Duty Tomb of the Lost Emperor

The river valley in which the tomb is located is flush with life, green trees and local animal life and a low population of monsters. The tomb itself is located in the wall scurried by decaying ruins that have been heavily overgrown but at the entrance two statues flank the entrance spears crossed daring the party to enter. What treasure and dangers lurk within this forgotten place?

Loot. Danger. Combat.
Sign. Souji. Up.

Inspired by his recent match with Daiyu, the sword saint samurai has taken up a Hunter's Guild request over for the Palace Lands. The overland battles were great, the dungeon? Potentially even better. "I will take up main tanking position," he lets the party know. Keep everyone alive by rushing headlone into combat. He shall protect your biscuits. And your tea. Tea and biscuits.

Schneider has signed up for this duty. He's a bit new to the Palace Lands, so he'll follow the lead of the others. But loot and adventure await, and missions he hasn't been on before. "Sign me up," he says, but he has already signed himself up. As toSeta's tactics, he says, "Sounds good. I'll hang back and light enemies up." Those who know him know he's not being figurative.

"It says something about how little we explored outlying areas that I was unaware of this location being a dungeon, " is Daiyu's input on the matter. "Wonder what it could be hiding..."

Miho needed to get out and stretch so when she heard Soujiro was here? How could she say no, also a chance to pry him away from his unwitting harem? Double hell yeah far as she was concerned she'd be arriving clad in her combat gear rather than something for the forge. She very looked the part of a lady samurai as she leaned on her Nagitna. "So we good? Also good to see all of you!"

The samurai gives one thumb up to Schneider and another to Miho. "Thats whats so great about Elder Tales," Souji asides to Daiyu, "there is always something worth seeing when you take the moment to really look." Deep look at Daiyu. Deep. Look. And Miho too. Deep Look. So mindful. So thoughtful. So very wind-tunnel between those ears. Like being around a happy doggo. With swords.

The entryway is not dark glowing crystals enchanted long ago provide dim light to this day. Between each of the lights is a statue of an armoured warrior. Each one is different, some human, some Pooka and so forth. There soon emerges a troubling pattern: they are the same; there is no difference between them at each interaction. It's a maze designed to confuse intruders it seems. It will take some work for the party to find their way through. There may be small tells as to how to move forward and of note, there is some movement of the air which could be used to figure out where to go. Additionally someone with mining experience could make a difference here.

This maze is a-mazing! Soujiro wouldn't mine charting a course through here for hours. That is how you get the best random encounters, exp, and find all the missable treasure. Although he is in the front of the group, his ponytail occasionally catches wind of the wind. An observant person might use the main tank as a sort of wind sock. Where did you come from, where did you go? Ponytail Souji in a maze we go o/`

Schneider looks around, is unable to work out the best way through the maze. But there is always another way. A small paper is produced, and it is used to wrap up some plant product he'd found previously. It burns slowly and smokily, and the drifting air currents are fairly straightrforward to follow thruogh the maze. But he kind of got lucky on that one, who'd have known that the smoking grass was just grass that burned extra smokily?

Miho says "This is a wonderful world for the most part..." Well she looks to Daiyu. "Well before we got out of Yamato and found out what else was going on." Still she's in good spirits as she will attempt to use an air based weapon art to figure out which way the might go but it doesn't pan out too well for her.

Daiyu on the other hand would rather avoid excess encounters and conserve their stamina. She has stealth on her side though and occasionally darts ahead to check around corners and make sure they don't walk into needless trouble.

Creative application of long hair award: Souji. Most creative application to an animal's name: Shiruba. Only you can stop forest fires: Schneider. Least Stamina Consumed: Daiyu. Miho: Miho.

The party finds their way through the maze rather handily without burning through too many of their precious party resources to reach the other side. A post a-mazing maze awaits them, minimalist style: a long corridor.

The good news is there seems to only be one way forward. The bad news is that it appears the area is trapped. Some are more obvious than others. All of them appear to be flame-based as here and their gouts of fire would cross the corridors before resting and then firing off again a short time later. Our daring heroes will have to find a way past the various flavours of flame traps to press deeper into the tomb.

Nothing like a few traps to make Souji want to practice his crazy good evasion abilities. Flame traps just add flavor. Spicy flavor! Samurai a-go-go-go.

Miho is okay thanks to her friends, she make her way deeper guided by the others as they find the next challenge she stares for a moment. She then moves in a full out run using her tail to keep balance. She'll start using water based weapon arts to keep the fires under control as they attempt to not end up Korean BBQ.

Schneider has a time-proven method of detecting traps. While moving slowly and attempting to be careful, he makes sure to step on every pressure plate and trip over every tripwire that he can find, emerging at the end of that hallway much lower on HP than when he started. But his HP are coming back up already, it's hard to kill a wizard.

Daiyu likewise just opts for the evasive approach as it is one of her strengths. The fox woman takes a running start, followed by a display of nimble flips, slides and wall jumps to get through the obstacle course of flames. Fwoosh goes the fire. Swoosh goes the fox. Up down, over and under, zig and zag.

Eventually she comes to a stop at the other end. "Well that we--" she stops as she notices a bit of smoke behind her, and steps back with her foot to smother out the tip of a tail that got in the fire at the very end. "--This is a reminder that Cait Sith and Were Fangs are less common here, I suppose. Not as much room for lusher tails."

The application of fire to things is a Scale Emblem Alliance thing. Its clear they love fire so much they have to be ON FIRE at least once during this dungeon run. So Schneider, Souji, and Daiyu all end up crispy bacon during this trap, leaving Miho to spend most of her Water Artes time trying to remove all those Burning debuffs. Silly New Worlder, FIRE CONSUMES ALL! Including the party's health and mana.

Through the flames the party would find a massive cavern of carved stone from top to bottom the entire place standing in parade formation are statues of soldiers from the distant past of the Palace Lands. Each one looks different, no two are alike. There are ranks upon ranks of them all seemingly waiting for some unseen order. Nothing happens for a little as the party traverses the room. Until partway through then the door seals shut as does the one on the far end. The statues are not such they are golems or something like it as they come to life and attack. Not so mindlessly one at a time they seem to fight as well-trained Landers would use tactics and try to go after the less durable members of the party. This is going to be one heck of a fight.

Souji is all about the 'one heck of a fight' fights. Heck. He is one to fight a heck would a heck one a fight. And he would won. It is not the party that is stuck in the room with the Terracotta Army. The Terracota Army is stuck in a room with Souji. Fear.

Schneider smirks as the stone soldiers attack. "If that's how this is going to be..." he mutters, then casts, "Deep Doomsday. To the spirits of land and air, bound by the pact, fulfill your obligation now." "MEGADETH!" The fiery explosion engulfs a bunch of the attackers, and burns away their pathetic little health bars savagely.

Once the enter the next chamber Daiyu stops, tilting her head as she looks over it's contents with an expression that's equal parts awe and concern. Being from China and a bit of a historical and folklore afficinato she almost immeadiately recognizes what they have come upon. "To think, someone took all that effort to recreate something like this here... Maybe someone that was upset they do not allow visitors readily into the real site because of it's--"

She stops, ears snapping up. Sharp vulpine senses hear the movement of stone and clay rubbing against itself. "--apparently also a trap."

They want to use strategy? Well so can the Party. Seeing as just dropping them as a smokescreen would not be effective against such enemies, Daiyu takes a more direct approach, throwing several illusionary mist bombs right in the construct's faces and hopefully interfering with whatever means they sense intruders by.

Miho makes it through the fire little worse for ware when she sees the army that is waking up.

The tactics of these things use notable these are not mindless in the normal sense. No someone made these things and put a lot into whatever animates these things. Miho is locked in a fith with several using her nagtinata. She becomes a whirlwind as she pulls a lot of attention by making herself a major threat.

"Who did this! This would have taken a lot more work than standard golems to make!"

The army stood no chance against seasoned Adventurers. No chance at all. Like rolling 1d20 and asking the Dungeon Master if you can reroll that 1. And the DM is like 'sure brah' so you reroll and get another 1 and you go 'Pretty sure this is cursed, mind if I get a noncursed die'? And the DM is like 'you do you brah, rules are for fools'. So you keep rolling that 1d20 until you get the 2 or greater you need to destroy the Terracotta Army.

Its like that. Army is ded.

After the clash with the terracotta Army. Our heroes find themselves in a more dimly lit corridor which leads into a massive armoury. The weapons and armour here are all here are well made but there seems to be no way out until at the center of the armoury is a weapon rack that seems oddly shaped. Looking at it closely one would be able to tell there's some sort of mechanism that could be triggered if the right weapon was placed here. The possibility also remains that it could be picked or even brute-forced.

Its forging time! Wait, thats Haru. No, double-wait, Soujiro looks to Miho as he grabs a smithing hammer from his inventory. "Tea and TingTings?" which is not code for what you think it means. He means forging. It'll also be a good time to repair the durability on his offhand katana after smacking it against stone earlier. Sharp blades must be kept sharp.

"As much as I would enjoy a cup of tea, mayhaps best we wait until after the dungeon." Sparks crackle in Daiyu's wake as she uses both her quick agility and her Were Fang senses to make a rapid casing of the room and it's contents. After a lap or two she stops, pulls a weapon out of a random pile, and walks over to the others with it. "If one of you are a smith, mayhaps you can shape this to fit in the opening of that rack suspiciously positioned at the center of the room."

Schneider will step forward and attempt to help push past this hiddem egress. He does this by going to the exit, pushing on it without effect, then waiting to see if the rest of the party can figure anything else out. Puzzles are not his forte, it seems. His brute force is not partticularly brutish, either. He is very much a bishounen pretty boy, without the muscles to go with the shape.

The Army is finally out of the way, good it was quite the fight all things considered. As they enter the armory she'll take a moment to look aroun and notices the empty spot and get an idea. She'll spend a fair bit of time looking about the room, checking out weapons. A few moments pass before she cries out in success. She has a weapon in hand which she'll ake to the empty spot and place the weapon in. It fits perfectly...

Souji's venture into Ting Ting left some Ting Tang at the door. And as we all know, Tang is a kick in the glass. It is not a kickin the weapon forging minigame. His katanas get repaired, but by then Miho has this forging puzzle down. All that is left is for Daiyu to figure out where to place it and Schneider to lend a hand putting it in its place. Behold, the keyblade, a blade that was the key to this puzzle.

With the Armory behind the party it could be the end, right? The crystals remain and while there are more Terracotta soldiers lining the wall here and there. They do not awaken at least for the moment. Finally, a massive set of doors is behind the party. Upon opening it they will behold something like a war room with a number of Terracotta soldiers around what seems to be a map of the tomb itself. Even with miniatures of soldiers, traps and what could be a stand-in for invaders.

The lead and more massively built captain turns its head and silently mouths what likely is in order to attack. The Captain readies his polearm as the other terracotta warriors fall in and move in to attack with more skill the one might expect creatures like this to have. It's going to be a boss fight with adds from the looks of it the brave adventurers best be ready for it!

Souji was born ready for this. He dreams of it. He dreams of dreams when he was born for this. Katanas are at the ready and eyes are waiting for that captain to do that order. He is a blur of motion forward as the drawing slashes leave only the sound of slicing after the fact, like a sonic boom without the big hair.

Schneider looks over at the massively-built Captain, and gets a thoughtful look in his eye. He casts a spell that will give him some extra knowledge about the captain, enabling him to deliver a crippling magical attack right in the place not covered by his armor or by his group insurance policy. His magical attack is not super-high damage, but is quite penetrating, getting a healthy damage multiplier for that in exchange for the lower total damage.

This time the terracota soldiers are less of a surprise. Though that big imposing one that's apparently in charge is a new addition. "Don't let the additional soldiers distract you. If we take out the captain they will be without organization." She'd noticed how they acted like real soldiers before, so it makes sense that sort of strategy would apply here.

Still, this is going to be a fierce fight. Enough so that Daiyu forgos her warfans and immeadiately unsheaths her jian dueling sword. "Strike fast and swift!" Which is what she does, weaving around and between the soldiers to get in her strikes at the captain leading them. Cut the head off the serpent and all that.

The party is past the armoury, all should be good now? Or not it seems there are officer class soldiers which. She will pile into the mess yest she's a bit worn down she knows about the extra soliders. Yet she ends up bogged down still she's pulled them off the party and she'll find she's pretty beat up when everything is over.

The battle is a brutal one with the Commander making use of its offices to harry and strike at the Adventures but in the end, the ancient tomb guardian is no match for the skill, guile, fury and tactics of those who have breached the tomb this far. It finally sinks to its knees collapsing and breaking into several pieces before it explodes into shards of light. The party has carried the day and would try to press onwards yet they find the way is sealed by some powerful magic. They also get a warning of insufficient level to continue onwards for now. It seems to learn the true secret of the tomb they will need to return once they have become stronger.

Soujiro gets his shard of the loot with the battle being over and realizing that, sadly, there is no more puzzles, combat, or exploration left in the Tomb. For now. He is still 10/10 hype for what was there and it only leaves him hungry to do more training and combat. So much to dooo so much to seeeee. And fight.

Daiyu lets out a soft sigh as she resheaths her sword after the fight. "I am.. getting a crash course in relearning Raid strategies. Well done, everyone... Hmm?" She stoops down to pick up one of the shards left behind by the crumbling terracotta. "This is interesting..."

Schneider is panting hard and down HP by the end of the fight, he's more in-your-face than a lot of casters and he's not afraid to use that, even when there's a cost. He picks up a shard of the boss that's been left behind, and will tuck it into his inventory. He nods to Daiyu, "The strategies aren't hard, buyt they can get complicated in unexpected places. So we always have to stay alert." He looks over to Souji, gives him a thumbs-up, and observes, "I think we had a pretty good team for this one."

Miho will pick up her own drop and stops for a moment "It is Daiyu, yet? I dont'; think this over." She frowns a bit and looks towards the way forward. She'll teach out to pass it. She gets bounced back with a leveling warning. "That ends that for now..."