Duty Session 421: Totally Typical Tomb

    Seeking adventure is its own reward, but Fuka has actual reason to accept the typical hunter's guild request for Adventurers to destroy undead from graveyards. She's completed a few training missions and, on request of her patron, has trained in two of the dungeons Mora Chester has particular interest in. She's very interested to see if the third has a similar theme to it. Besides, she has no reason not to help where requested, and every reason to be accomodating in this. Mora is a wonderful source of lore and skill after all. So when she saw the posting, she asked those friends of hers who were available if they'd like to help her out with some training... by redeading some horribleness! Fun times!

Adventure is its own reward! You get memories and entertainment. Occasionally you get fish stuck to your hands or a phantom Air Peko! Haru doesn't need a lot of additional reasons to go back to the Tomb. It was fun enough the first time. And thus the white haired artificer is there. "This place," he motions around the ambiance, "to die for. Could use more candles though. Fifty percent more."

"And here I thought we'd get a break from the undead for a while. Silly me." Well at least it's just an overrun burial area and not an entire army of undead legions, those are still safely sealed away for the time being. Good enough for Shiruba. "But if I see that gods damned trumpet skeleton again...."

Uta is here. Her regular nurse's uniform slash gi outfit destroyed during the last foray in the Lost Undine Caves, she is now wearing a new one. Mid season appearance upgrade is go! Even if a few months late.

This one looks slightly better, of course, as an upgrade demands, and has arabesques around the back and the neck area, that curl into the shapes of colorful slimes. She's also wearing the two presents from Haru: the musical-notes-with-slimes-pin, and the songbirds-on-a-hook-with-a-gem necklace.

"Well, at least it's an indoor challenge," Uta comments, staff firmly held in her hands. "Wouldn't want to be out with this this weather, would we?"

Somebody needs to tell her that the Storm Festival is over.

    "The only break we get from undead is BREAKing their bones!" Fuka states cheerfully, carefully checking Shiruba's reaction to the lameness. She very much enjoys the wolf-girl's reactions, especially when Fuka's being a dumbass or about to do something Shiruba thinks might be dangerous or dumb. Both apply here, naturally.

    "No dying!" she threatens Haru. "Fifty percent more candles though, I think we can agree is a good thing! But no romancing when we're trying to fight monsters! Or at least no *distracting* romance!" she grins. Yes, leave the poor fish-hand guy confused!

    While walking between the tombstones the party encounters a large group of zombies. These are all humanoid but seem to come from every race. The zombies attack, shuffling and moaning as they approach. Most Adventurers know how to handle this particular threat, by removing the head or destroying the brain...

What is a totally typical tomb without totally typical zombies, right? "I wonder if these zombies could be organized into a sort of flash mob one day," the Artificer musese. Haru looks at sections of the horde. "Say, put one side over there with a shambling move. Another one over there. Maybe a lead zombie with a red leather jacket. People would love it. A reall thriller." He can see it. A real visionary. Shiruba adds a good point there, "Maybe led by the trumpet skeleton or give it a number. That way it can be taken out as part fo the routeen."

To Uta, Haru does agree, "This will be indoors, won't it?" He looks skyward, "With the weather its more cold and flu festival over storm festival." A smile, "though watching lightning storms is pretty nice." Simple weather viewing pleasures. Quickly snapped out of it by Fuka's requirement to /not die/. "What!" he exclaims. He is totally taking this seriously, "concerned if I die here I'll come back as a Haru zombie? A Harumbie perhaps?" No. That meme never happened. Darkest timeline.

It is not to say that Haru isn't taking the horde seriously, though. Enough of them will become overwhelming like electronic mail or the mass marketing during a sale week in the city during certain festivals. Coal red glow comes from Haru's orb, conjuring up basic Wave Arte levels of fire and releasing it in a steady stream of dakka dakka dakks against the zombie threat. It is like a machine gun of hot death, getting them right in the head most times. He leans in to pester Fuka, "So non-distracting romance is allowed?" He eyebrow waggles, "because," firebolt, "this is a pretty hot combo we got going on here right now." Firebolt.

Shiruba just groans softly and rolls her eyes at Fuka. Followed by firing back with "Don't be such a numb skull." It's the only way to deal with people like this, just join in.

Fortunately Shiruba gets her wish and it's just the general shambling corpses rather than obnoxious skeleton somehow blowing a horn with no lungs. These are the sort of undead it's usually easier to just outrun. But that doesn't keep her from shooting off an arrow imbued with flame elements here and there, more as a diversion than trying to slow down to aim, and make herself a vulnerable target.

"It is nice to watch, I'll have to agree...", Uta replies to Haru. And at his second comment, she adds, "And we -have- seen an Adventurer being turned into an undead by a high level monster. The Adventurer was called Ichiya. An adventurer who used to die a lot. In light of the recent information..." She trails off. "If you want to know more about this, feel free to speak with Setsuna. I think he researched the phenomenon. I also have his friend Hammer on my friend list. The undead tried to turn her too, but it didn't work."

Uta turns to the monsters, and exclaims, "Surgery time! Today, students, we're going to learn how to perform a necrological phrenoctomy. Observe!"

She launches into the fray, every step a spin, every spin a slash of her staff, every slash of her staff, a head flies off, to bounce onto the ground, to shatter shortly after, along with the body of the original undead.

"Speaking of which!", Uta exclaims while she ducks to avoid the tail-swipe of an undead Salamander. "You might want to have your fish-hands looked at by a medical professional."

    The undead take the opportunity to present themselves, and there's only one good answer to undead. It's what they came here for after all. Fuka sets her axe, seeing no reason to get close, and sings a simple and repetitive chant heavily featuring fire. With a gesture she fans the flames outwards, incinerating several of the lesser undead as they approach. Shoot for the head? Why bother when you can have FLAMING ZOMBIES?!

    "Hot? I like it hot!" Fuka claims, grinning fiercely at Haru and yes flirting. "Too bad you're such a floppy fish hand! We need to get that taken care of or you'll never be truly hot enough... though I guess Scale is kinda known for lots of flame so... huh, I guess you're all set! Just don't die, because I'm here to set undead on fire, and I don't want to be the only reason you're hot!" she muses.

    "Also speaking of hot, don't set Songbird on fire! She just got that new outfit and it'd be a shame to singe it!" cries Fuka, getting into the swing of things so to speak. She's fortunately fairly careful when spewing her fire; Uta's safe for now!

    While moving towards the mausoleum at the center of the graveyard, the party is alerted to an impending attack by the rattle of bones on metal. A unit of skeletal soldiers in heavy plate mail march towards the party. The skeletons ready axes and finally charge the party. The skeletons seem to be focused on preventing the party from entering the mausoleum. Someone familiar with armor might be able to crack their defense, otherwise it might be quite a battle.

Shiruba tilts her head at the skeletons marching in armor. "Maybe this was a military memorial at one point. Seems to be a soldier theme going on now." And then they charge.

Shiruba pulls out her throwing glaive and hucks it at one of the soldiers, intending to stop his charge, but the relic just wedges in his armor. Forcing her to fall back on swinging her enchanted bow to hastily knock aside his axe swing (good thing those are fairly slow and predicatable weapons when it's not axe-fae swinging them), grab the glaive to pull it free, and give him a boot in the other direction for good measure.

"Well, at least I got behind them," she mutters, turning and hustling for the malouseum entrance.

"It's actually a present from Baroness Wake for the Bonded Hearts Festival," Uta explains. "I will appreciate not being set on fire for- well, reason 1, not being on fire is good. If that's me. If it's monsters it's okay for them to be on fire. Unless they're slime. Then not. Unless they're fire slimes. In which case it's how you know they're working as intended. Reason 2, well, it's a present, and it's impolite to burn presents. And you people know how big on Etiquette Baroness Wake is...."

And then, soldiers! "Oh, looks like today I get to practice my Phsical skills." She dashes towards the attackers, and this time, it's your more usual fare of ducking, kicking, roundhouse kicking, elbowing to the face with a slide, and good ol' punching, at different heights from the face to the knee. "That is a good point, Shiruba. Has anyone ever researched how the undead get to infest memorials? Since, that is, Landers do not leave bodies..."

Zombies are one thing, because they are slow and look somewhat like people if you dont count the whole rotting flesh thing. Skeletons on the other hand? Haru points out to these guys and says, "I've got a bone to pick with you." Last time he was here, his noodle arms were defeated by basic things like calcium and iron. All good things for a healthy skeletons. They rattle back at him like skeletons do, all cackling skeleton howls and chattering bones. "And today," he produces the fish hand, tail fin swishing, "say hello to my little friend!" Yes, he did the voice.

Noodle Arms. Fish Hand ehancement. Engage! He slaps a skeleton in the face, making the head spin in place but doesn't do any real damage. Haru Punch, now with Vitamin C-you later! "Look I heard Scale needed some Enchanters so I became an honorary member with Fish Scales. One might say I have my hands in a lot of things these days." Fish slap! "A little fire never hurt," he looks to Fuka, getting whacked by a skeleton in the process, "because I'll always Rock." Short and Earth joke at once? Yes.

To Shiruba's commentary, Haru wonders, "Hey I wonder if they can appreciate our jokes, then." Fish slap. "Like, if I was an undead soldier, I'd appreciate a little joke now and then. Maybe thats why we were asked to come." Slow turn to Fuka. Eyebrow waggle.

    "Hmmm." Fuka muses to Shiruba's words. "No one leaves bodies behind when they die, so I'm not sure the graves have anything to do with what sort of undead show up. They just... show up. But there might be a martial aspect here that drew them, I guess?" she offers, actually seeming rather thoughtful compared to her usual ditzy attitude.

    The armored death warriors seem to be a bit more of a challenge than your run-of-the-mill zombies, but Fuka has an answer to that too. "Roll the bones!" she cries out, hefting her axe and wading into battle. She strikes precisely, leveraging both the weight of her weapon and her experience with heavy armor to sunder weak points, break balance, and punish openings with fierce brutality. "Surrender or die!" she cries out. "Oh wait! Never mind!" she adds, falling straight back into that ditzy mode because it's more fun that way.

    She still has time and energy to respond to the others however. Uta gets a grin. "You're looking hot enough!" the sylph flirts. "No need for me to make you any hotter!" And then she looks aside at Haru, actually trying to engage the armored warriors in hand to hand. Well, fish to hand. Fish on hand? "You're really flailing with those jokes." she grins, not actually taking issue with it. "I mean, stick to what you're good at. Like being boreing and hot!"

    Yep, if Fuka's flirting with Haru too, she seems to be sending mixed signals here. "It's kind of bone-headed for you to be punching them. What do you think you are? You're not cute enough to be Uta!" Fuka insists. Or punchy enough. She has to admit though, he's trying!

    Entering the mausoleum the party descends a set of marble stairs that lead deep underground. Opening up into a cavernous space. This area is made of carved marble and styled to look like a jousting arena. An exit lays at the far end of the lists.

    Mounted on a skeleton peko is a skeleton in black jousting armor, his helm is crowned with an effigy of the Beautiful One. On his left hand he appears to be missing his ring finger. "None Shall Pass! Who bless not the beauty of my lady! Or best me in the Joust!" Another skeletal peko with a lance stands on the party's end of the lists. Perhaps honeyed words will work, if not brute strength, or skill.

"Graveyards and burial grounds exist specifically as a spawn environment for Undead and Spirit type monsters because of that, Uta. And while the Landers don't leave bodies behind in deaths, their memorials are often made with items of deep personal meaning to them. Which may in turn 'imprint' on the undead that spawn in that area, so," she replies to Uta, and waves back at the armored skeletons, "You get mobs with similar athsetics if its strong enough." It's a bit of framing former game meta into a realistic comprehension, and the kind of answer you'd expect from someone that's devoted themself to studying the Lander social and historical culture.

"Case in point," Shiruba adds as they come upon a jousting knight. "I wonder if they still have Peko Jousting. I've only seen races." She's polite enough to let the boney knight make his little speech. "Huh."

Technically she does have a Dedication to the Beautiful One, it was part of establishing the Museum, which she doesn't actually have access to right now, stupid Palace Landers. "Beauty is blessed in many forms," she replies instead, as she straddles the undead peko provided... but rather than draw the lance she pulls back an arrow in her bow, and fires the lightning charged projectile at the knight, stopping his charge. "A sharp mind that knows when to stop a fight before it can start..."

"Haru, I seriously suggest you see a professional chef to have that fish removed," Uta suggests. "In the meantime, take a couple swigs of healing potion and chim me in the morning."

The reaction to Uta being flirted with and complimented? Focus deeper into the punching. 50% more manhandles. Can you noun that verb? Oh well, it's just been done. Too late. "This is a MMORPG!," she exclaims. "We're here to punch things, not to look good!"

"So, Shiruba... are you telling me that the Undead are sort of like slimes, with the imprinting and all?"

She segues to Shiruba's other wondering with, "...Wait, is the Peko Race still ongoing?" Look at the Knight on a Skeleton Peko. She turns to the rest of the party. "Is this the Monster Peko Race for the Shadow Festival? AAAAH! It's the Shadow Festival! It's later than expceted!" Again, she turns to the Skeletal knight. "...where did you sign up for this race, good Sir? Can you kindly point me to the registration point?"

They get into the mausoleum and there is plenty of space here. "The marble here is nice," Haru admires. He is a real nerd when it comes to gems, minerals, and ores. It takes a moment later to realize the joust implications. "Ok, the jousting joke feels too easy," he says as he takes stock of skeletal Peko and knight. "That crown, though," he looks at it. Accessory Crafter mode has activated. The musing on undead. Good thought. "Maybe undead are what is left of the pixels and/or souls made whole by other elements of the world? So it wouldn't be 'thier' skeleton per say, but the memory of? Source of from many others?" Its an interesting concept to think about while being Gandulf'd by a skeleton knight. It comes with a nod from Shiruba's explaination, "Yeah that makes sense. It was along the lines of what I was thinking. I'll have to go read a book on undead in one of the libraries later. Its good mind food."

"Aw thank you," Haru says in response to not needing extra hotness, "I wouldn't want to spontaniously combust on you. Not until later at least." He waggles around his fish hand, "maybe I'll add some ventriloquism to my tight five."

Dead serious turn though. "No one is cute enough to be Uta, but Uta," Haru says. Because teasing Uta is fun, too. "I'll talk to Pela or Gwen about it later. Right now Im subclased summoner and feel obligated to level it up to its next tier. Who knows, maybe it'll evolve and I'll get some killer weapon out of it." Stranger things have happened.

The skeletal knight is waiting patiently. "Look," he charges in to address the knight in mortal kombat. "Noodles arms never let me down." Correction, they always let him down. Its just an enjoyable way for it to happen. Magicarp equipment, go!

    Fuka studies the black knight briefly. "I recognize that thingy on his head." she muses. Then she snaps her fingers. "Waku-waku uses that symbology! Clearly she's his lady!" Fuka then proceeds to sing the praises, quite literally, of Baroness Wake. It goes fairly well, if embarassingly, until she mentions the Baroness' name and tips the dead knight off that she's not praising *his* woman. A definite etiquette lapse from Fukaziroh!

    Fortunately she has a fallback. Long weapons wielded with both hands! Also riding too. Quite the combination, a weapon needing both hands to wield, plus riding. She looks back at Haru. "You know, credit for trying, but I'm not sure you know how to handle your weapon." she says. "Maybe you should leave that sort of thing to me!" she says with a *highly* suggestive wink. Yes, she knows exactly what she's saying here, even if she doesn't actually have *that* kind of experience!

    That said, she's actually pretty darn good at jousting. This isn't, as it seems, her first rodeo indeed. She might actually manage to murder the undead knight if, well, someone else didn't beat her to it.

    Sighing as her tilt ends, she looks at Uta. "Hey, I'm always here to look good!" she says with a flourish. "And you can't help it! But I don't think this is actually a race. We'll have to wait a month for one of those. This guy's raced his last!" she muses, looking down at the fallen knight. Between her lance and Shiruba's arrow, they more than make up for Haru's attempt to fishhandle the warrior.

    Continuing through the tunnels under the mausoleum the party reaches a large stone room with a large stone bier with a skeletal sphinx resting atop it. The skeleton has a key dangling inside her rib cage that matches the style of the gate.

    The Sphinx stops the party with a greeting. The human looking skull has lots of pointy cat teeth. Somehow it's able to speak perfectly well. It asks the party a riddle with the standard sphinx caveat, get it wrong and get eaten. Get it right and you get the key. Of course there are always other options, like violence and thievery.

"Oh cool, a sphinx!" Pause. Then Shiruba remembers how sphinxes usually work. "Oh crap, a sphinx!" Sure enough, it goes into the whole riddle thing, threatening to decimate those who can't answer it.

"You can't call an aswer right or wrong if I don't give you one," she snarks back. And while the sphinx is trying to parse how to respond to that, she aims one of her magic arrows between the sphinx's ribs and fires, aiming to hook the key and pull it out the other side of the monster, then run to grab it. "Let's get out of here! Before she turns this into a real cat-astrophe!"

After the mandatory embarrassed response to the teasing in the previous room, Uta muses on the Sphynx's riddle. "Hmmm... Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evnening... Let's see... let's see..."

She raises her hand and snaps her fingers, "Oh, it's easy!", and stiffens her arm to point at her right. "It's Fuka. She crawls out of bed in the morning, goes step on a magical land mine in the afternoon, loses two limbs, and then I have to regrow them, but due to the recent war, regrowth potions are rationed, so only one new limb per day per customer."

"Joint weapon training," Haru flirts back to Fuka, "now thats something I can get behind." He winks. The fish winks. The skeleton they are fighting winks.

And now they get riddles. Haru loves puzzles. He says, "Traditionally the answer is 'human' though there are some Talos principals with Athena that say the question that not is not being asked as 'Why are you here, asking questions to begin with'." A hand motions, with fish attached, "but that feels too easy." Flop. "I'm thinking that there are secrets on secrets."

With that he gets out his casting focus orb and begins a Wave Arte. Is he NOT going to noodle arm through a challenge? Combo broken. "Tenebris. Cadit. Lunae Lumen. Oriri. Occultare." A small black cat with six legs lazily walks in with a roll of black mist. It looks at the fish and does the chittering thing cats do when they want to hunt. "No, Eve, this is not food." Chitter. The mist rolls in. The two stare off as the mist gets thick. "Obsidian Light, Eve." Chitter. There Haru goes, having difficulty with the cats again. Eventually Eve relents and hops up into the air to settle on a fake pale moon, keeping an eye on the fish as the area is basked in a soft blacklight effect great for finding SEKRETS.

    Seeing a Sphinx, Fuka breaks in immediately before the riddle's even asked. "I bet the answer is Time. Or Nothing! It's always one of those." she confides. Of course none of the above is the true answer, sadly. She's just being a clown, or possibly distracting the sphinx from what she's actually intending.

    She abruptly HEYs though, at Uta's answer. "That was ONE TIME!" she complains. "And there wasn't any potion rationing then either!"

    She's amused, at least. And takes the opportunity the others provide to do her own bit of magic. That is to say, Fuka's invoking some subtle magics. Going into a soft chant, she gestures with a hand, trying to use air magic to tug the key out of its current resting place. It twitches, pulls, but she lacks the fine control or power to free it with such a subtle spell. A shame really... it was a pretty decent idea, and she was close to actually pulling it off...

    The party is able to get the key at least, without having to be eaten by a guardian sphinx. Having reached the heart of the tomb the party finds itself in a crypt with a coffin and several torches casting flickering light. Out of the coffin rises a very pale skinned gnome. He has long fangs and a burning thirst in his eyes. The Vampire attacks the party.

    The Vampire gnome moves quickly bouncing from wall to wall and slashing at the team. He also has a meserism attack that can leave an adventurer stunned and unable to act. Everyone however has a pretty good idea how to take out Crypt Vampires. Light, staking, and certain pungent herbs.

"The fact that it happened once..." Shiruba mutters as she peers at Fuka for a moment.

Oh look. A Vampire. An -anklebiter- vampire.

While she's not Light user herself, Shiruba does have some of the infused arrows Miho made for the war against the Undead in Ninetails. So she puts them to use now. Or would. Turns out the highly mobile and small target the gnome vamp makes of himself is hard for even her to pin a hit on.

"Hey, she is always up to doing anything at least once," Haru asides to Shiruba about the Uta riddle response. Eyes also slide to Fuka when Shiruba peers, though his comes with an eyebrow waggling.

Then there is this vampire. "Oh hey, a smol vampire, this is all you, Fuka!" That isn't to say that Haru isn't going to support. He summons out his Earth Elemental, Terra, with her sick beats to set a suitable background music into the fight. Her sound fits with crypts quite well! The vampire doesn't seem to be for the 'its all you' approach and lunges at Haru at some point. The Artificer blocks the attack with his fish hand, getting a vampire gnome gnawing on the hand that gnaws on Haru. "I don't know how I feel about this, but Im not mad at it." With a swing swish he throws the vampire gnome back into the battle arena, sans one tooth which the Enchanter perks. "Bonus loot!"

"Aw, c'mon, that argument doesn't have a leg to stand on," Uta teases back. Oh, no. She's learning. Evolving.

"Oooh, a Vampire! I know just the thing! Let's see... let's see... this is his own crypt, so we cannot use the thing where they need to be invited. Sacred symbols... I don't think we have any. Garlic... sadly, none. Hm. Oh. OH. I know! Compulsion!" She slams her staff on the stone floor, and begins to intone a bouncy J-pop tune. A downright -massive- amount of slimes,in various colors, seep out from the cracks in the floor and walls, drip out from the ceiling, and begin to bounce around the room. "Look at all those slimes? How many are there? HUH? HOW MANY?"

    "It was a buried explosive! A land mine!" complains Fuka at Shiruba. It's not like she got bit by a fish, or had her arms chopped off when attempting to block an axe, right? Right? Besides, she got her legs back. Uta even got to use her impressive medical inspection ability, and even spawned a cool meme! "I do have to agree that when it comes to lost limbs though, you've got me beat HANDS DOWN!" Fuka snarks.

    The high of banter lasts until they open the locked door and peer inside. "Cute little sucker." Fuka observes. Well, little sucker at least. Cute? Well, the undead isn't her type. Literally. "Haru, I'm going to need you to do something for me." she adds, eyeing the man with some degree of seriousness. "Could you, for me, NOT try to punch in the mouth something that wants to bite you?" she pleads. "With the fish is fine. Let it suck on the fish. I really don't want to see some small and vicious being sucking on you!"

    Ahem.

    ANYWAYS! Fuka sees the speed of the vampire and immediately breaks into a chant. She knows at least one super-appropriate spell here, and she's used it frequently enough in the last few days. Combining fire and light mana, she both burns and blinds the vampire. The rest of the fight is going to be rather difficult, but hopefully not terribly so!

    After a fierce battle the Vampire falls to the ground, rather than vanishing into a reverse rain of pearlescent orbs of light, it blows away in a dust leaving behind a skeleton. Which then crumbles away. With the Vampire defeated the undead curse is lifted from this graveyard. The party can gather their loot and head off to inform the Hunter's guild.