Duty Session 542: Zombie Jamboree

Since the rise of the undead in the Ninetails Dominion, many villages have fallen, leaving behind ruin in their wake. The group of Adventurers are given directions to one such location. Even from a distance, it is obvious that this place has been overrun. Shambling corpses wander the streets and there is no sign of anything living, at least that they can see from this vantage point. The streets seem to be littered with abandoned belongings, as if the people who fled from here had little time to gather them all before they were forced to evacuate. Some buildings show significant signs of damage, as if a few had stayed behind in order to try and protect their homes, only to have their sturdy walls toppled by the forces of the undead.

Soujiro has lit the beacons, sent the chims, and conveys all the energy of a happy doggo in a simple samurai smile. We are going on an adventure. "Undead. A classic fantasy enemy," he says as he walks the streets. He doesn't get sentimental about the loss. Towns that get ruined get to become ruin dungeons. Its the circle of funnnn o/` "Maybe we will run across a Church with a secret basement." Wrong game, we are not going down to slay Diablo.

Goldenblade has shown up to help with the mission to fight zombies, because she heard there were zombies to fight. Of course the Landers had tried to seal away the zombies during the Palace Lands invasion, but that was known to be a temporary thing, and that is demonstrated by continuing zombie outbreaks. "We can do this," she says confidently to Seta.

Checking her gear and her status, she nods her readiness, and is prepared to go. She doesn't loiter much, now that she's got as much energy as she thinks she does/ Getting old sucked, she's quite pleased to have shaken off that yoke.

This is serious mode Gwen how? No silly costumes, no Heavy Blade armor today she's clad in plate armor. She's also got a large two handed sword along withg her normal one hander with her too. She looks over to Soujiro and Goldenblade.

"We will do this." She notes sounding more serious than normal as she readies her final gear checks.

Shiruba made a promise to a friend that she would continue to fight the minions of darkness and undead. So with there's word that another overrun villiage has been found, she was on the matter as fast as she could be. To the point when she arrives she's already in Serious Mode, one of her Spell Fletcher arrows already prepared in Thundersnow Howl. "Let's do this. Before they realize they have unwanted company." No witty remarks or quirky chatter, this is serious business when it comes to her personal vendetta against the Undead.

There is something eerie about stepping into the village's Festival Square and seeing it quite so abandoned. It must have been during one of the more recent celebrations that the village was attacked, as there are still signs of decorations strung between posts. A single child's toy lies forgotten in the center of the square, dropped in a hasty retreat when joyous festivities turned into fear and chaos. There is a chill feeling in the air, and a faint impression of being touched. A hand brushing an arm or shifting hair as if something unseen was passing far, far too close. Then, something materializes. A ghostly apparition of a child which plucks up the small toy, hoisting it into the air. It is translucent, and the Adventurers can only see it from behind at first. Perhaps the child had died here? Then, as if hearing something, it turns. Hollow, dead eye-sockets stare at them as a skeletal face screams, sending a powerful sonic attack in their direction.

GB and Shiruba both gets a solid thumbs up on the vote of confidence. Yes. We can do this. However not without addressing an important observation. No silly costumes?! Soujiro looks to Gwen, "Are you alright?" He checks from head to toe. Toe to head. Gwen without a costume glam is like peanut butter without jelly. "Are your outfits on cooldown?"

Then there is this whole undead child thing going on. Very sad. Very sonic. Sonic the sadkid. Don't be blue, lil kiddo. Uncle Souji is here to show you the Light. Into the little SonicAnne. Into the Light!

Goldenblade's vote of confidence is completely unwarranted, it seems, and she faces off with blades against the sad kid. Her blades do not hurt the sad kid. Nor does any amount of fire coming off said blades. Goldenblade is, so far, useless. It is not a happy precedent for her, and she grumbles about monsters that can't be killed by normal people. "Stupid game." Though who's fault is it for not selecting Strange Skills in chargen? Well, she might have, if she'd known. But she didn't. She does have a remarkable facility with fire, though.

"Even Gwen knows there's a time and place for glitz," Shiruba comments when Soujiro questions her big sisters lack of the usual flamboyance. Her lupine ears splay back at the shrieks, but otherwise she doesn't flinch or budge at the assault. She's already got an arrow prepared, and when she fires it turns into a brilliant bolt of Light streaking towards the screaming skull to take it down without a second thought. Those are the kinds of attacks that tend to build up the longer they go on, so we're not going to give it the chance to do so.

Gwen seeing things like this for Gwne dispells any thought about this world being just a game. The landers suffered a lot from this, if they clear this place out it can at least be taken back. She'll look at the toy and a frown appears on her face for a moment.

"I am fine, they are not on cooldowns I am A Holy Knight and thus a Paladin..." She will look to the undead and draws the two handed sword. Then charges in bellowing

"THE GODDESSES SUFFER YOU HERE NO LONGER!"

Then comes the holy magic too...

There is a distinct sound of something like music that draws the attention of the Adventurers, leading them down one of the partially destroyed streets of the village. As they draw closer, it looks to be from a set of hanging wind chimes that have drawn the attention of a more powerful zombie creature. The creature has one decayed hand wrapped around a now empty bottle of alcohol, the other keeps making a steady *thunk* of sound on an empty wooden container. It seems to be drawn both by the alcohol, based on the presence of so many empty bottles, and by the sound of the nearby wind chimes.

Power zombie?! Let us engage in combat! Tea ceremony combat if one must! Alas there is no tea in any of these bottles. Only alcohol. How can one have a proper tea ceremony without tea? He empathizes with the zombie for being robbed of such a simple bliss. Maybe that is why the zed is misbehaving.

Goldenblade is twice as determined after being carried through the last encounter, metaphorically, to be effective here. This is not helped by the monster drinking and immune to fire and being slashed hard by her swords. She tries the Extra Fire option, but that does not seem to help here and she continues beating with her sword, which really just seems to annoy it.

There really isn't much to do on this matter, none of them are monster handlers. The best Shiruba can offer is to fire one of her wind arrows into some chimes down the street in an effort to draw it's attention somewhere else than them, but it's literally a long shot that it will work in any capacity.

Gwen pauses at the sound of music he'll look around for a moment she pauses for a moment. She looks more on dealing with the undead as possibly putting down those who has suffered horrible fates. It's time to put an end ot this and she'll start singing some anime opening she likes maybe it will work or maybe? Kau? Uta and others need to tie gwen down and make her learn song...

As the party moves further into the village, there seem to be more difficult foes waiting for them. They manage to clear through a number of lower level zombies and skeletons along the way. Meaning that they've made significant progress towards clearing the village. However, what they might not have expected is the grotesque creature awaiting them as they turn onto the next street. A massive looking undead creature is hunched over, seemingly eating what looks to be the remains of some poor animal. There is a shuddering sort of motion as the monster hears them, turning in their direction. That is when they see the full horror of the creature. There is a strange, small, secondary zombie hanging out of one side of the monster's stomach, it's eyes staring outward and hands grasping like some eerie baby. Gobs of bloody looking meat drip down the decayed chest as it starts to move towards them, making a strange gurgling sound.

Soujiro has something to fight. He is not a paladin, but a sword saint. He has no Excalibur, but Kogarasumaru, the holy katana. It is drawn own in a radiant dawn towards the zombie duo. Extra Light Power. LIGHTSABER. Fwoosh! Soujiro does a jumping attack, slicing downward, landing, and repeating the attack upward in a Rolling Thunder arc before settling the blade back into its saya.

Now that is an abomination. "That is just all kinds of sick and wrong." Pause. Tail twitch. "Best we put the thing out of it's misery." Shiruba takes the direct approach as one might expect of a DPS specialist, and just goes unloading Light infused arrows into the horror as fast as she can fire and reload them. The air is practically filled with the glowing streaks, all directed towards the horrid obstacle in front of them.

Goldenblade is quite embarassed about her earlier failures to be effective, and this time leaps into the fray with reckless abandon, which is unlike her. Even when she's single-mindedly merciless, which is a lot of the time, in a fight, she's not generally reckless. She is here, but she also seems to have found an enemy she can fight, blades ablaze and glowing white hot as she stikes this enemy down hard, chopping off bits of HP bar with every slash.

Gwen skin crawls in disgust at ewhat she sees yueah that's got to be purged, oh gods does it need to be purged. She will just move in at it making use of her healing skills to get an idea of where to strike the secondary zombie.

As they delve deeper into the village, it becomes clear that there is one central building that must have been the home of a noble of some sort. It makes an easy landmark for them to head toward, visible through the damaged buildings that surround them. However, before they get that far, they run into something more unusual. It starts with a sound, followed by rotten fruit being thrown down into their direction. Sure enough, as they start to look upward, they'll realize there is an entire troop of skeletal monkeys hanging from one of the tallest buildings in town. They screech at high volume, leaping down onto the Adventurers waiting below.

Now is a good time to practice the sword strikes that are so swift that they leave an airblade trail. Like Link from Legend of Zelda. Only no master sword. The results are fifty fifty. The ones that don't wind-blade end up on getting hit by Souji's /other/ katana so he isn't completely favoring 'hard mode' over reason. He is reasonable samurai. Who was robbed of tea earlier. Probably by these skeletal monkeys. Stupid monkeys.

Goldenblade is buoyed by her success in the last fight despite having no particular skill versus undead, and she will try again, because these monkeys look fightable. Not closeby, so she'll have to bail them in, and how better to do that than by being invisible? She will vanish and lurk and strike the monkeys at unawares. Sadly, they do not come within reach of her blades at all, and she sits around useless for another fight. Her self-esteem is soaring.

Several of the skeletal monkeys don't ever make it to the ground. At least not in one piece, as Shiruba fires off a shot with such pinpoint Hunter accuracy that the arrow spears through three of the monkeys' exposed ribcages, slamming them into each other and then into the wall of a building. Only broken bits of bone and dust fall to the ground from what's left of the sequence of impacts.

Gwen catches on fairly fast once the freaky ass zombie has been taken out. She move with Soujiro trying to keep in front she is the tank after all, right? She seem to be on edge about this as she looks around. "So that's what happened to those buggers after the end of Oz..." She'll now put her sword away ready her shield and channel the mother of all wind spells trying to capture the flying undead in a votrex and then slam them into the ground.

At last, they seem to reach the other end of town. Here, a large building that would likely be considered a 'mansion' by Lander standards, lies in a state of disrepair. There is a significant amount of damage here, just as there was throughout the rest of the city. As they approach the building, there is an immediate aggression notification as a man in heavy armor steps out from behind one of the walls of the ruined building. He is wearing the colors of the town militia, his face now ghoulish with half rotted features. The monster lacks the jolty or stuttering movements of its lower level brethren. Instead, it slowly draws a sword, rushing at them with uncanny speed.

A swordfight! Soujiro is all about this. The samurai rushes in to meet the revenant with a clash of steel. Uncanny speed is met with sword saint speed. He is half minded to duel this thing, if not for the fact it is showing up as a boss mob and, well, wouldnt want to deprive others of the joy of a boss battle! In these situations Souji is simply /relentless/ and fueled by a warrior's spirit that causes him to shrug off the heaviest of blows and out regenerate chip damage that is suffered during lesser blocks and parries. The management of energy on dodges against health damage on parry/block is an elegant feat.

The arrival of the armored form.... actually gets Shiruba to pause for a moment. Seeing one of the town's defenders corrupted like this brings back enough bad memories about the Undead that it could make it's own PTSD disorder. But she's too resolute in spirit to let that hinder her from acting. "You shall be released from this corruption of your being, former protector. Let the Stars and the Light of the Goddesses guide you a better place."

Which that she raises her bow and fires an arrow into the air. But where one goes up, a multitude of light projectiles come raining down at the armored undead, like a minature barrage of shooting stars forcing it to keep its guard up and give her melee combat allies a chance to move in on him.

Goldenblade is entirely frustrated by her previous weak performances and she wades into this fight with a burning conviction in her eye. It's entirely to her benefit that this enemy doesn't need any soecial techniques to fight, but she's so off her game by this point that her performance is still pretty weak. Coming in with the steath strike, she manages to fight it, but it's so fast and she's so off her timing that her performance, while effective, is only barely so, and she fights with great determination even though her eyes are clouded by frustration, and she lays a thorough beatdown on this boss, or at least participates in one. She's not ineffective, but she knows she could have done better.

Gwen is getting near the end she knows trhey will have some seriously heavy foes to deal with.

"Your torment ends this day...warrior."

With that Gwen charges in she'll give a warning to her allies as she's going to do it. Shiruba should know what Gwen is about to do, she draws on her own lifeforce somewhat to power this next spell.

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNDD CROOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

A massive cross of light forms under her and the undead as she seems to hold it in place and just pumps the light into the thing.

There is an unearthly roar that comes from the Revenant Captain. However, the attack seems to roll badly, causing them to resist the effect. While the undead is still quite a difficult foe, without the impact of a debilitating status debuff, it doesn't take long for them to burn through his health. A few final blows is all it takes to cause the former guard to burst into pixels, the broken and damaged armor falling into pieces where he once stood.

Only one thing left to do. Victory fanfare. Soujiro gives the air a good fist pump or three in the light of the broken pixels. Celebrate dem wins! "I could go for more training after this," the athlete says, reserves to go a few more miles before the adventuring day comes to an end.

Goldenblade pants hard after the enemy vanished into pixels, and she says, "I'll tell you, I don't remember undead being this hard. These must have been some pretty special undead." She picks up the old armor pieces that are dropped and says, "Now I can use these. But I'm glad that one is over." She nods about more training. "I feel the same way. There must have been some trick I was missing."

Shiruba lowers her longbow as the boss monster finally succumbs to the attacks. "Rest in peace." Gives her head a slight shake. "I'll have Red Chain send some people to look for survivors and assess the damages. If the village can't be restored they'll find new places for the people." She walks over to pick up a piece of armor that remained after the Captain's re-death. "These might be useful, yes."

Gwen will put he weapons away as the former Captain is put down and she muses he must not have gone down easy in life if it took four adventurers to take down his zombie remains. She muses on that. "We should keep trying to clean the remainder of these villiages out so they can be recliamed or at least no longer be a hazard to the area." Gwen is all business mode on this... it may be strange to see her like this. "So ... how about we get something to eat?!"