Duty Session 464: For Whom the Bell Gnolls

It wasn't hard to find the intended meeting point. Shiruba had set up a small camp just outside the forest the Gnolls had overtaken in order to pursue her observations of them. But watching from afar wasn't enough. She needed to get up close, needed to re-experience the venture to find more of the little nuiances that differate Yeenagi's demon worshippers and the other more populous gnoll types. Plus there's also the matter of the ones that get glitchy to keep tabs on as well. Not her focus, but less golls in general is still a good thing.

At least, even in the grip of her desire to hone her tracking skills to find the source of this evil infestation, Shiruba had the common sense to call for help rather than plunge into the forest on her own... This time, at least.

While waiting for others she sat and worked on drawing up a map, so she can keep track of what parts of the forest have already been explored.

Where Shriuba goes, Kaydon often follows. She's one of his dearest friends in this world...And she pays him. That's always a plus.

But when it comes to fighting gnolls, Kaydon will do it for free. The monsters give him a bad name. It's not his fault that this is the were fang form he chose before they decided to go all demon worship. So he's there with Shiruba, grinning a bit as he tried to sneak a peek at her map.

    The last few weeks had been ... rough. There wasn't going to be a lot of explination from the warhorse who had replied to Shiruba's call for an attack on some gnolls, but the fact they responded at all was a pretty good thing. At least they had found some shards in the whole ordeal. Maybe they'd get lucky tonight and pull off something else they'd been thinking about for .. well, a long time.

Nobody Gnolls the trouble I've seen. Nobody Gnolls the murder. Well some people gnoll and the (not so) little hungry murder demons need tending to with the XP and loot sort of why. Who are the real monsters here?

Not Haru (probably)! He saw the call out to do a little culling and was on his way. The white haired Artificer meets up with Shiruba and Co, ShirubaCo LLC, in short order. He arrives on his overly large brown Peko, hopping off and giving her a tie off to the camp site before venturing further in. "Today we hunt for the elusive Grass-type Gnoll?" he asks, tone as non serious as usual but he has his menu up and is capturing notes for some Alliance activity through a chim backlog. The human hand swipes the invisible menu away.

"These gnolls are a gnuisance," the Spriggan who wasn't there before she spoke insists. "Didn't we just cull them a couple of days ago?" She shrugs and settles onto a convenient seat, producing her guitar to play a tune as she lazes about. It's going to be one of those days, apparently.

    Miyako looks over at Haru, and hmms. "So where's your better half, noodle boy?"

"That they seem to repopulate quickly is another problem, especially with this being close to areas used by Landers and people that haven't pushed their levels back up like most of us have," Shiruba replied. She knew she could rely on her Alliance friends, and seeing Arashi turn up after one of her sorjourns does bring a brief smile as well. "There's too many unknowns about these divergences still, and that's why I need to investigate more. If I'm going to find the source of this demonic turn some have taken, I need more information. Find the traits to trace that only those types have."

She tucks the map away and picks up her gear as she gets to her feet. "Follow me." She leads the gathered party into the edge of the forest, pointing out the tracks and the clawed up trees as she does. "They regularely patrol the edges of the forest regardless of the type, be careful." There's a darker tint to the previously bright flora, and a complete lack of ambient sounds to make everything feel that little more eerie. Animals tend to sense things that are evil and unnatural, and most have apparently fled the location. Proceeding with caution and stealth is their best option until they get deeper into the woods to find the more prominent gnolls.

At least Shiruba gets a little nod when her and Arashi notice one another. There's no doubt that the dire-shire looks a bit tired, but it's not a physical sort of tired. Once Shiruba turns to move onward, Arashi follows, staying low, out of sight, and keeping to the shadows. Why? She's done it before. She knows this one, and it shows.

Kaydon doesn't have magic, but he does have sword artes he can use. So he draws his blade and slashes it in a vertical line along one side of the path, putting up a wall of mist to help hide the group as they move along. Not something he'd usually think about, but he's following the lead of the more stealthy team members.

"Keeping the pot warm. Can't have Noodles without bringing the heat to a boil," Haru looks to Miyako and responds with a wink. Or a blink. When your other eye is covered with a monocle it leaves a lot up for interpretation. Though it is true. When fun is to be found, the Sylph and Human are often together in full punny force. He rolls his head around and stretches an arm across his chest, the cloth armor of a jacket affording excellent mobility for the good ole casting classes.

"Come with me if you want to leeve," Haru intones in a deeper voice after Shiruba provides context and direction. The important thing in the covert operation is to crouch. Haru does just that, looking a little lower to the ground with the creep-walk in the party formation. In an odd way it does work as Haru is a tall human. Not Kaydon levels of tall, but the noodly armed beanpole isn't hiding behind a shrub any time soon. With a name that ends in 'Night', Haru does not disappoint to his non-elemental arcane roots. Noise dampening enchantments help to pass without trace in his general area. "Ninja mode," he whispers, "Eve would have loved this." But alas, Eve is on a different mission tonight, a mission of feline importance.

    Miyako hmms softly to herself as the group approaches the forest. The world holding its breath, she almost says, then bites her lip and keeps quiet. Then she pauses and looks at Haru. "Ramen," she says, quietly. "You owe me."

    That said, she slips into the treeline, vanishing into the shadows with silent tread. "This is the worst part," her voice echoes from... somewhere. "Waiting."

Shiruba may not be a professional at sneaking but as a hunter (and a wolf cait sith) she knows how to stalk, keeping low and using the environment to maintain less of a profile. That most of the party is using darkness to conceal their advance certainly helps, too... though someone may have to nudge Shiruba to keep moving now and then or she'll get distracted inspecting the clawed up trees and trampled foliage. The important part is the subtle approach works and the group manages to avoid any fringe pack patrols for the time being.

Then the wolfgirl stops, rises to look around, and darts ahead. She's spotted the discard pile, and all but dives into it with the digging of her animal roots. Though after a moment she sits back, eyeing a piece of armor she's dislodged from the scrap pile. "This was definitely torn off someone." She turned it over in her hand. "Could be a trophy from a fight... or the remains of a victim of their rituals, eew." She rummages some more, pulling out a chunk of wood. "Looks like this was broke off a caravan wagon..."

With most of her usual attentiveness tunnel visioning on her 'research', Shiruba hasn't noticed the squacking of angry scavanger birds as they loft from the trees and swarm towards the party....

Mmm. Ramen. Don't threaten him with a good time! The scrap pile gets a good solid look by Haru's blue eye. The purple lens on his be-monocled eye lights up as white lines carve semicircles in slowly rotating patterns. They are looking at the pile Shiruba is going over. Suddenly he stops. Gnolls are here to murder. There must be a murder of crows nearby!

The first wave of birbs sweeps down during the tunnel vision Shiruba is in. The cloth wielding Artificer steps in a half turn away from the Huntress and towards the descending birbs. His hand sweeps out with him, taking a frosty mist into the air that has an cholorine-clean scent to it that sting the nose. Not that the birds notice as they dive, the air freezing solid as Water mana pours into it with a shield. Birds hitting a closed window thud-thud-crack-crash during the first wave, the ice melting their feathers off with the alchemical mixture that is not-exactly-ice. Haru clears his throat and looks to Shiruba, "Commander Woofenstein, there is kaws to be kawsious. Thar be a murder aboot."

Kaydon has to work fast as the birds start attacking. He quickly grabs a few pieces of the broken cart, and mashes them together to make a protective. It's not his best work by far, but for the few moments he has to try to put it together, it'll hold.

He motions for anyone who needs to to get under it, as he does his best to use the makeshift shield to keep the avian menace away.

    "Stone the crows," mutters a Miyako-like voice from the shadows, and she steps out into the open with her war-fans on display. "This place is just gone to the birds, hasn't it?" She meets the gaze of one of th ebirds, her eyes locking with its own as she stares down the crimson gaze of the bird.

    Finally the bird takes flight, zooming at her with a murder of friends, and she lifts her fans to defend herself. "Fine," the Spriggan says. "Get stuffed."

    Well, that's a lot of birds. Too many birds, in fact. Enough that, honestly, Arashi can't really do much to get out of the way of them. She'll take cover by some nearby trees but there's no real getting away from them for the moment. Effin Birds.

"Hey!" Shiruba initially objects when Kaydon grabs some of the stuff she was examining... but calms down as that also gets her attention to the matter going on. Birds collide with Haru's frigid defense and drop to the ground as birdcicles. The ones that are smart enough to pull away and try to circle around the group only meet with the smith's slapdash but still very effective shield and Miyako deflecting them with warfans... huh, when did she start using those?... while Arashi takes cover in the trees.

"They must be hording things discarded by the gnolls." Shiruba replies to Haru, then huffs even as she throws her protective glaive upward to knock a few more carrion birds from the sky. "This does nothing to help find determining traits between the different gnoll subsects though..." Then she pauses, wolven ears perking. "Wait, what's that?" The Were Fangs probably hear it too with their enhanced monster senses, and it's not hard to tell its in the direction of that war chanting that Shiruba bolts off to investigate.

Sure enough, they've finally found the actual gnolls. But they're all remaining lurking amongst the trees, chanting their empowering calls. The real danger is the response to the chants, as a chonky gnoll clad in scrapped together armor and hides and antlered helmet stomps onto the scene, slamming his mace against his shield to the same rhythmn as the chant.

"Uh..." Shiruba skids to a stop, barely in time to avoid plowing right into the brute in her rush. Stares at him. "... Can't tell if that chant is infernal or just a tribal warcry."

"One way to find out," Haru replies back to Shiruba as the Enchanter turns to the big ole hulking Gnoll of Doom. "Infernal roots in fire, doesnt it? All we have to do is turn up the heeeeaaattt," he bellows. One does not simply conjure fire without some heat and passion behind it! The Artificer's casting orb turns a bright red color in response, channeling in the Fire mana and belting it out in a Burning debuff Wave Arte. When it sticks, he assumes, "thinking tribal," with the thing /on fire/. "Or a non fire related infernal which seems odd. Its in the name. Inferno. Though a more literal meaning would be 'underground' so perhaps a Curse would shed the light." More sizzling. Nah, Fire. "Later." Haru stacks on another Burning debuff for good measure. o/` Relight that Fire. D O T is my only de-sire o/`

    Miyako flicks her fans closed as the sound of chanting reaches her pointed ears. "Mmm," she muses. "To the Norse, Hell is a cold place. Ice and snow and all that." She smiles lightly and starts tapping the fans against her armor, producing an almost snare-drum like effect. "To me, it would probably be... silence."

    And then she starts whistling, adding her own tune to the scene, timing it to disrupt the rhythm of the chant and dismay the gnolls.

    (Because, well, what other tune would be appropriate? https://youtu.be/axZRfTBcuYg )

Nah to hell with that. Kaydon has a new toy since the last time he was in this forest. He bears down on the armored gnoll, returning the howls and cries as he crashes into the armored figure. Now it's time to break out what he's never had before, as his left hand jams in between two armor plates and the hidden blade stabs into the gap.

He does this several times in rapid succession, each strike as directed as the last as the blade finds it's way in between armor plates. Kaydon will eventually break contact, but the damage will have been done.

    It is time, isn't it? The chants, the howls, and the arrival of one Very Big Gnoll. The warhorse looks up, seemingly unimpressed, and before the hulking brute can attack, she lunges, fiercely slicing out at the creature's legs, trying to bring it down for others to have an easier chance of striking.

It's somewhat ironic that Miyako's choice in music is a composed and structured march, because that's exactly what makes it throw off the more frenetic and barbatic chants of the gnolls, leaving them confused at which sequence they're suppose to be following. The disruption removes a sort of morale bonus the warchants were giving their brutish brother.

The matter of Hell being fire or ice is of mute point, as it's the gnoll's shield that Haru sets on fire, and in a panic he throws it away before the rest of his protection catchs aflame. But now he's without a very big piece of defense.

One that would of aided him in fending off the warpwny's lunging slash. Followed by Kaydon's charge, which just shocks him in that -another gnoll- is attacking from amongst the Adventurers. By the time he realizes what just happened it's too late, having been stabbed more times between his haphazard armor than he can count before he's gone pixilated mist.

He's dead by the time Shiruba has gotten her wits in order and her bow in hand. "Good job guys... But I don't think we're clear yet." As soon enough another gnoll emergies, this one seeming to bleed out of the shadows in his dark edgy cloaks. Cloaks that he pulls open to reveal a plethora of vile vials, which he starts flinging about while emitting whailing cackles appropriate to the animal gnolls are derived from. "AARROOO BURN TO THE GROUND!" Acid, fire, smokebombs, nasty works of an alchemical nature.

A few which get knocked back at him as Shiruba shoots them out of the air with wind-infused arrows. "THAT IS AN INAPPPROPRIATE USE OF AROO!"

    Oh no. Potions. From another Big Gnoll. Whatever is Arashi to do? Well she learned a long time ago that if you add enough water to a potion it basically becomes useless. So. A whole lot of water is called up as she starts to dodge about. With enough built up, a quick swing of her sword sends a nice wave crashing against the creatures flasks. ... That should help.

"There is a point there," Haru considers Hel literally freezing over. "Niflheim, home of the Mists, is cold. The hot one begins with an M. Fire Giant land. Mussel heim or some such. Surt's Surthouse." Close. "And so is a layer of Hell in Dante's Inferno that is freezing. Mythos are fascinating." Neeerrrrddd.

But when magical science (alchemy) is in play, who you going to chim? Chim Haru! When there is something strange. And its in the air. Who ya gunna chim? Chim Haru! "Alright, this is crude alchemy and offensive. Offensive, I say!" the Artificer declares as he waves open his menu to pull out some green herbs. A hand burns them like incense, letting the vapors mix and neutralize the airborne alchemy bombs. Liquid is still a problem, avoid those. The battlefield gets to smell like fresh linen now instead of sulfiric booty.

    "Muspelheim," Miyako corrects Noodle-Boy's pronunciation. "And yeah, Jotuns - ice giants - and... uhm... damnit, can't remember what the fire giants were called. But if you want mythos, well, Ia! Yog-Sothoth!" She grins and flicks her fans open, half expecting...

    Yep. "Ahhh. The Gnoll of Eternal Stench. Hello again!" She waves her fans, generating a blast of air to blow the hideously repellant smoke away from her. "Good-bye."

Kaydon finds his usual tactic of rushing in blade first to not be as effective as he would like, but never the less he continues to press the attack, aiming to try to keep the boss' attention on him, or swapping with Arashi when need be in order to drain that HP bar, "Come on, we can still put him on his ass!"

Turns out that being able to use alchemy doesn't necessarily make you unaffected by it. Especially when your own is being used against you. Haru defuses (or maybe diffuses is more accurate) the gaseous effects, while several of the potions are airblasted back at him. Then a big ol' wave sweeps several more away from the group and into his face.... Though this gnoll is already gone enough that he cackles and howls even as he's being dissolved in his own concoctions.

And as soon as he's dead Shiruba is off full-tilt once more. Despire all the chaos she spotted something between the trees, and with the rest of the gnolls deciding to not engage the Adventurers that already bested two of their champions she easily makes it into a lamp-lined grove. One much hotter than the lamps alone should make it feel, but she's ignorant of that as she spots the other end of the chamber-like grove. "There!" She runs up to the markings carved into a stone slab lodged into the ground. "This is it! Another one of their alters." She holds a hand towards the slab. "Maybe I can sense where they're drawing fro--"

She's interrupted by an eruption of fire and smoke that sends her tumbling backwards, acrid brimstone filling the air as a gruesom horned gnoll emergies from the pyre. "Shit!" Shiruba has to roll into an all fours scramble to get out of the way of viciously quick claw swipes. "See, see! Demon infused gnolls!"

There is a finger pointed at the lightning gnoll of shenanigans. Rroarn, some may call them, but Haru is not one of those people. "I remember this one. I punched him right in the face." It then dawns on him of what happens when you punch someone in the face and you see them again. They tend to want to punch you in the face back. Is that instant agro? Is he cloth tank now? The Artificer starts on a defensive Wave Arte before going into debuffs. Small multi-colored crystals float around him. With a snap they form silvery lines between them and the panes look like different colored glass, not unlike a cathedral style window. It is an advanced form of the common Energy Coat that buffs the human's agility as well, making it so he can get the debuff casts off without interuption from the fast an furious gnoll.

    Oh. That's new. Demonic Gnolls? ... wait that sounds familiar. Was that a part of Shiruba's message? ... Probably. The assault begins, Kaydon moves in, and yes, Arashi is happy to tag in and out to deal with the massive monster. This isn't what she was hoping to find tonight but, well, she had some more attempts in her back pocket. She'd try again. Soon.

    As for Rroarn? Well it gets to suffer Arashi's wrath because she wanted the Other Guy. As a result, she vanishes for a moment, allowing Kaydon to get some licks in for a few moments, tank the beast, while she drops from above with Starshadow to try and stab it through his -skull-.

    "That you did," Miyako says, nodding. "NOodles for the win, yah?" She chuckles lightly and taps out a quick rhythm with her fans. Then she starts to /move/, flickering in and out of sight around the gnoll, fading into the shadows after each strike instead of waiting to be hit in turn. Impressive speed and precision, iron determination, and a perfect sense of rhythm, these are her best tools.

The demonic gnoll is not a boss to trifle with lightly. Those claws strike viciously fast, and occasionally he'll sweep his dragon-tail in a big arc to keep the party from flanking him for tactical advantages. That said, between the noodle-arm that smacked one of his previous incarnations in the face, the bitch that's been poking around their rituals, and A GNOLL ADVENTURER HOW DARE THEY it's not hard to keep Rroarn's rage from getting too focused on one specific target for him to pummel. While his enemies have teamwork on their side, Kaydon tanking and Haru throwing debuffs on the manic mongrel keep his fury on them and away from the more elusive and intrusive methods used by Arashi and Miyako to rip into his health. Once she's back on her feet Shiruba even pitches in, popping a few arrows into his thick hide to help chip down that big HP meter. Until he finally staggers, gargles out some incipherable curse, and crumbles into ash and motes.

"It almost feels like this one was set as a trap for people investigating their activity," Shiruba muses, even as she pulls out her map and scribbles in notes on this section they've now cleared. "Definitely Yeenagi's influence, typical gnolls would just lie in ambush themselves to mutilate interlopers." Pause. Frown. "This is going to make observing them more difficult though." More scribbling.

    Miyako lets her spell fade as the demonic gnoll fades away into pixellated death, and flourishes her fans. "This is starting to get repetitive," she comments. "How deep does the rabbit-hole go? Any idea yet?"