Duty Session 437: Travel with Triffids

    It is Triffid Hunting Day! This is the first time Nariko's come upon the request to find the elusive monsters on their migration, and to be honest, she couldn't figure out why no one else seemed interested at the guild! Ah. Whatever. It was something she hadn't done before, so, time to get to it.

    A few friendly calls are made out to the other guilds, a location is given, and here on this beach is where the were-fang is waiting for everyone.

    Hifumi takes up the challenge, not because of any feeling of honor or adventure, or even just general power or whever. No, Hifumi is after the the same thing the guild is, triffid bits. Only he wants them for experimenting with food buffs. Chef is gona chef. The man arriving with a small dragon on his shoulder, the dragon is comprised of leaves and flowers obviously a summon of some kind.

Schneider is here for Triffid Hunting Day. There are a lot of more pressing issues, at the moment, but he was closeby, and the quest popped up. He'd never done it before, so he figured it was worth a few hours. Also, he'd heard it was pretty tough, so this will let him know whether he's really a bigtime player or not.

He offers a nod to Hifumi, who's helped him on quests, and smiles to Nariko. "Hey there," he greets. "I'm ready for the quest," he announces, having scrubbed extensively from his last quest. Stupid pirates.

"Ugh this one again.." Syx grumbles as he realizes what quest it is. He's done this one twice, failed it once and also ended up getting his butt kicked by a giant angry Bun Bun.

Still maybe this will be different, "Hunter's Guild is going to owe me a huge pile of money for this one."

    Merek will pull on his attire and take his time to come with Nariko and anyone else which gathers for the duty. He nods a bit while he checks on the two weapons with him, twin blades. "Alright, I will assist with what you need to do!"

    "Find Triffids, I guess? That's all they really said. And then they said good luck, and so did a lot of people on the way out... it was really odd," Nariko muses, greeting everyone else as they arrive. "Alright, then, lets get this show on the road. There's some tracks over here," she muses, pointing. "Saw them on the way in.."

    And suddenly it dawns on the were-fang why this may be an issue. But hey, she does have SOME tracking skill. ... Some. "Oh huh.. Lets see if we can figure this bit out.."

Schneider is not so sanguine about the tracking. He's privvy to mysteries and odd things usually not known, and so can sometimes puzzle things out that most can't. But stare at the tracks as he might, he can't tell fathom out one detail from another. "I can tell you for sure they're not /our/ tracks," he says, possibly less than helpfully.

    Merek looks to the plants, while he points to them, "These will lead all of us to the right way," he offers to the party. Then he's doing that, while the others will assist with their own ways to track.

Syx does his usual Syx thing, as he takes a knee at the edge of the treeline and picks up some dirt, tasting it for a moment, "You know animals are way easier to track than plants are, moving or not." He mutters, as he thinks he might have a good idea of where they are this time.

    Hifumi looks around and then taps the dragon on his shoulder on the head. "Snapdragon, go find them girl." he says sending his summoned plant dragon snuffling through the undergrowth and flitting from root to root as it hunts for Triffid tracks.

    Welp. Nariko is a were-fang, and as she is typically in that other form most of the time, the tracks get a good looking over, maybe a sniff, a bit of peering around, and an agreement with the others that the tracks go over yonder, "Agreed, lets get moving then."

    After a short trek, the party finds a grove, and there be TRIFFIDS there. Huzzah. "... That wasn't so hard. Why was everyone at the guild so ominous about this?" She whispers to the others before shrugging and glancing to the creatures. Oop. Spotted! "Ack! They are NOT friendly!"

Schneider eyes Nariko skeptically, but nods. "Maybe this won't be as hard as I had heard." He'll follow the others as they follow the tracks, and sees .... "Or maybe it will be." But Schneider has a solution for plants. "Deep Doomsday. To the spirits of land and air, bound by the pact, fulfill your obligation now." He sounds entirely serious about this, and who knows what they owe him, or what their pack was, because when he shouts "Megadeath!" it's fire that happens.

Ohboy, is that a lot of fire. The whole clearing is filled with it for a moment, and when the flames and fire clears from view, it looks like the triffids are all down a chunk of HP and most of them are on fire.

    Hifumi skips back from a lashing tentacle, but seriously his entire class is about controling and summoning plant monsters. This is just what he does when he's not cooking, heck even when he is cooking, as is demonstrated when he whistles and Snapdragon strafes the Triffids, a lance of flame gouting from it's little petal muzzle. Leaving a burning line, a flaming wall between those lashing tendrils and Hifumi's tender tender flesh.

Syx goes immediately into combat mode once the now hostile Triffids attack, and he throws himself into the midst of them with reckless abandon. Clearly it's not his best move as despite his firey punches and kicks raining down on them, the group he jumped into is far too big for him, and it shows as his health bar rapidly drops.

    Merek looks to the Triffids, while he seems to consider, "We never actually managed to find any of them, well it looks like that's changed. We'll do what we can," then he's swinging about with his feet to kick into the triffid with flame.

Time for Fire. All of the fire. In amounts that would make the sun jealous. First Schneider burns out a lot of the attacking plants. Hifumi's familiar follows suit, blasting more of the creatures with flame. .. Huh. A plant dragon breathing fire. Seems dangerous to the critter, but apparently not. When Syx dives in, he's finding a lot more of them turn toward him than he may have wanted. Thankfully, while he's able to take out a few, Merek's follow up keeps the salamander from losing too much health. Lastly, Nariko follows in after Syx, taking out a few more to ensure his safety. "Phew. They're angry..."

There's still more than -half- of them in the grove. Yikes. And now they are -healing- each other. "Oh..." Health bars are increasing. "That's a -problem-. Keep on them!!"

Schneider continues to hurl fire at the triffids as they try to evade and heal, but they're not evading enough that it spoils the exploder wizard's aim, and he ocntinues to drop fire on them at long range. Really long range. He squints. But he's spent his /really/ big boom, so he's following up with focused shots one by one, to try and counter their heals. It's actually effective, a testament to quite good luck that he plays off as pure skill.

    Merek looks around and finds a place he can begin to climb, then he pulls the bow he keeps with him to begin launching arrows along into the triffid. It seems that it works, while he keeps on to keep them away from the party.

"Wait they can heal? What the hell, man!" Syx doesn't seem to like the fact that these things apparently can cheat and heal. Well players are able to heal too so he supposes he can at least do what monsters would normally do in order to counteract player healing.

So he drives straight into the pile of pollen and starts grabbing Trifids and hucking them through the air. Lets see them heal when they've been slammed around and seperated from each other!

    Hifumi spots the heals incoming and tries to get some interuption going. "Snakeroot!" he calls out, a serpent made of roots and leaves with flowers for eyes and venom dripping thorns for fangs. "Get us an earth bind going." he says only to have the burst of stone and earth cascade over him as well as the roots of some of the trifids. But those who have been adventuring with Hifumi know... it's just something that happens to the poor chef.. burried is a condition he's long become acustomed too and learned how to get out of with a bit of time.

Stop the healing! MAKE THEM BLEED. Or burn. or ... shrivel? What do plants do when they're hurt?! At least Schneider's potshots are keeping the bars from getting to high, it makes it a lot easier for the others to get in there and deal with the rest of them enmass. Plenty of arrows from Merek help, hell he's even having them tossed into the air for target practice by Syx. That'll keep them out of the healing dust AND hurt them. Hifumi's attack is.. not quite so effective, earning a wince from Nariko. "Ouf." The were-fang tries to do something similar, pounding the ground with both palms to send a monolith skyward, trying to push some more of the plants out of the way. "Nice!"

Unfortunately.. now the plants are going absolutley insane. They're hurt, they can't heal, and now? They're desperate. "Ah, hell, hell! GIVE'M YOUR BEST SHOT!"

    Hifumi struggles in his pile of earth, ineffectually trying to free himself and call for one of his more tanky summons. Instead he ends up more burried as tentacles smash into this earthworks and then his summons are spending most of their time trying to dig the chef out.

    Merek looks around a little bit, while he takes the time to lift up both hands, drawing the field of sanctuary along the party. It heals them, and will make a defensive place for them. "This is different than the whole boss battle we fight if we can't find it!"

    Hifumi spends the rest of the battle buried under a mound of earth with his summons trying to dig him out until the party is able to aid, giant plants stomping all over the mound just seems to keep the poor chef down.

Rampaging plants, most of Syx's cool stuff on cooldown, but that's never really stopped him before, as he lunges straight into the fight, hoping one of the others will be able to keep him alive while he tries to punch down as many of the angry plants as he can.

Without having his fire fists available he opts for one of the other magic types he has. It's not nearly as effective, but he manages to make it work.

Schneider falls into his role as very off tank. He's a Rune Knight, most people don't know what those are. Schneider doesn't, either, and he tries to play it like ranged DPS, but he's surprisingly versatile, with the right gear and spells. For instance now, he'll sweep his cloak around, and take advanrage of the insane toughness of it to tank for a bit while the rest of the party deals with the surging triffids. It works, that's the cool part.

Those are some -angry- plants. Thanks to Merek's Sanctuary, it gives everyone some breathing room, but those vines are lashing at the barrier like a ravenous hoard of zombies. It isn't going to last long! ... And someone unbury that poor cook! Syx keeps on putting those fists to good use, and now it seems like he's making good progress! And with Schneider acting as an additional barrier, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the triffids are finally laying on the floor of the grove. "FINALLY..." Long breath, heaved sigh. Then the trees rustle. "... oh no... what -now-?" A massive triffid appears in the clearing, huge, growly, thrashing, dripping tendrils, and somehow it even ROARS. "... Once more unto the breach!" CHARGE and what not.

"I call the big one!" Syx yells, as he runs straight at the Alpha Trifid. Fire starts to engulf his whole body as he runs straight at the big guy. He swings a massive haymaker and then follows that with a spinning heel kick. The whole idea with the kick is to throw the trifid off balance and then get under it, where he can heft it up into the air.

He throws himself, and the trifid, up into the air and spins around, slamming back towards the ground with explosive force.

Schneider whews as he spends the last of his mana fighting off the triffids, and he says, "I'd heard this was hard, but wow. Haven't spent all my mana in ages. I ..." And -now- the /boss/ shows up? This wasn't in Schneider's plan.

He squeezes out a trickle of power, enough to fire off "DAMNED!" which is a pretty small bolt of energy, all things considered, and it doesn't hurt the boss monster very much. "This is going to hurt," he predicts, and he's not wrong. He /is/ tough, however, perhaps surprisingly so, given his bishounen looks and build, and he hangs tough, stabbing the monster with his starter sword because he hasn't upgraded it ar all, and for the tiny damage that it does, it's better than nothing. Slightly. Very slightly.

    Merek lifts up a hand to pull the string upon the bow while he fires that into the triffid. It looks like it's not all that wonderful although with the party there it is probably a win for the team!

Triffidzilla charges, the party charges in return, Hifumi is still buried, and the battle is met! Nariko makes use of the pillar she created earlier by setting it on -fire- and double-palmstriking the monolith, sending a flaming chunk of rock at the beast which just barely grazes it. Schneider has similar success, with the spell clipping one of the Alpha Triffid's many tendrils. Some arrows also land in the beast but don't seem to slow it down much. What DOES work, is what Syx does. Everyone else softened and distracted the beast so he could get in, combo it, heave it up and SMASH it into the ground.. right where Nariko's flaming boulder was. Perfect! It has stopped moving. Permanently.

        SUCCESS

"That.. was ... ROUGH.." but when the seeds all over the grove are collected? And flag as a rather rare commodity? .. "Perfect!" ... "Now would someone please help Hifumi up?"