Duty Session 627: Minecart Goblin Edition

Those pesky goblins are proving to be a threat once more, this time within the Eastal region. Growing in numbers within a labyrinthian cave network, they need to be dealt with by taking out the various goblin lieutenants that guide them. Unfortunately, there's far too much ground to cover on foot. Fortunately, there is a minecart system that runs through most of the tunnels.

Preparing to adventure forth into the goblin infested underground, it becomes clear that the caverns have seen significant mining efforts in the past. As not only is there an abundance of minecarts and tracks available for use, there's even a map outlining a rather complex series of tunnels.

The map is vertical, hanging on a rocky wall, and Uta is running her finger on the lines that connect various junctions and exchanges, looking a lot like a tourist studying the map for the metro (pardon, the 'underground') of an unfamiliar city.

"Judging by the size and length of the caverns and adjoining tunnels, going on foot would be far too much of a slog," she declares, diverting her gaze from the map and looking towards the rest of the party. "Our best choice is to ride the minecarts." She taps her lips as her head swings left and right. "...Anyone knows where one buys the tickets?"

Yeowang has joined Uta because goblins are a problem, and she's got an interest in keeping the land clear. She's arranged for adventurers to clear out the overland route to Shibuya, but these underground ways are troublesome and harder to clear out. And extensive! "How far do these tunnels go?" she asks, clearly surprised.

She will try to follow the map as well, but like any unfamiliar map, it's hard to take in all the nuance in one go. "So many routes. Checkpoints, and goblins might be anywhere. They're insidious."

She has forgone her pretty princess dress that she favored in Eas for her hard-wearing adventurer garb, looks like ball season is over. And no sign of her beau, sadly. Well, she knows he's in game. Unless the Palace Landers recaptured him, he did seem to be highly placed, for a player. But she won't find him where we're going. But it will take her mind off him.

Falling back into practical mode, she says, "Do we have the supplies we think we'll need?"

"Very," Uta replies to Yeowang when she asks about how far the tunnels go. Gesturing towards the map, she adds, "I'm not a cartographer, but I can tell when a grid is big. And this grid, I am pretty sure, is -big-."

"And that is exactly why we bring weapons!" She raises her staff. "Heartsong will be invaluable in getting us through. People may think it's just a stick, but what they don't realize is that it's a -magical- stick. Gets them every time." Hunching over, conspirationally, she continues, "At this poitn people ask, but wait, what about the magically attuned? They -will- notice it's a magical stick!" With a grin, she taps the side of her cranium, "See, those are the kind of people who tend not to notice that while it's a magical stick, it's also a stick. Perfectly good to whack people upside the head with!"

"I brought all I could think of," Uta says, swiping her menu open to go through her inventory. "Shall we proceed?"

* * *

As the party rides along on their track, they notice ahead that several more tracks curve in from secondary tunnels to merge or run parallel with their own.

"Well, seems pretty uneventful so... far..."

Uta turns to look behind her.

One. Two. Three minecards, brimming with raging Goblins, dart towards our heroes. It won't be long before they catch up with Yeowang and Uta.

Uta readies her staff, and pointing it at the incoming threat, she says, "You ready, Yeowang?"

Yeowang hrms as Uta mentions her stick. That it's both magical and a stick is impressed upon Yeowang, who isn't a gamer, and takes the input seriously rather than regarding it as the Captain Obvious-level data dump that it is. "I see," she says, and watches the cave walls as we roll through, agreeing that she'd brought all that she felt she needed as well.

This does not include weapons, but as the goblins come into view, Uta may be reminded why this is: Yeowang is a national-level champion in her home nation, and she has a punch like an iron bar, and a kick like a mule, which between them send goblins flying as soon as they get within striking range. Most of them dissipate into puffs of XP, but the tougher ones are simply knocked away from the cart as we continue, and the close quarters fight is both savage and gruelling as they try to mob the two. But Yeowang's height and reach are an asset, and the cart is at no point in much danger.

Inspired by Yeowang's impressive performance, Uta snaps out of her daze (due to having been lost in slack-jawed admiration) and narrows her eyes at the party's enemies.

She climbs on the back rim of the cart, and pushes, throwing herself at one of the incoming carts of goblin. Between punches, elbow drops, grabs, tosses, spinning kicks, and good ol' beating with a stick, she does short work of one of the carts, after which she immediately jumps on to the other, churning out shimmering polygons at a sustained rate.

"There, I think those were all-"

* THUD *

Uta was soo concerned with whether she could that she didn't stop and consider whether the Goblin cart she jumped on was headed for a dead end or not.

Spoiler: it was headed for a dead end, and now there's a Uta-shaped indentation on one of the mine walls.

"I AM OKAY!," claims Uta, who has lost a chunk of HP. "Plenty of health left!"

She proves the point by starting to run, and catching up on Yeowang's cart on feet.

The track the party is currently on has led them into a less dangerous section of the caverns. Here, signs begin to appear beside the tracks, warning that the area is under the control of a local mining guild. Soon enough, the track ahead becomes blocked by a sturdy locked gate. One that appears to be guarded by some tough looking Landers. There don't appear to be any alternate paths and backtracking would take quite some time. So the party will either have to talk their way past the guards and through the locked gate... Or find other means. Or both!

Yeowang looks worried as Uta finds the track ends a bit sooner than she expected, and so she yanks on the brake, slowing her cart until uta can catch back up. She smiles as Uta jumps back aboard, then releases the brake, allowing the cart to speed up again, looking over her friend. "Er, do you need a potion?" she wonders, eying Uta's HP.

When that's resolved, she'll return to watching forward, but it seems like there's not much to see until the cart starts slowing again, and it looks like a checkpoint of some kind. But it's people, not monsters, and Yeowang can deal with people. "I assume this is about a transit fee, very well," she says haughtily and pulls out a suitable fee, turning it over to the surprised guards. Adventurers aren't usually so free with their cash, but no one told Yeowang that.

"I could use a potion, yes," Uta comments as she, having reached the cart in her running, jumps and clings to one side, pulling herself up and inside with a thud.

Yeowang seems pretty good at negotiating with the locals; not surprisingly, considering her track record so far. As for Uta... while she's off to a good start, she eventually manages to mostly -confuse- the guild members she talks to; when all it's said and done, completely at a loss, the local Landers have to turn to their fellows who have spoken with Yeowang, to have an inkling of what the heck is going on here.

The sound of running water can be heard echoing through the tunnel. Soon enough the track ahead crosses another, larger tunnel. One that has a somewhat fast river rushing through it. The track goes down into the water and then up out on the other side. It's probably not too deep, right? Wrong! As it turns out the carts float pretty well! Lifted off the tracks, they begin to float down the river. Still, this isn't too bad, right? Wrong! As it turns out the river isn't empty. Large, apparently carnivorous, fish with some rather equally large teeth begin jumping out of the water to try and take bites out of the party! How can this get any worse!? Wait... Is that a waterfall!? Sure enough, the river soon ends in a sudden drop. Although thankfully, there are some tracks running along beneath the waterfall for the carts to land on. Assuming the party can survive the bitey bitey fish long enough to get to that point!

Yeowang passes Uta a potion from her inventory. Both of them have similar skillsets, it seems, though perhaps not so unusual as that. Both are martial artists, though Yeowang has focused on the financial management side of her skills where Uta has developed her medical skills as well as her monster handling. Yeowang has no slimes, alas, or much skill in medicine apart from her experience in sports medicine from her long years of training.

None of this helps her when the cart hits the water and begins floating downstream, but she can at least remain balanced against the motion of the water - if this cart tips, it'll go straight to the bottom, and swimming with the bitey fish seems like a bad plan. Holding the cart steady to keep it from taking on water as the river drags us along turns out to be the easy part, though, as the water spills over a cliff, and down we come, minecart and all.

Luckily, whatever caused this disjunction happened after the tracks were laid, and they seem to continue down below, where Yeowang, now soaked to the skin with her long hair plastered across her face, has to guide the cart back to where the tracks are so the cart can continue to take us deeper into where we need to go.

Uta has also developed her musical skills, as proven by her intoning a vocalized melody that causes tendrils of shimmering color to dance in helixes of light around her staff. Coalescing into the focus gem at the top, it radiates into multiple beams towards each of the bitey fishes; thus enveloped by the magical field, Uta can, through her melody, control the motion of the fishes enough to prevent them from interfering with the minecart's progress.

Of course, it is not easy to manage this large a group of monsters, and there are, well, bumps in the road, both metaphorical and literal, but when the cart finally lands at the bottom of the waterfall (with a jolt), the danger is over, and people can continue on to the next part of the journey.

It seems that the party is really starting to get into goblin territory now. Currently riding through a bottomless tunnel on an elevated track, the party will start to notice some basic wooden fortifications built into either side of the tunnel walls. As the party passes through, crossbow-equipped goblins begin to filter out of holes in the walls to take up positions on said fortifications.

Crossbow bolts begin to assault the party from both sides! They'll need to either survive them, or pre-emptively deal with the archers before they do too much damage.

Yeowang smiles as Uta displays her musical skills. She's a Musical Kung Fu Nurse, of course, can't forget that part of the equation. Yeowang isn't quite so versatile, but she can at least appreciate it as we ride along. She considers as we roll into Goblin Country, but she can't do much at range to goblins shooting arrows at them, so she hunkers down as low as she can get in the cart and will attempt to ride it out. Sadly, the goblins just have to put a bit of upangle on the arrows, and they fall straight down into the cart, and she's taking steady damage, doing what little healing she knows and quaffing potions as quickly as the cooldown allows.

"I got this!", the Spriggan exclaims.

Uta's melody segues seamlessly into a low chant, almost whispered, and the beams of magic that were enveloping the fishes defocus, becoming an indistinct mass around the cart. A mass that gets darker and darker, until the zipping cart is, as far as the people outside are concerned, smack in the middle of a large mass of seething darkness. Makes it much harder to aim for it.

The minecart track the party is on finally comes to an end. It stops right outside a series of rickety wooden fortifications, complete with a flimsy portcullis that's easy to get past. Sounds of heavy clanking can be heard from within the room beyond the short tunnel that follows. Entering, the party is greeted to the sight of several groups of goblins armed with various battered weapons and shields as well as badly shaped metal plates strapped to them like makeshift armor. They are currently marching around the large room to the shouts of a goblin on the far side. This goblin is wearing a rather dirty and patchwork makeshift military uniform, complete with absurd looking bicorne hat.

"The guy with the hat!", Uta exclaims, pointing. "He looks important! Because hats are important! Therefore, he must be the leader! If we dispose of him, we can get his hat!" A moment of silence, then Uta shakes her head. "I mean, if we dispose of him, victory will be guaranteed!"

As the party is spotted, the goblin leader appears to shout something at the goblin troops, who all begin to rush the party. They prove to be skilled at using their shields to defend themselves against ranged attacks, trying to force the party into close range combat.

Yeowang springs from cover as we arrive at the goblin encampment at the end of this long and arduous journey. But because it's been a non-fighty journey, Yeowang hasn't burned any of her long-cooldown abilities. This starts now, as she leaps into the fray with the closest goblins, sending them flying when the hits don't result in a cloud of XP immediately.

When that first cooldown wears off, she triggers the next one, and the fight continues. If the goblins expected to wear her down or tire her out, they are not succeeding, a stamina potion substituting for when she'd normally be stopped by the bell, in a match in a ring. Continuing on, fists pounding savagely, she clears through a screen of lieutenants with Uta's aid, and she turns to face the boss.

"He's going down hard," she tells Uta confidently, and pops the cooldown she was saving for last, and Uta gets to witness her Epic attack come out, running towards the leader, then vaulting into the air. She seems to flip around as her legs gain rotational momentum and her heel -slams- into the boss hard. So hard. The fight's not over, but that was a savage blow, and she's still got that last cooldown pumping her DPS up into the stratosphere. Metaphorically. The goblin is not happy about this.

Uta has been clearing the path for Yeowang: rapid bursts of blows, effective both as a machine gun style mow down, as well as a terrifying battlecry, what with the associated 'ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta' sounds.

Uta has to stop to admire the final blow, leaving herself completely open to enemy attacks -- but it's okay, so do her opponent. The blow was that epic.

As soon as it is over, however, Uta, after the mandatory cheering, narrows her eyes at the remaining ragtag goblins. "SOOOOOOOOOOO. To finish that annihilation...", she says, cracking her knuckles. The rest of the goblins chase after her, but she's too quick; she's already jumped into the fray and has begun to pummel the boss, which soon shatters into colorful bits, dropping two symbols of power and one hat.

At this point, the underlings, terrified, decide to beat it.

As in, retreat, not as in, punching something.

Many succeed, but Uta manages to grab one of them by the collar.

Yanked back, he finds himself pulled by the lapels to be almost ouching Uta's face.

"Look at me," the Nurse says, pointing at the hat she's just collected (and worn). "I'm the captain now."

It was an exhausting fight, the cooldowns Yeowang had popped have caused her to go through her attacks much faster than usual, and now she's drained nearly all her endurance. But the boss is nothing more than pixels now, and the few remaining goblins are scattered and not a threat. She will, with Uta, clean up such remaining goblins as are too slow to get out while the getting is good, and the getting becomes ungood when her heel slams into a goblin, or a fist.

Once the goblins are all dealt with, she peers at Uta, and wonders, "Er, what are you doing?" She does look around for drops from the boss goblin, and picks up the goblin fist, looking it over curiously before putting it into her inventory. "Looks like this is the end of the line," she comments, in regard to the cart ride. "How do we get back, do you think?"

"I got this!", the Spriggan exclaims, finally punching the goblin into polygons.

Uta's swipes her inventory open, and unfolds a paper map, which reproduces the cart system that was hanging before the entrance. "...Now, to find the timetable of this subway system..."

...or should it be 'underground'?