Duty Session 452: Reclaim the Peko Fort

Nobody is here. To be specific, nobody other than the party is here. Mind, someone -had- been here. That someone, a self-declared scout, had proudly proclaimed something about an easy path ahead. Nothing to worry about. Just a quick night-time stroll, then a report back to the Hunter's guild. His teeth shone white in the darkness. Crest would have been proud. Cheshire cats might have died of envy.

Course, he'd then booked it out of here as though his pants were full of leeches.

Robert, his darkened figure a shapeless, formless blob against the regular geometry of what once may have been a low stone wall used to keep grunties in their pasture, does not look impressed. Not that there's much that can be seen of him in the low light, but the arms folded over his chest and the shoulder-wide stance would suggest something...mule-ish, to be charitable.

Vertina isn't exactly the stealthiest of people but she at least knows when to keep a low profile, crouching down near Robert. Low being a relative term, do to her being tall. But it's enough to keep out of sight until they need to move, at least. "Guess some of the undead thought they could hide out."

Schneider is here, with Robert and the rest of the party. He is here to help out, mainly, and to maybe grind out another level before the encounter with the Tear of Ice. Every bit helps. He's also here to help out with keeping the undead remnants pacified until the Palace Landers are dealt with. Because dealing with everything at once is problematic.

Nevertheless, the Exploder Wizard is here, so things are in motion that will result in Big Booms. Not so big on stealth, but just standing around, he doesn't make extra noise. On the other hand, the way he's dressed kinda screams out his presence.

    Merek looks to the party, with a nod to each of them, "We should do what we can to get back territory," he mentions, taking his time to adjust the weapons which he keeps with him. The man wears a white-black attire with beltcape. There's a shift of the hair of his, locs adjusting while he waits for them to begin. "You know, I think undead are my least favorite monsters."

    Setsuna looks at the party that had gathered to storm the fort, "So tell me again why we don't just drop every form of fire bomb on this place and turn it to ash? I mean between everyone here we could damn well glass this thing." In truth he wasn't one hundred percentn about that, but it sounded good. With a yawn he looks towrds the fort for another moment before he looks at the others. "Last one there is from New Worlder, " Setsuna goes quiet as he stops realizing Merek is there and gives him a look before shrugging and turning back to the fort.

"I mean, we /could/ but," Prophylaxis rolls his shoulders lazily. "I mean, I'd rather not? The people of Ninetails have been fairly good to me. So I'm in no hurry to be burning down their infrastructure if I can help it. Besides, this time of year, it's not unlikely that the fires will spread to the fields-- and then we'd be in /serious/ crap." Of course the Doctor is here. The Doctor is always here!! Even in the most ripe of apple orchards, you are not unlikely to find the Doctor when there's an adventure to be had.

As long as he's not overworked.

...Or setting goblins on fire.

Or coordinating a campaign of war against invaders from across the sea!!

"They're not exactly the subtlest, are they," Robert responds to Vertina, turning around to survey the fort in the distance. It's a hulking thing. No wonder the undead want it. Robert grimaces, crinkling his nose and running his tongue over his molars. "But then, I suppose neither are we. We always did lean towards burning our way through stealth missions, didn't we." Pointedly he does not glance at Schneider. Not overtly, anyhow, though there just might be a side-flick of the eyes.

Setsuna kinda just makes his point for him.

And so Robert can only shrug as he begins wandering off towards a hollow in the land around a quarter of a mile away, from where one might get a better look at what's going on.

A closer look does not improve things whatsoever. The walls are high, the clattering skeleton lookouts alert. Probably. They certainly pace back and forth energetically enough. "Right, intel's a clusterf...fudge. So let's just get this over with," he grunts. Inspiring words indeed. He sets off towards the fort's base, sliding from shadow to shadow.

Schneider says to Setsuna, "If we level the place, the original Landers can't move back in. They need to hold the fort, that's why the fort was built in the first place. You build a fort to hold territory. That's why the undead didn't just level it. If we clear out the undead, then the Ninetails Landers can reoccupy and hold it against undead and Palace Landers." He eyes Proph. "Plus that."

Now when it comes to sneaking, Schneider's stealthy as a brass band, and does tend to blast his way through stealth missions. No survivors = stealth, right? But then he's got this spell: "Roots of shadow," he casts. "Tendrils of light, smoke over water, fire in the sky, DEEP PURPLE." And the place he was standing is replaced with quite a good illusion of the place where he was standing, but without him standing in it.

"I make no promises that there won't be things that won't be set on fire, but we can at least not blow it up."

Did we mention stealth isn't Vertina's strong point? Yes? Well we're mentioning it again just to be sure. She tries to use her own manipulation of air to keep the mist covering her, but it's not perfect, and once she gets closer to the wall she just hotfoots it for the base hopefully before being spotted. Maybe the lookouts will be busy staring at the illusion.

    Merek lifts up a hand, while he begins to draw the wind to keep the place covered a little bit with the fog. He then walks through, taking his time to be quiet while he watches the party, assisting where he can. When they make their way through that, he nods a little, "Alright."

    "So then we are clear, we can set it all on fire but we are not going to raze the fort." Setsuna says as he pulls the shadows from the area to blend in to the area around him. It's a quick walk, the shadows keeping him covered before he reaches the wall. "Step one, get to the fort. Check."

"Oh sure, I'm not for /not/ setting things on fire. Just, burning down the whole place is probably a little much?" The mists swirling around the party are thick and growing thicker by the moment. This is a little-known spell that the Doctor of Tolbana invented for himself, in fact. 'Deep Fog,' an incantation that specifically gathers sight-obscuring mist to conceal exactly this kind of infiltration...!

The fog that /was/ there was natural, of course. The doctor is just... helping it along.

Alright. So maybe the lookouts aren't -that- alert. Some members of the party are fantastically stealthy. Others, not so much. Robert, for instance, should absolutely know better as sneaking -is- his strong point. And yet, in a truly astounding feat, he manages to locate every single dry, crisp stick between his starting position and the wall...and step on it. By the time he does reach the wall to tuck himself away in a patch of shadow, one eye is rapidly twitching. Obviously, he doesn't comment, instead preferring to pretend that nothing whatsoever happened just then and oh hey isn't it nice to climb walls?!!

Said walls, in point of fact, are considerably more imposing up-close than they were from afar. They tower overhead, blotting out fully half the night sky. "Welp. Up and over," Robert indicates. "No fire," he reiterates, just in case.

"Yet," he amends. Because he too is Scale.

Vertina tilts her head back for a moment. "Biggest rock climbing wall I've seen." She shrugs, and jumps up to grab a spot by using the claws on her cestus as extra grip. Starts making her way up. Slowly. More slowly than she probably could of done if she'd used some fancier technique, but that'd go against the thrillseeker mentality. Or she's likely saving the big stuff for later.

"Right. Not /yet./ IF we find out that the whole place has been infested by some kind of undead castle spirit, THEN we can set it all on fire. Otherwise, I mean, burning stone seems like it'd take an unnecessary amount of time?" Their first obstacle, though, is getting /into/ said whole place. Unfortunately for the party, there's a stone wall in front of them blocking their way! Fortunately, there are ways around it. Or rather, /over/ it. A 9 meter climb is rough, but less so when the Doctor is able to stand on a boulder and send it shooting upwards with a burst of pressurized air to do most of the climb /for/ him.

Schneider arrives at the base of the wall, and hrms at Robert's request for no fire. "So, no rocket boost. That limits the options, of course," he quips. But he is a wizard, and a wizard is always prepared. In this case, by touching the wall, and then walking up it. As if Vertical had become hosizontal for a few moments. When he gets to the top, vertical and horizontal are restored as he steps onto the top of the wall. Looks like it wasn't that hard after all.

    Merek nods a little along to Sprites, while he takes the time to begin climbing the wall. He does it the old fashioned way, and manages to make his way to the top of that. He then shifts along to assist anyone else up that might need it, "Well, we managed to get by that," he mentions.

    Setsuna looks at the wall and then overs at Robert, "If you apply heat correcctly then in theory you would be able to use it to climb the wall AND not burn everything down. However today I think I will go a different route. " He takes the earth magic approach of magicing up easy foot holds and hand holds as he climbs the wall. "This is a whole lot easier with proper breathing." Finally he reaches the top and pulls himself up and looks down at the courtyard, "ON to the fun part."

SpritesHero nimbly clambers up the wall. Robert clambers straight into a skeleton. Robert smacks the skeleton around a bit, then shoves said skeleton's pixelating remains behind a barrel so the other skellies aren't alerted. It's not exactly slick, but it does manage to get the job done.

With an expression that screams 'What?' at anyone who might be side-eyeing him, he strides forward to survey the next step in their journey.

Contrary to Setsuna's assessment, it will likely not be 'fun'. The courtyard before them is pockmarked with ditches, as though there'd been a recent meteor swarm. Bones are strewn everywhere, and the smell of sulfur hangs heavily in the air. It is hell on earth.

Or at least that's Robert's assessment. But who is he to get in the way of another's fun? "Setsuna goes first," Robert decides.

    Looking up at Robert, Setsuna smiles at him with a magical symbol appearing on his forehead of an eye and a buttlefly laid on top of each other. "Robert I can guarantee that we will all survive getting across this courtyard. Trust me I'm an oracle." With that Setsuna hops down into the courtyard and then strolls through it casually as if he knew where every problematic spot was. From the outside it made it appear that oracle was a really cheating power.

Schneider takes a look at the wasteland on the inside of the wall, and decides that Scale isn't the only group in the game to master laying mines. Well, then. But by taking a look at the craters, which are probably safe to walk in, they imply a pattern to the minelaying. Which should mean there are mines there and there. Those are where Schneider /avoids/ walking. And it seems he's worked this pattern out, because he makes it through the minefield without a scratch.

It is in fact going to be fun! They have no choice in the matter. Fun is going to happen whether the party wants it or not.

"I think," Prophylaxis says, wrinkling his nose, "...I think I can see the pattern. But we're going to have to be... silly about evading it."

Oh no.

It involves... hopping from safe spot to safe spot like some kind of particularly jumpy lagomorph!?

A little less cartoonish than that, maybe, but the doctor is absolutely jumping from spot to spot without blowing up even a little bit!

    Merek looks to the floor, and seems to consider it. Eventually, he will nod a little bit, taking the time to use the patterns to make it by each. Then he's nodding a bit to the party, "It looks like things are going alright, at least for the moment."

Vertina stops at the edge of one pithole, swipes a couple of fingers through the gunk around it, and lifts them to her nose for a sniff. ".. Ah." Someone booby trapped the courtyard. Doesn't really matter if it was the fleeing Knights or the squatting undead. Traps are best avoided, so Vertina picks her way through, using her own hunting skills to deduce the best places for such traps to have been laid, and avoiding any unsprung ones in doing so.

From the outside, it would also appear that the oracle cheating power is self-only. Merek, Prophylaxis, and Schneider make (or hop) their way through on their own independent routes after a quick bout of pattern assessment. Vertina likewise slide on through with minimal problems. But Robert? Robert -tries- to cheat, by following (generally) in Setsuna's footsteps. And true, he doesn't blow up. Not exactly. But he's artfully decorated with dirt and soot by the time he makes his way to the other end.

Does it matter? Probably not to anyone other than him, for the skeletons on the walls (that is, the skeletons who, over a week's worth of natural selection, have decided to not go into the courtyard) have long since taken notice and begun peppering the party with arrows. There's not much in the way of shelter, and as for the sturdy door on the far end of the courtyard? Eight inches thick, banded with iron, and locked. Very very firmly locked. Oddly, the hinges appear to be on the courtyard side of the whole contraption.

Vertina looks at the door. Looks up at the archers prepping to fill them full of arrows. Looks back to the door. "Right, no time to be neat about this." Vertina wheels around on her heel, lashing out one foot to kick the door with the same force she uses to launch her flaming rockball projectiles.

*WHUD*

Then clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip as she yanks her foot back to hold down a yowl of pain. After a few moments her expression unscrunches and she gingerly tests her step. "Ugh, that idea turned out so much better in my head..."

Schneider will rush up to the door to burst through, but it looks like we also need to cover the entrance while getting through, so he will cast, "DAMEDO! Magic Shield!" His magic shield springs up, and it does manage to deflect attacks, at least for as long as it takes everyone to get inside.

    Setsuna grins like he is some cat cait sith who caught the spriggan. "I mean you survived, I never lied. " Did he imply that he knew Robert would get covered in dirt, he would never had risked his ally like that. See even now as people work to get in he does his best to put a magical shield up. This shield holds up perfectly to light breezes and peoples intense gaze but the moment an arrow touches it the shield shatters and Setsuna inherits the title of shield instead.

    Merek takes the time to lift up his shielding power, while he takes the time to protect the party while they make their way by that lock. He nods a little bit to Setsuna, "Alright, I will guard along this side," he mentions. "You know, this is... I am hoping we can make things better, with that war in the Palace Land, it's difficult to keep protecting from other things."

"Arrows, huh?" Prophylaxis muses as the missiles begin to rain. He glances over his shoulder at the door, then back up at the skeletons. With a soft sigh, Prophylaxis plants his staff into the earth. All around him, the air begins to chill, the fog congealing into a rapidly crystalizing frost. "I'd rather /not/ deal with you at the moment," he declares, spreading his arms wide as a wall of thick, blue-white ice suddenly materializes around the party. On the other side, they can still hear arrows plinking away at the ice.

"I can hold this for a little while longer," he asides to the ones behind him, "But not forever. Get that door open, would you?"

*Whud* goes Vert. *Eep!* goes Sprites. There's the tell-tale snapping of metal as his lockpicks (which, if one is to be honest, he'd not been having that much luck with anyhow) snap off and wedge in the lock mechanism. Luckily, the shielders are on point, so they have all the time they need to break on through.

And they do need time. After much pounding, crashing, and maybe a few cheating blasts of flame (because why not), the door eventually sags on its hinges, caving before one last bash from Vertina.

Luckily, once the party passes through the doorway into the hallway beyond, they are safe. Safe from the archers, at any rate, who have decided to stay on the walls and not risk trekking out over that minefield.

They are not safe, however, from the ominous music from overhead, nor from the crackle and hum of a magic ritual being activated. Robert doesn't pause (except to give Setsuna a both literally and metaphorically dirty look), and bolts straight for the stairway...

...and straight into a room full of vampiric cultists. They seem inclined to talk. He is not, and hops straight into their midst with a blast of flame.

    Merek looks to the vampire cultists. Thinking about it, what's the best way to manage that. He nods, then he takes up both hands, while he swings them into the creatures, "Ragnarok's Wisdom!" Then he's sweeping about with the kicks. Fire is a great way to solve things.

Cultists. Vampire cultists.

"Yeah, this is all sorts of bad mojo here." Fortunately it's dealing with this kind of monster that she did that training a while back for. She clenches her fists, which start to glow brightly as she channels her Light attuned ki into them. "It's time for you to SEE THE LIGHT!" she shouts as an impromptu battle cry as she rushes in and starts swinging divine punches into sicko vampires. It's just as effective as Fire on these assholes!

"Ah, yes, vampires," Prophylaxis says, staring forlornly at the summoning circle. He makes a wiggly finger gesture, "Well, let's get this party started properly. Fireball!!"

There's... a little poof of steam.

Prophylaxis frowns, staring down at his (currently pale-blue) fingers. He shakes his hand like he were trying to get a numb tingle out of his fingertips. "Come on... Fireball!" Poof! Steam! Sparks! "Ugh! Damn, I'm too full of cold mana! You guys take care of this!"

This is why he has minions!!

Schneider slips through the door, and when the last person in the party has gotten through, he magic's up a bit of extra brick wall, to brick up the doorway since the door's sagged through. He'll head up to the roof, but then there's vampire cultists. Well, he's got a solution for that, too. "GUNSENRO!" he shouts, that's his very basic fire spell, and it's more than enough for these scumwaffles, it seems, burning up cultist vampires until their pixels vaporize into poofs of data and XP.

    Setsuna looks upon the cultist vampires and begins to talk to them, calmly, rationally, as if they were a normal adventurer. "Look we don't want to do this. We are all rational people and we can just let you go..." Trailing off for a moment he sees all the fire, "Right just scratch everything I said. You are all going to burn in a firey hell." He reaches his hand into some of the spreading fire and the flames turn black as night as they intensify. He simply grins as he watches all the vampires burn.

Do you want tea? Fire! A steak? Fire! Fire is the great equalizer. Fire keeps you warm in winter. Fire gets rid of warts. Fire powers Scale's steam engines.

But most importantly, fire gets rid of monsters you don't like and these monsters haven't got a prayer. They are immediately bathed in flames. Flaming fists. Flaming kicks. Flaming...flames. And sure, there's Proph with his cold feet. More suspiciously, there's Vertina who evidently decide that light is more important than fire at present. But she too can be forgiven, for the place does rather scream of pain and death, and such a den of iniquity could probably use a bit of a purifying touch-up. Are the vampires even still there after a while, or is the party just making a bonfire? Either way, the treasure-chest that suddenly pops into existence finds itself sitting on a rather toasty bed of hot coals. It utters a shriek, bounds to its ectoplasmic feet, and shoots goopy tentacles everywhere as the magic circle around it begins to glow, to shimmer, to -twist. That thing is unstable, and is likely to blow. When it does, the mimic will probably disappear. Probably. Might as well kill it dead just in case.

    Merek will take the time to begin adjusting his magic to place up shields, although it doesn't look like that will do a lot for the team. At the moment he nods while he coordinates with them, "We will do what we can," the man mentions, while maneuvering with the shield to protect people, not doing a lot with that.

Vertina is still in motion when the chest pops into a Mimic and starts flailing about with it's tentacles. So the easiest thing for the Salamander to do is drop to her knees and lean back almost far enough for her horns to touch the ground and slide under it. Then rock all the way backwards to flip herself into a cartwheel to roll away from a second one slamming down. "Too slow, too predictable!" she taunts at the boss. Then runs right towards the Mimic directly. Naturally it opens it's lid-maw to try to chomp down on her.

But Vertina is faster, grabbing it's lid and slamming it back down to daze the monster as she vaults herself over it with a fancy handspring somersault.

    Setsuna looks at the treasure box as it begins to squeal, "Do treasure chests usually make noise like that?" The answer likely goes unanswered as the mimic tentacle comes flying at him. Then he tucks and rolls and leaps up over the tentacle and certainly gets his workout in. Finally he shouts out, "So how much longer do you think till this thing gets tired?"

Schneider grumbles about the cultists. Stupid cultists. Hoist by their own petard, as it were. So, they wind up summoning the awful thing anyhow. Gah. We've just got to weather this, it seems, but he can't get his shield up in time, and he gets the crap kicked out of him before the monster despawns. Much lower in HP, he gets his shield up, and wheezes.

Prophylaxis stands a fair distance from the treasure box, not because he doesn't want to be helpful, just... There's a nice fire here, is all. "You guys have that handled, right?" The doctor asks, squatting next to the nice, warm bonfire. He holds his hands up to the flickering glow, savoring the pleasant heat. "I'mma take a few to warm up. Let me know what drops, 'kay?"

It's just a chest, after all! What's the worst it could do?

Yeeesh. Those are a lot of tentacles. And while Sprites doesn't have the correct...anatomy for this to be a serious concern, he nonetheless hides behind an object. Possibly a party member.

At any rate, while the party distracts the over-excited, over-heated mimic, he settles for muttering to himself as he surveys the magic circle in front of him. At length, he grimaces, summons an orb of arcane energy into his palm, and blasts it into the magic circle. It doesn't seem to do much on its own, but the final surge (involuntary, and in response to Prophylaxis's tactical decision), the blast overrides the circle. Its trembling increases in frequency, causing it to shimmer, and the sound of its energies increases in pitch to a shrill screech. It then bursts into fragments. As for the mimic? It too screams, glows a brilliant scarlet...then vanishes, banished back to...whatever plane of existence from whence it came.

"I'm guessing that was a mistake," Robert opines, eyeing the spot where the mimic used to be. "Don't mimics eat and grow until they can eat worlds?"

    Setsuna shrugs his shoulders, " I doubt they can actually eat the world. System protection and all." The necromancer shrugs a s he walks to where the mimic was and shifts through the rubble for a moment before he sighs. "Never anything left." Looking over at the others he ignores the view and simply asks the group, "So who bought the meal last time? I'm kinda hungry."

Schneider huhs about Mimics that eat worlds. "How would anyone know? They'd get eaten along with the world? But that sounds like BS to me..." Schneider, by no means an accurate judge of fantasy physics.

"I'm not sure we're talking about the same mimics?" Prophylaxis says, now warmed to his previous complexion and /not/ trailing the faint hint of winter's deepest, killingest cold along with every step. "The mimics I'm familiar with are... usually chests. Sometimes they can be other things, like swords or potions or tables or houses or Peko Fortresses."

Beat.

The Peko Fort does not laugh. (Perhaps it knows what sort of terrible fate would befall it if it did?) "Well, seems like we're done here, though. Everyone alright?"

"And Gazebos. Don't forget Gazebos." Vertina dusts herself off after her acrobatics. "Whatever. We chased the undead cultists out before they could summon a new boss or whatever, that's what counts."

"One bite at a time, Schneider. One bite at a time," Robert informs Schneider, with the gravitas of one who has seen many worlds eaten by mimics. "Anyhow, I'm so hungry I could eat a mimic. And Setsuna, you should know by now. We charge lunch to the company credit card." With which threat he strolls out towards the rear window. Which isn't, you know, covered by undead archers and the like. And then he's gone.