Duty Session 588: Goblins are Forever

The Hunter Guild has provided coordinates to start your attack on the goblins, but as the group approaches and gathers at the location they will all notice the smell of smoke in the air and the signs of fire on the horizon. As the group gets closer to the campgrounds, they can see the goblins got there first and left ruin in their wake.

Soujiro lets people know that he is headed out to start to train on some goblins. Anyone who is interested is welcome to join him on the coordinates the hunter's guild provides.

/Goblins./

It's always Goblins.

These Goblins in particular are a uniquely problematic bunch. Rumor has it that they're being led by a Goblin Queen who had originally dwelt within Karluin. That means they're a Tower Problem, and /that/ means they're a Scale Emblem Problem.

Prophylaxis came along when Soujiro headed off for the Great Tree of Lios. The doctor is waiting nearby, quietly putting out the still smoldering embers of what used to be a camp. No need to risk forest fires.

Narii wasn't the type to often take jobs from the guild, in fact, this was one of her first. But with the aim of exploring and finding new things out of her usual haunts, she really did have to push the boat out a little. Couldn't just stay behind a bar and then complain that you never got to see things, right? At least she was confident enough in her own combat skills. Wouldn't want to slow everyone else down, after all.

The Were Fang approaches the coordinates with a lax pace, unhurried and almost seemingly unprepared for the fights ahead, if the light of metal didn't shine off of her hips. Just a shame about lacking any armour, really. As she spotted the rest of the gathering, she offered a small wave of a hand, "Greetings. Sounds like we are after some goblins today? Heard they been giving landers some trouble."

Considering their previous dealings with Goblins it shouldn't be a surprise this has drawn the attention of a lot of Scale members. Vertina walks up, giving Narii a pat on the shoulder as she does. "Just keep your wits about you and everything will be fine. Goblins like traps and other sneaky shit. But they also burn really well.... though maybe drowning them is more your sort of thing?" She shrugs. "Doesn't matter, as long as they're dead afterwards."

Lauren does not know Vertina, and so, goes to the person she does: Gwen. The imp is, as usual, dressed with care for the occasion. She's flexing and cracking her fingers.

"Pft traps." Syx says, waving a hand, "You know how you deal with traps? You just hit them with everything you can muster and they break!" The wrestler flexes a little bit, stretching and warming himself up a bit before the dungeon run gets started fully.

Gwen did not like Goblins and knew these things had to be handled she also had several things she needed to make more use of in the field too if it came to it as well. So here she was in combat gear and ready to go. She smirked over at Vertina.

"So Vert, more goblins to smash?"

    "Do we have any diviners?" Lauren asks in a cool tone, her gaze assessing the man left behind. "I can treat him, but it'll have to be an old-fashioned bandaging. I'm no healer," She mutters.

Upon entering the camp grounds there is carnage everywhere. It is clear they were unprepared for anything that was about to happen. What exactly happened here is hard to say though, the crosses in the ground among the corpses show it wasn't just landers. One interesting thing though, all the landers appear male. As they search the bodies, one of the landers appears to be alive but out cold. If only there was a way to see his memories of the brutal goblin attack that occurred here and them kidnapping the women. Otherwise they will have to rely on more modern approaches of treating this lander back to decent health to hear what he has to say.

Goblins. It is always Goblins. Narii gets an affirmative smile from Souji on the target of the day being gobbos. "Goblins are the target today. Welcome." With a large group, that is extended to all those that are here. Individually. Souji favors the personal touch to ensure everyone is seen and heard over broad statements.

Souji is not a medic. He does care deeply for those injured and starts on providing first aid to the men, thus breaking the myth that he is only nice to his all-female fanclub.

So Syx is a lot of things, but more than anything else he's just Syx. One thing he is definitely not, however, is a healer. Spotting the still alive, if barely, Lander, Syx goes over to the poor man, and bends down to pick him up with his left hand, Syx's right hand glowing with light.

He then slaps the Lander across the face, not HARD but hard enough to try to rouse him, "Hey! Wake up!"

Narii let out something like an appreciative hiss towards Vertina as she was tapped on the shoulder, advice was indeed not a terrible thing to have. "Yess, drowning them is much more my style. Fire never really agreed with the scaless, though.. Glad I don't have to worry about that currently. But you never know. Water is much better for it. Hopefully I won't need to get close anywayss," offering a bit too wide a smile. Usual for her, sure enough, but it was always on the uncanny side. To Syx she adds, "Please don't just try and stand on traps, I don't know firsst aid."

Despite those words, it doesn't taker her much time to wind towards the injured landers, trying to give what hand she can. At the very least offering cloth to bandage wounds and aid the fallen.

Lauren leans near the man, and the light around her hands and arms begins to fade into something much, much darker-- thin wraps of shadow and water that curl into bandages as she does her best to treat the man.

Coming upon the ravaged camp all Vertina can do is scowl. This is a disaster. The goblins that attacked did so without remorse... and why is it only males still left in the remains of the camp?

Question for later, as Vertina really isn't the questioning type.

When she notices one of the men groaning she hustles over to him, clenching a fist as she does. And punches him in the chest!

Because she's using her Light magic as a defibilator basically. The guy coughs and groans, but starts to come back around from the surge of healing energy.

Of course goblins would do something this cruel and wanton. They're goblins! It's kind of what they do! "No women..." Prophylaxis murmurs, moving swiftly through the camp towards the injured man-- right as Vertina punches him positively full of magical healing.

Prophylaxis has similar magic. But his is-- somewhat more subtle (and specialized).

The doctor presses a hand to the man's shoulder. A pulse of potent, regenerative energy surges into his body, knitting wounds closed in mere moments. "What happened here?" He asks, once the wounded soldier has come to, "Tell us what you've seen."

In whatever way they get the information they learn from the Lander that the campground was raided by goblins led by a large Goblin Champion. On top of the death and carnage, the lander informs them they took the women, including his wife and daughter. Finally before he passes out he says, they came from the west. With a direction given the party sets out west, and are able to initially find tracks easy enough but as they get further away from the ruins of the campsite, the tracks and goblin signs get harder and more confusing to follow. Eventually the group comes to what seems like a heavy traffic area for the goblins, tracks everywhere going every which way. Even broken goblin weapons and armor lying in the dirt. If only those items could speak they could tell you where they came from. Alas one will have to search for clues or find the right tracks to find the culprits and save everybody.

Souji is not much of a tracker, either. He is a blue haired samurai who is excellent at being out in the front of combat and acts before he thinks. He uses this tracking opportunity to raise up others who excel in this field by asking and giving value to their insight. He contributes by feeling out the responses to the earth, more of a divination-earth style approach than anything else. Unconventional, but Souji is a pretty face with limited brains up top and a big heart down below.

Gwen is quite the healer not that it comes to mind but today she shows it as she'll get up to the injured lander and cart chanting. dancing golden runes dance about her body as she channdled a powerful raid heal over the injured Lander. If this doesn't patch them up, she won't have any idea of what else she can do.

"Sanctuary!"

As the injrued lander is healed up and she frowns.

"We're going to have to sell the Slayer about this..."

With the information she gets form the lander she will thank them and head out telling them which way they can go once they feel up to move.

As the party heads on she'll start to check out the weapon and the like using magic maybe she can use some earth based divation magic to help find out more, it sadlyu won't go so well as this is one of her weaker areas...

"Raiders AND kidnappers. These assholes are going to go down and hard!" Vertina smacks a fist into the opposite palm to emphasize the point. Then moves on with the rest of the group with an even greater determination. "Do goblins males have the 'appropriate junk' in their breeches? Because I've got a growing desire to kick one of em right there...."

But first, they need to find them. But the busiest parts of the passage are full of tracks. And she is no tracker. So instead Vertina walks over to a wall and puts her hand up against it, channeling some geomancy into the stone and dirt to try and get a better feel for the layout of tunnels. The last thing they need to be right now is lost, and walk into an ambush. Or another trap laiden gauntlet like the ones she trained in beneath the city the Goblins once occupied in the Tower.

The lander's story draws a look of ire from Narii, what was happening here was bad enough already, nevermind that the goblins seemed to perhaps be raiding. The Were Fang wasn't heartless, after all. But, bringing 'justice' to the monsters would have to wait until they found the encampment. She trudges on with the group, following the lander's directions, not really seeing the need to dwell on the whole thing for now, past an nod of utter agreement to Vertina, "Oh. Right with you there. Knew I liked ya, Bosss." This part she was good at. Sure, sure, she might mostly be a barkeep these days, but she never quite stopped being a huntress at heart.

As they come upon the tracks, Narii takes her time scanning them, working along the path to find the route where the goblins had headed off towards. With the whole group, that task was so much more manageable, ever with the spattering of old tracks going off in odd directions. "Might be sly.. But I don't think they cover their trackss.." She intones, just a touch of venom on her voice. Enough to perhaps be noticed.

    Whatever the Enchantress is looking for, she doesn't say. But her fingers tap here and there, or hover just over a mark, all while Lauren listens with her gaze in the distance. As if listening. "Mmm," she mutters, before moving on, checking something else. "Maybe they accidentally confounded their own trail by carrying things that broke, and so were discarded," she says.

There's not much a doctor can do for someone who is rightfully passed out and utterly exhausted. There's not much he particularly /wants/ to do, either. If someone's not in any mortal danger, then it's best to let them rest. Of course, it's not exactly safe out here either-- but that's what hirelings are for! A couple of peko porters accompanied the party to the adventure site, and can be trusted with an unconscious man for a little while.

Which frees everyone up for moving onward. Onward!

"There are... quite a number of goblins here," the doctor murmurs, moving toward-- and past the tracks, toward a small, nearby tree. He pauses for a moment, placing his hand on its trunk. After a couple of seconds, he nods and gestures, "This way. Seems they've regularly come and gone from this direction."

Syx's attempt to gather information out of the guy he slapped is less than fruitful, but that's okay, because they do get the info and move on. Of course it was Goblins. They never seem to know when to call it quit.

They had to have left some kind of trail. Syx thinks, perhaps his best bet is to search for footprints, but without actually having much in the way of searching skills, he does go with the technique that has worked for him before. Focusing an Earth arte into his foot, he kicks the ground, and thinks he can determine a general direction the goblins went.

The last piece of puzzle reveals that the goblins are coming from a
hidden cave nearby. They even have trap doors nearby that can act as a
back door to the goblin's stronghold. The only problem is that it
appears the trapdoors are well secured.

Upon closer examination of the trapdoor they find it locked shut
tight. The lock is rather complex looking but with enough time one
could pick it. On the other hand there seems to be some condensation
on the lock, with fine enough control one could simply freeze the
internals of the lock. If only someone could just make that which is
locked unlocked.

Injured people, tracking, and puzzles, oh my! Soujiro remains at the point to address dangers and lets the cunning rouge-likes address the trapdoor situation. Samurai Overwatch!

Vertina waves a hand a few times at the lock.... but nothing happens. After a bit she stops, huffs a bit, and then shrugs. "Sorry, I'm not as good with the ice part of waterbending yet." She scoots back to let other more capable people take a crack at the obstacle.

    Never one for strong emotion, Lauren simply stares at the lock. The Artificer, and recent apprentice of Wisp, raises one arched brow.
    The duplicitous imp Lauren was and will be before and after anything else is simply not a person to be confounded with a lock. Drawing a hand until a sphere of water floats about her fingers, she freezes the pick and begins to work. "Gwen?" She asks, "Can you do tumblers?"

There were some things you were good at, and then some days that came along and decided that today you just wouldn't be able to manage at whatever obstacle you came across. It was one such day for Narii, she was certainly managing to help the group, but back on the field recently, she wasn't quite at her finest. "Waterbending? Ahh, ice iss a bit too cold. I'm hardly an arctic creature.. Honesstly. But I'll give it a go," though true to her word, she could only help so far, chilling the room, more than the lock. "Precission with heat is.. Tough."

Syx can't pick locks, and water is his weakest element. He tries, however, to hit the lock with a freezing punch. All he manages to do is punch the lock though. The door doesn't budge, "Ow." He mutters, faintly, as he turns around and walks away from the trapdoor, rubbing his knuckles a bit.

Something needs to be frozen? Say no more! The good doctor walks right up to the lock and takes it in one hand. In moments, the air around him plummets in temperature. Frost creeps across the ground and rimes his skin as it turns pale-- then blue. Finally, the chill races into the lock and freezes the moisture within solid. With a sudden *CRACK*, the lock comes apart into tiny pieces and the door swings open.

"There, not too terrible," Prophylaxis says with a nod.

The trap door is opened and into the cave system they go and what a cave system it is, winding paths, branches after branches, it would be easy enough to get lost down here for days. The good news is that there is fresh oxygen and any goblin patrols appear to be lone goblins here or there. After some wandering it becomes clear that they are going to need to figure out a system to find the main entrance and the prisoners. If only you could ask for directions it would be much easier, even just a map showing where you have been. If all else fails you can just follow the freshest air you can find all the way to the largest cave entrance.

For a place with goblins, there are little ?s above Souji's head about the lack of goblins. Goblin adjacent? His katanas remain in their sayas as he continues on as a vanguard a the party navigates through the maze-like construct.

Lauren puts her hands to her nose, gags, and hopes someone else will be able to tolerate this air.

Vertina tries to tune into and follow the air currents in the tunnel... but stumbles back from one entrance in a hurry. "AUGH. FOUND A TRASH CAVE." She quickly bolts in the opposite direction to get some relative cleaner air to get the stank of goblin refuse out of her nose. UUUUGH.

"Definitely feeling traplike," Prophylaxis mutters, tapping his staff against the ground. The gem at its head glows a soft green, stirring the ambient air into a gentle breeze. "This way," he says, following the wind through the caves-- slowly.

These are definitely the kinds of places that can get a person shanked if they're not careful.

"We have had a distinct lack of Goblins in this goblin cave." Syx says, as they walk along, still not seeing any goblins to punch in the face.

Still the stale air hangs heavy in the cave, and Syx can sense the direction that leads to the exit, "Well they gotta be somewhere, lets keep going."

Narii wasn't too keen on the stale air, caves were not at all her style. But she was good at making sure she knew the directions, even in a dingy place like this! "Hey, carefuls there. You don't want a noseful of that," she happily advises her boss, trying to throw over some of the cleaner air she had managed to convince to stay around. "Yess.. Lack of goblins. Bet they're all in a room playing poker or something. Jusst be prepared for the traps. Or.. Go first if you like, that way." Nodding in a particular direction, the same he is already headed in.

Oh look a door, Gwen is not happy about this, she finds they can't really just break it down but she has an idea of how to deal with it. She's going to use a ice spell top hopefully freeze and make the lock brittle. So that's what she's going to do as she helps to make it easier to break or pick it. She'll hang back as her friends do the real heavy lifting.

The group finds the right path and soon they start hearing goblin
chatter mixed with screams of help. The stench is getting worse to and
even some lit torches in the halls to show well traveled paths. Before
you know it you are stumbling into the main cave entrance.

The cave is large , several goblin warriors and workers moving about
tossing bound women in cages and it looks like they will be wheeled
off to a deeper part of the cave soon. That is when you hear it, a
large howling wail through the caves that seems to rattle those who
hear it with fear. A palpable fear of the legendary creature that
helped wipe out the camp, a goblin champion. If someone could just
protect the group from such psychic attacks it would be much easier to
do what needs to happen. Either way they are going to need to sneak
over and free the prisoners before anything bad happens to them.

Alright! Goblins to fight! But the one thing more important than fighting goblins? Helping save lives. Good Souji is Good. He keeps low and helps where he can for the covert rescue. Like all covert stuff, it goes loud soon and he will be at the ready for the whole slash and bash. Payday 3: Goblin Rescue.

Oh dear the next room has a whole load of goblins and there's a feral smirk on Gwen's face here.

"Oh what is this..." The oor's been open and she'll make use of a Wind spell oddly a thunder blast to help figure her way through this mess and ge deeper into things.

Someone probably should of told Vertina they were suppose to sneak around helping people before she just strides right into the chamber ready for a fight as she really is. "Knock knock, Avon calling!" Well at least she found an interesting old meme to use. She's a wuxai shaolin monk, not a ninja, what did you expect!

It might be the right way, but as the psychic assault deepens from the champion as they head down the tunnel, it becomes clear that it won't be quite that easy. Narii reacts fast, twirling her hand as a sigil blazes into existence, doing her best to at least shield the group. While the effect is certainly dampened, it's not enough to get rid of the awful, creeping feeling. "Soon.. Gonna make them pay for this.. Awful sound. Awful things!" Oh, the Were Fang certainly is not the best pleased today. This was just plain rude.

Finally, goblins! But they're no ordinary goblins. A terrible scream howls through the caverns. Prophylaxis grits his teeth and utters a few words of power from beneath the spine-tingling din. A pulse of protectiv energy washes over the party, coating each one in turn with a barrier of crystalline flame.

Unfortuantely, there are still a LOT of goblins.

But that sounds like a Soujiro Problem.

Syx isn't very good at sneaking, he's always told everybody that and asked them to not make him sneak around and maybe try to keep him in the back until they need him to hit stuff. Unfortuantely some situations call for trying to be sneaky.

But Syx is not, and he trips over a rock as he's trying to dodge roll around a corner, crashing hard near one of those victims they're trying to rescue, "Oh screw it."

He gets back up and smashes the lock on the hostage's bindings, "Get out of here, go." He tells them, turning around to face the goblins. Hiding is off the table at this point, may as well get started.

Oh look it's goblins a whole lot of goblins to fight. She's still feral grinning at this moment She's got a few ideas she'll start generating barriers, yes this isn't normal stuff she's clearly useing system protection here to protect the people they are saving, the barriers will go up attempting to hem in goblins or block shots that might hit the hotages...

The prisoners are free but with so many prisoners about it was just a
matter of time before the goblins noticed. The good news is that the
goblin warriors are rather easy pushovers, the bad news is you can
feel the presence of the champion approaching.

Moments after the fighting starts the goblin champion steps forth from
his tunnel and easily towers over the others. A club in one hand it
charges forward swinging wildly at the adventurers and landers. After
everything the party has gone through it is probably best to provide a
distraction for the prisoners to escape. This is unfortunately easier
said than done, they are panicking and scattering in all directions,
it would take some presences to rival the champion to corral them all.
At the same time the party has to slow the monster and burn it down at
the same time so it doesn't regenerate.

Vanguard gets to guard the vans. Soujiro looks to Gwen with a 'Lets tank this up' sort of look and a smile. Then he is off to be the blade that cuts the way through.

A fighter in her own right, sure enough, but today Narii took a different tact with all the goblins being so clumped together. With flashes of magic and glints of metal as she tossed her chakrams at the odd goblin, she was doing her best to push them back and keep them from engulfing the small party. They weren't exactly made for that, and their skills not at all good enough to keep them from slowly starting to swarm around the edges. "A little help here.." She asks. This was the worst, she just wanted to beat some of the smug little things up..

The arrival of the larger goblin just makes a huge smile cross Syx's face, while at the same time he is grabbing one of the smaller goblins by the face and slamming it into the ground, pixelating it in a moment, "There we go."

Flames immediately erupt around Syx, the fore and heat evaporating several goblins that were coming in to strike him. There's several more in his way that are soon not in his way as he charges through towards the champion, grappling with him as he gets in range, rolling through and swinging him up into the air, before jumping after him, catching him around the neck, and hauling him back towards the ground with an explosive impact.

Finally, a proper fight! As soon as the champion makes it's presence known Vertina rushes in to join the fight.

It looks like she's going to live up to what she said earlier and kick him in the junk, only for the last minute drop down to slide between his legs. Then get up and leap on his back, and trying to wrap her arms around his neck for a chokehold. But he's got an unusually thick neck for a goblin, and eventually manages to shove himself backwards against one of the cages to knock her off.

A bigger, fatter goblin. The biggest and the fattest, in fact. Prophylaxis grunts at the beast's terrible approach, and--

Conjures what looks to be a series of glowing, magma-creased orbs all around it.

"Burn," he demands, clenching a fist. Each of the orbs suddenly bursts, disgorging a torrent of shrapnel and lava into the massive champion.

The fight with the goblin champion drags on, between having to protect
the prisoners who didn't listen or were too scared to move and the
other goblins, well to say it is a rough fight is an understatement.
However finally all the prisoners have run to safety and now it is
time for the adventurers to retreat too.

As the party gets to safety they can finally recover and while they
didn't defeat the champion they did manage to get something to show
for all their effort. Yes that is right, the nasty goblin champions
grease can be found on their weapons and body from all the roaring and
mucus spraying, and whatever other fluids it may have flung during the
fight.

Any fight you can walk away from. Souji is excited that there is still yet a challenge out for him to overcome: The champion! Next time around he will see if there is a person who can Capture Monsters and be the hero of the battle so that the party can focus on the burn and defend aspects of that mechanics. Elder Tales. So cool! Sparkle. Time for more -training-. Sparkles intensify.

Lauren wipes her brow and is happy to be, relatively speaking, back in the sunlight. "I am going to burn this clothing," She says to herself.

For all that corralling the awful goblins didn't work, Narii was glad to see them beaten back, eventually swapping to going on the offensive herself with an overwhelming glee. Sure, maybe they didn't finish them cleanly, but any victory was a victory as far as she was concerned. Soon enough, her attention turned to making sure the caught landers had gotten away safely before returning to Vertina with a victorious grin. "Thanks for being around. Know I'm on the rusty sound. It'ss very nice to finally be back in the field. But for the next few dayss.. I think the tavern probably needs me. After a bath. This place stinks," grimacing at that part.

Syx is covered from head to toe in grease, absolutely dripping with it. He looks around to the rest of the group, "He slimed me." Then remembers maybe that joke won't land because of his audience.

Honestly, it could have been much worse. Most if not all of the captives were rescued, and several dozen goblins were put to the torch. The fact that the Champion yet lives is somewhat problematic, but that's a problem that can be solved another day.

They've all walked away alive and intact, and that's what matters most.

The doctor is going to be busy for the next little while, at least. There are wounds to mend and traumas to heal. But he'll probably return again soon.

Goblins cannot be suffered to live.

"Stupid goblins," Vertina grumbles as she gets up and tries to wipe some of the sweaty grease off herself. "Well at least -this- has some use." Not entirely sure what, but she's an alchemist maybe you'll find something down the road. "Let's get these people out of her and torch the dump."

Things are getting crazy here, she's going to make the attempt to deal with the goblins. IT doesn't go so well as she's going to try to tackle and pin one of them it goes very badly. She does not die but she really should not be doing that again. She is alive when everything is over and sigh sighs and looks around she will be going to aid Prophlaxis in the medical aid.