Duty Session 435: Spinner's Deep

Spiders. Why did it have to be -spiders-. Taiyo was just hoping for a nice easy job from the Hunter's Guild for some money and maybe a little loot, but this wasn't what she was hoping for. Ah well, it can't be helped, now. As a result, she's out here at the entrance to a mine in the cliff face, one that leads down deep to a nest that needs copious amounts of -fire- applied to it. ... Hopefully some folks bring some fire. She didn't have any at the moment. All burned out from training. HA HA HA HA HA HA. *cough*

Goldenblade is what is known, toungue-in-cheekily, as the Fire Party. In real life, a fire party is a small squad of firefighters that roam around looking for small fires that have started around various pieces of heavy machinery and such, but GB's affiity for fire is about as high as you can get, completely inadvertently because she had no clue about chargen when she went through, but she's pretty well known now, over a year into the game, as someone who can put down the fire - thus, the Fire Party. She was on the way to someplace closeby, but when the call went out for an adventurer needing fire, she of course came. "Shouldn't be too much trouble," she says confidently.

"Well this brings back memories. One of the first places we focused on clearing out when it became available." Despite the chipper arrival Vertina mutters under her breath about spiders and poison, but then goes back to being her usual ethusiastic self. Though the first thing she does is take a flask out and toss it to Taiyo. "Just in case. So our support doesn't run herself out of mana saving our butts. It's not a -hard- dungeon but the poison and healing requirements can be annoying if we're not prepared."

DID SOMEONE SAY FIRE?!

As if answering Taiyo's prayers, Syx appears out of a burst of flames in the air above the mine entrance and executes a perfect superhero landing.

"Heard there were some spiders around here that needed to be killed with fire. Well I specialize in fire! And hitting things with fire."

    Catch! "Oh, thanks! I have one myself but a backup never hurts. Good preparation, Vertina!" Taiyo compliments before looking at the group. Four eh? Not bad.

            LIGHT PARTY.

    "Alright, so you all probably know the deal. Spiders. Lots of spiders. Probably too many spiders. Apply aaaall the fire you guys want. I'll deal with the poison and such like Vertina mentioned. Lets get started!"

Down into the mine they go, a nice path cleared for the group's exploration. After a bit of a walk, the group finds a room that may have been a boss chamber. The walls are smooth, strange patterns, but the center is most important. For what? Time to figure out.. "Huh.."

Goldenblade looks around, sighs. "Not sure where the fire goes, here." She's about as musical as she is magical, which is about as much as an elephant can fly. She sings a couple bars of some song, but it's not really possible to tell /what/ song. Could be from the official list of songs for the game. Could be Frank Sinatra.

"Good, this part is still clear. Nothing came back up to reinfest it." Vertina nods to herself as they walk into the former boss chamber. "That," she points at the center and explains mainly for Taiyo's benefit," is a gate deeper into the mine, and the actual infestation. Basically, we need to jump start it into opening." Easy explaination. Which she demonstrates with channeling some ki energy into her hands and pressing against the patterns, making them light up almost like a circuit board.

Syx wanders into the chambers, and hmms a little bit, as he looks over that weird thing in the middle. The pattern looks familiar. Is it a musical note?

Syx has a weird idea, as he starts to whistle what he thinks the notes are trying to show him.

The song? Unrecognized. Vertina seems to have been here before, though, "Oh. Ha! That would explain where the spiders came from, then. I guess we need to power it up, then." Again, a song, and it seems to match Goldenblade's? "What... is that?" she asks of them both before trying to send a bit of magical energy toward the device. Success! NOW they are in the new dungeon proper. "... and this is what I expected... someone needs to invent a flame thrower," she grumbles, allowing the flameslingers to go first.

    As the group ventures from the entrance, the tunnel eventually comes to what seems to be a dead end. However, there's a statue that looks vaguely human there with .. pincers on the face instead. "... Fire that sculptor.."

Vertina has been here more than a few times, and seems to have come prepared. She knew how to reactivate the teleporter gate after all.

"Yeah, it's not the greatest piece of art." The Salamander saunters up, maid dress hem ruffling lightly with her steps (yes she's still wearing it. We're not about to evoke the wrath of Gwen by ignoring her 'dress for the job you want' fashion), pulls out a few strips of hide and bone which she lays on the alter. "Having to hunt meat for my cooking lessons has left plenty of other regeants over, handy for a time like this!"

"Damnit Jim, I'm a farmer not a hunter." Syx says, as he searches his inventory for something that might work as a sacrifice for this altar. Nothing comes up that he's willing to part with

Goldenblade is teleported here. She has no idea if her singing helped or not. She's not sure how, unless she accidentally hit the right notes. It'd have to be accidentally, those are the only notes she can sing.

But now it's some statue, and the instructions calling for fire. 'Fire that sculpture' is what she hears, so, WHOOSH, flames bathe the thing for about ten seconds. It doesn't do anything except warm it up, and now she just shrugs and tries to work out what she's supposed to do.

Hrm, offerings? Well, the flame cleared the ground a bit, and there's these shinies, so she'll pluck them out and put them in place.

Oh! Sacrifices? Offerings? "Oh it.. wants stuff. Um.." The were-fang starts to rummage through her inventory while the others please this ... strange thing. "Not... that kind of ... Nevermind," Taiyo muses of Goldenblade, at least they give the statue something. After a few moments the healer tugs out a potion and offers it up to the strange statue, hoping it is enough.

Seems it is! A passage opens allowing the party to continue onward. As they go, the tunnels get rougher, the walls have scatch marks, and when it finally opens into another room, the group will find another adventurer in need of aid. Something Taiyo is adept at! "We'll see what we can do! Just hold on and I'll focus a bit for a healing spell."

Goldenblade gets lucky once again, her offering is accepted, and she moves along. Coming to the injured adventurer, she will kneel down and try to help him, but as much as she knows basic first aid for on-the-job injuries, thanks to 50 years of mandatort safety training, none of the procedures she knows actually work here, on people's glowy insides.

Vertina points at the poisoned warrior. "See. This is exactly why spiders need to be disposed of, no questions asked. It's going to take more than one of us with how far down he is... Uh, sorry to use you to make a point, sir." Again Vertina channels ki into her hands, and jabs her fingers lightly against his shoulders. And his side. And his neck. And... wait, she doesn't have that many hands?! No, but she's moving them so fast the afterimages make it look she's contacting several spots at the same point, infusing light's healing energy through several pressure points to make sure there's enough in his body for Taiyo to make hers effective.

"I can help him out." Syx says as he walks up to the guy and puts a hand on his shoulder.

Syx then starts shaking him back and forth, "Get on your feet! You've got to get out of here! There's no time to rest!"

The hurt adventurer appreciates the efforts of Goldenblade and Syx, at least, but they do little to actually help. Vertina's technique saturates the individual with a dose of light energy which Taiyo then acts on, supplying a large amount of her own by first channeling a Certain Attack Spell, but then redirecting the light energy of it into a potent healing spell instead. "There, that should do it." The adventurer is elated, and points the group toward the path they came from.

Following that path, the group finds the massive underground jungle that exists here, full of trees, and sludge, and ALL OF THE SPIDERS. -All of them-. "....Ugh. Can we just create a -star- in here?" Or something? Fire? ... No? WHY NO FIRE? Oh god the spiders heard that. Here they COME.

Goldenblade channels all the fire there is. You called for fire, you get fire. Fire /everywhere/. You'd think, if you thought like Goldenblade, that there must have been an explosion at the flamethrower factory. You can't hardly see for all the fire. Unfortunately, is seems like these spiders are immune to fire. That does not stop her from using fire. That just stops her from helping the situation at all.

The first instinct is to use fire in a situation like this, so Syx does the same as Goldenblade, rushing into the fray with the spiders and his burning gauntlets swinging. While he might be able to take out a spider with punches, it seems like the fire part of his punches is not doing as well as he would like.

Vertina hands the man a flask of booze on his way out. "Here, to get the taste of poison out of your mouth and pass the time while waiting for your friends to respawn." Then turns to follow the others onward.

Into the poison gas field. She ughs, putting a hand over her mouth. "Shit. Now I remember what part of this dungeon I -hate-." She'd be all for igniting everything on fire, but they have spiders also closing in. "No time to dwaddle around right now!" She slams a foot into the ground, causing it to rumble and roll with the shockwave and heave under the spiders... who just leap into the trees to avoid the minature tremor. "Damn cheating spiders!"

Time to just run.

THERE ARE TOO MANY SPIDERS. And they are immune. To. Fire. "RUN!" Though not the obvious way. With the swarm on the march, Taiyo tries to make a path of light for everyone with one of her spells. A path over them, through the air. Then the spiders just jump onto that too. "GOD DAMNIT. GO GO GO." Nothing went right that time. Not. One. Thing.

As the group tears off into the strange environment, it gets even -more- strange. Acid is dripping from above, the ceiling is lowering, and eventually the group finds itself facing off in a large chamber against a massive strangely-white spider with some blue traces. And on top of that? It -blinks- around. "... OK. NO PLAYING AROUND. FROST ARMOR FOR EVERYONE!"

The rush at least gets them into the boss chamber quickly. Seeing where they've ended up, Vertina smiles with little dragon girl fangs and all. "WE'RE BAAAAAAAAACK!" She calls out, even though she's the only one that's been here before. "I don't know if spiders even urinate, but if they do, you can start pissin' yourself in fear any time!"

Sure enough the spider phases around the chamber, but she's ready. "And I've got a surprise just for you." She creates a ball of flame in one hand, and hurtles it across the chamber. Nothing new there.

Until the fireball explodes, unleashing a eruption of light more akin to a flashbang. It does something to interfer with the boss' phasing ability, making it stay visible longer as well as burning and blinding it so people can focus their attacks. "HAH! You forgot fire also creates light, didn't you!"

Goldenblade joins the fight, and flames once again appear, this time at her feet, and seem to boost her already pretty butch agility to incredible levels. Her fighting skill is meh, but all her attacks are unanswered, it cannot touch her no matter how it tries. When it phases out, she can't hurt it, but it can't hurt her, either, and when it phases in, she smacks the crap out of it. It's sort of like a Phase Goldenblade, because whenever it swings at her, she's not there. Just a sheet of flames that adds a bit of DoT to it as the party beats it down.

Running from spiders is no fun, Syx wants to smash them. Next time he does this dungeon he'll have to remember fireproof spiders and bring something else.

However the group manages to drop aggro when they get into the boss room, which has a spider that can teleport? Well shit, okay. Syx tries to grab it a few times, though is short, until he spots a pattern.

With the frost armor helping him absorb any hits that come his way in his attempts to grab it, he watches Vertina throw her spell as he moves into the position the spider is going to appear at next.

In a literal flash, Syx grabs the spider as soon as it appears, and Vertina's flare makes it unable to warp out of his grasp, "You're mine now motherfucker! Yee fuckin haw!"

Syx launches himself upward into the air, twisting in midair to plant his feet on the ceiling as he moves the spider into the buster position and pushes off of the ceiling.

It's like a meteor crashing into the ground when Syx slams the spider into the floor, a massive explosion rippling out from the impact. This one ain't fireproof!

With a quick cast, the group has their frosty armor to help protect them from the Spider's attacks. After, Vertina stuns it, Goldenblade pounds on it, and then Syx just FINISHES it just as a wrestler should. He may even have a chance to pin the beast before it explodes into a shower of red pixels and vanishes from sight. Victory Fanfare. DUTY COMPLETE. REWARDS ISSUED. Phase crystal gained. "Yeeeeeeeeeees. That's the one I wanted!"

Vertina fistpumps and cheers, both at Syx's finishing move, and at Taiyo getting the prize she was looking for. "Great! That's the one I used as a foci when I was creating my Mirage Phase technique."

"What're you working on you needed that for?" Syx asks after he gets out of the crater he made in the ground. He brushes himself off, and then realizes his vest got tore up in the spider room, "Gonna need to get a new one. Again." He mutters to himself.

Goldenblade smirks as Syx slams the spider, and nods, "Well done. What was the fire needed for anyhow?" she wonders, puzzled. She brought so much, and everything was either stony or soggy. The crystal is peered at dutifully and put away.

"Eh? Oh! Light element in that particular item. Should help with my training a fair bit, so I was hoping to get a hold of one! Glad I got a hold of it, and thanks everyone for the help!" To Goldenblade: "Oh, I was .. I mean it's spiders, I was hoping we could just burn them out.. Guess not.."