Duty Session 13: Goblin Scouts in the Field

Kite stretches out his arms, readying himself up for the quest ahead. The Hunters Guild had a request placed in for Goblin Slaying, as the bandit-like critters had been spotted scouting out an older trading route in the free leagues.

He and a handful of other Adventurers had decided to put their heads together and get the issue taken care of, after all, the EXP and gold alone made doing it worthwhile with the in-game economy as it was. "Alright .. hopefully I won't need to use any of these potions, I'll need as many as I can."

He wasn't optimistic about Ezzo's current state of affairs, after all, when he finally was able to make his journey over there.

With that, Kite decides to rest again a tree in the wallered out spot at the side of the road, as everyone else finished their preperations, watching the drawn carts move along the dirt path.

The group that had gathered for the Goblin-hunt was possibly larger than normally, but with the reset that had happened, safety in numbers was a thing again. A BIG thing, especially with how much more real the whole world now felt. Plus, it was a way to possibly earn the coins needed to feed the many Adventurers in Alne.

So, Emiko had joined the pary, the fennec Cait Sith carefully following with the others. "I don't think any of us is a healer, but we have the numbers... as long as the groups are not too large we can gang up on the goblins..."

Kaleido barely spends time to rest between one quest and another, getting in a quick nap at most before getting right back out there, joining up with whatever group they find that's doing something worth experience or gold. They seem driven.

They are a little wary of Kite - having witnessed the confrontation with Balmung right after the start of all of this. But...

... Well, blame can be assigned later. Fixing all of this is more important, and to do that they need to climb the tower (maybe?), and to climb the tower they need experience and resources to get better gear.

And doing that means nuking some goblins. It's to be expected.

"I'm support, I've got heals," clarifies Kaleido. "And buffs. I'm missing the good ones I had, but Hero's Song and Guardian's Song will have to do."

A young cait-sith woman joined them on this assignment. She had been quietly observing the Hunter's Guild, people watching on a bench while others walked past. She was in starter gear like the rest, with only a simple black staff and a shapeless grey robe with a white blouse and skirt underneath.

She smiles underneath the cowl at Kaydon's grousing. "Let's try not to come to their attention too soon, whoever they are. But yes.. I can share the sentiment."

Ever since the disaster and realization that they were trapped in the game, Ragna has been going non-stop. With this quest all the same, he keeps moving with this party of adventurers, the human magic knight keeping his attention on his party members as well as the danger ahead.

"Lets play it safe rather than sorry."

Kite nods to Emiko, "Everything's better with friends." he adds.

He was more than aware that most were, to some extent, wary of him now. Balmung was a well respected member of the community, and any blame he assigned to Kite would be met with some level of face-value; still, he did his best to grin and bear it. "That'll be really useful!" he says to Kaleido, giving them a small thumbs up. "Hopefully this time, we won't run into another Lander trying to funnel the goblins down here to thwart the competition, huh?" he jokes to Kaydon.

Their peaceful trek onwards is short lived, as Kite realizes just too late that he'd just stepped onto a crude, rope tripwire. "Watch out!"

The nimble Twin Blade is able to force himself to the side, sommersaulting out of the way of a large, swinging tree trunk hidden up above that would have crushed and skewered him rather easily.

Unfortunately, most of the others didn't seem to have been so lucky.

And seemingly, just as they're trying to recover from such an awkward and painful waylay, the goblins themselves get the drop on them! The green fiends, wielding their crude and ill-maintained weaponry, charge the group. Kite acts quickly, drawing his dirks. "They're here!"

Using the edge of his weapon to knock an incoming sloppy axe chop to the side, Kite jabs the tip of his opposing dirk deep into the goblin's neck before pushing it away, launching a lightning fast, two-fer jab into the chest of a sword wiedling companion to the first goblin just a moment later, a small group of the beasts swooping down upon the entire group.

"The Gang Runs Into Every Trap"

Kaydon stumbles his way past several Goblin traps, managing to get himself stuck in an old rusty bear trap and also hanging upside down from a snare. Thankfully both times he is able to smash or cut his way loose with his trusty sword, though now he's realizing that he's using it for things it was never designed for, i.e. breaking traps. He's going to need to repair or replace it soon.

Eventually he finds his way into the midst of the Goblin patrol. Not a lot of them, but this is something he's much better prepared for. Sword at the ready, he charges into the goblin formation, transforming into his were fang form as he goes, howling out a battle cry as he swings his blade with abandon. This is more like it.

Goblins, Gretchen, whatever you wanted to call them they were a plague on fantasy settings after all. When there was a call to go deal with some? Gwen was very much down for it. What was not expecting it this while cautious and on her guard, she doesn't end up doing so well as she's assailed by various traps. She endures it and will push on but that one board trap caught her find the face and she's left with a wireframe deformed face for a bit.

"...Goblins..."

Then the goblins show up and that's when she gets to work the scouts would face her wrath as she starts chanting magic to twist the very Earth against the Goblin and she is ruthless.

"HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT YOU LITTLE GREEN MONSTERS?"

Traps. Of course there's traps. And goblins.

"All this low level stuff is wearing on me," complains the were fang as they apply a bit of spot healing as needed. "I miss dethroning and overthrowing god. Those were good times."

"By the way, have you all given any thought to-"

SUDDENLY, MORE GOBLINS

"Nevermind, talk later! OL REPTH! OL REPTH!"

The young woman is cornered by several goblins during the conflict when she gets enmeshed in one of the traps that spit a vicious smelling purple gloop that makes movement difficult and while she has no difficulty dealing with one or two, she ends up taking FAR more than she dishes out, especially when a missed block leads into a teeth-chattering shield slam that knocks her straight on her ass, straining her delicate ( and sensitive ) tail. She lets out an indignant yelp, limping to her feet in a hurry as she rolls up her volumnous sleeves.

She takes in a bracing breath and rubs a bleeding spot on her shoulder as the goblins cackle between eachother, looking like they have found easy prey. They are firmly disabused of this when they step into range again with a combination of awkward hacking cleaves and wide slashes that fail to hit the mark. Instead, the first and second get a face full of arcane energy while spikes of dark energy explode from the ground, trapping the rest long enough for her to get back out of range.

As Ragna walks, and the rest of the party announces the sudden arrival of a goblin party and thus, Ragna is surrounded by multiple goblins as he's shot in the shoulder with an arrow just barely touching him, but registering as a hit anyways on his person. "Damn." When he replies with a Concussive Blow, he just barely misses.

"Right...low leveled." Ragna narrows his eyes and tries to play it a little bit smarter, but keeping his blade set as he tries to attack again.

For the most part, Emico could evade the traps on the way, partly because of the nimbleness, partly because others were unlucky and stepped right into them.

Things don't change when the goblins appear, taking the group by surprise. Barely she manages to dodge backwards from a spear thrown at her. Within a moment or two, Emiko readies her weapon, the chain rattling free as she remoes the band that binds the flail head to its heft. "Focus your attacks!" her voice can be heard.

Instead of striking at the goblins themselves, her smash with the weapon goes right through the air, the head leaving behind a purple... no octarine line of flickering light, detonating into a shockwave that washed right into the group of greenskins, though it's not the most effective.

The goblins go down with varying degrees of success, blasted by magic or slaughtered by blade. Kite breathes easy, at least until they come upon their next adversary -- a stray goblin, a larger one of the beasts clad in rough looking iron armor and wielding both a sword and shield. If left to its own devices, it could spell real troble.

That's why they were going to have to take it down right here, right now. "Keep your guard up. It's no joke with how low our levels are."

Crouching low, Kite seemed to shimmer as he took off at high speed, flickering forward to bury his dirk in the creature's armpit as it fails to strike him with its sword, the weapon shearing away strands of Kite's bright blue hair in the process. The stray goblin howls, Kite wrenching back to tear his weapon out. "C'mon!"

It tries to batter Kite to the side with its shield, though the Twin Blade dances back out of range, absorbing the brunt of the blow with one of his dirks as it turns its attention on the rest of the party, charging shield first before delivering stabs and hacks with its blade, only /just/ more skilled than the barbarian-like goblins they'd fought moments prior.

Nureha keeps the initiative, taking Emiko's advice and focusing her attention on goblins that are closest to the other members of the party. She stands apart from them all, watching them handle the goblins while watching the movements of the goblins themselves as they poke and harry the adventurers.

While they are handling a bunch of stragglers, a much bigger and better armored (by virtue of having armor) goblin gets irritated enough with the fall of it's lackeys to come to the forefront. The golbins press forwards, railed by the stray goblin and start to overwhelm their positions.

She retreats back towards Kite, standing behind him as the stray goblin pivots into the rest of the party, trying to pull them down. It's a difficult slog with far more Goblins than could be expected. "There's probably a Cave nearby. It could be why there are so many in this area."

Though she offers no other information as to WHERE. That's probably going to be someone elses problem.

Ragna attempts to use Fine Needle on one of the goblins, though he misses by a narrow hair, though dodges when the creature attempts a counterattack. "No doubt. We need to play this smart, rather than reckless. Until we regain our higher levels, this is a very dangerous situation." He strikes again, his blade bouncing off the shield of his enemy, beforeh e counterattacks and strikes down not one, but two goblins with a twirl of his blade, blocking another's attack as he swerves backwards to gain some distance, cracking his neck.

"How many remain?" he calls out to the party.

"Have - OL REPTH!"

"Have you - THROW COIN!"

"- have you thought about the future of - PROTECT - of... agh, nevermind, I'll talk later!"

Kaleido's efforts in getting their marketing pitch out are hampered by the presence of GOBLINS. This is unfair.

The stray goblin falls under the weight of the wounds dealt to it over time, the party harrowed by the difficult opponent that had thrashed them with the timeless abilities of a sword and board.

It's not long afterwards that the injured group, most dwindling between half and three quarters HP. "Right," he says to the cait-sith, "If nothing else, it should be easier to find."

And eventually, this turns out to be the case, with the party confronted by a party variety of goblins and a skilled goblin swordsman, which turns into swift and brutal conflict. Thankfully, with the opposition being as direct as it is, most of the group has little trouble battering aside their foes.

    "TWIN DRAGON!"

Kite, with his dirks bursting with flame, is placed on the backfoot by the swift strikes of the swordsman, unable to get a blow in edgewise, sparks flying from the repeated blows. "Gh!"

Eventually, however, even that stalwart swordsman falls alongside his comrades under the combined strength of such a large party, leaving them to collect their payment in gold. "Well .. that could have gone better ... " he murmurs with a chuckle, rubbing the back of his head.

Tracking down the cave proves to be easier than Kaydon expected. You just have to know what to look for, when compared to the terrain around it. Once they find the cave, well, that's where the real fun begins.

Kaydon opts for his one handed longsword and shield combo, in order to ensure he doesn't find himself hitting the wall with his swings. Once he has both out, he maneuvers his way around inside of the cave, sword swinging and shield bashing.

Goblins are not a big threat until their numbers get too high. As long as you cull the herd early and often, it keeps them from becoming a problem. Kaydon intends to do exactly that, keep their numbers in check, at least so long as he continues to get paid to do it. He doesn't work for free, after all.

Gwen is on edge, it feels like these are not your standard JRPG goblins someone on the dev team? Had to be a D&D player of some sort it just reeked of it. She keeps fighting them and it goes not as well as she's like but she is digging into the Goblins. The fight results in her ending up beatup again, she's not having a good time of it, what is up with these goblins. Or has she become that bad? She's not sure but she's got to fight the ranger is brutal but Gwen finally gets her act in gear and uses Anchor Howl to keep it from hammering into her allies. She takes a lot of punishment but keeps the Ranger very nicely tied up.

"I hate... goblins so much."

An arrow slices across her arm, illiciting a pained HISS from underneath the cowl. A tail swishes with irritation from side to side as they reach into a pocket and fire something back at the ranger in response.

Before they can fire another arrow, the coin comically BONKS against their forehead, fouling their aim and setting them up to be attacked by the others. They find the rest of the goblins and clean out the remainder of the nest.

The woman sits down on the grass for a few minutes to catch her breath. "Well. That was.. bracing."

Twirling his weapon, before he comes back to the group to join them in their recovery. "No kidding." He replies to Kite. "We were -very- unprepared for that battle. It could have been rather terrible." He looks to Gwen. "Thank you, Gwen, for using Anchor Howl. You saved some of us from too much attention." he gives her a bow at the waist, before the Sleeping Knight looks over to Kite. "At least we succeeded and nobody fell."

At last, there's an end to the goblins.

Kaleido collapses, sitting on a convienient tree stump, catching their breath.

"Did... do you think... I mean, the future, the..."

"..."

Their carefully prepared marketing speech has gone right out the window.

"..."

"... You should invest in my stuff."

"Stuff?" The woman says from her seat on the grass. "I've always been in the market for stuff. Please.." she gives an encouraging smile, though it is chagrined. "Tell me more."

As he fight drags on, Emiko starts to loose count. "Some?!" she answers to Ragna as she asks for how many are still there. But it's not long after that the numbers dwindle, leaving the boss in the end. And then it falls too. She might be among those that were the most unhurt, having evaded most attacks, but still she was winded and tired. "This... ganging up was clearly the best way to deal with this. I mean, we pretty much... ran into them. If we would have been less, we might have been dead."

"I've got... a pitch meeting tomorrow where I'm going to go over more details," says Kaleido, once they've recovered a bit more (Ol Repth helps.)

"But the very short version is I'm setting up a multi-town merchant network."

"Before this all went down, I had planned to start out as a tamer. I mean, tame pets and rides. Well, now... the market might have changed but I surely will try that again." Emiko chimes upon Kaleido's business suggestion.

Gwen says "Not a problem Ragna, it's my job I am a tank after all." She grins a little bit and looks at Ragna again as she scoops up her drop. "Yes, right now I'd stick to oversized parties given the risks we're all facing better to storm it in numbers then bring too few. I don't want to be the first to find out what happens when one of us 'dies' right? So you got a project? Most of my efforts are going into getting leveled back up and helping plan the rescue op."

"Well, we need better gear to tackle the tower... and better gear costs money - not to mention trying to fix the area around the tower up so that we don't have to trek all the way from another city each time..."

"... This... isn't going to be a short rescue mission, if the farthest we've gotten in the tower is level 10 out of 100, and that was before everyone's levels got reset."

"You're also forgetting," Kaydon adds, "That was the Debauchery Tea Party that made it to ten. Those guys are legendary tier raiders. The average player couldn't even hope to compete with them. Even with the boss on ten fixed, the chances of putting together a group that good again are slim to none."

Kaydon has reverted back to his human form from his were fang form at this point.

Ragna looks at Gwen with a soft nod. When she agrees with him about not dying. "I'd rather not experience death as best as I can. All the same, stick to numbers so if you do fall, people can be revived by a healing potion." He then looks at Kaleido. "We best not even think about tackling a Tower Level until we get some new and fresh gear. Not to mention, we'll want numbers and multi-talented party members if we want to have the best chance we can have."

Smarter, not harder.

But, all the same, he looks then to Kaydon. "The Debauchery Tea Party is not the only legendary-tier guild to clear a level, Kaydon. Perhaps the most talented, but if I recall, the player Shiroe is also trapped here, along with Naotsugu. To assume that we are in perhaps the worst available position with no hope of recovery is to fall into despair, which is truly the worst scenario."

Seems Ragna, a famous player in his own right, was going to step up in his own right. "If we all pull our weight, and keep going, we'll make it."

"No. It is not going to be a short mission, I'm afraid." She gets up and walks over to Kaleido. "I'm surely looking forwards to your meeting, though."

She looks at the others. Her gaze lingers on Kite longer than strictly neccessary. "And you are quite right, Ragna.. if we all pull our weight, we'll make it."

Gwen looks over to Kaleido. "Eh I'm not talking about the tower, I'm talking about the players in Ezzo, or are you planning to leave them to their fate? I don't give a damn about the tower. The Tenth boss is bugged anyway. It's bloody suicide to be blunt. Also have you not PowerPoint about that /boss/ not from the Tea Party but another guild's run. I want to see what this world has to offer once we handle the evauation of Ezzo."

Most names just don't say anything to Emiko, as a relative newbie to the game. "At least the town offers housing, if it has to be fixed up a little. We make it a little more safe with these hunts, but as long as nothing comes out of the tower, it should be safe for the moment. Maybe kicking off the economy again to make the needed gear for those that want to try the tower might be of a priority concearn?"

"Do you have friends as well over in Ezzo?" The cowled Cait Sith looks over at Gwen. "Because I agree that something should be done." her eyes sweep across the assembled adventurers. "Though what it is seems up for debate. Economy.. combat.. housing.. there are all merits to each of these."

"They supposedly fixed the boss on the tenth." Kaydon says to Gwen, "But it's pointless to worry about it now when any of us would get slaughtered upon stepping food in the tower right now."

He sighs and rubs his face a little bit, wiping some sweat off. "So yeah, we need to keep doing what we're doing, working on getting levels and gears and helping out the Landers however we can since they're the ones who'll provide us with both of those things."

"And the food. Don't forget the food they provide. Though possibly us from 'Overseas' need to find ways to sort out the living situations in Alne while many still want to return to the other kingdoms."