Duty Session 404: Zombie Jamboree

    Wake has been busy. She's been running around a long list of places one might call the 'middles of nowhere'. After a brief pitstop home, she's launched herself off to the Ninetails. She made a promise to continue the push to eliminate the undead. She is here to make good on it.

    She's dressed in a simple, but finely cut black dress, the sides slit for mobility. She stands waiting, her expression neutral, her focus direct at her surroundings. She's isn't expecting trouble to come to her, but she does mean to find it as soon as possible.

Yeowang is here with Wake as well, having joined the entourage for her own reasons. She's got contacts in Ninetails she likes to keep track of, but the chance to take care of some zombies is an opportunity she won't pass on. Zombies bad. She's got her long hair bound up in a loose bun with the excess hanging back in a ponytail, and she's dressed in what for her is her typical casual advenuring garb - a white blouse and black pants with ankle boots suitable for kicking skeletons or zombies.

She announces, "Ready to go whenever we're ready."

    Miyako is not happy at all to see such a sight, it would seem. Not at all an unusual feeling, in such company. When she arrives, she takes one look down at the town, and slides on a pair of fingerless gloves, the knuckles set with steel studs. "Ko-chan, I get the feeling we're going to be *breaking* stuff today," she says, with a coldly satisfied smirk.

    She looks around at the rest of the group that has gathered around the Baroness, asessing each of them with the same steady gaze. "You all ready to dance?"

After an enlightening conversation (and a sound trouncing from an impromptu trainer), Gallant has decided to take some self-improvement detours and tackle on some of the troubles of the land... that were not directly linked to the Palace Landers. After all, he had been told, clearing dungeons and tackling dangers would eventually help towards making him stronger, and therefore of actual use against the invaders.

Well, that is the plan, anyways.

So that is why he is here, coming to lend his swords for a good purpose: the clearing of the undead. At Miyako's question, the lion grins and draws his swords, "Ready as I'll ever be!"

Just how ready that is, though...

o/~ It was a zombie jamboree in the middle of... o/~

Hold that thought.

It's a case of zombies who aren't exactly here for music and dancing. They're here to cause trouble, and they need to be stopped.

"I've got a feeling you're right, Miyako," Kotono replies as she takes out her daggers and checks to make sure they're sharpened. "Good thing I keep my blades sharp." She smirks a little. "Time to send these beings back to the afterlife!"

Shiruba has been making regular trips around Ninetails to help clean up the lingering remains of the Undead problem. It was part of the reason she hadn't been at Shibuya during the siege, for better or for worse. But she was determined to carry on regardless, as she made a vow to see to an end of this infestation.

This time she just happens to come across a group of familiar faces also preparing to deal with one of the pockets of foul fiends. "This is certainly fortunate timing." Her falcon gives a soft kree of agreement before taking skyward, freeing Shiruba's arm so she can properly draw and arm her magic longbow. "This problem needs to be dealt with before a new dominance can fill the void of power left in their ranks."

    Wake acknowledges everyone as they appear. Her curtsey is particularly graceful, though it's hard to say from a mechanical standpoint just what it is that makes it different. Practice makes the perfect ever more perfect, perhaps. Regardless, her introduction is offered in an even, relaxed tone, regardless of these unsightly surroundings.

    "Thank you for joining me, everyone. I am Baroness Wake of Eas. We are here to clear out the undead. You can see their handiwork all about you."

    The village looks a mess, with things discarded in all directions. Clearly the landers who dwelled here had to beat a very hasty retreat.

    The work lies ahead and through the outskirts, towards a cemetary. It's always a sure place to find undead, isn't it? And it's no exception in this case, either. As the party approaches, the slow, shambling undead move between the monuments, showing no sign of even noticing their doom approaching.

    "My friends.. you may begin showing these creatures back to their rightful place in the earth," Wake says softly before racing ahead to attack.

    Miyako nods curtly, and fades into the shadows as she and Kotono set out into the graveyard to do their work. The shorter Spriggan moves in oddly close synchrony with her friend, the surety of a pair who have worked together in many battles.

    Slipping out of the shadows, however, Miyako finds she's misjudged her target. The zombie hasn't continued on its way, but is facing directly towards her. Well, that's going to make the fight harder.

    Not that it's a terribly long fight even with the handicap.

Yeowang takes a look at what lies ahead, takes a short breath, and wades in. Zombies are not fast, and these aren't the cutting edge of zombies, either, so it's fairly basic work to take them out. Mostly kicks and hard punches, knocking them back several steps when she doesn't knock them down, or cause them to disintegrate into pixels. It generally only takes a few hits for her, but her martial arts skills are getting pretty good. They're not quite up to where she was in real life, unfortunately, but getting there.

These don't seem to be the most coherent of zombies. But that's no reason to be reckless about it. Shiruba chuffs softly as she creeps amongst the memorials. Windburn lands atop of one, and emits a loud almost shrieking noise, more a surprise in that falcons aren't the most vocal of birds. It gets a lot of the shamblers to turn their limited attention in that direction.

Shiruba takes a few pot shots at the deadheads, but focuses mainly on darting her way through the cemetary. These shuffling corpses weren't worth expending excess time on, not when there was likely bigger threats within the village itself.

Fortunately her bird has perched higher than the zombies can grab at her with their limited dexterity, and takes off again once Shiruba has made it pass the worst of the lot.

Unfortunately, it seems Miyako isn't as skilled at sneaking as Kotono is. Nevertheless, Kotono picks up the slack by helping her friend with a swift sneak attack to catch the zombie off-guard and completely double-team them.

"You'll get there, Miyako," Kotono says as she finishes off the zombie that was looking right at Miyako. "For now, let's just be glad it didn't come off worse."

A first real encounter with the undead can be a little daunting. As part of the melee detail, Gallant advances, using his blades to try to cut down what few creatures come within his reach. Unfortunately, all enemies he has fought up to this point have been alive (or some concept of alive, anyways), and their reactions are different. He isn't quite used to hacking someone's arm off and having that someone be largely unfazed. And ready to retaliate.

A startled yelp followed by the attack, and the lion cuts the creature down, sending it back to the land of pixels. He glances at the wounded shoulder and grumbles, "Great. I hope this doesn't turn into one of those episodes where a member of the party gets zombified and turns on the rest..." He presses on.

    The shambling zombies only notice they are under attacked after they are already well in-hand. Since she was closest, Wake has no trouble at all rushing forward to deliver a powerful sneak attack, striking several of the monsters before they even know what's hitting them.

    "I hope the rest of them are as observant as these beasts," Wake comments glibly.

    The zombies manage to hold their own only for a brief time. Even though Miyako isn't able to make a sneak attack, Kotono's strike is successful, clearing out the threat immediately.

    Yeowang is able to swiftly overcome many of the zombies. Near Yeowang, Gallant meets the undead for the first time. It's not a flawless meeting, but many adventurers have suffered far worse from their first victory. Though Shiruba isn't able to devstate the enemy with ranged attacks, their low hit points have them exploding into pixels left and right under the pressure of the adventurers.

    With the first group of undead put to rest, the team is able to catch a moment's respite. In a short while, the sound of a wind chime. Spotting the source of the sound reveals an odd sight, indeed. Under the chime is a strong zombie with an empty bottle of alcohol in its left hand while the right drumbs out a steady, somber beat on a barrel. All about it, empty and half-broken bottles are littered. Seeing the adventurers, the beast slowly settles its attention on them. An eerie glint comes to its eyes as it surveys the party, still drumming out that strange, slow rythm.

This isn't really Shiruba's strong point, so she just tries to adapt on a whim. She picks up one of the empty bottles, uses some elemental magic to dump water in it, then freeze it cold. The best she can do is approach the problem like she would a rowdy animal. "Here, here boy." She flings the bottle down a different alley. "Go fetch!"

And then turns to run farther up the street because that is probably not going to work.

Yeowang is not sure what she can do about this monster, it seems to be one of those specialist encounters that you get no warning about. She will attack in her normal manner, hard kicks, martial arts strikes, but the damage is shrugged off. Clearly, this is a mechanic that will not avail her for this encounter.

What is that thing? Kotono's never seen anything like it before.

Nevertheless, Kotono decides to try distracting it. She throws a rock in its general direction, not intending to strike it but merely get its attention. Unfortunately, the rock goes a little wide and nicks the creature, which takes notice of Kotono.

"Oh crud," Is all the green-haired Spriggan gets out before she takes off running.

Hey! It's a monster! He handles monsters!

"Wait, guys, I got this!"

He begins to approach the malevolent creature. He advances towards it, arms held to the sides in a trained conciliatory gesture, "Now... now- good b-"

And then he gets a glimpse of that glint, and it's all over. It becomes extremely evident that this is one creature that, in life, had a one track mind for bloodlust. The mind may be gone, but that track is still there.

"Nnnnope! I don't have this!" he says, turning on his heels and pulling a Brave Sir Robin, following the example of his team mates.

    Miyako blinks as she takes in the scene. She tilts her head to one side, almost birdlike, and listens to the windchimes for a long moment. "Hm hm hm hm," she hmms, in a rising pitch, then repeats it in a falling one.

    Soft. Soothing. Almost like a lullaby. That's the tune that swells up around the zombie. Perhaps to lull it back into somnolence?

    It's too late for that, unfortunately. Or perhaps the zombie's eardrums have just rotted away too much for it to hear her contribution. Either way, it's time for a fight.

    ... or not. With the others turning to find another path into the town, Miyako shrugs, giving the zombie a 'whatchagonnado?' sort of smile, before she turns to sprint after them.

    Well, this goes poorly. It's a strong zombie, and it seems the alcohol has powered it up. There is a strong vibe of drunk boxing meets zombie monster in the battle.

    Various attempts to get the creatures attention fail. The thrown bottle by Shiruba seems to only make it angrier, and it roars at the thrown bottle! Being repeatedly slammed in the face and kicked by Yeowang does not improve its mood one bit.

    The rock hardly helps matters. It focuses its anger at Kotono. Suddenly it lifts the barrel above its head, showing no strain at all, and readies to throw it, Donkey Kong style, at the Spriggan.

    The attack is delayed momentarily by Gallant's attempt to get the creature under control. There's a moment where things seem to be in the balance. That moment passes and soon Gallant is opting for the better part of valor. Miyako's song is heard just as Gallant races by, but that, too, seems ineffective. Perhaps the creature is deaf as well? It just roars in anger and gets ready to throw the barrel.

    In the midst of this, Wake is able to clutch a smaller defeat from the jaws of.. catastrophic defeat? She manages to use a nearby hammer to break the barrel in the course of Miyako's song, dumping cheap beer on the zombie monster in a deluge.

    There's no point in waiting to see what follows. Wake swiftly moves on with the group to the next problem, hoping that it isn't quite such a niche situation.

    

    Leaving the wind chimes and the alcohol-soaked zombie behind, the party quickly runs into another enemy! This time it's a massive undead mess, with a smaller zombie hanging out the side of the beast's stomach. Worst of all, the group has interrupted the thing's meal. It's not happy!!

"Oh that is just sick and wrong!" Shiruba complains as the zombie with the smaller zombie infestation comes shambling down the street. With a grimace she nocks one of her chemically treated arrows and fires it at the bodily horror, but it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. One zombie has a lot of body mass, which is probably keeping the chemical away from the smaller parasitic one that's in control. "Better we keep moving! Try to find whoever is manifesting these wretched things."

"Time to shed a little light on this subject," Kotono says as she brings her spell runes up. "A little light magic should help us out here," She adds as she prepares to cast a spell of light...

Only to have it fizzle out almost immediately.

"This is embarrassing," Kotono says with a sigh as she runs away again.

Yeowang is resigned to giving up in this monster, which at least doesn't seem particularly aggressive. She will join the others in proceeding on, taking out the trash mobs easily enough. But then we encounter the Neko-koneko of zombies. It's pretty awful. But what's really awful is the pathetic damage her strikes and kicks do. This is another encounter that is not going well for her.

"Agreed, that's just... wrong. Ungh." The Were Fang's muzzle curls in disgust at the sign of the atrocity. "But I think I've got just the thing!"

A concoction he bought from an itinerant merchant specializing in potions. From her, he had bought a combustive philter, according to her, that would cause a powerful conflagration focused in a very area. The perfect thing to clear something like this, right?

He reaches into the pouch hanging from the side of his loincloth and retrieves a flask. Without looking at it, he flings it with the haste brought around by desperation and-

Crash

A green-brown substance drips down the abomination.

There are no flames.

"... crap." Right. He also had bought specialized fertilizer for a portable garden as part of a fetch quest for a villager. Which he had given to - "... oh no."

----
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FARM: *WOOOOOSH*
"Goddamnit Yayoi, what the hell did you water those pumpkins with?"
-----

"Right. Run away."

He turns tail and follows Kotono. "This really isn't our day, is it..."

    Coming around the corner, a few feet behind the rest of the party, Miyako skids to a stop as she sees the monstrosity standing in the street. She stares at it, just as revolted as the rest of the party. Her inner thought is something along the lines of '... no. Just *no*.'

    All she says outwardly, however, trying to sound cold and uncaring, is "Focus, Ko-chan. It's just another target."

    The young Spriggan produces a few pouches of ingredients from about her person, mostly her firestarter kit, and adds a bit of rust taken from a doorframe to improvise some thermite. The powder is tossed into the gaping hole that the ... the /second/ zombie is emerging from, as she sprints past the monster. "Hit it with fire!" she yells, as the fuse on the improvised bomb burns to its end and ignites.

    She doesn't stick around to watch the results. It's time to gafiate. She runs hard to catch up with Kotono and the rest of the party.

    "Well, this has to get better!"

    Wake knows that is not strictly true. And it's also not true in this case. Wake's work with light is so ineffective it's not clear what she was even attempting to do. Thankfully, everyone is running in short order anyway, so there's minimal need for explanation.

    It's not like most of the group was delivering top performance in this challenge, anyway. Shiruba's attempt to use alchemical arrows results in losing some arrows. The little zombie thing does make a rather high pitched, horrific keening in response, though, so that's something. Kotono's light attack puts an end to that, but only for a moment. Like a flash bulb, it bursts in and out of life almost instantly.

    Yeowang has the same level of luck, but at least she gets to hit the thing a few times. Hopefully at least it addresses the frustration of the round.

    That level of frustration also might be mitigated by the rather curious contributions of Gallant in this particular fight. While at first, the unpleasant concoction reveals no effect, a moment later it gives off a scent that is most motivating. As if the party needed any more incentive to get out of here!

    The monster, now smelling like an over-used latrine, rushes at the fleeing party, only to be cut off by yet another bit of alchemical work. In this case, a large explosion covers the retreat of the party and soon the double zombie poo-smelly monster is left in the dust. If only that were true of the smell!

    As the group continues to work its way (okay, the party is really just fleeing this way by /chance/).. in any case, the party is heading towards a larger building, likely the home of the highest ranking noble in the settlement. However, their progress is cut short by the sudden appearance of a monster wrapped in cloth. This is odd in these parts. But more odd is the fact that this particular undead creature is balancing on a high wire. A nimble backflip later and the zombie's flashing its teeth and moving to attack.

The mummy isn't the only one scouting. It's spotted by Windburn as the falcon circles over the village, who quickly swoops down low towards her master and allies while emitting the sharp "Kee kee kee kee!" that is a peregrine's alarm cry. That's enough to get Shiruba's attention and pause, looking up towards the bird and spotting the mummy on the wire just before it does it's impressive acrobatics for an undead to flip to the ground.

"Finally, a problem I really know how to deal with!" remarks the wolfgirl as she pulls an arrow, nocks it in her bow, and fires. The Spell Fletcher magic takes over, the arrow glowing bright red-orange until it impacts with the mummy's body where it explodes in a burst of flame. And guess what? Embalming fluid soaked bandages prove to be quite flammable!

"OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!" Gallant bellows, skidding to a stop and sheathing his swords, "I've /had/ it with the undead!"

His hands move in a blur, and a spark of magic turns into a revolving sphere of fire that leaves him and impacts the monster right after Shiruba's arrow takes effect. Fire to feed fire. His approach to the undead and spiders are pretty much the say: Kill it with fire!

Yeowang finds that punching the hell out of a zombie that takes no damage is not particularly cathartic. So she moves on with the rest of the party. "This isn't a job for adventurers, they need the /Ghostbusters/," she complains, leaving and proceed on with the others. She hrmphs at the highwire zombie as it flips down to fight us. "You want to fight?" she demands, and will take stock of the situation with her hunter's eyes, then wade in with the knowledge this gained. It's all about knowing your enemy, and knowing the enemy, she kicks twelve kinds of crap out of it, spinning back kicks, chaining into elbow strikes, chaining into snap kicks. It's vulnerable to normal damage? Well, she's got all the normal damage it could aks for.

The mummy is no dummy, and neither is Kotono.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to cut this thing's bandages off," Kotono says as she draws her blades and prepares to deliver a running strike at the mummy...

Only to have her blades fall out of her hands. Missing the mummy completely no less.

With a diving roll, Kotono picks up her blades and then waits until she's a safe distance away before stomping her foot and letting out an angry noise.

    Miyako is out of patience. And, perhaps more importantly, out of explosives. Some part of her regrets having used what she had on ... the other zombie. No, this will be simple. She's going to get up close and personal and RIP IT APART.

    Curved daggers in each hand, she runs forward alongside Kotono, her face grim as she prepares for the fight.

    It's a short fight. She cuts the thing's hand off as it reaches for her, and then it's overwhelmed by Yeowang's martial arts. So the Spriggan takes the oppportunity to demonstrate why Spriggans are known as 'backstabbing bastards' among landers -- by backstabbing the bastard mummy. Thirty-seven times.

    "Anybody got a light?" Wake asks playfully. She's been on enough adventures with Prophylaxis to recognize what is, essentially, an animated wick in front of her. She sets the thing ablaze immediately, dodging back and away to avoid scalding herself (and frankly, looking rather elegant in the process). She hopes the earlier effort is forgotten.

    Clearly Wake isn't the only fan of fire, either. Shiruba's delivery is, admittedly, more impressive. Gallant adds even more energy and heat to the mix and the mummy goes up as a proper torch now. It does appear to be in agony, though it's not clear if the undead really 'feel' the pain.

    Just as the flames die down (those wraps can't last forever, after all), Yeowang beats the unliving snot out of the damn thing, striking it so hard the flames go out entirely.

    In the mix of this fight, Kotono's issue with blade-management is not quite so noticable. It's not like the zombie is going to do much.

    In fact, since Miyako removed both the creature's hands, there is little it can do at this point, besides get back stabbed. Thoroughly. So thoroughly that Wake has to give the offended Spriggan an uncertain look. Still, zeal is to be admired!

    Feeling just a little more confident, the group runs into the last challenge. It's at the noble's house in the middle of the town. While looking around, sensing danger, a vampire swoops down into their midst.

    "Ah, how thoughtful of you to deliver yourselves! I am in need of more reinforcements!" it calls out, smirking. It then leaps into the assault!

Shiruba scowls as the Vampire Mayor makes his presence known. She digs a heel in to brace herself, grabbing the string of Thundersnow Howl and pulling it back. Rather than loading an arrow she's drawing off it's elemental energies, forming a swirling mass of air, a minature windstorm for lack of better words, within the longbow.

"Not tonight." She takes aim. "And not ever again!" The air power is reaching the point the charging spell is starting to sound like a howling wind, and then Shiruba lets go to fire. "TYPHOON SHOT!"

The windy wail only intensifies when the 'charged shot' is fired, howling through the air with the same speed and force as a screaming cyclone compressed into an elemental projectile to shear through the target!

"Like hell I am going to join the sad-sack possee of a man who looks like he dresses out of his great-grandmother's doily drawer!" the lion roars and draws his swords again, the blades glowing white-hot with magical fire. After Shiruba fires, he lunges forward, the glowing tips of the blades before him as he aims to impale the vampire. Fire hurts vampires, right? He can never remember exactly what kills what when the thing you are trying to kill got killed a long time ago. It's complicated.

Unfortunately, it seems Kotono's not having a good day today.

Her attempts at using magical techniques backfire and she fails to do much damage to the vampire.

"I'm going to sharpen my blades even more when I'm done," Kotono mutters with sarcasm as she rolls away to avoid becoming vampire sushi.

    Miyako scowls as she recognizes the 'mayor'. Another mothereffing vampire. "I thought we were supposed to've gotten rid of all these bastards," she mutters as she starts to hum another tune, gathering magic towards her as others make their own preparations for the fight.

    "Reinforce *this*," she says, and inscribes the last rune by flipping Mr Vampire the finger. "I'd say drop dead, but it would be redundant, so... drop /deader/."

    Whatever her spell was supposed to do, it doesn't seem to do much more than annoy the creature, unfortunately. It's distracted for a moment, but shakes it off all too quickly.

Yeowang will square off with the vampire, and fight him, but it seems she hasn't brought a +3 or holy weapon with her; the punches and kicks she delivers, which battered the zombie we just fought very badly, do nothing to this mob. Spinning back kick, no, palm strike? No. She goes through her repertoire, but nothing seems to hit this guy. Her strikes are apparently not correctly magically aligned. If she ever meets the guy who designed this game, she'll ... but no, she won't. She'll have her father /buy the company/, her little brother would /love/ having his own video game company, then put that programmer out on the street. And any company that hires him will get bought, and his worthless ass will be on the street again. That's what'll happen when she gets out of this game.

    "Well, we approach the end at last. It's time to turn up the heat again!" Sure, it's not much of a one-liner, but Wake's not terribly interested in snappy one-liners. She just wants to convert this thing to loot.

    When all you have is fire to use, the whole world looks like a lot of fun. Undead generally don't like fire, and this vampire is no exception. Wake has to get close, but with a rush of flame she sets the enemy's fancy cape ablaze.

    Before the vampire can punish Wake for getting too close, Shiruba's arrow strikes home, staggering it away from her and shearing a hole right through it's torso. The damage is massive, but it's still alive. Well, not alive, it's.. it's just not really dead.

    Not for long, though. Gallant's blazing weapons tear through the undead flesh as if it were butter. Where they cut, flames leap up. Even after the attack, the damage goes on.

    The vampire launches a few more attacks, but it fails to strike Kotono. The magic may have failed, but it did serve as another distraction. Turning to attack, the vampire finds itself met by Yeowang. The attacks do not inflict damage, it seems, but the vampire can't seem to attack effectively, either.

    Sensing its danger, the monster seeks to flee, but is held up at the last moment by Miyako's attack. No more damage is inflicted, but it buys enough time for further flame and air damage to put it to a much-deserved ending.

    The vampire's last cry rings out in a horrible tone, "The Queen has abandoned us!!"

Yeowang hrmphs at the vampire, but it seems the party has defeated it, so her frustration backs down a bit. Hard to stay mad at a bunch of discorporated pixels. But just when she thinks she has this game figured out, there's some other complication. First, it was all the hunter business. She was a martial artist. 'Shadowfist' doesn't sound like a hunter. But she had to develop all these hunter skills. She's still working on the stalking unseen bits, that's not even in the standard hunter package. "So, why couldn't I hurt that?" she asks, annoyed. Though the answer, which she seems to have a blind spot about, is she hasn't done anything at all with Light, or really any of her magic powers.

    "Vampires and many undead have unusual rules for damage. In the past, when I was a regular raid scout, I'd sneak in and try to find out a few of them. It was fun! But.. that was back when this was just a game, and death was just a dratted inconvenience," says Wake.

    She lets out a soft sigh, forcing that unhappy reflection away with an effort. "You add some fire, add some light, generally that keeps you viable when dealing with them. But as we saw today, that's not universal. Special encounters throw a wrench in everything we do."

They made it through... barely.

Kotono sighs as she puts her blades back in their sheaths. "Next time I'll try to be more careful," The Spriggan says with a scowl. She then looks to Miyako and says, "Come on, let's go relax someplace."

Shiruba waits for several baited moments until they're certain the vampire isn't going to pull some regeneration trick. Or maybe that was liches. Honestly she's dealt with enough Undead it's just safe in general to be doubly sure. The use of fire probably canceled whatever recovery method it might of had. Then she finally stows her weapon and pulls out her map of Ninetails. Previously it was part of her effort to locate the castle the Forgotten Army spawned from. Now she was using it to keep track of these small pockets of remaining undead as they're dealt with. The village's coordinates are marked down, and then checked off as it's been cleared successfully.

"One down, still plenty more splinter groups to deal with," she mutters as she puts it all away afterwards. Then nods a bit to Wake. "It's good to know certain expectations, but not to rely on only them. Things are rarely that cut and dry anymore."

She holds out her gloved arm for her peregine to come land on. "Thanks for the heads up on that mummy, girl."

Gallant shakes some vampire dust off his mane, grumbling, "Augh, I am going to have to bathe to get bits of dude dust off me. That's just gross..."

He glances at the group, then at the Baroness, and he smile. "I have to admit, for a moment there I thought we were all doomed. But somehow we managed."

He looks back at Yeowang, "The Baroness is right... the undead have their own peculiarities for damage. This is my first time fighting them. And it is just so STRANGE how my EXPLOSIVE POTION just completely FAILED to go off. They must have some neutralizing power. Yes."

He glances sideways, to see if anyone is buying it.

    Miyako nods, producing a rag to clean her blades before sliding them back wherefrom they were drawn. "That was just ..." She shakes her head, words failing her. "At least we all lived through it. I think." She looks Kotono up and down, then turns to examine each of the others in turn, checking for any sign of oddities, or status indicators.

    Whatever the case might actually be, she seems satisfied with her examination. "Hey, at least my thermite impro worked. That thing was just effing disgusting."

    She turns back to Kotono, stepping close to slide an arm around the taller girl. "That sounds like a great idea. I saw a sign for a bath-house in the last town we passed on the way here."

Yeowang nods glumly to Wake and Gallant. "Have their own peculiarities is the truth. About the only thing in the real world that resisted my attacks like that was a six foot eight American-looking fellow built like a truck. And I had on dress heels at the time. I understood why he was't hurt. You need to use more judo-like attacks on those types. This whole business with damage types is frustrating."

She nods at what Miyako says. "Yes that's a good point. I guess this is just food for thought and should give me some new direction for growth."

    "Well, the game generally wanted to force us to be flexible or gather certain items. But back in those days, before the Cursed Wave, I'd say everything made a lot more sense. Considering things now.. it's all gone sideways." At least, that is how the Baroness views it.

    "The important thing, though, is that we made it through together. The alliances can overcome anything if we stand together when it counts." Though Wake isn't really addressing the duties. She has bigger fish to fry.

    "Getting the undead out of Ninetails is critical, in any case. Then we can focus on dealing with our Palace Landers." Wake is so totally not a fan of them. Well, except for the uncrowned.

    She diverts her attention to Shiruba, "Do you have a decent idea of just how many more pockets of these things remain? I know we sealed their power center off, but I can't claim to know just what is left to deal with. People need to get back to their homes."

Something happens to Gallant at the mention of The Other Life. He seems to completely ignore those comments. Almost as if it had never been mentioned, he dovetails into the Baroness' remarks, "Indeed. We will kick the undead's sorry asses out of here and then..." he cracks his knuckles, "We send the Palace Landers crying all the way back to Queen Lollygag Latrine's throne. Count on me for whatever more clearing missions are needed to cleanse the land from these shambling monstrosities."

    "Oh, they will all get what is coming to them. For enslaving adventurers, the punishment will be terrible, indeed." The Baroness turns her attention to the south. "For now, though, I must make my way back to Eas. No doubt sooner or later our enemy will come for a visit. I must make their welcome... memorable."

    She turns to face Yeowang and Gallant, smiling suddenly. Once more she glides into a deep curtsey, "Farewell, my friends, until we meet again! Watch your backs."