Duty Session 601: No Game Gnoll Life

    As someoone in a movie once said, if there is a god, he ain't here.
    This barren wasteland is still, if only technically, a forest. In the most scarce sense of the word, that is. Where once there were leaves, now the only thing decorating branches are ribcages and tattered gear, which clamor in the wind. Perhaps most unsettling of all are the repurposed warning signs, which crop up with disturbing regularity. Whatever the gnolls are up to, the irony seems lost on them.
    In this milieu our party of adventurers is called to put an end to a particularly awful abomination.

    At last, our humble party arrives at the outskirts of the forest, where signs must be found if they are to advance. It is not so much the lack of a trail, perhaps, as it is the profuse amount of detritus scattered abaout.

Yeowang is, by now, a familiar sight to most Yamato adventurers. Black coat buttoned to her throat, black pants, very dark green hood, loq boots. Her long blonde hair is tied up in a bun atop her head, but the hood is down for now, to show she's uncrowned. Some Yamato adventurers look for that still. She does. "This," she says to Jayu, who she arrived with, "is probably one of the more problematic missions the Guild sends us on. There were these gnolls, and /someone/ changed them somehow. They started worshipping strange gods and doing strange magic, and it was very disconcerting. You can see even the forest is sick from their presence."

She will nod a greeting to Lauren as we form up for the mission, and she says, "This was all very strange. But we shall see how it goes."

    Someone has told Naniko that she needs to get out more. Hiding all the time is no way to live a life, old OR new. She's got her eyes pealed, and a hilt-less thrusting dagger backwards in each hand. She's on edge, to be sure.

    "It is likely in that case, that there was some kind of System Arte in use to make it that way," Merek admits to Yeowang. "And it looks like, while it's fixed the source, there is a lot to clean up. Well, we better get to it." He then begins to search with the party, looking for a way to advance.

Jayu had a super bad feeling about this particular quest. He wasn't certain why, but... Then again, Yeowang is here. And Jayu felt confident that, if the two of them are together, everything will be alright. That might be do to the fact that, pre-apocalypse, whenever there was a problem that he couldn't solve, Yeowang would eventually appear like Goku and it was no longer a problem, but...

Regardless, here he was by Yeowang's side. He was pretty sure he just needed to be a little more attentive than usual, and everything would be fine, "I have seen this before when a quest was left undone for awhile, and there was sort of an overpopulation issue with the monsters... Does this happen often in Yamato?"

Yeowang nods to Merek, first about the system arte, then about the clean up. "It's not an undone quest here," she says to Jayu. "But someone actively meddling. Someone very powerful. It's almost like some game admin is tweaking the game just to see how we deal with it." her attention paid to explanation is a bit too much attention, though, as an explosion hurls her aside, down a chunk of HP. She says nothing, just picking herself up, dusting herself off, and continuing, "Anyhow, we are looking to see if we can dig up actual actionable information on this."

Jayu spots several traps on the way through, and while he lacks the ability to disable them, the party does a relatively good job of merely avoiding the traps. "Hmm. Well, regardless of whoever is doing the meddling, the gnoll traps will hurt all the same, I suppose. Everyone be careful, yeah?" He warns with a smile. Perhaps this wouldn't be as hard as he thought.

Lauren does not see traps, but what she does listen to her party members. Without saying anything herself, her gaze goes distant with concentration. A normal evasive technique is well and good, but it has risks.
    One of Lauren's gloved hands draws swiftly up, to the left; ripples in the air appear, footprints that pass and surround the group like an invisible army of ethereal horses. Nightmares, galloping on their way to unload bad dreams.
    When the spell has built up, the churning magic coalesces into watery steeds. Pooka, the traditional pooka, those who usually drown... But the summoner is quick to latch on to one, and its spectral legs pass right through traps to carry any to safety.

    Naniko has a quick bout of absolutely failing to disarm traps, but soon, she just catches up with the rest of the group, sidestepping the traps she can by following in others footsteps who can see them.

    And now, time for battle! Seldom does one stumble through traps only to immediately find their creators, but here we are.

    Merek manages to evade some of the traps, but takes his time to walk around any of them, and nods a little bit to the party. And next thing he knows, he is being hit by arrows because he was not paying attention to things. "Well. That's a thing and all that," he says.

    Naniko is not having a great time of things. After not disarming a trap properly, she realizes she's managed to trigger it too late, and doesn't get up any of her defenses. She swears wordlessly, somehow.

Jayu senses the hostility of the arrows coming before he sees them. Don't think: FEEL. With masterful punches and kicks, he deflects the arrows aimed for him, and several aimed for Yeowang, out of the way.

Yeowang blinks as the arrow lands in our midst. She eyes the gnoll in the distance, and decides that'd be a very long run to catch up with it, and getting shot at the whole way. That seems like a bad plan to her, so she falls back on her actual ETO class skills, which she doesn't do often, and pulls a bow from her inventory. She affixes some sort of magnifying eyepiece to the bowshaft, and she will sight along that lens as she takes aim. She dials in the distance and wind, and that changes her aiming point. Finally, she sights in, bow aimed skyward, and releases.

She is rewarded with a hit, and she begins to fire for effect, using that aiming point, scoring more hits.

Lauren appears genuinely affronted by the arrow. "Excuse me?" She asks of the ranger knoll. Snapping her fingers, she says aloud, "A wisp in time to aim just fine, glory to flame that I call mine, Esper Ves Lord Demon, Eight Spire, I summon you to wield your fire."
    And behind her, a creature of flame and malice steps abreast the imp and leverages IT's flamethrower, dealing massive damage to the would-be rangers. When it is over, the summonses disappears, and Lauren is left slightly singed but otherwise vindicated.
    And now... Now the gnolls do not approach the party as they pass from torchlight to torchlight. There must have been many once, and now there are few. The answer is simple, as it turns out: their slower bretheren were likely eaten alive by those gnolls gathered around a pool, quick to slurp its contents and grow to enormous size.

    Naniko watches the gnolls, frustrated and in pain. She tightens her jaw for a moment. Tossing back her hood, she defiantly thrusts a heel into the dirt. "You want water?" she asks. She raises her hands, elbows behind her shoulder blades as moisture gathers out of the air into droplets floating around her hands. It becomes clear that it's just a side effect of the magical energy rushing through her, however. She lunges forward, thrusting her hands and crashing forth with the fury of her own personal ocean. "Have some water!" she insists at them. The water magic washes over them, their bodies rippling until capilaries on the surface burst, though it's just brine that bursts forth like they're over-filled water bags springing leaks!

Jayu singles out one of the gnolls and has somewhat of a duel with it. It takes a while, and Jayu eventually wins, but it takes an awful long time, and he is largely unhelpful with the party handling the rest of the pack.

    Upon coming to the gnolls that lookto be using some form of magic to be corrupted, Merek takes his time to lift up his potion and will throw that to them, with the wish that it will weaken them for the party.

Yeowang is ready for a hard fight as the gnolls buff themselves up. It's hard going, but she's not deterred by the fact that they're eight feet tall with teeth and claws, and she will strike them brutally hard, evading and taking up a new position, almost daring them to come at her, playing a dangerous game, it would seem, of brinksmanship, but it pays off, they are not quite prepared for quite how hard she's striking, and she knows a few esoteric techniques that involve beating people senseless quite brutally, and she will demonstrate as many of them as come up.

    Certain of one thing, Lauren ignores the gnolls for the nonce and elects instead to examine the pool. She's no alchemist, but she's very certain of one thing: She is no alchemist. Uncorking one of her carried potions, she dumps it into the pool where the reaction will be, well, who knows? Judging from those drinking, wildly unpleasant.
    And to stumble upon the Muse of the moment, this mise en scene entails... The Supermassive Black Gnoll.

Jayu does the worst thing one can do when they are trying to fight in ranged combat: he sends a flying kick out at the Gnoll. It catches him by the leg and throws him right back from where he came.

Jayu rebalances himself mid air and lands on his feet, but he is very confused. 'Why am I back over here? I was trying to be over there.'

Yeowang had gone all out on the prior fight, and as Jayu knows, she has been working very hard on so many side projects it's amazing she's been able to do anything. But it is against the super-massive gnoll, she is unable to accomplish much. She stays in the melee for as long as she can, but she doesn't seem to be able to strike any blow that does damage. Or not much damage, anyhow, it doesn't seem injured significanly by her attacks. When Jayu is thrown, she will break off her attack, which wasn't doing any good, and help him get back to his feet. "That gnoll is very strong," she tells him, though he's probably worked that out already.

    Merek uses his magic to keep healing the party. It does not look like that will make the fight easy, and eventually they will need to try and escape, that or fight it for a long while.

    Naniko flexes her head back and forth. "Okay," she says with a nod. She raises her hands skyward, droplets of water falling up as they gather together like reverse rain around her. She grabs the air above her like she's trying to claw at the sky, then seems to be trying to pull it toward the ground. Icicles fall all over the gnolls like missiles. The one that seems to matter doesn't even flinch at them. "Well," Naniko says, out of ideas. She hesitates. "Nope," she says, jetting away.

    Without Merek, it would have been a very different and much uglier situation. As it is, there is a long period of traveling during which the group's wounds can be tended by the medic. And it isn't long before trouble finds them, either: the shadow of what appeared to be a fixture resolves itself into a **SLAM** gigantic gnoll.

    Naniko is not having any of this Gnoll cannonball shenanigans. She dives into the sand, rolling to her feet. She spits. "Ugh. Worse than beach sand," she says like a food critic eating spoiled food.

Yeowang catches her balances as the ground shakes with the gnoll landing hard, and then a vortex of wind swirls around the gnoll, making it nearly impossible to see her. She has to move in very close, which is a huge danger zone, to see the target, and she will mete out her DPS hard and fast will dodging attacks by quite small margins. It almost looks like it's choreographged, each miss surprisingly narrow, but miss they do, and it leaves her in position to reply with devastating attacks of her own, punching, kicking, knees, elbows, she's throwing everything as she steps barely aside from each incoming attack.

Jayu has been focused on his skills of tracking and searching since the Apocalypse, and it comes in handy today as he is able to pinpoint the creature's position with ease. He joins Yeowang in her onslaught against it. If there were ever any doubt that the two of them were a force to be reckoned with, this scene is the proof needed.

    When that sanddancer falls, Naniko realizes she's been fighting it on autopilot. She huffs and puffs, knuckles pale as she grips her daggers. She loosens her grip on them, holding them with her thumbs before sliding them under her nebulous poncho. She shakes out her hands and looks around. "Everyone okay?" she asks as she checks what she got. "We lose anyone?"

    Merek assists with the magic of Thorn Calamite, and it doesn't look like he's managing all that well. With that, the party seems to be doing well enough, so he lets them handle the most of the fight and takes his time to aid where he can.