Duty Session 425: Investigating Payon Cave

Allia Peers through the trees spotting a very pale and dirty figure approaching herself and Goldenblade. "Who are you?" she asks as she points her stiletto at the new interloper approaching in the woods.

Goldenblade has developed a new skill, and is entirely eager to use it, to the point where she's not even willing to wait for a scrap with the Palace Landers to try it out. She's got to do /something/ and the new quest showing up in Ninetails is the perfect opportunity. The startoff point is on the edge of a thick forest. The Guild person tells the party that's assembled that there will be a few hours trip into the forest before they come to a cave, which must be cleared of undead. There may be undead in the forest also, which should also be cleared. "Keep to the forest trails," the party is warned, as it's otherwise trackless. And of course no one's invented GPS yet. A map is given, showing the forest trails, but it's not a very detailed map, so off the trails is a bad plan.

She smiles to Allia, who she met the other day, and brought along with her to this duty as a training thing. Because training is something Goldenblade focuses on. Following Allia's glance, she smiles to Wisteria, "Oh, hey, I see we've got more takers. Allia, this is Wisteria, Wisteria this is Allia."

    Wisteria lifts a hand, the tall albino girl smiling "Hey Golden." she says and then selects her menu, equipping it seems as dark armor with smokelike shadows drifting from the metal appears over her kimino. "Got a undead thing to clear out I heard and well... I've never been in this cave so I need to poke around for glitches you know the deal." she grins

Goldenblade nods to Wisteria about poking around the cave. "I think this is an entirely new quest, I've never seen it before."

Goldenblade will lead the way into the woods, following the trail suggested by the map. This goes on for a couple hours, following the forest trails, and there's not much remarkable going on. For those with foresty knowledge, they may notice that there's fewer forest-type animals around here, though the tracks and trails seem pretty well-used. About three hours from the start of the hike, the party spots, in the distance, a small squad of what seem to be skeletal warriors walking along the trail, headed our way.

    Wisteria jumps into combat, trusting in her armor and curses to do the trick, the skeletons must be especially hardy however as she is stuck in a stalemate with them, having to defend and letting her curses just slow and bother them but not able to get in any decisive attacks. The tall albino girl looking somewhat frustrated at the whole thing. "Research is getting me all rusty... maybe I need to just spend some time adventuring."

Allia pulls out her flute and starts playing, a soft melody that's almost magical and puts a nearby small creature to a lull as she runs over and stabs its neck with the stiletto.

The skeletons are not so much resistant to magic, but the curses Wist is using might not have been the best curses to use on skeletons. They'll never have to worry about muscle aches. Now arthritis would be terrible. Or it might not, of there's no brain to feel the pain. Goldenblade's solution will always work, or it will if she doesn't goof it up, she attacks with her golden-bladed swords, and slams into them, both swords swirling around her like arcs of destruction, and each time one touches a skeleton, HP are taken away. Allia, it turns out, is quite effective with her magic, her spells quelling the skeletons aggressive tendencies, allowing her to kill them up close and personal; and then the two of them can come to Wisteria's aid. "Pulled a bit too much aggro?" Goldenblade asks with a grin.

Once the party takes stock of where they are and what resouces they have left, they do their post-fight necessities, and proceed on. It's about another hour before they see the cave entrance, with the wreckage of a wagon marking the position. Proceeding inside, Goldenblade holding one sword aloft and channeling fire to let it burn like a torch, they can see a little way in, revealing a huge cave, clearly once a staging area for when this was a mine. It's stinky here, and the source of the stink is a huge knot of zombies in the middle, just aimlessly zombying around. "There's way too many to fight normally," says Goldenblade, "Unless you've got fire..." Goldenblade, well known for fire, clearly plans on that.

    Wisteria looks over the zombies "Well... pulled agro last time." she grins "So lets instead see how they handle a moving target." The tall albino girl gets taller by several inches even as the strange hinged holes in her helmet become obvious and needed as long bun ears grow out of them. Then she's off, the speed of the caerbannog is well known even if it isn't tearing out your throat. She bounces in smooth flat arcs through the crowded zombies, bouncing from foot to foot and even sometimes stepping on an air rune that simply appears under her foot in the air to give her a change of direction or a higher arc for especially thick groups.

Allia jumps and moves out of the way of the skeleton that was sneaking up behind her "fuck off" she yells at the bastard as he runs past completely missing and running into a wall instead.

The zombies don't handle moving targets well, Wisteria finds, or, really, at all. Even when their prety has a small lead, they give up the chase and go back to shambling aimlessly. Allia all but steps back into one, but is able to dash past it before it can do much of anything. The party of three speedsters zip past the zombies and into the passages beyond.

If the last room didn't make it clear enough, this is obviously a former mine. Old rails, now rusty, line the passageways, and every now and again there's an abandoned mining cart. There are more skeletons and zombies here, but they're in ones and twos, and the party annihilates them with no problem. The real problem is, where are they, and how do they get to ... anywhere, really? It is a problem. Though, they -are- clearing the caves. Slowly.

    Wistera looks around and pulls out several maps. "Hmm most of the Ninetail mines use a repeating pattern." she says "Unless they hit a weird ore vein or something." she flips through a few more maps and nods "Yah we should be able to get through this to the main seams this way." she nods and rolls her maps back up, taking them out from time to time to help keep the party on track.

Allia searches for a way to get deeper into the mines but doesn't see any obvious entrances.

Wist's maps and knowledge prove to be spot on, Allia is unfortunately unable to find any hints or clues about how to move deeper in. Goldenblade, while not familiar with mining, knows a thing or three about how things are built. "Got to be this way," she mumbles. "We've come east so far, it ought to cut back, or they'd have sunk a different shaft."

The party finally seems to be coming into an important place in the cave. An inner staging are, maybe? There are carts spilled everywhere, and the light revals a sizable cavern, at least a hundred yards across. Well, more that that, that's as far as the very limits of the light reveals. At the far edge of the light, a small bedroom scene is seen, a bed and dresser at least, but further investigation will have to wait because a figure comes bounding, literally, out of the darkness. Seemingly frozen, this zombie-like monster nonetheless menaces the party with savage blows and huge jumping attacks.

    The tall white bungirl imitates the undead leaping into combat, however she isn't stiff as a day old corpse. "Kyonshi? We sure this isn't a problem from the Palace Lands?" she asks even as she bounces around, her feet bouncing off the floor, the ceiling, earth pillars the pop out of no where for her, as well as glowing sigils in the air. She's like a dark smokey pinball as she battles, her blade snapping out, dark hungry curses rolling over the blade to bite into the sub-boss and dig into its mind stunning and blinding it periodically.

Allia throws some rocks at the zombie girl laughing as she hits the girl in the arm "Weren't using that were you?"

Goldenblade slips into the shadows as the Bongun hops towards the party, and when he attacks Allia, she fades in and strikes the Bongun as it attacks Allia, striking with a deadly assassination strike. It costs the Bongun a big chunk of HP, and it struggles to fend off the three. Allia's rocks aren't hugely effective, but Wist is able to bounce right along with the Bongun, and it is unable to fend off her attacks before vanishing in a splash of pixels.

As the undead Bongun cries out in death, there is a stirring in the small circle of light in the center of the cave, A young girl, it seems, and beautiful, but with a tragic look in her eye, crawls out of the bed and timidly approaches the party in a series of what seem to be hopping steps. When she sees the party clearly, she hops forward, and when she gets close to the party, she smiles, revealing razor-sharp fangs. "I hunger," she says pitifully, "I hunger so much." And she tries to slake that hunger by attacking the party. She is deadly in melee and must be confronted at range!

    Wisteria grins and at first she doesn't move letting the boss girl take the first swing, which is to her detriment. The smoke drifting off of Wisteria's armor turns in to black metal chains latching into the vampire girl as the bun leaps away. The chains then sink themselves into the ground slowing and hampering the vampire's movements. She then goes into her normal combat pattern leaping from thing to thing and place to place, lashing out with curses and sword in equal measure. Dark magics crackling and flying about her, new chains snaping into existance anytime the boss gets a hit in on her.

Allia Folows the others out of the caves and back to the forest.

Goldenblade is technically a bow-user, but she's not very skilled. But this hopping vampire-like monster is far too savage in melee to get close in and fight with. Wist, on the other hand, is quite the skilled archer, and has tricks besides that slow the Munak's movement. Goldenblade and Allia can hit the target when it's pinned down, and the three of them manage to wear down the Munak's HP before it can hurt any of us. When it finally bursts into pixels and fades out, Goldenblade says, "I think we can call this mission done, let's get out of here and get our reward.

A hike back to the starting point, where the Guild has set up a small camp, offers food, places to rest, and a Guild official with bags of gold for all of us. Goldenblade grins widely.