Duty Session 495: Fireball Solves Everything

A Lander from the Hunter's Guild is awaiting the adventurers at the end of a beaten path, where vegetation begins to reclaim a long forsaken area. After a bow to the assembled Adventurers, the Lander briefs them on their mission: "There are a number of abandoned temple-like structures dedicated to The Burning Goddess throughout the forests of the Eastal Free League. It is believed that at the heart of each of them lies a brazier carrying special Igneous Stones, rumored to be particularly apt at stabilizing flames. They are in high demand, and the Hunter's Guild offers rewards to anyone who can bring a few back." He hands the team a map to the nearest structure, and a map of the structure itself. "Good luck, noble Adventurers."

Shenmi is, oddly enough, one of the first to arrive, today. Due to his predicament as a Palace Lander, he usually preferred to stick to the rear of the party. But it seems that, by now, he has gathered at least enough confidence to be at the forefront until the quest actually starts.

"Thanks to you, kind sir!", he says, with a slight bow and a tip of his hat. "Find the stones. Bring them back for study." Possibly keep one or two as a mememnto. "Got that."

    Fuka isn't much of a devotee of the Burning One, though she appreciates the concept at least. In terms of bonuses and traits of the followers she's more a follower of the Blind One, of whom you would have to be crazy to worship. That suits Fuka just fine, to be fair.

    Still, adventure is adventure, and Fuka enjoys hunter's guild missions with friends. So regardless of her ambivalence towards the Burning One, she's putting her best foot forward. "Stabilizing flames huh? Well, my flames have this surprising tendency to explode! Not sure why. Maybe I can pick up one or two for myself! To ... to study!" she grins, winking boldly.

Yeowang has heard, through various contacts, about scholars willing to pay for recovering certain artifacts. The exact details aren't important, this is a financial transaction to her at this point. If some monsters or undead or other ne'er-do-wells feel that they'd like the artifacts left alone, they will be introduced to quite a convincing counterarguement. A fist to the face is often a surprisingly effective counterarguement.

She will show up, and offer a nod of greeting to Shenmi. Her role is never explicity stated. She's ranged DPS, technically, but she seems to prefer melee DPS, and is in fact substantially better in that role. She is also skilled in infiltration, which was not a skill she had planned on obtaining when she joined the game, but which she now dresses for, when it's work, a hood covering the mane of blonde hair, dark coat and breeches and boots. No weapons, but as those who know her know full well, she /is/ a weapon. Fuka gets a nod of greeting also, and she says, "Good afternoon," to her Guildie.

All you had to say was 'abandoned temple-like structures' to get Shiruba's attention. Between her typical historical pursuits and her current effort in learning more about the aspects of Light the Cait Sith explorer was all over this as soon as she heard the quest revealed, even if she was more in the Beautiful One's camp. The three Goddesses were facets of an overall following, so it didn't hurt any to learn more about the other faces as well.

The wolfgirl strides up, falcon perched on the leather armor bracing her shoulder so she doesn't get ripped up by her own companion's talons. "I've been in the mood for a good archeological quest, this is perfect. Hello, Fuka, Yeo." She pauses a moment, tilting her head at the magician. "Shenmi, was it?" She's not as familiar with him as some of the other Uncrowned.

Shenmi, as he is wont to, will greet the other members of his party with a slight bow and a tip of his hat as well. "Indeed... Shiruba, wasn't it? We met a few months ago. Sher Kar challenge, if memory serves me well. Thrilled to quest with you again."

A little further into the forest, the party finds a one-story circular structure built out of stone. Run down, smothered by plants and moss, it takes the Adventurers some time before they can free the main door from the vines. Still in place after all this time, wards made of wood and colored strings protect the place against trespassers. If someone could read their ancient script, or knew the enchantment which gives them their power, they could probably understand how to best deal with them. Knowing the exact rules which regulate their activation and removal could also hint at the proper defusing procedure. For the impatient, burning them all down at once is also an option.

"Hmmm," ponders Shenmi, pacing around the small edifice. "Enchanting... Scripture... someone I know would be a shoe-in for this kind of challenge," he remarks, a bittersweet edge creeping into the tip of his smirk.

    "Archer-logical quest? I guess that makes sense since Shiba's with us." Fuka says to Yeowang, apparently confused. "Oh, speaking of logical! Yeah, I've worked with stuff like this! How cool of you to think of me like that!" she flashes a grin to Shenmi, even though he's clearly thinking of someone else. Someone who has an in with scripture, no doubt. "Let's seee....." she muses, tracing a finger near but not quite touching to one of the warded strings.

    "Oh! Yes, there's a pattern. Anything you touch can cause a mana surge. If you can make sure the surge discharges harmlessly, that's safe. If it discharges into a ward, BOOOM! So the key is to touch the right things to ... like a circuit, to break a path further along, so when you touch THAT trigger it goes nowhere bad. Pretty cool puzzle! Now... I wonder which one we blow up first?" she muses thoughtfully.

Yeowang nods a greeting to Shiruba as well. "This is practically a Guild run," she observes, and says to Shenmi, "But we'll let you join us." This is meant as humor, but her delivery for humor isn't great. She doesn't do it very often, and she lacks the skill. When we find ourselves before the cluttered, obstructed corridor, with the strange wards impeding us, she will step closer and look carefully.

Fuka gets a wry look for her sort-of-play on words. But she says, "There's a way and an order to things...." as she slowly unmakes the wards like taking apart a Lego set. And left with a bunch of pieces that you would never imagine going together the way they were found in the end.

Shiruba rolls her eyes as Fuka turns her being here into a pun, but that's no surprise considering it's Fuka. So she takes a few moments and inspects the edifice, and frowns a little. Mostly at it being straight scripture and not the more runic cyptography she was expecting. Can't do much there.

Eventually she just conjures a small shard of fire, and flicks it into the mess of wards... and it is snuffed out before it can do much more than sparkle and fizz. ".. Yeah, not going to walk into those." Windburn gives a soft kree of agreement from her shoulder.

Shenmi chuckles at Yeowang. "That is very generous of you. I will make sure to return the favor at the first available opportunity."

"So... we have a 'cut the red wire or the green wire' kind of scenario?", Shenmi asks Fuka with a chuckle. A flourish of his hand, and it's enveloped in a ball of flame. "That one you said, huh?"

A swipe of his hand, and the ball of flame, along with a few of its fisbling, is flung at the specific spots Fuka and Yeowang will indicate. Sure enough, the conflagration spreads in a way that causes no major damage to the party, but damages the ward system enough to allows access to the temple.

The Adventurers enter the building, and it does not take them long to discover a trap door leading down a musty stairwell. Torches flicker; long shadows are cast against the walls built out of uneven stones as the party descends a long flight of stairs. At the bottom lies a massive oaken door riddled with padlocks. The more roguish types can try and pick the locks, while Accessory Forgers can try and tamper with the hinges. Maybe those adept in the art of woodworking can find a way to cut through the wood? Of course, a well placed fireball can always burn the door down.

Yeowang smiles to Shenmi, and follows the group along, down through the trapdoor, and to this forbidding portal. This is where she's not so useful. People skills are more her thing, and this includes concussing them brutally, which is very much in her skillset. Noting the order and proper place of things is even in her skillset, though it's not clear why this is so. Finding clever ways through locked doors is not in her skillset, though, and she will wait patiently without fidgeting until the rest of the party works this out without her.

There is a big, heavily locked door. But notibly the door is made of wood and not something more mystical. "Okay, this is a problem I can do something about," Shiruba speaks up, as she reachs for her belt. But rather than a weapon, she withdraws a pair of artisan knives with an unnaturally clean sheen to their blades. Which Shiruba digs into the frame of the door with, working to seperate the wood from the hinges so it'll be easily to open. The Blades of Zahab cut with such ease she's able to easily use what she learned about how woodworking applies to construction to do so. Even getting the top hinges aren't a problem, as apparently the knives allow her to extend their cuts farther than the physical blades, chopping through the upper frame that she couldn't have reached otherwise.

    "Neat magic trick!" approves Fukaziroh cheerfully. Really, blowing everything up is great; what could possibly go wrong? Of course she wasn't entirely sure which ward to trip first safely. That was just a guess. Fortunately it was a good guess, or at least a lucky one!

    Of course Fuka will no doubt say she meant to do that, and it all worked out. But when confronted by a door with a ton of locks on it, she looks impatient. "Are we really going to pick the locks?" she complains. "This IS a fire shrine right? Why don't we get creative?" she asks, beginning to chant. Holding up her finger, she ignites the tip magically, turning her finger into the magical equivalent of a blowtorch. "This should fit the locks JUST FINE!" she smirks, going to work on some of them no one else is particularly near. "Hot stuff coming through! Also be careful you don't get in the path of the fire!"

After spending some time in admiration of Shiruba's skills and impressive toolwork in dealing with the door frame and hinges (you don't see that every day!), Shenmi turns his attention to the padlocks. "Hmmm," he mutters, as he rattles a few of them. "Hoops, chains... multiple columns of padlocks..." He looks up and down. "through the whole height of the door..."

He rubs his goatee. "Cutting the door might be enough. Or it might not, depending on which surprises they might have hidden -inside- the door..." He cracks his knuckles. "Ah well, better safe than sorry." He wiggles his fingers, reaches into his pocket, and extracts a small lockpicking set. "Time to practice some Escapology," he smirks, as he tackles the column of locks closer to the wall, away from the hinges.

After some fiddling with the bottommost lock, begins to go through them with increasing speed, to the point that opening the last few takes only a single move.

He takes a bow to an (imaginary?) audience, then turns to look at Fuka blowtorching her way through her own columns. "...or you could do that," he says, somber.

As the Adventurers bring their light sources into the next room, a blood-chilling sight meets them: the walls and ceiling are covered in dire bats. They seem to be asleep, and that is a good thing: they are far too numerous to fight, so the adventurers' best bet is to sneak past them, possibly shrouded in a spell of Darkness. Or, you know, wipe the whole lot out with fire.

Just think of Shiruba and Fuka's efforts as a means to not have to undo -all- the locks. "Teamwork makes the dreams work," Shiruba chimes in.

Though her cheerful demeanor fades as they get into the next room, and it's bats. Lots of bats. She had a bad experience with bats last time, and these are dire bats so she can't just get fancy animal whisperer with them.

So the first thing she does is put a hand up to Windburn to keep the falcon on her shoulder, shaking her head. There's too many for you to fight off, especially in an enclosed space that will hinder your movement and speed. Which the bird seems to get the gist of, and just squats down farther on her shoulder.

Shiruba digs into her small bag of non-archery Spell Fletcher tricks, creating a pocket of darkness around herself as camoflague and using that to sneak across the chamber. She really does not want to get bitten again.

Yeowang looks pleased as the party skillfully sorts out the door. Without her help. She'd like to help, but she's git no applicable skills. Bats, on the other hand, well, traditionally women don't do well with bats, but that tradition is partly founded in the era of beehive hairdoos, which a bat's sonar sees as clear space, and no one's happy when he learns that it's not. But Yeowang simply stops, holding stock still, and she will hold a hand up to pause Shenmi as well. She studies the room very carefully, then, and almost as if she could sense areas that might trigger the bats, she will step quite carefully through, indicating that Shenmi should follow her route. She doesn't speak at all. Bats and sound, and all.

    Fuka's idea of stealth is ... well, kind of like her approach to locks. To that point, if you kill everything with fire, there's no one left to detect you. Still, she's not as bad as some. She at least TRIES to sneak, using a little improvised magic to muffle her footsteps. So perhaps she only has a few goddamn dire bats to kill instead of an entire room full.

    Grumbling after, Fuka looks around. "How is it you guys are so sneaky?! It's like... maybe I shouldn't trust you if you're all so sinister like that!" she claims. Then shrugs. "Oh well, I guess I'm the official distraction! I don't like bats though. I mean okay bats are like sky puppies and are adorable. I just don't like the dire kind!" she insists.

Shenmi freezes in mid-step when Yeowang holds up a hand to stop him. He looks down, where his foot was about to go down.

A loose stone tile, about to crack

On which a pile of ritual bells had been stacked.

Next to a full set of what look large cooking pots and pans.

Right above a sleeping Screaming Rodentmonster. What's that one even doing here in the bat chamber?

Shenmi's lower facial muscles all tense in realization, and he mimes blowing off air as if for saying 'dodged a bullet there!' to Yeowang. He shall follow the route she indicates.

But then, Fuka manages to awake some bats. Ah well! FIREBALL TIME!

The Adventurers reach what, according to the map from the Hunters' Guild, is the antechamber to the inner sanctum. The smell of mildew is overpowering, the floor is littered with puddles, and the silence is broken only by the occasional drip of water. If, that is, we don't count the screech from the tangle of monster vines which has taken root in this room: vegetal tendrils attempt to grab at the Adventurers, too many for mere physical beating and slashing. The stench makes it hard to fight, so some aeration could come in handy. Given the level of humidity in this room, fire looks like an unlikely solution, but that is certainly not going to stop some Adventurers from trying.

The group moves on... and Shiruba jerks back suddenly as a vine snaps at her. Followed by several more starting to slink and slither about. "I've heard of ruins getting overgrown, but this is a bit rediculous!" This time Shiruba does go for a weapon, but rather than her bow she takes out her throwing glaive. Which she spins a few times around a finger before throwing, to give it a good charge of Air magic. So when she throws it the glaive's sharp edges aren't the only thing to cut through vines, it creates a small but potent cyclonic effect around itself as it flies down the passage, tearing and shredding through foliage that it doesn't even physically touch.

    "Oh I know!" Fuka exclaims as the vines in the next room come to life and attack them. "FIRE! That'll surely work!" she exclaims. "Unless that smell is some sort of explosive gas, then it'll definitely clear the room!"

    At that, Fuka launches herself into a spell chant. Hopefully people in the group are familiar enough with her runeword chants to recognize she's NOT summoning fire, else the sudden chorus of FUKA NO would probably deafen. No, she's instead calling on her sylvan heritage, calling on lightning to zap into the grounded vines and wither them without being nearly so risky as using explosive fire spells. Sure she could use wind magic too, but she's more in tune with lightning these days after meeting the Kirin. And besides, others have wind magic covered and she doesn't need to out-blow them to be useful.

Yeowang having made our way past the bats, she will proceed forward with the party until our way forward is imeded by mildewy attack vines. She steps forward to prune them, but the mildew is too overpowering and she can't breathe. She steps far enough back to catch her breath, then, and wraps a cloth around her face after soaking it in water. This makes it much easier to breathe, or at least makes it survivable, and she moves forward with a machete taken from her inventory to clear the path forward.

Shenmi attempts to deflect the attacks of the vine with quick bursts of air and lightning. Not devastating, but as long as the blows are barely intense enough, that is fine. The key, here, is to be -fast- and keep at it.

Sadly, the vines are too quick for Shenmi, and his attack/defense combination isn't perfect -- so he ends up on the receiving end of the occasional slash, with a few glowing red streaks across his body, and corresponding amounts of HP docked.

Shiruba is far more effective at dealing with the monsters with her Cyclonic Lettuce Blender (that's how the technique is called, right?), as are Fuka's lightning-based brand of monster-based devastation. Their combined efforts soon shatter the mini-boss into polygons, while Yeowang... somehow manages to avoid aggro entierely due to her sneaking abilities. A second nature as an infiltrator?

The innermost room is sweltering. The central brazier is aflame, as are torches all around the room, bathing the room in a wavering red tint. Some sort of squat, rotund, red-nosed creature with a perpetual scowl has taken residence in the innermost chamber of the temple. He seems to be some sort of Heat or Fire Golem? Somehow he's wearing a straw hat, glittery shirt, and rambles on about his skill in liquifying items through simple skin contact, and how he refuses to acknowledge days whose temperature falls below a certain threshold.

He demonstrates his powers by grabbing metal tools lying around, melting them, and tossing the resulting molten blobs at the Adventurers. He appears to be attempting to perform some sort of battle song and dance, but he doesn't seem very good at it, falling into pitfalls like rhyming a word with the same word. What makes things harder, he's protected by a small gang of minions that look a lot like him, only smaller.

Yeowang comes in, looks around, and grimaces at the heat. She pulls off her cowl, she doesn't need it at this point, and surveys the situation. Well, it looks like a straight-up fight, so she will wade in and start attacking. The minions are zero threat, and are kicked clear with heavy kicks. Some of them despawn, others are simply knocked back, and must return to get kicked again to despawn.

The boss is much tougher, but that's okay because she's much tougher also. Avoiding the thrown bits of molten metal, she will stride forward and fistfight the scowling creature with a savage speed and fury, striking heavy blows with fists and boots. Partway through, she changes pace, the left-right-left-right rhythm of her attack, which he's guarding as well as he can, gets turned around when her just-completed punch lurches forward again from nearly full extension, and so he's guarding her left when her right comes in and slams him hard, causing him to stumble back. It's all over at this point, his guard is a mess after this and it's basically a beatdown.

They get to the final chamber. It's sweltering hot. I mean they would be expecting heat with the Fire theme, but this is more than anticipated.

Shiruba is really glad she's just a floofy Cait Sith and not a fully furred Were Fang, that's for certain.

There's also something weirdly familiar about what the boss is doing, but she can't quite put her finger on it. Feels like something Gwen and her family might of shown her some time... but there really isn't time to think about it when the boss starts throwing melted metal globs at them! Shiruba brings up one of her magic barriers to deflect the projectile.

Except the metal is so hot that it burns -through magic-. Shiruba quickly has to backfedal farther away from the smoldering lumps left in his wake to keep from collapsing from heat exhaustion. Best to just stick to her long ranged combat from this point. "I should of prepped less fire use techs and more fire countering ones."

    Cheered at getting to devastate things with lightning, Fuka carries that cheer on in to the boss chamber. The heat is almost overwhelming however, and she quickly realizes that casting air magic here as well would be a bad move. Feeding oxygen to the fire wouldn't be great for their health indeed.

    As she dodges flung molten metal, Fuka can't help but notice the golem is rap-battling... and doing terribly at it. She could charge in and hit him around, but those minions are in the way. She'd have to clear them out... or otherwise neutralize them. And she has an idea. A terrible, wonderful idea.

    "Your rhymes are sick! They make me ill! I got this trick, you need to chill!" she chants, throwing the fire-rapper's rhythm back at it. "You're not that hot, you've lost your fire! We've got a shot, you've raised our ire!" she continues, dancing around like a madwoman, and of course avoiding flung molten metal.

    "Your tools are weak, they're made of tin! You're just a freak, we're going to win!" she belts out, as the minions start to look on Fuka's mad rhyming skills with approval. Perhaps she can turn them against the boss mob entirely, or at least distract them so they're not in the fight. "You have no chance, you don't suffice! Just watch me dance, and put you on ice!"

The battle is long and difficult, but despite the heat and the humidity, the Adventurers manage to take care of the minions. They then focus on the main boss; their attacks might be powerful, but all they manage to do is chip the creature's HP away bit by bit. It's a long, slow, and painful process, but they eventually get there. The monster explodes in a gigantic fireball, leaving no proof of his former existence except blobs of molten metal, now solidified; this will have to make do as loot, since there are so few Igneous Stones left that they will all have to be brought back to the Hunters' Guild to satisfy the mission's quota.

As the monster explodes, Shenmi, who had been fireballing like a madman ("Let's fight fire... WITH FIRE!"), lets out the pent-up tension in the form of laugher. "Oh, my! We did it! We murdered it!" He grins all around. "Way to go, ladies!", he says to his questmates, taking some time to specificcally look down at Fuka, "Especially your verbal attack. I'm sure that last flare was his massive ego blowing up." He goes inspect the structures of the room, specially braziers, but all he turns up is a very small handful of Igneous Stones. "Hmmm. Not many, it would seem..."

Yeowang fights on despite the heat, she's used to sweating pretty hard in a fight. They're mostly like that, in her experience, when you're going full out and trying to take out your opponent before they take you out. When the monster explodes, she's right there taking it in the face, but it's down and she pants hard, smiling grimly. A tough foe, but beaten. And what do we have to show for ourselves? Igneous stones, but just enough for the quest. And little blobs of metal? She tucks it dutifully into inventory. "I guess it could be worth something," she surmises.

Shiruba idly picks up one of the cooling lumps of metal. "Not exactly an artifact, but we've barely got enough Igneous Stones to fill the Hunter Guild requirement, so it will have to do." She shrugs, dropping it in her inventory. Maybe she can get one of her crafting friends to do something with it down the road.

    Fuka wipes her brow, both from heat and the effort of the fight. Not to mention the effort of singing sick rhymes during battle. She looks happy though, and takes Shenmi's compliment in stride with a beaming grin. "I like it when things blow up!" she says agreeably.

    She checks out the reward, shrugging. Not something she sees an immediate use for, but loot is loot. "The real treasure is the enemies we blew up along the way!" she claims. Then beatboxes before busting out with "His rhythm was bad, his rhymes were worse. We trashed the lad; call him a hearse!"