Duty Session 516: A Pirate's Life For Me

Passage has been arranged to Byalan Island, an area off the coast of Yamato. Viewed from above, the island reminds one of a skull. According to the reports, this island has been overtaken by undead pirates who have been hoarding cursed loot. The objective for adventurers is simple: Defeat the pirates, recover the loot, and return it to Mac Anu to be cleansed.

"The island ain't safe, not safe at all!", the ship's captain (a grizzled old timer) reminds the Adventurers that have reached him by the gangplank to his ship. "Ye'd better wrap up whatever ye be plannin' quick if ye don't want to swim!"

Shenmi... offers the man a polite nod. "Worry not, kind sir, I can assure you that I have no intention to swim. Wrapping up quickly it shall be."

Goldenblade arrives ready to take on pirate, nodding to our captain about him not hanging around, and echoing Shenmi's assurances. "In and out and all wrapped up. A commando raid's not about holding groud. You keep moving." She checks her gear, and does a couple stretches, but she's as ready as she'll ever be.

Pirates? Undead? Time for a Sword Saint Samurai! Not quite a ghostbuster, but an undead buster is involved. "Speed run," the blue haired Souji says with a confident smile. A menu is swiped up to start a little timer for it as well. Training through speed. Fortunately he is a fast fighter. Go go go.

The surface of the island is quiet, with only the sounds of birds and other animals to be heard. The captain drops anchor and lowers some longboats for them to use to reach the shore, again reminding them that he does not wish to linger long because of the rumors around this skull shaped island.

Upon landing on the island, the group is tasked with locating the entrance to the pirate's lair. "According to the briefing," Shenmi says, back straightened as he gestures around with economical sweeps of his hand, "There is a cave nearby that looks as though it may lead deeper into the island. We may be able to find the secret entrance the pirates use. If we do, we will also have to try and get inside that entrance."

Yar har har! Pirate entrance! Now Soujiro has some keen eyes, but he is not what one would call an 'investigator'. They come from instincts and intuitions. Downright a mystical state of things. So it is is both mystical and on brand for him to be standing by an alcove that oversees the seas. A good breeze across his billowing Edo period Samurai clothing. Hair blows as well. "A good breeze," he says, as if the wind itself is going to tell him where the entrance is. It could! It doesn't. It really doesnt.

Having been put ashore by the skittish captain, Goldenblade will look around and search for the pirate lair. "They didn't make this easy, did they?" she asks, searching for secret entrances under boulders and in trees. Just squirrels, though, and not happy about being pestered by adventurers. Finding nothing better, she says to the others, "Into the cave, then?"

"Into the cave indeed," Shenmi confirms to Goldenblade. He indicates the aforementioned cave, off in the distance. "Over there. It should have a connection to our objective." He beckons the party to follow, as they venture into the bowels of the Earth.

As they proceed, the caves get darker and darker, until no natural light reaches them anymore. "We are not getting anywhere by normal means," comments Shenmi, as he sloshes through the underground ankle-deep waters, with his pants rolled up out of the liquid's reach. "Maybe with some elemental manipulation..."

Soujiro Seta did not locate the entrance. Wind, you will have to whisper the secrets to him another day. It is playing hard to get. Perhaps a jilted element of his harem. Hard to say. Because it isnt speaking. At all. He doesnt dwell on it and happily goes along to the next path in front of him: the cave. "A difficult challenge with a speed check," he offers as things get darker. "I find that exciting, don't you?" He smiles, the young ex-Tea Party member always seeking to shine in the darkness. Kind of like now that they are in a dark area that needs light. One of his katanas are pulled from the saya and begins to glow, not unlike a well natured hobbit. If only Frodo had a harem. Different fanfiction.

Goldenblade chuckles at not getting anywhere by normal means. "This is true," she agrees. "So of course that means we will have to use abnormal means." If that's what it really means. Apparently, what it means is Goldenblade says with some amusement, "So follow me," and then flat out vanishes. This makes following her quite difficult, as it happens. And it is not clear at all how she gets to the point where we've all reconvened, looking at some fallen debris.

Shenmi replies to Soujiro with a quiet 'tsk' click of his tongue. "I will agree that it does pump your adrenalin. But the stakes of respawning in Kallamore if anything goes pear-shaped, well, are preventing me from upgrading the review of this experience to the full five stars of 'exciting'. Maybe at some other point in my life?" He offers, with a polite smile.

Blink and you miss Goldenblade. She's gone, gone like the wind. Which gives Shenmi an idea as the corners of his mouth curl up in- c'mon dude, -that- is excitement. You cannot deny it anymore.

He reaches into his jacket, extracts a deck of card, takes it close to his mouth, gives it a soft blow on the top card and-

Presto! The cards depart, picked up by a powerful gust of wind. Shenmi laughs, a liberatory laugh, and splosh-chases after them, towards the intended destination indicated by the air current.

The party moves deeper into the caves, but it seems that excavation on the pirate lair has caused one the walls of this path to collapse, blocking the way forward. There doesn?t appear to be any way around, so going through is the only option. The party will need to move the fallen debris out of the way in order to proceed and brace the wall back up in order to ensure it doesn't collapse again after they pass, blocking their escape route.

Soujiro Seta hasn't had any luck with the pirate entrance or with his night light. However he isn't letting that get him down! In fact, he is more hyped than ever. One can learn so much from when something /didnt/ work. Reasons to train differently. He is already thinking about how 'reading the wind' needs to go into his Zen-like practices and also 'Want to find a way to make your sword Glow? Click Here!' which he is pure enough to probably click on. On the flip side? Souji is jacked. He tackles the fallen debris with the sort of happy-go-lucky work ethic that has him prying the rocks out and pushing them aside. The Samurai makes a little minigame about it. "Don't worry there, Shenmi," he says as he is picking a rock some five times his size, "if something threatens to land a fatal blow, I'll be right there to shield you, ok?" Sparkles. Don't forget to live life!

Goldenblade looks around as it seems our path forward is blocked by a cave-in. But debris and clutter and needing to be shored up is part of her stock in trade. "You know, this was what I did in my very first job. Picking up spilled bricks was how I spent most of my first day at work. Someone had knocked over a huge pile, they must have backed a truck up into it, and I had to pick up everything that had spilled, set it aside to clear the ones that weren't knocked over, and then stack the spilled ones back up on the original pile."

As she explains this, she's picking up the fallen stonework and packing it back into the walls. Where there's no mortar, she's using some sort of device that has extended out from her backpack, it seems, and comes out like an oversized monocle, or targetting reticle over her eye, and pushing some virtual controlls, is causing the sand to fill in and harden into a mortar-like substance.

"That is much appreciated, Mr. Seta." A pause. "...Is that the correct way to address an Edo-period Samurai? I beg your forgiveness, my Japanese history is not my strong suit."

Shenmi finally stops, having reached his destination; his cards fly back into his palm to re-form the original deck. There is some degree of amazement displayed at Goldenblade's device. "That... a relic?", he asks, gesturing, impressed at how advanced the item seems to be.

He is no construction worker by trade, but he can help with some simple Earth magic, to speed up the task.

The effort succeeds, and once they're done, the party finds itself in an unusually thick forest of seaweed that blocks the cavern. There doesn't seem to be any way around it, and the team will need to figure out the best way through.

Soujiro Seta looks to Shenmi on the question on his outfit, "Seta-san would be most appropriate if this was a formal setting like court," he says from a historical perspective. "But my friends call me Souji and you are a friend." Going straight to a first name basis. The samurai is about hard work today! "I can see it!" Souji adds to GB with the sort of spirit of someone who is still filled with enthusiasm for what he is doing. Eternally. This font of positivity that is kept in composure to not be too irritating or overbearing. It is this genuine /joy/ in what he is doing, even when it is mundane or not an expert at. "I bet it became a fun thing to joke about later on, too." His blades are already out, so the option on how to take care of the seaweed is straight forward. Slash! Slash slash! Slash slash slash. Wait. Nope. Slash slash slash! "Better than training dummies," he says as he focuses on his form, focused training. Thats about as good as it gets though since it isnt making good dungeon progress.

Goldenblade smiles and nods to Shenmi, replying, "Indeed it is. And quite a useful thing, until we invent bulldozers." She admits, "It mainly works on the ground, but inside a cave, we're kind of surrounded by ground, so I used it on the wall. Which is the ground if you tilt your head like this." She tilts her head ninety degrees.

Pressing through into the heavy, towering undergrowth, she sighs and starts to hack her way forward. Her blades stop cutting soon enough, and she pauses to re-sharpen then. More cutting, and more re-sharpening, and the progress she makes is not fast. This will take some time.

"Soujiro it is, then," Shenmi offers with a smile and a light tap on the rim of his hat. "And thank you. Of course, as already established, Shenmi it is in my case."

After tilting his head ninety degree to follow Goldenblade's line of reasoning (which makes sense, really), he kneels down to examine the plants. "Let's see if having dealt with all those farmers is of any help here...", he comments. Silence. Observation. Rubbing of leaves.

"...nope," he comments at the end, shaking his head.

The team finds their way deep into the underbelly of the pirate's lair. Instead of finding the pirates however, they come across a giant enemy crab which has somehow managed to get a large portion of the cursed treasure embedded in its shell.

It clacks its claws at them as they near, giving them warning to back off, but with that gold embedded in its shell, the massive creature will fulfill the goal of the mission, even without running into the pirates proper, however the group is still going to need to fight it in order to get their prize from its carapace.

Having finally cut through the forest of slash-resistant foliage, she re-sharpens her blades one last time and eyes the giant crab who we seem to have found rather than finding the pirates. "Did we make some wrong turn in the cave?" she wonders. "I didn't see any other way to go..."

But there's a giant crab there, and Goldenblade hasn't gotten to fight at all, yet. "Well, this may get messy," she remarks. "Do they even have Old Bay in Yamato? I had the hardest time getting it in Japan, it was easier to get my family to mail it from the states."

Speaking of Old Bays, Goldenblade vanishes from sight. But she hasn't run away. She /has/ slipped behind the crab, though, and with a particularly complicated SFX, she thrusts one blade hilt deep under the crab's top shell. The crab is not happy about this, and several of its HP bars quit in protest.

Crab battle? Crab battle! Soujiro has both of his katanas out and at the ready when the fighting action starts up. Plus this thing is shiny and likely wants to do a dance number about how shiny itis. Souji can appreciate this. He spends his time tanking the beast. "I tried it once," says the samurai on the topic of Old Bay, "it tasted pretty good on rice!" The good ole Baltimore Roll. CLANG! Even when Souji is talking about food, he manages to stay focused on combat. It is so natural. There is a stance he keeps which is slow and steady. Anchored. Clang clang! Parry after parry shows gradual reductions to his health. The party Buff 'meter' shows a buff that goes from x3 to x4, all the way to x10 after the tenth blow.

When the next strike comes towards Souji, he dodges out of the way, towards the Crab. It is a clean metalic sound as he launches straight up in one slices and then straight back down. As graceful as two strokes form a paintbrush with heavy red damage lines. The buff fades, a token to the Samurai's subtyle: Vengeance style. Meanwhile: this crab is ready to be nom nommed.