Duty Session 108: Spinner's End

With the work on Scale Emblem HQ running into some supply issues, members of the Alliance have been tasked with heading out into the field to see if they can't secure necessary material. The abandoned mine outside of Alne is as good a place as any; after all, it wasn't left to rot because it had suddenly run dry of useful minerals, but because the place had become home to a sizable infestation of eight-legged nightmares.

Prophylaxis, newly promoted as he is, leads this particular expedition with a small amount of trepedition. He's not /afraid/ of spiders per se, but he's keenly aware of what their venom can do to a body, and would really rather like to avoid being bitten if at all possible.

It's probably a bit of an ask, but that's why he's packed a whole box full of antivenom for the trip.

"Everyone ready?" Prophylaxis asks, standing at the yawning mouth of the main shaft. Thick, sticky spiderwebs hang from the walls like morbid lace curtains. The good doctor looks at them with a thoughtful grimace, then begins whisking the webs around his staff, gathering them all up in a fluffy cloud of spider goo. "I'm not looking forward to this... Who had the bright idea of putting a /spider cave/ in a VR game...?"

Hisame stretches out, working her arms back and forth while standing in front of the various webs and bits and bobs. Eventually she ties her hair back into a bun, using bits of leather she'd usually tie potions up with. When she's finished, a bandana is tied around it, tightened then fiddled with so as little hair as possible is hanging out for the spider webs to get stuck to.

"I promise not to try and eat any for the experience of it." Is all she offers at first. Then realizing how odd a joke that is, shrugs and says, "Nevermind, it was a joke- I'm ready when you guys are." and adds as an after thought, "Giant spiders are a staple in fantasy. It's a boring idea's what it is."

The Alliance needing more material resources was more than enough reason for Vertina to go spelunking in a mine. That and certainly there will be something that needs beating up along the way, if it's infested with things like spiders.

"Spiders are pretty typical type of enemy from what I understand. Right there with rats and slimes." Vertina just grabs some of the webbing in a fiery hand and disintergrates it. Shakes off the remaining ash. "What she said. Not very original... but the easiest way to flesh out lower floors of the tower and save the weird stuff for later, I suppose."

She's not strictly a tank but being a daredevil she has no problem hopping ahead in the lead. "Let's get this duty rolling!"

"I mean, you know spiders distant relatives of crabs, right?" Prophylaxis asks with a bit of a shrug. "So maybe they wouldn't taste too awful? Though that said, they don't exactly have musculature. Spider legs are all just a bunch of hydraulically driven limbs, so they're probably really gooey on the inside. Might be good fried, or in a stew, or something? I don't know, I'm no cook."

What the party finds in the first of the tunnel's wider chambers is not a spider, however. It's... Something. It sure is Something. It's a big, flesh-colored thing with a too-big mouth and teeth like tombstones. It seems to be chewing on a very human femur, even as its beady, blood-red eyes scan over toward the adventurers as they enter its spiderweb-laden chamber.

"Nope," Prophylaxis declares as the monster makes to stand. He hurls a barrage of fiery bolts in a spectacular array of pyrotechnics. The beast recoils at the flame, and then begins screaming (in a tone that sounds way too much like a giant, upset baby) as the fire spell smashes into it. Curtains of spiderweb catch fire and fall across its exposed skin, cooking it like a coal-roasted pig. "I did not sign up to deal with any form of nightmare other than the eight-legged variety, thank you very much."

Vertina scampers around one of the work tables and hustles along, only coming to a stop when the... beast guarding the other end of the room comes into clear view. "Is that... suppose to be some kind of dog? Looks more like a giant mole rat." That's shudder inducing.

She looks around, and spots one of the satchels of stuff left behind when the miners flee. Gets her toes under it and flips it into the air in front of her. "Whatever it is..." As it drops back down she twists to slam her foot into it, kicking the object towards the beast as it's ignited by her Salamander Fire-Fu.

Hisame IS a tank and is more than happy to just walk over to the weird fleshy monster and use the blade of her scythe in a low sweeping slice, angling the blade to catch the creature and lift, holding it in place for all of those fireballs to impact it.

"I mean I know they're related to crab and all that- I'm sure they even taste finee prepared properly. I'm just happy going for simple ramen though."

Giant man-eating naked mole rat or not, nothing with skin that exposed can survive being set on fire as thoroughly as the party has been able to manage. Hisame might be a tank, but there's very little she needs to actually tank aside from the monster's increasingly desperate flailing as its boy cooks from the outside in. In the moments before Prophylaxis' and Vertina's fire reduces the beast to a flurry of blood red pixels, one can pick up the /very/ distinctive scent of cooking flesh.

It smells like pork. Delicious...?

"Well that was unpleasant," Prophylaxis says as he presses on through the corridor. "Let's hope it was guarding something worthwhile and not just another dead end?"

Not quite. The tunnel immediately past the smoldering embers that used to be a monster is... winding. It goes on for a long, long time, and Pro wonders whether they're ever going to run into anything spiderlike at all. For all the web in their way, they haven't encountered many arachnids yet-- though the reason could very well be what they find at the end of the winding mineshaft.

"Flooded," Pro says with a huff. The tunnel very clearly continues through the water, but anyone who knows anything about cave diving would be able to tell you just how dangerous it can be. "Anyone have any ideas? I'm tempted to just part the waters as best I can, and hope that it might clear a path."

With the 'beast' dealt with the trio can continue deeper into the mine. The sound of rushing water is maybe a strange thing to hear down here, but the reason becomes apparent when they come to the flooded passage. "Okay, this wasn't expected." She leans forward a little to look farther down. "Hmmm." A good adventurer is always prepared. Especially when she's the sort that prefers more impressive stunts. Vertina pulls out a grappling rope as she steps back, twirling it at her side a few times. "I wonder how deep it is?" She flicks the hook end into the water, intending to just let it sink to the bottom to get a rough estimate of depth.

One of the fish swimming around gets a different idea when it sees light glint off the sinking hook. The whopper has gnarly jaws more than big enough to chomp down on the hook and take off in a rapid swim.

Vertina blinks as the rope abruptly twangs out at an angle instead of sinking straight down. "That's not what's suppose to happe--ACK!" She's cut off by the splash as she's yanked into the pool, being towed into whatever underwater passage it is her unintentional catch is barreling down!

The imp didn't really need to tank it, but she does enjoy taking point. Besides, she was clearly doing a stand in for a barbecue spit, if the smell's anything to go by.

"I figure it wasn't guarding anything, it was probably just here. Like here to eat kind of thing. It's a trash pull." Hisame shrugs, poking the water with the butt of her polearm and swirling the water up while thinking.

"I mean" she starts, "Instead of parting the water why not just give yourself a bubble head sort of thing and wander around that way? Or change the currents to speeed along or something. Seems easier." Which she then does, because the fish is yanking oe of the party along and she'd better catch up just in case.

"I mean, sure, if you want to be /practical/ about it," Prophylaxis says with a disappointed huff. "I was going to push all the water aside and then freeze it all in place and make us a corridor through the pool, but I /guess/ what you said makes more sense--"

And then Vertina is abruptly yanked into the pool by some kind of ridiculous cave-fish. Prophylaxis has barely enough time to curse his platformer-trained reflexes as he reaches out to grab hold of her ankle just as she tumbles in. "MRRRGLGLGLGRL!" Prophylaxis babbles through the freezing, crystal-clear water as he conjures a bubble of air around each of their heads (even Hisame's, who should probably try to catch up as soon as she can). The fish- or whatever it is- takes them through a twisting, zig-zagging underwater channel, slamming the adventurers up against limestone walls and into jagged rock before suddenly leaping /out/ of the water. Vert and Pro are thrust bodily into the air, and manage to catch sight of their makeshift ride. It's... majestic. Some kind of gemstone-encrusted dolphin-like creature with a massive tusk on its forehead that glitters like diamond. Some kind of... Stone Narwhal. A Stonewhal, you might say.

"Guh!" Pro grunts as he hits the ground. The Stonewhal falls back into the pool and swims away, having slipped free of Vert's fishing hook. Hisame needs to dodge the creature's retreat if she wants to avoid being impaled by its tusk, but can follow its path easily enough to where the others have ended up.

Which is, as it so happens, a distinctly square-shaped chamber... With no readily visible exit, just a whole bunch of weird rock formations. There are indications, however, that someone must have passed through here recently-- the spiderwebs are torn in places, and the dust seems to have been disturbed here and there. "Ughhh," Pro groans as he pushes himself back upright. "Anyone get the number on that truck?"

He pauses as he peers at the room, casting a quick fire spell to help light things up a little bit. "...Looks like a dead end. Or maybe there's a secret passageway here...?"

Hisame is swimming. Slowly. She really should have tried to grab the free ride when she had a chance. She does dodge out of the way of that horn, getting knocked around getting a string of not-so-nice things said about it, muffled by the bubble and water.

Surfacing some short time after, she mutters a few more times and hauls herself otu of the water.

With absolutely no skill whatsoever in picking locks or even pretending that she can, she instead starts to fiddle with the stones, fingers running over them and eventually just trying to kick them. When all else fails, percussive maintenance or... something.

When the fish starts to dive deeper into the flooded tunnels Vertina lets go of the rope, and paddles her way back up to the surface. Swimming was not one of her better workouts but eventually she drags herself onto the dry land. "Well not what I intended but what works works right?" She pulls her jacket off for a moment and twists it between her hands to wring it out, but otherwise just lets her natural fiery disposition dry herself off. "So, now what? Another dead end?" She squints, trying to tune in on things less visible to the normal world... but then yelps as her concetration is broken, instead hopping to the side on one foot while shaking the other leg.

The only thing she finds is the small fish that eventually flops out of her judogi pants, splatting about before finally floundering back into the water.

It's pure luck that they manage to find what they're looking for. Pure luck, and the judicious application of a whole lot of poking around. Eventually, Hisame manages to locate a strange looking set of runes, delicately etched into the stone by some ancient hand. It might be Alvish? It's hard to say, with how worn down they are. But they /are/ arranged in an arc, as if marking the presence of a doorway.

From there, Pro is able to apply literal magic to it and convince the runes to light up and the gate to open. Illuminated as they are, their meaning can be discerned: the runes spell 'friend' in Alvish...!

But nobody here can read Alvish, so the meaning is lost. Still! The cavern wall seems to fade away, revealing a path that leads even deeper into the earth. "Looks like we've got our way forward," Pro says with a quick glance back at Vertina's sudden yelp. "You okay back there? Let's take a sec to dry off and then get underway, huh?"

There's nothing dangerous in /this/ room at least, right? It's a good place to take a brief breather.

But afterwards... There's only one way to go, and it leads to somewhere both terrible and not at all unexpected. The tunnel leads to... webs. Lots and lots of webs. The webs coat the floor, they stick to boots and shoes, they... They're everywhere... and so are the eggs. Great, web-covered eggsacs hang from the far wall, promising the birth of a nightmarish swarm of spiderlings just waiting to be born.

And... Hanging above them are what must be their parents. A pair of giant spiders, legs curled up as if sleeping... For now, anyway. If they're disturbed, who knows what they might do?

"Careful now," Prophylaxis murmurs, weaving the beginnings of a spell under his breath. "I think I can shroud us-- or at least slow the spiders down if it comes to that, but ideally we can just... make it through without any trouble."

Or they can just set the place on fire. That could work too.

Moving on!.. Though not very far, as they end up in more webbing. At least it's not more water. As exciting as that stunt was, Vertina would rather not get drenched a second time in the same duty.

"If you can keep them from not acting up, that's great." Vertina clenches her fists, causing them to ignite in flames once more. "I'll clear us a path through so we can hurry." And continues from there, until her entire form is glowing in the fiery aura. Which allows Vertina to just charge her way through, burning webbing out of the way to make a path, and headbutting down any big spiders dumb enough to get in her way.

Hisame looks at the runes and slowly reaches up to poke a few of them just to see what happens. "Figure it reads 'Open Late" or something?" Before stepping through the gateway. There's a lot of spiders. She pauses and scowls. "Well. That's a great sight."

Her initial thought would have been poison. Lots of it, but they're deep in the mine and that would probably be counter productive. Or does it follow video game logic? She's distracted by the idea as she tries to conjure up darkness to suppress the area. It's not particularly effective, the blobs of darkness blobbing off to the side before she can correct the spell. "Oops." is all she can think of to acknowledge it.

'Keeping them from acting up' is a simple task, relatively speaking, especially when there's a considerable amount of fire spreading throughout the complicated network of webs. The scent of smoke appears to rouse the spider parents, whose legs unfold and whose many eyes begin scanning the tunnel for threats. While Hisame's darkness doesn't do much to shroud their presence, it does add to the smoke to make the flame seem much more widespread than it actually is. The spiders initially look ready to spring at the party, but a wall of entangling brambles springs from the stone at Prophylaxis' command, the many vines bristling with poisonous thorns. It's enough of a deterrent to convince the spiders that escaping with their eggsacs is much more preferable to fighting a bunch of adventurers in a burning tunnel. The creatures hiss and leap for their precious eggs, tear the sacs from the walls and then take off down an adjacent tunnel.

Meanwhile, Vertina's fire clears a separate passageway of a massive tangle of webs. "Let's go down this way?" Pro suggests, not wanting to risk setting himself on fire by following the spiders through the still-smoldering nest.

The new tunnel is... ominous. Humanoid remains litter the ground and some semi-liquefied skeletons dangle from cradles of thick webbing, their mining helmets still firmly set atop their heads. Prophylaxis grimaces at the sight, but proceeds regardless. Eventually, the tunnel opens up into a vast, vaulted chamber. The walls are positively plastered in webbing, upon which a veritable army of tiny spiders crawl and spin. This is not the main threat-- that designation belongs to the enormous arachnid that falls from the ceiling at the center of the room. It has... too many eyes, and too-large fangs that drip a venomous, radioactive-green ichor. "I think," Pro observes as he regards the boss-- and the corrosive venom that scorches craters in the stone where it falls-- and frowns, "That we've found the boss. Hisame!" He offers the tank a few potion bottles. "You'll need some antivenom I think! I'll hit it from as far off as I can stand."

A few sparks fly from clawed feet scraping against stone as Vertina skids to halt her momentum after barging into the next chamber. She pulls a few lingering strands of spider silk off her horns before looking around.

There's a massively ugly spider monsters in the room and clearly it doesn't like visitors.

"Finally! The source of the infestation and something actually worth fighting!" Vertina is probably one of the few people -happy- to see a big threatening boss, but that's why she's here. "Time to squash you like a giant boot!"

The Salamander darts into the fray while her teammates are prepping, but it's not quite as ignorant of the Boss's threat as it might seem. She's just not the sort to stand around fussing over matters like extended strategy, being the thrillseeker that she is. When the Boss vomits up poisonous gunk she vaults over the splatter, leaping high into the air in the process.

"SHINING AXE!"

Using the momentum to somersault foward and bring her foot, alight with focused ki energy, smashing down on top of the spider boss with the aerial axe kick!

Hisame pauses and says flatly, "What a wonderful new smell we've discovered. Nevermind the view." She lifts her scythe, adjusting her grip so that she can take a run forward, taking a quick moment to pocket the anti-venoms before dashing forward. She doesn't really do the graceful thing and instead just hatchet chops the spider with the scythe blade, burying the thing deep into the chitin before adjusting her grip and yanking hard to drag the creature closer. Where she then punches it, avoiding the bites from the giant critter by leaning into the pole of her scythe, keeping it at the proverbial arm's length.

There's a bit of green, glowing goo vomited up by the creature, which to be fair, is better than what she'd figure it would be. It's just poisonous, smells bad and itches right now. She can chug an antidote AND she doesn't have to try and repair acid eaten armor. She does meet that attack with a firm kick to the teeth with her armored boot though. "Knock it off and die already." She growls out and finishes with a sharp twist and yank of that scythe blade.

"Ugh," Prophylaxis says with a flat glare as Vertina vaults right into the boss monster. "DPS, I swear. I don't actually have rez spells you know! If you stand in the templates, there's nothing I can do about it!"

Fortunately there really isn't much that needs to /be/ done. The giant spider clearly does not expect the level of violence that these adventurers are able to bring to the table-- especially not when one of them has made abundant preparations for just the kind of threat that this monster poses. Arathrog manages to land its corrosive, venomous spittle once or twice, but Prophylaxis quickly follows up with an antivenom potion, hurled with the same accuracy with which every Latin mother wields their chanclas.

With the neutralization of its potent venom, Arathrog is vulnerable to being outright grappled and punched repeatedly in the face by the other two party members. Hisame and Vertina savage the monster with little fear of repercussion, and Prophylaxis occasionally hurls a sizable nuke right on top of the beast between potion-tossing. By the time the creature dissolves into so many pixels, the battlefield is utterly ravaged by flame.

...Revealing what looks to be a runic <<Dungeon Gate>> circle emblazoned upon the ground. "Well," Prophylaxis says as a certain item appears in each of their inventories. He examines it with a quick flurry of hand gestures-- and nods. "Looks like we got what we came for. Might not have been metal, but I'm sure nobody will care that we're building walls out of spider chitin, right? Heck, we're the Scale Emblem Alliance! Spider chitin is /almost/ scales, right!?"

When it's all said and done Vertina scrapes her foot on the floor a few times to clean bug goop off of it. "I knew exactly what I was doing Doc, no worries." For the most part. Her tendancy for jump kicks and flying punches kept her out of most of the templates at least. "Glad you had the antivenom on hand all the same."

She picks up one of the chunks of spider exoskeleton, giving it a firm shake before slipping it into her inventory. "Better to make use of what we have than whine about what we don't."

Hisame looks at the dead critter and gives it a solid kick. Mutters to herself, then sighs and looks back over her shoulder, "Wait, we're building with this? Wouldn't it be easier to pull some of the spare support beams or-... nevermind." She shakes her head and tries to avoid the logic of using spider bits for wall bits.

Yanking her scythe, she flicks the blade, clearing the spider goo away and turns to the other two. "Ready when you are. I need a bath."