Duty Session 598: Tomb of the Lost Emperor

    "So we've all been called here because..."
    Lauren, artificer, imp, glossy-haired and reading a missive, is chatting loudly while perusing the project papers given to her. "... You'll find out? What the hell kind of answer is that?" Lost in her own presentation to the motley group of assorted adventurers, Lauren is reviewing the mission plan as drawn. She sighs, and carries onwards.
    "Are we all set and ready to go? Straps, uh, strapped?" Lauren calls out. "Boots tightened? Gloves the right way on? Swords sharp?"

Vertina for one laughs at the 'You'll find out' on the papers. "I guess they want to keep it all mysterious so Adventurers stay interested." She shrugs, and does a few warm up stretches as is typical for her athletic tomboy nature. "Ready to roll out when everyone else is."

     "We have been called here on a mysterious quest to defeat our enemies! Thus we stand here, ready to enter the dungeon and strive for victory in this step towards the destruction of the world!" Comes the voice of Honami, followed by an evil 'uwa ha ha ha!' laughter afterwards.
     She is wearing a somewhat armored dress today, frilly and with extra padding against the cold, her long hair kept out of her face by a ribbon that goes around the back of her head. "All of my gear is tightened and prepared, lady...." Pause. "Ah. I don't believe we've met before. I am the Lady Demonrose Honami, the Demon Rose of the Forgotten Legion and apparently Angel of Darkness according to Uta!" Honami steps towards Lauren, dipping into a kneeling position, one hand holding out a pitch black rose with thorns still intact out towards her. "It is a pleasure to meet you!"

Yeowang has shown up, but with some sort of homemade, bound volume open in front of her, and she's making notes with some sort of pencil-like device. She barely seems to notice the party, but follows along as they form up and move out, and she grunts to Lauren's inquiries about straps and boots. She's wearing low ankle boots, and they appear snug enough. No straps or swords, though. For those that glance over her shoulder, she's apparently marking in a log how much time she's expending on various efforts. There seem to be a lot of projects, but at least she's organized about them. Vertina will almost certainly remember that she doesn't use armor or weapons, so she's probably OK. If distracted.

Klein readjusts his trusty headband before flicking a thumbs up towards Lauren. The Scale Samurai was pretty eager when he found out about this mysterious tomb, since tombs are usually a prime hotspot for ancient treasure. What the reward actually was for was anyone's guess. "They didn't have to go that far. Besides, this is gonna be fun!"

Klein was wearing his normal armor, a set of light yet sturdy armor that wouldn't be out of place in any Japanese museum, touched up with his own flair. Resting a hand of the hilt of his sheathed sword, he taps two fingers against his forehead as a sort of salute. "Here's hoping to a successful dungeoneering trip with you guys."

Honestly, just seeing a group of friendly people like this is giving him some classic Fragment vibes.

Tightening the straps of his swords, a silent Kirito nods once to those gathered. "Ready, willing, and able."

Ge looks at Klein, nodding. "Any potential bosses in this dungeon, the kind that would give us plenty of trouble?"

    Warriors, their form cast in marble, line the entry hall in which the heroes find themselves. Although ostensibly indoors, their footsteps may as well sound like the forest; after all, this floor was never strictly meant for the footsteps of the living to echo or squeak. Row after row of statues, and yet, each statue the same. The way forward is not clear, but once again, it was never meant to be. Perhaps only the Lost Emperor knows their way around this place.
    "I'm Lauren," Lauren shares, because when confronted with this many faceless adventurers in a somewhat stiff position, one can only differentiate. She asks of Demonrose, "You'd think they would at least have a sense of humor about the affair. Not a single 'I'm With Stupid' on anyone's armor."

"These people don't seem to have much sense of humor in general," Vertina replies, even as she circles one of the statues. Then looks around, noting the similarities. Okay, so just seeing a way through isn't going to work.

So she closes her eyes.

More accurately, she closes her eyes to focus, using a monk's affinity for getting in tune with their surroundings.

She feels a faint movement of air through her hair. Shifts her stance a bit. There it is again, a different part of her face facing a different direction. Air wasn't her strongest Element, but strong enough she's able to start visualizing in her mind's eye how the air is rippling around the statues much like water would stones in a shallow brook.

Yeowang huhs as Lauren introduces herself, and replies absently, "Yeowang." She doesn't respond about a sense of humor, although she certainly seems distracted enough to have missed the question as she plans out her time in the upcoming week. She appears not to have much to spare, her time being filled almost entirely with training. Huge sections of day are blocked off with various training types.

     "I'm sure it will be quite successful, sir!" Honami says towards Klein, flashing a grin towards him. "As I said to Lauren, it is a pleasure to meet you, as well!" Pause. "Oh. Uhm. D...don't mind it if I say ridiculous things. I uh. I used to use this exclusively for roleplay to practice for writing my book when it wasn't all glitched out so like... yeah. Uhm. ...It's.. kind of just... habit? Uhm. ...I guess it's just kind of become a part of my personality too." She mumbles afterwards, rubbing the back of her head. Ha ha ha. Ugh.
     "Honestly? Don't know. But considering it's the Lost Emperor's tomb, it's possible we may have a glorious battle with them!" Honami responds to Kirito with a grin.
     "Ah, Lauren! An absolute pleasure. You may call me Honami, The Dark One, The Destroyer of The World, or really whatever so long as you make it obvious you're talking to me." Honami stands, and then dips into a curtsy. And then... turns towards the corridor. Hm. "Methinks that this might be a bit of a trap." She says, as she steps forward towards the hallway, lifting her hands up towards it and quietly incanting, "Engulf this hall in thine sothing embrace, Darkness!" And casts a dark shadow over the hallway, obscuring vision and allowing for easier passageway through the hall. She's not necessarily particularly stealthy, but she /is/ at least good at making herself hard to see.
     "A sense of humor? Hm. Well, you see, it's hard to laugh when you're dead. Hm hm~!."

The scruffy samurai follows along with the rest of the party, an easygoing smile on his lips. Trading a look with Kirito, he gives a good-natured shrug. "Not a clue in the slightest, since this is my first time here too. I figure if there's anything we would have to worry about, word would have spread by now." This wasn't a 'new' dungeon by any means, but things tend to reset over time. News about this place would have spread at some point!

Klein has been playing games on and off for most of his life, but here is one of his least favorite puzzle tropes. "I hate mazes like this, where you have to follow set instructions." His good mannered smile is gone for now, and he gives one of the faceless mosiacs on the wall an annoyed look as it yet again doesn't give any hints to this maze.

Thankfully, the Demonrose is there to help distract him and he gives her a quick thumbs up. "Pleasure to meet ya! The name's Klein, and don't worry about it. Trust me, I met one knight who speaks entirely in Shakespear quotes, so you're fine." Flicking his hand about, Klein tries calling up some air currents to help figure out which way the party should go, but his hocus pocus is all out of focus. "...eh, i'm better at fire, anyways."

"Kirito."

The infamous Black Swordsman offers his name to those who don't know him. As they travel, Kirito tuned into the nature of the wind, honing it, clasping it with his senses and the strength of his own mind...

But fails to grasp anything noteworthy or useful, by just a hair.

He smiles softly at Honami. "Good." Though he tilts his head at her titles. Spectacular titles...and if they have any truth to them,truly horrifying. "Agreed." He tells Klein. Knowledge is power.

    The B-Team, who didn't do their homework because they're certain you did, Emperor, is here. Marginally. A loose coalition, if you will, of an imp artificer who fails to command water, and the vastly more successful Kirito, leaving Lauren speechless. "Uh, but, like..." She doesn't even /have/ a sword!
    Between Yeowang and Kirito, flames are managed; thanks entirely to Vertina and Demonrose, the actual path through to the next chamber is found; the group is hurried.
    "Like this," Lauren tells Demonrose, continuing the aside that had been interrupted for sake of life and limb. "Now I would have dressed them up in... Oh, those aren't mannequins, are they.."

The group manages to find their way through the maze of soldier statues.... which just makes the straight corridor that comes next all the more supicious. "This reminds me of some of the death trap gauntlets under the tower city ruins. Give me a moment." The Salamander takes a brief pause to adjust the light pads worn on her forearms and legs. Then crouches down like a runner at the starting line, tail swatching back and forth like the countdown... and then she's off!

The light armor allows her to move almost as if wearing none at all, so Vertina can wuxai her way down the corridor avoiding various flame traps and fire spouts. It's not the most practical means of searching out the traps, but you can't deny it gets results. After seeing them go off other people can either avoid or extinguish the traps for themselves.

Yeowang's plan for getting past flame traps is to have a bucket of water handy, it seems, and now that she seems better oriented to what she's supposed to be doing, she seems to be paying better attention. She nimbly hops past several traps, but she's upended a bucket of very cold water over her head, and the pre-chilling seems to offset what burns she can't avoid. At the end of the trapped area, a menu-clean erases the dripping and mess of the dousing.

     "...I don't think I could remember enough shakespear for that." Honami responds. "Mostly I'm just supposed to be some sort of evil demon lady who is going to destroy the world and such. On actual game I've also latched onto old lore of the legion of spriggans that fought for the scrapped princesses and being one of the few remaining members of that army. Which means technically Honami is ancient as all heck but that's irrelevant." Honami nods idly towards Klein. Yep. She's rambling on there.
     "A pleasure, Kirito! Come, let us defeat this dungeon posthaste!" She says with a wild grin. And then... then there was a a long corridor. Hm. There appear to be traps. Hmm. Honami taps her lip, and then she draws her broadsword, which she runs her hand along, runes etching to life along the side of the broadsword. Anyone who knows runes would understand that it's absolute nonsense as she lifts her blade. And stabs it tip-down into the ground! A swirl of black rose petals appears next to her, causing a clone of her to appear. And then dart out down the hallway until it hits a trap, triggers it, and bursts in a flurry of roses. And then a second clone appears. And a third. And a fourth. She repeats this until each trap is triggered, taken care of, and moved past.
     "Demon Rose Distraction!" She finally intones at the end of the casting, and then continues on to the next area behind everyone with a pleased look on her face.

     And then they continue on into a room of terracotta soldiers, hmm. She crosses her arms. "This makes me think of some sort of undersea thing or whatever from china." Honami murmurs to herself thoughtfully. As they continue walking through the room and the soldiers come to life... she lifts her blade again and flashes a wild grin as she intones a soft musical note, softly singing, "Strength of earth, break this seige, end this threat in front of me. EARTHBREAKER!" ...She never claimed to be good at making songs up on the fly. What /does/ work is that her blade is enchanted, glowing with a soft aura of stone around it as she brings it downwards towards the terracotta soldiers, a wave of pure force unleashed in a straight line in front of her, heavily cracking the stone beneath them.

     Afterwards, she follows up with a mix of ranged and melee magical attacks, just slowly doing her DPS thing. As one should when they're a DPS.

The downside to her maneuver is that Vertina barrels into the next chamber before she realizes she's actually past the traps. And slams right into the front of a terracotta soldier. "Oof!" She staggers back a few steps and looks up. "For being made of clay that was oddly hard feelin--"

Cue the soldier moving to draw and raise it's weapon. "--THAT WOULD EXPLAIN WHY!" Caught on her backfoot, Vertina has to quickly bolt to avoid getting crushed by the terracota weapon swung at her. "A little help here would be nice!"

Thankfully, there are others who are better than he at nagivating confounding mazes, and he's with them. Together, the group reaches what must be the other side of the maze as the mosiacs disappear from the long hallway. That is until Klein steps on a tile that sinks down just a little, but with a loud click. This causes all the traps in the hallway to spring to life, spitting out jets of flames all along the hallway. Klein just stares down the hallway, left eye twitching. "...oh come on!"

Klein really does try to help out with the flame smothering by casting a water Wave Arte, he really does. Instead, he somehow manages to splash himself with an orb of cold water. Incidently, this actually worked out well for him as an errant spark was trying to make a part of his headband catch flame. Pulling it off, he does his best to wring the water out of it. "Seriously, couldn't the trap makers just put up an easy shut off lever on the other side?"

Where Klein's talents suffer in magic, he more than makes up for it in sword skills. It's like he's an actual samurai or something! As the obvious clay soldiers start to move, Klein's steel katana meets the clay mace head on, sending shards flying everywhere. "Don't worry, I got you guys! If your HP gets low, fall back to me and I can tank them for you!" His prior guild leader experience is coming to the forefront now.

Flames and fire block the way, staring at the adventurers and demanding no.

But the path demands yes.

Between himself and Lauren, they easily douse the fire and now comes the next challenge. Called for help, Kirito suddenly FLASHES in front of the obstacles. "Behind me!" And his blades cross in front of him. Apparently he's elected to help Klein tank.

    Lauren forgets what she's doing mid-fight, because... Kirito.
    And the imp is juuuust certain of some things in this world that while Kirito is moonwalking backflips through clay golem, she can't be the only one. But she glances at the terracotta army, and even they seem surprised. Before Kirito happens to them. Because while they take lead, after such a demonstration, Lauren's indifferent-to-authority nature selects heavily on 'survive'.
    Thus Kirito, Lauren, and the rest of our heroes find themselves in the Armoury. It's like a playground for a certain type of person, namely, an enchanter. "Oooooh," Lauren says, moving to inspect what seems safe. "Do we have to find an exit, do you think, or like..." She flips a hand, gesturing to the room. "Beat the Emperor at his own game and just raid the armoury?"

     After the fighting, Honami is more than willing to just walk calmly through the room, inspecting things silently. "It is my expert opinion, that this is a locked door requiring some sort of puzzle solving to take care of it." Honami reaches for the closest big, heavy object, which turns out to be a nice heavy hammer. Which she picks up. First tries placing it in the thing. And then she pulls it out again. "Alternatively..." She steps towards said locked door, lifting the heavy hammer and swinging it with all her might! ... Only to... maybe dent it a little and bounce off, hitting the floor with said heavy hammer still in her arms. "Ow. Ow ow ow ow. That hurts when it fails." She says, setting the hammer down and slowly pushing herself up to a stand. Luckily her extra-floofy dress padded her fall a little, and she spends the next few minutes just. Quietly soothing her pride while everyone else works towards getting through the door.

Yeowang isn't a crafty type, nor is she used to dungeons and traps and is the opposite of genre-savvy, having zero idea of what might work on this barrier. But she understands that RL physics works, and will start kicking at the exit in hopes of breaking it down.

Vertina wanders around the armory a bit. Picks up a few things, looking them over. "This shape..." she wanders back over towards the oddly shaped weapon rack. "But it's.. Oh." She grabs a broken sword, and seperates the hilt from it. Affixes hilt to the other oddly shaped blade, so now it has something to hold it onto the rack. "It's kind of like a puzzle. Made of weapons."

Even when surrounded by their first real opponents of this dungeon, Klein can't help but look over his shoulder and grin at Kirito's back. He really did miss his bud, and moments like this are always great to see in action. But he can be sentimental later, there's clay pots that needed to be smashed! Kicking outwards with a foot, Klein shoves a clay soldier backward to give some more breathing room for his allies. "Wonder if they'll drop any emeralds, sapphires or rubies!"

After smashing the rest of this small armor, the party finds themselves reaching a rather impressive armory. Sure, the equipment here is impressive looking, but already pales in comparision to all of Klein's current equipment. "...nah. I think i'm good." With that, Klein leans onto the weapon rack in the middle of the room, intending to wait for everyone to get their looting fix...

...only for him to put too much weight on it, causing it to slide out of the way and revealing a secret passage underneath. This, of course, deposits Klein onto the stone floor with an 'oof' of expelled air.

    "Oh," Is all Lauren has to say when the door is literally broken open for her. Never a woman to question how a door is opened, but one clearly accustomed to them opening, Lauren passes through after failing to find the lock in the slightest.
    "What are the odds that, It's On?" She asks just before the group turns the corner to face... A small squadron of mooks with an elite leader in their ranks.

Yup, It's On. Vertina rolls a shoulder. "I got the boss!", she shouts, and darts forward. But first the mobs? Nah, she zigs and zags and jumps up to land on one's head, using it like a springboard to launch herself even higher. Flames erupt in a brightly glowing aura around her.

"DRAGON AUGER!"

And she hurtles down at the captain of the terracotta guard in a blazing drill kick!... Which he manages to hold partially off due to being the toughest of the bunch, and eventually slaps Vertina away with his polearm. The Salamander flies partway back across the chamber before hitting the ground and rolling.

Yeowang steps up into the fray when the bad guys advance. She doesn't back down from fights in general, and she's not about to start now. Hard punches and kicks highlight her style, though she's not throwing the super deadly kicks she's known for, too distracted by side tasks, perhaps, but her skillful defense is important, too, and if she can't be hit, she can remain in comvat for as long as it takes to deliver the required damage. Close combat doesn't seem to bother her, and she moves easily with the golems, predicting where they'll be and eliminating their options tactically as she strikes each one as and when they give her an opening.

     Oh gosh it's a boss terracotta soldier, with a full on war room! Honami blinks a bit at this. This isn't what she'd expected to encounter when it arrived. Honami looks at her sword. And looks at the soldiers. And she leaps towards them, lifting her sword as if it were a giant shield to attempt to block some of the blows from the order to attack! It's... it's kind of effective. Sort of. In that she took some damage instead of someone else. She is, pretty quickly, retreating to suck down potions and shoot her little wrist-mounted crossbow at enemies. At least she didn't floor tank. She's a DRK, not a DRG.

It was good to be back in it.

To battle the monsters and the mobs, to feel like he has the thrill of battle again...but now he was there with his allies. But now was the boss fight. He had easily helped the party completely power through this quest.

"Frost Shock."

The words immediately cause a psionic attack on the mobs, enough to deal enough damage to cause virtual minds to burst from the debuff. Then it's the boss.

He extends the spells range, attempting to affect the boss and he's largely successful! Rattling the boss enough to be slain by his allies!

Mission success!

Picking himself up from the ground, the ronin looks at the secret passage he helped to uncover and coughs into his fist. "U-uh, yeah, glad I helped move that obviously secret display rack!" No, he doesn't doubt anyone is buying that, but he has to cover himself just in case.

One hand resting on his trusty katana hilt, Klein's other hand is holding up a small orb of fire as he walks down another final hallway for a light source. He was really expecting those clay soldiers to hop and attack them at any time, but it seems like they are safe for now. Well...until they enter the final room and he just blinks at the Clay Commander. "...welp, Kirito. Here's our boss!"

The following battle is a frantic back and forth, especially with this number of soldiers being ordered about by the Commander. On top of that, there's no dedicated healers or tanks here, and it's a party composed of magical and melee DPS. But for one of those DPSs, he dabbles in a little bit of everything.

Including tanking.

With his katana used once more to defend, Klein is seen dashing about to be the shield for everyone now. Trusting in his allies to crack some more pots, the samurai who looks like a mountain bandit is purely on the defensive here. "Come on...just a little more, guys...!"

It's only when the Commander finally crumbles in a shower of clay and shining blue virtual shards does Klein plops down onto the war table, clearly exhausted from all of that running back and forth. "Whew...great job, guys. I guess those soldiers weren't all they were cracked up to be!"

...and of course, no one laughs. Klein hangs his head is shame.