all over; Matilda's immediately on guard again after last time, and readies her shield again. As it starts to harden, she starts swinging her shield at the hardest portions with no small amount of force.

Her other hand, meanwhile, fishes out another bottle of -- something. Hopefully it can turn slimes into nothing!
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has used her Tool Bubble Lotion toward her party's challenge, Ichorous Earth.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha does not look remotely concerned, because lamb diseases would have to get up ''pretty early in the morning'' to get one over on Tabitha deVriese! (&#42;this is not how that works)
Fortunately it's not a concern. Tabitha sways with her walk as she steps onward. "I feel like perhaps their safety mechanisms have not survived the test of time," she notes, idly, tucking her book away and examining a tube with some amount of curiosity. "If they were ever all that safe to begin wRBLGRG"

That would be a slime shattering its housing and leaping ''into'' Tabitha's mouth, where it attempts to eat her alive from the inside. Fortunately it gets enough solidity to it that she's able to pry it out, and then shoot it until she's satisfied, before slamming the slide back to switch the gun back over to high-output mode for a bit while she BLASTS SLIMES.

She sticks her tongue out afterward, experimentally poking at it and wincing.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Ichorous Earth.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 ========================<* CHALLENGE - Ichorous Earth *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 3          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Shapeless, amorphous goo makes a surprisingly effective receptacle for all
  kinds of things. Elemental energy, souls, other forms of shapeless,
  amorphous goo. By far, the most common and readily accessible form of
  shapeless, amorphous goo is the humble slime. But sometimes, when you leave
  enough slimes alone in the same place for long enough, things can get...
  complicated. And violent.
 
  A nearby vessel bursts as you pass near, covering everything-- everything!!
  In a great big mess of acrid-smelling ooze. This would be gross enough, but
  the stuff seems to be hardening as it's exposed to air, gradually
  transforming from a viscous fluid to something substantially more solid.
  What more, you can feel the stuff stinging at exposed skin, digesting
  submerged clothing and armor, and gradually rendering you into basic
  nutrients. If you don't escape quickly, you'll be nothing more than
  fertilizer for a new generation of exceptionally deadly slimes.
 =Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================

 ==================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 6 *>===================
 ==========================< Results - Ichorous Earth >==========================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          75 --(20)--> 95                Fail
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    75 --(15)--> 90                Pass
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              75 --(20)--> 95                Fail
 This Week's Best Guess              2   Brute   Effects: Cleanse and Liability
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   70 --(20)--> 90                Fail
 Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   70 --(15)--> 85                Pass
 Bubble Lotion                       2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen
 -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  65 --(5)--> 70                 Fail
 Conditions: Reckless(1)|Weaken(2)
 Effects: Cleanse|Strengthen(1)
 ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has failed this challenge! The party gained 5 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management
 commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
"Yeah?" Kaguya asks Loren, and there's a dangerous cast to her eye this time. She does not say this until ''after'' the destruction is done, until after everything in this room is crushed. And that takes some time. After all:

Elly crashes everything around her with wind, ridding herself of the awful protomatter. Loren lets fly rock, and stone; it is unemotional, but it is destruction. Matilda smashes with her shield, but the true attack of hers is with that strange bottle that begins to ''dissolve'' what is already slime. Tabitha, meanwhile, is not eaten. She starts shooting slimes. She shoots them a ''lot''. No, the safety mechanisms aren't working.

But now it is done. They are all injured, they are all much more tired than they should be. ...The slimes seep away. And Kaguya?

She recalls what Matilda said, what Elly asked. 'Among her people.' It's a fair answer, isn't it? "No, no. It's fine to scare him. To scare them," she says, and still she has that dangerous edge to her voice. "You see..."

"I'm dying regardless. So is it 'idiocy' to decide I'd rather not die in bed? To decide I'd rather get out into the world, the world that was ''denied me'' before?" Kaguya asks, and there is something mad gleaming at the edge of her voice.

She looks... Pretty awful, frankly, even with all the medicine. "Just keep it in mind," she suggests without a hint of her usual pleasantness. "My little 'allergy' sometimes makes me very angry."

She smiles, this time, and looks to Matilda. The smile fades. "Let's keep moving."
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has drawn a new Challenge.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =======================<* CHALLENGE - Fluid Mechanics *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 1          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Electrical circuitry? Absurd! Ridiculous! Fascinating! Also not something
  that can be found anywhere in this lab! It's an amazing idea, but we do
  things differently here. Hydraulic controls are the way of the future!
  Everything uses them: reactors, control systems, door locks...
 
  Speaking of the latter!
 
  This door seems to be in pretty bad shape. The enormous locking mechanism
  refuses to budge no matter what you might try to do to it. The cause is
  obvious after a little investigation: the complicated piping that powers the
  door's opening and closing is thoroughly wrecked. There are a number of
  replacement parts available in the same compartment that the hydraulics are
  kept, but it'll take some doing to reassemble into something that'll get the
  door to open.
 =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck=================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    ...Elly isn't the only one having a little bit of a difficulty here at the moment. Maybe that's all the more reason for Loren to shift gears from support to direct force.

    In the end, the metaslime is chased off. Dredging through his bag, Loren pulls out a vial, downing its contents before passing others along. Enough to stave off serious injury from becoming a career ender, yes. Enough to see them through this to the end, well...

    Loren meets Kaguya's gaze, meets every inch of her bitterness and anger at a world that she'll be forced from. He lifts a hand to push his glasses back up that microfaction of an inch up his nose.

    "Yes," he affirms, even in the wake of her and indeed even Matilda's displeasure. "It's complete idiocy. Go play with fire if you want. Jump off a bridge." He waves a hand, a little manic in its motion. "It doesn't matter to me. But the moment you're with a group, you're ''their'' problem. The moment you're here, you're ''my'' problem. " He seethes a breath. "Do you understand or do I have to spell it out for you, ''Veruni''?"

    It doesn't take much to drag everyone down with you. He knows that, almost personally.

    ''I won't be like him''.

    He moves on, pushing past them for the door across the room.

    It is, of course, closed and non-functional.

    Loren spends a few moments with his hands on his hips, facing the door, all the while attempting to trace back the origin of the issue.

    "...Over there." He points. "There's some pieces missing."

    A beat.

    "I don't suppose anyone brought a standard-issue toolkit? ...I didn't think so."
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Fluid Mechanics.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Elly hurts and stings. She breathes heavily even as the others fence and spar. She startles when Loren says those words, and Kaguya gets look # - what - seven? - as she considers her with new eyes. She looks to Tabitha, but she's got a burned tongue. She looks at Matilda, who seems to be a doctor.

Elly is also emitting a subtle but unpleasant smell. It is not, in fact, due to the Lunarian diet, but seems to be coming from her hair. Loren glares at the door, and Elly's eyes are in shadow.

But Loren asks a question. Elly doesn't look at him, and to Etheric senses is deliberately holding her metaphorical 'hands' now. Elly, even so, gives him an answer.

"... Loren."

"We're inside of some horrid surgical center. We nearly died several times getting this far. All of us - of them - are trying their best."

Elly folds her arms loosely.

"... Stop yelling at us. This is -Conduct unbefitting an officer-."

She raises her gaze to look at him stepping a pace closer to Tabitha (weird, huh, why her) as she says. "If you can't stop being a - a - a ''butt head'' about all of this, as if we're the authors of your suffering, then at least hold your peace. All of us have more in common, right now, than we do in difference. Don't make yourself ''our'' problem."

After this Elly sinks down to one knee and unties the laces of her boots. This is probably moving from 'ominous but logical' to 'completely inexplicable' until she turns up the insoles of them both and fishes out two gray wrapped packages. They aren't large and seem to have a couple of metal pieces in each. She steps forwards, staring dead-ass on at Loren, and holds the emergency tool kits out to him.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Fluid Mechanics.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>When Kaguya and Loren start to get at each other, Matilda... looks a little worried for a moment, scootching toward Kaguya. "She's right. There's... nothing more important," she says, "than choosing how you live -- and die -- on your own terms." She sticks close to Kaguya, and gives her hand a little squeeze.

As Loren presses it, Matilda feels herself getting noticeably more upset... and doesn't manage to hold it in very long. She opens her mouth to speak -- and then Elly does, instead.

... Elly managing to say what she would, more or less, but with more authority and a clearer sense of what's happening (because Matilda has no idea what the common thread between these goobers is yet and will need Kaguya to explain it later, and does not speak Solarian), gets her to turn and focus on the piping instead.

Loren asks for a toolkit. Matilda lets out a slightly exasperated sigh, and reaches into her pack. "I doubt it's 'standard-issue,'" she says, "but go ahead." She withdraws, sure enough, a decently-sized toolkit, with a book on Gear repair stuffed into it.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has used her Tool Portable Library toward her party's challenge, Fluid Mechanics.

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha looks the machinery over. Kaguya snapping at Loren barely registers, although she does slip a few more notes into her book. Which is surely not related. But then, examining the mechanisms, she flicks her book open and starts reviewing it. "Interesting..." she murmurs. "Locking mechanism using hydraulic power...I think, yes?" She flips between a few pages for a moment, then nods. "Most of the older permanent locations are using Symbological or even Crest-based permanent infrastructure...this place doesn't have any of that, of course, but..." She's...muttering to herself. Almost off in her own little world, picking over the mechanism. Even Loren loudly snapping doesn't get her to do more than glance. SOmething sparks off her fingers, but...Elly.

She glances at Elly, briefly.

Then her eyes cut to Loren. She's barely been paying attention but that playfulness seems to have dialed down. Like she's actually looking at him, for once.

Then she looks back to her book, thumb worrying the page. She says, "Kindly use Elly's tools to swap out the diameter 3 piping on the third panel," she says. "I think it's where the main block is."

She's entirely outside their chain of command...but talking down to people of lower standing doesn't care about such formalities.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has used her Tool Field Journal toward her party's challenge, Fluid Mechanics.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =======================<* CHALLENGE - Fluid Mechanics *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 1          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Electrical circuitry? Absurd! Ridiculous! Fascinating! Also not something
  that can be found anywhere in this lab! It's an amazing idea, but we do
  things differently here. Hydraulic controls are the way of the future!
  Everything uses them: reactors, control systems, door locks...
 
  Speaking of the latter!
 
  This door seems to be in pretty bad shape. The enormous locking mechanism
  refuses to budge no matter what you might try to do to it. The cause is
  obvious after a little investigation: the complicated piping that powers the
  door's opening and closing is thoroughly wrecked. There are a number of
  replacement parts available in the same compartment that the hydraulics are
  kept, but it'll take some doing to reassemble into something that'll get the
  door to open.
 =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck=================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Bitterness meets bitterness. Kaguya can ''see'' it there, in Loren's gaze, and her anger meets a fascination with what would make this ''human'' feel the same way. What he says--

''Their'' problem. Bringing them down, like always. Needing to stay back, be protected. It's familiar to her; she grew up on this very idea. ...And of course, he speaks what she is. She stares at him for a few moments, even as he pushes past for the next door, mentions the missing pieces. Her anger still builds nevertheless--

...Until Elly interrupts. Kaguya stops, from where she'd started walking towards him, and then she... blinks. She looks between the others for a moment, until she finds herself staring at Elly for a little while. ...After all the looks, of course. Her smug exterior has faded into actual shock, though she finds Matilda's hand for a moment as they stand together.

"Huh," Kaguya says, and glances to the side. Is she... wiping her eyes? Obviously something like what just happened wouldn't make a hardened villain ''cry'' (yes, it did, and she's doing her best to hide it.)

"I ah," she says, "...I've got tools. And I mean--anyway it's fine. It's cool. Um--Oh you've... got..." She glances at Tabitha for a moment, and pulls a tablet--not stone, but glass and electronic--from her bag, hits a button on the side, begins to look over the set with it. "Hmm... I'm seeing some... weaknesses in the current piping. You might want to adjust the third from the left too--it might break under the strain."

She pauses. Then, with almost a hint of whine, "And anyway I'm doing fine. I broke the door. Right? It's fine."

...She's kind of tired.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has used her Tool Radi-74 Tablet toward her party's challenge, Fluid Mechanics.

 =======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>========================
 =======================<* CHALLENGE - Fluid Mechanics *>========================
 |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 1          |
 ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
  Electrical circuitry? Absurd! Ridiculous! Fascinating! Also not something
  that can be found anywhere in this lab! It's an amazing idea, but we do
  things differently here. Hydraulic controls are the way of the future!
  Everything uses them: reactors, control systems, door locks...
 
  Speaking of the latter!
 
  This door seems to be in pretty bad shape. The enormous locking mechanism
  refuses to budge no matter what you might try to do to it. The cause is
  obvious after a little investigation: the complicated piping that powers the
  door's opening and closing is thoroughly wrecked. There are a number of
  replacement parts available in the same compartment that the hydraulics are
  kept, but it'll take some doing to reassemble into something that'll get the
  door to open.
 =Dungeon Conditions: Bad Luck=================================================

 ==================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 7 *>===================
 =========================< Results - Fluid Mechanics >==========================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          95 --(0)--> 95                 Pass
 Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    90 --(0)--> 90                 Pass
 Field Journal                       2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              95 --(0)--> 95                 Pass
 Radi-74 Tablet                      2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   90 --(5)--> 95                 Fail
 Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   85 --(0)--> 85                 Pass
 Portable Library                    1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
 -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  70 --(20)--> 90                Pass
 Conditions: Bad Luck(2)
 Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
 ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================

 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
 management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
 DG: Tabitha deVriese has drawn a new Challenge.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    'Live life on your own terms', he thinks, bitterly. Well, isn't ''that'' the joke. Matilda for now is on the receiving end of a particularly sharp look, but at least for now, he has no comment for her.

    His attentions, as they do, direct towards Elly. "And how precisely is that supposed to change anything?" he says to Elly, as she gamely points out that everyone has been ''trying'' and doing their best. "''She's'' a liability."

    Before Elly says something that quite frankly cuts him to the bone.

    Blink and you'll miss it. The way his head jerks a micrometer, as if he's been struck. The way his eyes widen. -Conduct unbefitting...-
    ''You won't measure up''.
    It would have gone better if she had simply walked up to him and slapped him across the face. As it is, he stands rooted to the spot for a moment as if there transfixed. He rouses from that quasi-trace, shoulders hunching as if feeling the weight of everyone's gaze in here.

    But in particular the other two Solarians, in a sense the only people here who parse as 'people' to him.
    ...Why, indeed, does Elly take that step closer to Tabitha?
    Why is Tabitha looking at him like that?

    Neither is Elly finished.

    'Don't make yourself ''our'' problem.'

    His hands curl at his side, nails digging into the flesh of his palms.
    'Don't be a liability', his father had said. He wants to say something to ''Elly'' now, but he...
    It's as if even words have failed him.

    "..."

    In extremis, as Tabitha takes the reins of the moment and tells him what to do, the most he can manage as Elly profers those tools his way is a hoarse, "...fine." To Elly and Tabitha both.
    Neither is she even the only one who ''has'' tools. Words might be failing him right now, but perhaps words aren't needed for Matilda to maybe gain an inkling of what's going on under the hood so to speak. There's nothing else the look in those eyes could be mistaken for except frustration and buried rage.

    In the end, it takes a few minutes of silent work for him to replace the parts and get the mechanism inside the door hydralics to work again as Kaguya and Tabitha indicate, and using Elly and Matilda's tools. The door slides open.
</poem>

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 =====================<* CHALLENGE - Mysterious Machine *>=====================
 |Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  Finally, you've arrived. The depths of the laboratory have been waiting so
  long for you to reach them. Opening one final door, you find yourselves
  facing what appears to be an enormous machine of mind-numbing complexity.
  Tubes and pipes from all across the facility all end here. All the
  experiments you have seen, all the churning machines and bubbling fluids all
  seem to terminate in this room.
 
  The machine takes the form of a monolithic, black capsule flanked by a pair
  of massive pistons and an incredible number of syringes filled with
  unspeakable concoctions. You notice as you approach that a humanoid
  silhouette seems to be contained within the central capsule, its shadow just
  barely visible, cast against the frosted glass. But then, just as you draw
  near enough to try to examine the machine and figure out a way to get them
  out, the process begins. Fluids begin racing inward toward the central
  monolith as the syringes depress and deploy their payloads. The silhouette
  within the machine vanishes beneath a flood of alchemical madness and the
  entire thing begin coming alive, gyrating with flashing lights and terrible
  sounds.
 
  A number of controls, valves and consoles surround you. It may already be
  too late for whatever was inside, but maybe you can stop the process, or
  break the machine, or do... /something./ Maybe even... Allow it to proceed?
  Tune the process? See what your genius can produce?
 =Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha has adopted a....somewhat less provocative pose, for now, suddenly brought out of her play acting and into the need to act a bit like her own age and gravity (...ha) in response to Loren's rather abrupt emotional collapse. As Kaguya deflates, Tabitha gives her device a glance and an appreciative "oo," that isn't dripping with nearly as much smoke. "Yes, I think that will do nicely," she says. And, in time, the door opens. Tabitha makes a few flicks of her pen, shorthand marking her field journal. Then she tucks them both away and glances across the group - Kaguya, Loren, Elly, Matilda. She gives them her pretty little grin and then sweeps into the next room, apparently believing this is reassuring.

"Oooo!" she chirps, excitedly. She sounds more like an excited kid than the flirt she more typically comes off as. She all but scampers over to the controls. "Something's in there," she says, breathless - and not nearly as alarmed as she perhaps ought to be. She scans across the controls, fumbling to get her journal back out. "I have ''no idea'' what any of this does!"

That was not panic; that was excitement.
</poem>

 DG: Tabitha deVriese has used her Tool Field Journal toward her party's challenge, Mysterious Machine.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Loren is subdued. For now. Elly knows this is probably temporary. A reaction like that means he's turning in on himself, she thinks as she slides her feet back into her boots. But perhaps he'll take this with him. Perhaps it will irritate him the way it irritates the inside of an oyster. Perhaps he'll form a pearl.

Perhaps.

When they are faced with immense machinery of unclear purpose, Elly blanches.

"If anyone needs an extra pair of hands, with anything," she says in a small voice, "Um." She raises both her hands, as if to indicate that she has, in fact, two hands.

Otherwise her eyes are slightly blank.

She's got nothing here, Venkman.

</poem>
 DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Mysterious Machine.

 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Matilda watches Loren carefully. There's a bit of infectiousness to that tension in Loren -- at least, for her; there are emotional reactions Matilda has... difficulty with seeing in others, especially half-together vaguely-military men. Her posture shifts, and her body language shifts, simultaneously closing off and avoiding looking threatening.

This is something Matilda has, in fact, done before; she even took notes. Notes which she reaches into her bag and starts to fish out while Tabitha starts fiddling with the controls. "Usually, it makes some sort of horrible monstrosity appear," Matilda says, with faint resignation.

Matilda scoots slightly toward Kaguya as she seeks something or another in her bag; eventually, she fishes out her notes from the last time she came here. Placing them on the console, she says nothing further, and steps back toward Kaguya.
</poem>

 DG: Matilda Whitehead has used her Tool Portable Library toward her party's challenge, Mysterious Machine.

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Kaguya spots the discomfort in Matilda quickly. She glances her way, stays close. ...But the change in Loren's expression--the way he looks to others at all of that...

'Fine' he says simply, and he follows directions. That's just fine. "...Don't be too hard on him," Kaguya suggests, looking at Matilda as she says it though it's not Matilda she's addressing. There's something thoughtful in her eyes, something... calculating.

Tabitha's appreciation for the device gets a little nod. And then of course she puts it away shortly after, moving into the next room. No idea what it does, is it? There is... Hmmm.

Elly blanches. Matilda mentions it's here and has been before. So Kaguya considers thoughtfully, looking to the console.

"Hey, so... If this one works this way... That adjusts aggression..." Kaguya considers for a moment, and pulls something from her things, injecting one of the tubes with a mysterious substance before she starts working the controls.

She's kind of a mad scientist.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Kaguya spots the discomfort in Matilda quickly. She glances her way, stays close. ...But the change in Loren's expression--the way he looks to others at all of that...

'Fine' he says simply, and he follows directions. That's just fine. "...Don't be too hard on him," Kaguya suggests, looking at Matilda as she says it though it's not Matilda she's addressing. There's something thoughtful in her eyes, something... calculating.

Tabitha's appreciation for the device gets a little nod. And then of course she puts it away shortly after, moving into the next room. No idea what it does, is it? There is... Hmmm.

Elly blanches. Matilda mentions it's here and has been before. So Kaguya considers thoughtfully, looking to the console.

"Hey, so... If this one works this way... That adjusts aggression..." Kaguya considers for a moment, and pulls something from her things, injecting one of the tubes with a mysterious substance before she starts working the controls, pulling her tablet again and checking a few things on it, tapping, tapping.

She's kind of a mad scientist.
</poem>

 DG: Kaguya has used her Tool Radi-74 Tablet toward her party's challenge, Mysterious Machine.

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    At least the act of repairing the machine gives him something to focus on. He has to slow down and think about what he's doing, by turns, and there's hardly room to dwell on what's happening. Which is all fine.
    It's when he's finished that it's a problem again. His silence maintains, almost as if daring someone else to say something first.
    Kaguya does, but not to him.

    'Don't be too hard on him', Kaguya says. Loren's grasp tightens about the screwdriver he's still holding, as if it were a weapon of murder rather than a simple tool.

    'Don't be too hard on him'. Like he's some child, or something-- something pathetic?
    But he takes a breath, and in doing so, swallows rage and humiliation, following behind the rest as they filter into the room beyond the door.

    There, a machine awaits them.

    Something's in there?

    He tries to get a look; there's not much of one to be had. Too many obscured points. Too much frosted glass.

    What happens if it stops? What happens if it proceeds? ...What's even happening here?

    He tries to trace the pipes backwards, out to their point of origin. If he can figure out what the substances involved here are, maybe he can figure out what it's doing. And if they want it to proceed.

    But his silence still maintains.
    The mystery of the machine is again almost a welcome distraction.
</poem>

 DG: Loren Voss has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Mysterious Machine.

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
"Why does a static machine have an aggression dial," Elly asks, knowing as she says it that she doesn't want the answer.

</poem>
 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 =====================<* CHALLENGE - Mysterious Machine *>=====================
 |Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  Finally, you've arrived. The depths of the laboratory have been waiting so
  long for you to reach them. Opening one final door, you find yourselves
  facing what appears to be an enormous machine of mind-numbing complexity.
  Tubes and pipes from all across the facility all end here. All the
  experiments you have seen, all the churning machines and bubbling fluids all
  seem to terminate in this room.
 
  The machine takes the form of a monolithic, black capsule flanked by a pair
  of massive pistons and an incredible number of syringes filled with
  unspeakable concoctions. You notice as you approach that a humanoid
  silhouette seems to be contained within the central capsule, its shadow just
  barely visible, cast against the frosted glass. But then, just as you draw
  near enough to try to examine the machine and figure out a way to get them
  out, the process begins. Fluids begin racing inward toward the central
  monolith as the syringes depress and deploy their payloads. The silhouette
  within the machine vanishes beneath a flood of alchemical madness and the
  entire thing begin coming alive, gyrating with flashing lights and terrible
  sounds.
 
  A number of controls, valves and consoles surround you. It may already be
  too late for whatever was inside, but maybe you can stop the process, or
  break the machine, or do... /something./ Maybe even... Allow it to proceed?
  Tune the process? See what your genius can produce?
 =Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================

 =================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory - Round 8 *>==================
 =======================< Results - Mysterious Machine >=======================
 Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Loren Voss                          95 --(15)--> 110               Pass
 Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tabitha deVriese                    90 --(20)--> 110               Fail
 Field Journal                       2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Kaguya                              95 --(15)--> 110               Pass
 Radi-74 Tablet                      2   Wits    Effects: Enlighten
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Elhaym van Houten                   95 --(20)--> 115               Fail
 Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Matilda Whitehead                   85 --(20)--> 105               Fail
 Portable Library                    1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse
 ----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
 Leader: Loren Voss                  90 --(0)--> 90                 Fail
 Conditions: Madness
 Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
 ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================

 DG: Loren Voss is too exhausted to continue!
 DG: Tabitha deVriese is too exhausted to continue!
 DG: Kaguya is too exhausted to continue!
 DG: Elhaym van Houten is too exhausted to continue!
 DG: Matilda Whitehead is too exhausted to continue!
 DG: The party has failed this challenge! All party members are now Exhausted. This attempt is over.
 DG: The party led by Loren Voss has been fully Exhausted by The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory!
 DG: The party will now draw a conclusion.

 ======================<* The Soul-Alchemy Laboratory *>=======================
 ========================<* CHALLENGE - Cube Noises *>=========================
 |Type: Landmark    |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1          |
 --------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
  As the monolith falls apart, you hear something go click-clank-thunk!! And
  then a baker's dozen of strange, cubical bottles fall out of a dispenser on
  the side of the machine. One shatters on impact with the floor, releasing
  the colorful fluid inside. Mere moments after being released, the contents
  of the bottle quickly expand and congeal into a brightly colored, softly
  burbling, geometrically perfect, geodesic slime. It wiggles, it jiggles,
  it... Is apparently not doing anything special! You can poke it, pat it, do
  whatever to it, it bounces right back into its original. Its surface is
  unusual, nice and soft and smooth, but also not at all as sticky as you
  might expect a slime to be. Checking the bottles, it seems as though they're
  labeled 'Portable Furnitooze.' It looks like you found some kind of strange,
  slime-based, self-cleaning furniture. Sitting in it is amazingly comfy, just
  be sure to water it every few days once you've broken the glass!
 =Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>Tabitha and Kaguya poke and prod. "Aggressiveness, is it...then this one's...viscosity? Or, no, turpidity!"

The entire machine suddenly emits a horrible groan, and then ejects a milk crate full of vials, which slides across the ground to plonk against Loren's boot. One of the vials shatters, getting goop all over his shoe.

It rapidly congeals around his toe until it is firm, springy, and adorable.

Tabitha squats at the knees, staring with stars in her eyes. "It's...''perfect''!" she cheers.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    ...What in the world are they doing over there? Loren lifts his head, having worked out that this tubing seems to be carrying a cellular substrate, but as for the others--

    Something ejects violently from the machine at that moment. Loren opens his mouth, as if to shout something over.

    A bottle rolls over to his foot and shatters. He stares over at Kaguya and Tabitha, the unasked question writ large across his face.

    Whereupon his foot gets engulfed in a slime that rapidly poings up into a geometric shape.

    "...What," he finally utters, breaking his silence at last, his tone entirely flat.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
<poem>
Is she being cruel? Maybe. Kaguya is good at being cruel. She picked it up very quickly, a prodigy in that, too.

"Do you ''really'' want to know, though?" Kaguya asks Elly about the aggression dial. She seems downright cheerful again now that she has some science to work on. And so...

"It's cool, isn't it?" Kaguya asks Tabitha, and then--then, there it is...

"They ''are'' cute!" Kaguya enthuses immediately after, looking at the varying colors in the bottles, the one at Loren--

"Super cute! Atida, I want four!"

Kaguya... Well, previously, she was an enraged, terrifying alien in combat, or perhaps a sick girl mad at the unfairness of the world.

Now she is a teenage girl and she is ''squeeing'' over these things. It's probably incredibly annoying. It might instead be adorable. Either way.

"Aah, look!"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Elly had been bracing herself. She had been anticipating one of two outcomes. One is the explosive destruction of this machine. That is something she actually felt fairly confident about. An anticyclonic structure to channel fumes and smoke away from them, a wall of ice to delay flames and shrapnel and any kind of Thing that might slouch out of that tank with malicious intent...

The other was, well, just the Thing with malicious intent. That was going to be simple enough: burn the head, burn down to center mass, work from there.

Instead she gets this.

Elly quietly loses consciousness and pitches gently to one side, gradually enough to be spotted but not so gradually as to not actually fall over. The probable reason is adrenal crash or... something like that.

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
<poem>Matilda... still doesn't seem particularly okay -- at least until the crate is ejected, at which point she has something to look at and assess other than Loren. She turns her gaze down toward the springy, sproingy slime once it's tested.

Kaguya says that she wants four, and Matilda immediately scoots up next to her and puts an arm around her. "We can have four," she says. There's a hint of mirth in her eyes that even... well, whatever's going on with her right now, can't quite suppress.

She does not notice Elly pitching over. What a monster.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
<poem>"Very cool!" Tabitha agrees, smiling brightly. SO GOOD. IT'S A PRECIOUS SLIME FRIEND. Well. 'friend.' "I think it's a chair!" Tabitha says brightly to Loren's utter confusion. "Or...a ....stool? Really there's a lot of applications to squishy geodesic shapes. You could store your weapons in here."

dShe looks up, noticing Elly collapsing. She flicks her fingers, quietly sending a gust to stop her from concussing herself, and then gets back to gushing over the thing that has declared Loren's shoes to be its property. "There's a lot of them! We can definitely have lots! We could probably even--"

She looks over and notices the lights are all off. "Oh. ....eh, it'll come back up when whatever it is that's operating this place boils some more water, I guess."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    "A... chair." A pause. "Of solidified slime."

    Well, isn't this the capstone of the day. "Ugh."

    At this point, Loren just... starts sliding his foot free from his shoe. Don't worry, he's wearing socks. The one is a lost cause.

    There's a brief moment here wherein Loren fights with it over his other shoe; in a turn of luck he successfully pulls that one (and his foot) free with a 'glorp' sort of sound, and staggers back a step or two.

    And then notices that Elly's collapsed on the floor.

    For a moment he hesitates, as if waiting for someone else to do something.
    They don't.

    With a sigh, he walks over to Elly's fallen form and starts checking her vitals.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
<poem>
Elly lands on the floor gently.

When Loren is inspecting her, he finds a slightly weak pulse but otherwise things are normal. While being checked her eyes flutter, and she says, almost shyly, "What happened... The others, are they... I thought I imagined some kind of... of jewels made out of gelatin..."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    The good news is, she's not dying or entering some critical state. She more or less just fainted.

    "The machine made something. Everyone's fine."

    There is a pregnant pause.

    "Jewels made out of... what?"
    Another pause.
    "Just... stay put and don't get up yet."

    He grimaces, digging in his bag for a pulse oximeter. Just in case.
</poem>

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Chapter 1]]
[[Category:Chapter 1, Act 3]]