Duty Session 500: No Game Gnoll Life

    In a land where life is Gnoll and void , all that is around is simply dead and desolate. Head on pikes, bodies hanging from dead trees. It sets a pretty gnarly scene. Then of course is the sign, the sign that has a bunch of monster speak on it and infront of that sign is a monster, particularly the cerberus of Setsuna's. This three headed dog is currently taking a whiz on the sign as Setsuna tosses some jerky to them. "Thats a good...them. Yes yall are." Taking a bite of the jerky as well he waits patiently for the others to arrive.

    Always eager and willing to help out in a mission, it's no surprise Fukaziroh shows up. She looks around at the familiar-seeming region. Seen one grassy gnoll, etc etc. Peering up at Setsuna, she blinks. "Hm. You know, it seems like no matter how many of these gnolls we end, more just keep showing up. What do you think, could they be like... zombolls? Gnundead? Maybe they just have really good late-healers!" she muses, then shrugs. "We'll just have to keep killing them, I guess! That and keep taking down their leaders until we can get in to that locked room and find out what's really behind it all!"

Yeowang is, like all the Yamato adventurers, multitasking. She's assisting in pushing back the Palace Landers from Shibuya, or, really, the trailblazing prepatory to that, but she also knows how important it is to keep the other monsters in check at the same time, so they don't run wild. To that end, she has agrees to accompany another gnollfighting expedition.

Dressed all in dark colors, with a hood pulled back for the moment, but able to cover the mane of blonde hair, she stands still, but poised, ready for action, but held in abeyance just for the moment.

She arrives to see Setsuna's three-headed pup baptising a sign on a post and offers a curt wave. "Hello," she says, then looks out over the desolation. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," she quotes with determination, but skips to the important bits.
"But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage..."

Well, it sounds like a pep talk. And it was, sort of. For Henry V, as written by Shakespeare.

Chuckling under his breath after seeing a three headed dog use a warning sign as a bathroom, Klein checks his inventory to make everything is set for another venture into these gnoll-infested woods. The scruffy samurai has already been here once before, but the threat of the gnolls still looms large for everyone nearby. Plus with some Adventurers making a push for Shibuya lately, the best thing to do is work on making sure this problem doesn't get too out of hand.

"Honestly? Maybe a combination of all three? Last time I check, one of their leaders is completely unaccounted for. Hopefully we can tear into him today!" With that, Klein rests his hand on the hilt of his sheathed katana and motions to the woods. "Should I take point then?"

Even though she's no longer obessed over the matter in a Strange Mood way, Shiruba has dedicated her effort to taking care of this obnoxious demon gnoll problem. She uncovered it, now she's going to see it to the end. But that third type of keystone had still eluded her efforts, so it's not long after getting word that there is going to be another attempt that the wolfgirl has caught up to the group. "I would assume we've all done this enough times I don't need to give the opening exposition shpeal about what to prepare for, yes?"

    "You know, I think in Fragment, there was a dungeon or something that needed your entire guild to collect hundreds and hundreds of loot to unlock it. So you know this isn't so bad in comparison." Setsuna comments as he stands up and tosses the rest of the jerky to trio and instantly regrets it. His stomach growls a little and he walks over as the three headed cerberus has slobbered and rolls the jerky in dirt. Anyone watching Setsuna would know he is considering taking it back before the trio growls. "Fine fine." Looking at the group he shrugs, "So apparently my snack time is over lets go do this."

     Setsuna waits for no one as he walks straight into the fun of the woods.If the others come or abandon him to his fate it doesn't change what happens. The dark and dreary woods turns to something a bit more normal, if you prefer your forests ominously quiet. Other then that everything seems normal, well besides the traps. Yes the traps that are well hidden and hard to spot, but surely someone will succeed at their spot check.

Yes the traps are well hidden, but when you know the traps are there, you take the time to watch for clues.

Or in Shiruba's case she points her search relic forward and lets it highlight all the tripwires and conspicious patchs of displaced grass and dirt. Which means, while taking a bit of time due to being cautious and not being able to traverse a straight line she gets through with little effort.

Yeowang follows Setsuna and the others into the breach, all right, and walks straight into a shell. Or a trap, anyhow, since this isn't World War One, which is the war she thinks of when she read that poem out of context. The traps are, indeed, well hidden, and she's not nearly fast enough to escape the traps just on raw speed. Blown up, she finds herself hurled into a pit trap, which she falls through, landing with a wince. She crawls out of that, and will do her best to follow in the exact footsteps, to see if she can get out of here without taking too much damage.

    Shaking her head, Fuka peers around. "I feel like they've tried this before!" she announces. With a fast chant, she summons an extremely bright light over the heads of the party, all the better to show up the various tripwires, deadfalls, and other traps.

    "Not that it'll stop us from doing something way dumb I bet at some point, but hey if this is predictable, so much the better for us! You know what they say, practice makes protect! Er, protect us?" she muses, picking her way through an assortment of various traps. She pauses to watch Yeowang. "Uh... maybe you should follow a scout!" she suggests, a bead of sweat forming on the side of her head.

Klein snaps his fingers. "You know, I remember hearing about that dungeon too! The guild I was a part up wasn't exactly big and we didn't want to spend days grinding just for one try of a dungeon. Just wasn't worth all that effort."

It's only as Klein is stepping forward that he realizes this place looks oddly familiar. That's right! There were those shaggy bushes, the same sunbeam, the same tripwire he was stepping onto...uh oh.

*snap*

Klein immediately rushes forward, sprinting for all he's worth as trap after trap goes off. Arrows fly, hidden bear traps just miss his foot and he leaps over a pit trap that was just starting to open under him. "Not agaaaaaain!"

    Setsuna himself is oblivious to the traps as he steps on one, and is quickly reminded to pay more attention as he takes an arrow to the arm. "Guys I think there may be traps..." Setsuna is interupted as he sets another off and this time takes a branch swinging around to the face. Spitting out the leaves he finishes what he was saying, "here." As the gorup navigates through the traps safely , or like Setsuna takes them to the face eventually all members of the party will eventually make it through the traps.

     Setsuna looks about as he tries to think about the situation for a moment, " I seem to remember something about what happens right after this but I can't place my finger on it. " Then a large crossbow bolt hits the ground with a loud *THWANG* and then another and then another. The gnoll sniper is strafing them this time, as if trying to drive them back into the traps. "Gnoll problem they say, well this seems like a problem. " Setsuna grumbles.

Yeowang nods grimly to Fukaziroh, doing that now, even as she suggests it. She's supposed to /be/ a scout, but she's noy quite trained up to it. She hadn't expected to be one, in the game, but it's come to this, that she does need to, on occasion. Most of the time, she's just vanilla front-rank DPS.

This is a problem when the job is to take out a sniper whose too far to charge. She /owns/ a bow, but she rarely uses it, and isn't very good, demonstrating by plunking an arrow downrange. The best that can be said is it lands in the right zip code. Well, she can turn this ranged fight into a melee, she just needs a bit of time. So she dashes downrange toward the sniper as the others take care of things.

A good hunter has to be patient. A great hunter uses patience to prepare.

By the time they cross his field of vision and the Grassy Gnoll takes his first shot, Shiruba already her plan in mind, and an arrow drawn into her bow. She takes a turning step to the side to avoid the opening sniper shot, rotates to face the direction it came from, and fires. Her arrow flies through the air with a touch of wind magic, creating enough pressure around it that a shockwave results to knock following shots out of the air. Leaving an opening for her to quickly start firing on the actual gnoll to drive him back.

    "Oh that son of a ..." she pauses, glancing at an arrow zipping past her. She sighs and breaks into a charge. "Your mom's a hyena!" she bellows, crossing her arms before her and ducking low to present a minimal target. Those vambraces of hers, large and thick, are practically impenetrable. Her body armour's good too, and between the combination she needs not fear much from a frontal assault unless it explodes. "Sniper? I barely knew her!" she cries out.

"Let's see, after the traps there was..." The sound of large crossbow bolts impacting the earth is enough to jog Klein's memory and make him pull his katana free. "Right, the sniper!...hmmm...i'll cover you from here!" Considering his current party wouldn't be a good idea to charge on ahead, Klein decides it's best to play defensively.

Staying back and letting the ranged-capable fighters sling shots at the sniper, Klein does his part by deflecting or outright cutting down any bolts that get a bit too close for comfort. It's a busy job considering how many bolts are flying at them, but he's making sure that no one gets too injured while he's on the job. "Oooh, I think he's getting a little crossed-eyed at that one." No, he's not going to laugh at that horrible pun.

That's for later.

    Setsuna has a solution to the problem, he brought a three headed solution to the problem so away the cerberus goes. The only problem is Setsuna can't quite make out where the gnoll is so Demon keeps ending up at the wrong spot and Setsuna keeps paying for it. Fortunately others are picking up the slack, shielding is everywhere from Klein and Shiruba with Fukaziroh taking the lead in damage.

    With the sniper gnoll dead the group moves on deeper into the forest, where they find a lovely fountain surrounded by some moss covered ruins. It would be a wonderful discovery if it wasn't from the gnolls drinking from the fountain. As they drink and drink and then turn to face the adventurers. Foaming at the mouth, eyes glowing red, the rabid gnolls begin to descend on the party.

You don't need to be familiar with animals to know what that frothing around the mouth means. "Damn, are they purposely getting themselves rabid?!" And of course they turn on the party. Shiruba grunts, and unleashing a magic blast to to try and knock them back, but their erratic rage movements are making it hard for even her to hone in a proper magic shot to slow them down.

Foaming at the mouth, red-eyed gnolls do not disconcert Yeowang. The gamey bits of the game often give her trouble, but once again she demonstrates that as far as the fighting goes, she's got that down. Well, she's been training in martial arts since she was six, she ought to be at least /pretty good/ at it. In real life, she's /amazing/ at it, but the game actually dials back her reflexes, putting her on an even par with the other players. It's one of the many challenges of the game, though, so she perserveres. Also, she kicks 7 types of hell out of the gnolls without breaking stride, punching, kicking, a relentless machine, a sort of MMA terminator, at least as far as the gnolls are concerned. When the rabid gnolls descend on the party, they are sent away, off to the bit bucket in the sky, to the accompaniment of glittery bursts of XP and the occasional loot drop.

    Happily recovering from her guardian's sprint, Fuka looks back at the ranged fighters who shot back. "Teamwork yey!" she calls out, holding up her hand for a medium five. From afar. Like... from halfway between the group and the sniper far away. Oh well. "I tank it you spank it! I distrac, you attac!" she grins, cheerfully nattering on until the group gets moving once again.

    "Oh hey this looks ominous!" she claims, seeing a bunch of gnolls turning themselves rabid and vicious. "And yet it explains so much! Didn't we murder their alchemist a while ago? Yet they're still transforming with potions! They must have more alchemists!" she observes brightly. "We just have to have more MURDER!" she adds enthusiastically, lowering her sword's point to the ground and holding it hilt-up like it was a summoning staff.

    Chanting runes of power, of earth and fire, she pulls earth from the ground with her magic. Hollowed stone barrels rise up and spin around her, rotating, aligning. Then they begin to glow with shards of arcane fire. And then... everything explodes. Fuka takes out their cauldron with an explosive double-barreled shot, which not coincidentally shreds everything between her and the cauldron quite effectively.

Klein blinks as they happened to find a new path he's not familiar with. As for what lies down it... "...that's it. It's proof. All these gnolls are absolutely insane." Even in this world, there's no way that drinking a strange color liquid to intentionally foam at the mouth is something good for your health in the long run. Especially with how much muscle mass each of these gnolls gained. "Alright, who gave these Gnolls access to Titan?!"

He doesn't get to say much more as the rapid gnolls rush the Adventuring party, and it takes some incredible effort not to get his throat bitten out. Jamming his katana to block those foaming jaws, Klein kicks the 'roided Gnoll in the chest to give himself some extra room before he jams the blade into the chest. He must have hit a weak point as shatters a few moments later, but there's no time for a break yet. "Either that or their really late doctors got their crazed doc back on his feet. Geeze, I got bite marks in this thing..."

    Setsuna shakes his head , "That is f'd up if they are. Fortunately..." Setsuna is a monster handler, he works with monsters constantly and is friends with a rabbit doctor. The necromancer has medicine for rabies. Several needles are thrown out from Setsuna, each with medicine to remove the rabies buff. That is the ones that still live, spin kicks to the right, explosions to the left and body parts being chopped off in front of him. Really only like one gnoll gets cured, before it to dies.

    The fountain is left behind as they go deeper into the land of the gnolls. Here they find upturned trees, holes that look like impact crators, rocks and boulders broke into pieces. In the center of all this is a single Gnoll, stark black, tree branches sticking out from portions of the monsters fur. Frenzied as well, possibly having been drinking the fountain water for far to long. The worse part about this Gnoll though, is that it has seen the adventurers and is coming to greet them, in a not so friendly manner.

Thankfully the team picks up the slack in the wake of her fumbling.

Now it's time for Shiruba to do the same for the party. As soon as she sees which part of the forest (not that much is left) they are in now, she takes out one of her lightning rod arrows and draws it back in Thundersnow Howl. The air around her gets that faintly ionized smell as electricity crackles about the weapon. Fortunately the gigantic gnoll isn't very fast, so she's able to fully charge the shot before firing, hitting the massive monster with the full force of a thunderstorm to slow him down for the others that can exploit his actual weaknesses.

    While Fuka's mana reserves are relatively high compared to an ordinary caster, the crucible cannon is a big spell and she's more of a dabbler in a variety of magics rather than a mana-dense archmage. Her reserves aren't high compared to other strong adventurers, and so when the supermassive gnoll starts to make its presence known, she's a little low on her reserves.

    She tries, however. Tries her best to blind the beast. Too little, in more than one sense, but she tries. And cheers as the others put together a powerful combination. "That's right! Tell 'em who sent ya!" she howls, grinning fiercely.

The scruffy samurai stares upward in disbelief at the hulking gnoll, an eye twitching as he realizes exactly who they are facing here. "Great...not you again! Okay, that's it, we need to find their gnoll necromancers, this is getting silly!" It seems that this massive beast and Klein has a history together, one that Klein isn't exactly a fan of.

Not wanting to get closed to this creature in the slighest, Klein falls back with the basic strategy he had from the last time he met this monster: slinging fireballs at it's fur. But this time, his aim isn't quite as true and none of the branches he's trying to hit are bursting alight. In his desperation to be able to do something here, Klein isn't able to dodge in time from a wide sweep of a claw that sends him tumbling over the earth. "Ugh...right. Dodge first, then attack." Picking himself back up, Klein does his best to play ranged support this time around.

Yeowang blinks at the big, nasty brute that's come to fight us. Giant feral gnolls were /not/ part of her MMA training, but she's here to fight, so fight she will. The first couple attacks do nothing, and she gets one of the cryptic alerts that are supposed to notify her of what she's supposed to, though she doesn't quite understand what it means to do.

What she does is trigger one of the buffs that she has. Turns out to be the right one, by purest chance, and her fists glow with holy light, and her punches hit and score damage. Score good damage. She fights with ferocious concentration, but mostly with buffed punches and kicks, battering down the huge gnoll.

    Setsuna watches the big guy before he whistles and the three headed cerberus charges forward and lunges at the beast. The three heads clamp down hard and each one seems to be holding the creature for the time being. The light of Fukaziroh and Yeowang burns and purifies the gnoll, turning patches of the skin back to a nromal look and softening it. Allowing for Klein to get in and seems to cleanse some of dark skin softening it up, Klein's attack while unfortunately being interupted gives Shiruba time to charge her attack and the arrow of the storm pierces the gnoll and turns it to pixels.

    Past the vaulted door, and into the cave where a lot of gruesome things happening. The party has once again found themselves in Roarschach's laboratory. THere standing in a pool of blood is the doctor. Setsuna sighs and looks at Klein, "So a gnoll necromancer?" The question hangs in the air as the bloodweavers sends spikes of blood traveling at them, the boss fight has begun it seems.

    Keeping up her cheer, Fuka plows on forward with the group into the cave. She pauses upon seeing the Bloodweaver. "Oh hey look, it's ugly again!" she claims. Not that ugly means bad, not by itself. She's not that shallow, honest! But when ugly is a personality, well, it's monster killing time! "Blood from the blood gnoll!" she yells and rushes into combat, intending to do her best to tank the boss and give others a chance to get their strikes in.

    She is... well, marginally successful in that she does absorb several big hits. Her health bar is large, her armour strong, and well... like any big fight, the goal is to get the enemy to run out of hit points before you do. So it's a success, right? "Owwwww..."

Well at least it isn't the amphibious gnoll -again-. Then Shiruba would of been really annoyed. Like REALLY annoyed.

As is the caverns lead them into a science lab, and a maniac gnoll doctor? Mortician? It's hard to tell. Or really time to think about it when he starts attacking them with blood.

"Ew, gross!" Shiruba throws her magic glaive to intercept his first shot of blood spikes... but he's able to just pull the blood back to fire faster than she can throw her deflecting shots, driving her back into a corner of the cavern.

Sipping a health potion to restore his lost health from his tumble, Klein journeys with the rest of the Party past the massive sealed doors. "Honestly, I feel like this place gets creepier the second time around. Maybe it's just me?" Shrugging his shoulders even if there's no response coming, Klein stashs the potion bottle back into his inventory.

A long-suffering sigh escapes Klein's lips as he stares at Roarschach before nodding his head once. "Gnoll necromancers. It has to be. Honestly want to see if I can find some of them later." Reaching up to readjust his headband, Klein readies himself for what is likely going to be a long and hard fight for everyone here.

It's clear that this mad scientist has some nasty tankbusters, and it's going to take a constant effort between the entire party just to make sure no one takes too much damage too quickly. "Switch!" Rushing in, Klein takes his turn to be the focus for this gnoll boss. Perhaps it's because it's his second time around or he's been observing the others taking some nasty hits, but Klein is able to get his katana in position for parrying the majority of what comes his way. "Heal up and spank him, i'll tank him for a while!"

Yeowang isn't sure what to do here, weird magical effects really annoy her. But she's got quite a solid defense, when she concetrates, and the monocle gnoll is not anywhere near fast enough when she's in the zone. Following the movements, she flows around them, like a fist of flowing water smashing stone. Interestingly, that's the name her original sensei used for the technique, and she flows around every attack, striking from behind, then flowing away again.

    Setsuna charges forward with his monstrous ally by his side and as an attack flies at Demon, Setsuna throws himself in the way and uses himself for the shield. It hurt. The entire party does there best but really in the end it is Klein and Yeowang that carry the group. After a very long grueling fight the boss drops dead and turns to pixels. As the pixels of the boss fade Setsuna collapses on the ground, "I hate that guy. I really hate that guy." Looking over at the rubies he looks at the group, "Does everyone have the red paperweight?"

Shiruba picks one of the red gemstones up. "I do know.... this one is already completed though, isn't it?" Guess she's got a souveneir of this whole ordeal, at least until she finds something useful to do with it.

Giving a fist pump as Roarschach has his second brush with death from Klein, he fully makes sure that the resurrected gnoll wasn't about to come back as a rotting blood zombie just to mess with them. "I already got one here! Was hoping he would have dropped a different color though..." Stepping close to the ruby stones, he just shakes his head at the sight. "Well, who knows? Maybe one of the gnolls holding the other colors is actually the necromancer? It would explain a lot."

Yeowang picks up the keystone, looks at it, puts it in her inventory. "I hadn't gotten this one before," she reports, looking dissheveled but not too badly put out. "Do we no longer need it?" she asks Shiruba. "Well, I'm sure there's /some/ use for it." If nothing else, she can vendor it for cash, not that she generally lacks in that department.

    "I bet the necromancer is hiding behind the locked door." Fuka observes with a knowing, all-wise look. It doesn't exactly suit her. "Or of course we'll find out it was Setsu all along..." she adds, looking over at the necromancer skeptically. That kind of does suit her, in this case. "Regardless, my ruby's already in the collected pile. The ... dog ... pile..."

    Setsuna shakes his head, "Nope not me, trust me if I had an army of Gnolls, everyone would know about it. " Setsuna says as he reaches into his inventory and grabs some healing potions before standing up. "Anyways lets get out of here before the system decides it needs to respawn." Stretching a little he walks towards the exit whistling loudly as Demon chases after him.