Duty Session 625: Clearing the Way to Shibuya

    June has heard that there is help needed in battling the way through the wilderness from Ouph to Shibuya, she has friends in both places, and bars she likes to visit, so a chance to engage in violence in going from one place she likes to another place she likes is something she can't really turn down.

    June being June she's done no planning but figures SOMEONE will want to go with her to violently clear way for a road... or at least walk to Shibuya without being bored so she just puts out party requests.

Schneider has joined up for what he understands will be a romp through the forest. Given his prediliction for fire, he may feel he has a plan for that, but he seems civilized enough for the moment. He is easy to find if June is visiting bars, and he is always up for some mayhem.

    Fuka is a regular on all kinds of missions, seeing it as her duty if only to herself to keep up skills. No quest too basic, no reward too small! Besides, she's easily amused and often finds 'game quests' to be a fine source of amusement. A lot more fun than some of the big raids and the war and all that, to be sure. But then, it's also fun to go searching for new and interesting things!

    Today, however, it's quest time. Fort Ouph and Shibuya both are important to her alliance, her kingdom, and her friends, so it was an easy choice on the quest board. "Hiiiii~" she chimes brightly to the fellow adventurers gathered to quest. "I hear we're going offroading!"

Shibuya isn't exactly within the purview of the Scale Emblem Alliance. They mostly keep to their own business within the Tower of Aincrad. But that doesn't mean that they don't occasionally have reason to be out in the lands beyond.

For Prophylaxis, that means taking a brief stroll through the woods of Eastal. He contributed significantly to its reclamation from a goblin threat months ago, and stops in periodically to make sure everything is going smoothly with its recovery. Which is why he happens to be present here today.

"Good day," he says to the always exhuberant Fuka, and carefully marks his spot in a Mysterious Notebook before shoving it into the folds of his robes. "I will be your healer for this adventure. It's nice to see you again."

    June shakes her head "Nono, we're going ON roading... or build roading... we're... road crafting... like mine crafting but roads instead of digging... maybe we're road pathing? Pathfinding..." she taps her lips, cops a squat keeps thinking.

    After several minutes of blank staring she just stands up and stretches. "Soooo we ready to go kill monsters, blaze trails, and hunt for nests that need clearing?"

    Without waiting for anyone June is off at a trot heading along the planned path. It isn't long past the established trails that signs of Goblins arise. It's time to battle... though a good stealthy bit could lead the gobos into an ambush.

Schneider nods as Proph joins the group, smirking at his self-intro, and will follow June as she explains the mission objective unclearly. But it's a nice walk in the woods, and he's been spending far too much time in the library lately. He whistles off-key as we walk along, and is a bit surprised as goblins show up because he totally wasn't paying attention.

A quickly shouted, "Fiery Power Blast of the Damned!" is chanted, and magical energy is conjured and hurled, but he is off-balance and not really aiming, and his snap-shot, such as it is, charbroils a swatch of forest with no goblins in it. Such are the vagaries of war.

    "Mein crafting?" Fuka asks, adopting a dorky accent which might barely pass for German to those who don't know better. "Da, road-crafting!" she adds, screwing up the culture references even more. Possibly deliberately.

    When the goblins come into sight, Fuka's not at all interested in stealth. "Have at you, scurvy knaves!" she yells, brandishing her greatsword and charging in to battle. "You need to eat more fruit!" she cries out as she hacks away with greater enthusiasm than actual skill.

Prophylaxis' expression turns to one of dismay when Schneider LIGHTS THE FOREST ON FIRE. "We just fixed that!!" He groans, and commits a decent chunk of his mana bar spamming water and ice spells to put out the burgeoning forest fire.

He's not going to be very helpful at Fighting Monsters for the moment, it seems.

    June shifts form and follows after Fuka, "Aha! I doubt they have scurvey... pine needle tea is a good source of vitamins." she kicks a goblin with a hoof, punches another with her engraved cestus. Horns and hooves, punches and random facts... that's a fight with June. Once all the goblins lay dead, and the casters have both started and stopped a forest fire... Smokey would be confused.

Then it's back on the unroad for the party. It's been quiet until there comes sign of wolves. "OOh hey looks like it's time to go hunting, gotta clear this pack so they don't eat the workers later, lets go."

    Fuka's not so much into random facts as she's just random. And swords. And a lot of enthusiastic shouting. At least she's having fun slaughtering goblins. She spares a glance at the party mages, shaking her head. "MEN." she stage-catcalls to June. Like a stage whisper but not really. "I'm sure they're good for something, but I can't think what." she grins. Of course she'll regret saying that when she needs healing, but it's not really meant to be a serious complaint.

    Once the fight's over, Fuka nods at the idea of the next part of their mission. Clearing the wolf pack. She's clearly not happy about the idea. The girl's a true animal lover. Oh well, hopefully all they need to do is just drive them off, or something. Regardless, Fuka's heart is clearly not in it as she searches for sign of the pack.

Schneider looks embarassed as he almost sets the woods on fire, and he gives Proph an apologetic look. But he says, "They /are/ planning on building a road, right? So they need to clear trees?" But it looks like we need to track down a wolf pack.

"Clear what pack?" he asks June. Schneider has about the woodcraft capability you'd expect of a high school basketball player, ie. none. But he will try and help look for this so-called pack. He is definitely looking, no really! He's not finding anything, but he's looking as hard as he can!

"Maybe?? But there are pine trees in here," Prophylaxis says, gesturing at the... pine trees. "Those things are full of oil! Go up in huge fireballs when they get lit up! If they want to clear their way through, it's best they do it the old fashioned way. And that way they can actually make use of the lumber." One must be economical when mauling an ancient forest for the sake of commerce and travel, after all.

Speaking of woods, there seems to be a wolf pack in this one, and... Prophylaxis is still tending to the trees. He's patting one gently and even offers it some water. What kind of tree-hugging hippie is this mushroom-hatted doctor even!?

Oh, he's got a relic out. That might explain it. "Asked one of the trees we saved about the wolves," he explains. "Basically said that they usually come from this direction. Maybe we'll have some luck with that?" And with that the doctor sets off down through a small clearing between the trees. But can plants really be relied on to track carnivores...?

    June follows the plants... until she picks up the tracks of wolves and leads the party to a den. "Evicted." she says and ruffles Fuka's hair, she doesn't love animals especially, but she loves cute girls so eviction over murder.

    But now it's time to fight, hopefully it'll be less Gandalf and the Wargs and more uhm... yah there are few good examples in classic fiction when it comes to wolves...

Schneider is definitely not much help with the tracking, but luckily June and Fuka have that under control. Unlike June and Fuka, he doesn't see anything cute and endearing in a furry quadrpedal death machine trying to eat him. He doesn't know Gandalf and the Wargs, but his dad talks about those old bands all the time. Benny and the Jets, Echo and the Bunnymen, Reuben and the .. he forgets. Someone.

"Gunzenro!" he shouts, and flames pour out over the wolves, charbroiling them as they try and attack, then charbroiling them as they try and escape. There is general charbroiling going on.

    Fuka will of course do her duty. She even murders bun-buns when it comes time for that sort of thing, and they're far more adorable than wolves. But giant puppies are still not something she'll gleefully murder, like she does with goblins. She does appreciate June's headruffling though, and manages a bit of a smile. Maybe they CAN just evict them. She can hope.

    Chaos has other plans, of course. When the adventuring group finally comes across the wolf pack, Fuka fires up. Literally. Fire is a strong element, and one that animals naturally fear. What better way to drive the wolves off than to set their tails on fire or something? Fuka does just so, managing to craft a bunch of really good hot-tails that send wolves into a frenzy of fear and pain, and might just work to send them packing, when Schneider steps up and works his magic. And so does Proph. And suddenly there's fire everywhere, and now everything's hot and dry, and Fuka's own carefully crafted pyrotechnics erupt in the sudden dry heat into absolute funereal pyres.

Finally, they find the wolves. It's a very scenic little den they have going, in all actuality. Unfortunately, it's also a threat to the local merchants. And if these wolves HAVE been attacking people, it means it's probably either that there's an overpopulation problem, they've turned Monstrous, OR someone has been overhunting the game in the area. But those are all for later investigations.

There are wolves.

And there is fire.

(Because there are Scale Emblem members here, so of course there's fire.)

(At least Prophylaxis appears to be carefully laying firewalls to make sure none of it gets out of this glade?)

    June dives into the combat, but she's trying to be nice and scare off the monster wolves... which just gets her bitten, and probably set on fire from time to time. The fight goes on until the wolves are defeated and June just gives Fuka a consilatory hug. Then it is time to move on. She leads on, why else do you hire a hunter to trail blaze after all? Storm clouds, Storm Crows, well it'll be mostly a job of not getting dive bombed.

Schneider has no heartburn about frying wolves. They're wild animals, not friendly puppies, and they'd eat us if we didn't fight back. The game is serious business, he's found in his two deaths, and he means to take it seriously. He's not the same carefree college student he was when the game started, to be sure. But the monsters are too agile and airborne for normal magic to work...

However, "High-volt, annihilate my enemy, Strike!" sends lightning crashing down from the sky into the flying stormcrows, each strike crisping one, or sending it fleeing and very short on HP. He growls fiercely, having come into his own; when he started the game, he didn't have Schneider's facility with lightning. But he does now, and he makes good use of it.

What? Flying wolves!? It's more likely than you think.

"They won't be able to stay up there for long," Prophylaxis says, ominously. He gestures into the sky with the head of his staff, and--

Abruptly, several of the winged beasts freeze into solid chunks of ice and come crashing to the ground. Dozens of them fall shortly thereafter, blasted by a sudden deluge of ice and snow.

That it helps extinguish whatever lingering embers may remain from the party's earlier arboreal arson is... a nice consolation prize.

But it seems the doctor is taking this work seriously as well. After all, he can't very well have his charges dying too often under his watch, can he?

    Fuka can't even be upset at anyone in particular. It's not like she can fault Proph or Schneider for being effective. It's not like she intended what actually happened. It's just her luck was spectacular. That is to say, it caused a spectacle. And ... well, they did do their job really. She can regret having had to kill the cute murder puppies, but she can't really believe it to have been wrong. And regret, well, that's just not something Fuka dwells upon.

    Perhaps the hug helps, but Fuka's basically back to her normal self by the time stormcrows descend upon them. "Really?" she bellows. "You want to challenge the Lightning Lass? The Fairy of Fulmin...osity?" the little sylph screeches, brandishing her blade like a lightning rod. What follows may not be her finest performance, perhaps not as spectacular as when she fought wolves with fire, but it's still quite adequate as she fires bolts of lightning upwards into the air, a bit more focussed and powerful than the ambient energies the stormcrows enjoy playing with.

    June smiles, and who would have thought the iron scaled cow girl was good with lightning. The electricity dances along her scales, glowing blue and dancing between her horns as she sends it up and after the winged beasts. "Well, it's better than it could have been." she says with a chuckle and pats Fuka on the back... of course with all the electricity in the air makes her into a giant touchstone, causing a joybuzzer sized jolt to zap Fuka.

    She heads on to keep moving and then they find some old ruins. "Hmmm... I wonder if this was in ET:Offline." she taps her muzzle with a finger. "We should setup the camp in the ruins to give us some cover I guess... Let's get it going." She says dinner, and beers, and some hanging out is done around the campfire. Once folks have headed off to sleep until the Nightmares arrive and then ti's time for battle!

Schneider doesn't know anything about ETO Offline, or anything previous to this version of the game, and he's not genre-savvy enough to spot the danger in the setup. So he sets up camp in the ruins, because camping he understands, and dinner and beer as well. But when he's awakened at who-knows-what-time-of-night to the news of attacking nightmares, he springs into action as best he can. Sadly, they seem immune to his magic, which includes his fire, and he's left engaging them with his starter sword, which is not his strong suit.

The thrust and cut is done with as much verve as he can manage, but defensively he's got his Dragonscale Cape, which is quite effective at blocking damage, glittering shinily as the damage is deflected in pass after pass.

    A chance for recovery, for food and rest, is quite nice. She doesn't even resent June having joybuzzered her. She's tough, is pretty good at channeling lightning, and ... well, these things happen. Plus June is feeding her and offering drinks. Who can resent that?

    She's shaken out of a relatively pleasant experience, however, by the rapid onset of Nightmares. Fortunately Fuka's experiences and skillset have trained her nearly perfectly to handle an aspect of this challenge. "Gather close! We can break their charge!" she directs, mostly aiming it at June because she fully expects the healer and fire wizard to stand behind the tanky ones. And then Fuka goes to work on fallen masonry.

    The little sylph has gained considerable theoretical and practical knowledge of moving stone thanks to her invention of an earth magic lifting enchantment. She knows how much power to flood into a pillar to move it without damaging it under the sudden forces of acceleration, and she knows how to make the earth itself upthrust under a massive load so that it pushes the load into position, without catapulting it off the ground to some unforseen and useless position. So when she channels her mana, each use of a simple spell moves masonry exactly where she intends it to go, turning the rubble-strewn path leading into reach of the adventurers into a formidable bastion not unlike its long-forgotten original purpose!

"Hard to say," Prophylaxis replies to June. "So much has changed between now and the time before that damn expansion hit. This may have been something else before then, and was only turned into its current state after we were all stuck in here." But it's a welcome sight nonetheless. An opportunity to rest and recouperate before making the last leg of the journey toward Shibuya.

At least, it seems to be that way, until the Nightmares attack.

"Mm, horses huh," the doctor muses, then-- taps his staff against the ground. What issues forth is not a wave of water or a flood of frost, but a tangling, interlacing overgrowth of thorny brambles. Against any foe they'd be a potent obstacle, but against the Nightmares in particular--

Well, horses have very delicate legs. If they trip and break a limb, it's basically a death sentence. And Prophylaxis just generated a massive field of /very/ trip-prone terrain right underneath the charging Nightmare herd. The moment one trips near the front of the herd, many more quickly follow, tumbling into the bramble-covered earth in a heap of shattered bones, shredded flesh and smoldering vines (courtesy of flaming manes).

    June joins in on the fight, her cestus on her fists, she starts off with a flurry of blows that sends words of light streaking into the Nightmares, smashing through their dark magics to inflict massive blows and mass trauma. When all is said and done the monsters are gone and at least a bit more progress has been made to getting a road from the fort to Shibuya. "Time for beers, we're going bar hopping." she says as she shifts back to her human form and rests her hand on Fuka's shoulder. "Drunken days are here again."

Schneider is definitely up for beer as well, but he points out, "We're what, a day or more out from Fort Ouph? There's no bars out here in the wilderness, are there?" He looks to Proph, then Fuka and June. Is there some lore he's missing? A quick return-to-city button?

    Fuka cheers enthusiastically at the offer of bar hopping and beers. She's not a heavy drinker, not like June, but she does enjoy a good time. She's a social drinker, one could say. Then she frowns when Schneider makes a good point. "Spoilsport." she mutters. "Hey, for all I know there's an inn nearby! This is a fort, right? So there's roads nearby. And where there's roads, there's going to be inns! Trust me I'm a Messenger!" Fuka claims. "Though I have no idea where, because I'm kind of lost now. Does anyone have a map? One that shows the nearest inn? Or the nearest road?"

    June pats Fuka atop the head and ruffles "We have to finish walking to Shibuya hon..." she says with a chuckle "But I have beer." she says producing beer from her inventory, she travels prepared... and often drunk