Duty Session 144: The Vanishing Forest

As seems common in the new expansion, a special event seems to have appeared with the start of the Living Green Festival. An area of unusual plant growth has appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, driving the Hunters Guild to send out Adventurers to examine the odd occurance.

Being a person who craves new discovery, Mikage can't quite leave special events like these alone. She has sent out a public party invite, allowing anyone to join up in the quest.

The group begins to gather on a road leading southward. The place seems as if it had once been a dead and empty expanse, but now there are vines and new growth clinging to the trees and low scrub. In the past, many have reported that it was impossible to pass this way.

However, for now, the road is open.

Lush thriving growth is not really a Nightmare's scene... But what mysterious force that could be causing it is certainly enough to perk Kauchemar's curiousity all the same. She arrives in her usual fashion, heralded by the clomp of hoofbeats and whisps swirling dust and leaves through the air from her speed as she comes to a stop at the starting point. Being able to run most places has it's perks, and saves on the cost of peko rentals.

"Just as long as this doesn't turn into a plant version of A Small World, with everything super cutesy and singing in adorable yet oddly disturbing tones."

Goldenblade shows up, having heard the call, and is eager to join, particularly given the special event nature. "Hey!" she calls as she arrives, looking around the area. Not much of a nature person, she doesn't make any immediate association, but it does look ... different. She bows to Mikage, offers, "Good morning!" and seems eerily bright and chipper. She possibly is that strangest of all freaks, a morning person.

"I hope not." Mikage agrees with Kauchemar's sentiment.

The Ranger gives a nod to both nightmare and warrior, "Thanks for coming. I know it's early, but I don't like sitting on quests like these for too long. Especially if there's anything interesting to find from them."

With that, she begins following the road southward. The road ends at a small dock which heads of finto a murky looking bog. It appears to be some kind of puzzle. There are any number of ways for people to try to figure out which direction might be the right one to go, to avoid finding themselves sunk into the bog.

"Looks like we'll need to be careful. The ground here looks solid, but seems pretty unstable."

Goldenblade chuckles at the idea of a ETO rendition of It's a Small World, with interspecies folk dancers and strange instruments. But she sighs as the road sinks into a bog fairly quickly, and says, "This must be some new thing." She changes clothes after a few moments of fumbling at the menu, and proceeds in a Gwen-provided bathing suit. Because wearing wet chainmail for the next 2 weeks would completely suck. She starts in, tapping her toe ahead of her to check the ground, and will try to wade through without stepping into the soft mud or getting sucked down. She looks around for alligators.

Kauchemar smiles lazily at Mikage. "Technically it's late for me," says the creature of the night. "But curiousity tends to win over the potential sleep deprivation!"

The trek down the road starts dull, but her attention perks up as they come to a bog. "Oh, well this is not what I expected. THough I suppose it counts as flourishing."

A shrug, and Kauchemar reachs down to tap the bound scroll on her belt. The spectacles of spectral fire flare to life around her eyes, using her divination abilities to see which spots are solid and which are not. After that, her long legged stride makes it easy enough to step from one to the other to reach the opposite end.

"I tend to sleep at odd hours, myself." Mikage admits. "I usually end up being on night watch, which means I grab sleep whenever I can during the day." Which can lead to her keeping some very strange hours.

As the group starts heading into the bog, it becomes clear that there are telltale signs of which directions are safe to go, and others are not. Mikage tends to move forward by using a stick to reach forward and prod the platforms and see if they have any give to them or not. Kauchemar leans on those magical abilities, able to sense which ones might be unstable, while Goldenblade uses her own feet.

Between the three of them, they are able to easily discern which directions are bad, and which lead forward through the bog.

Of course, that seems to take them to the start of yet another puzzle. A thick, dense forest that seems to be filled with enough trees that it is hard to really track their way. At first, it seems simple, but then they end up right back in a familiar clearing near the start of the forest. "What the..."

Miki looks around, "Great, it's a puzzle forest."

Goldenblade wades out of the swamp and into a thicket, which turns out to be more than that. Not exactly trackless, the track is there, but in fact it's more of a maze than a track, and she pauses, unable to guess at the way forward. She looks to the others, stamps a foot down, and seems to listen for the echoes, but a puzzled expression crosses her face. "I don't know," she admits, and looks to Kauchemar and Mikage.

"Oh, joy," is Kauchemar's remark as they exit the bog, and into a forest maze. "This is turning into one of those places where the magic is purposely trying to stall you. Well, there is one way to deal with a maze -- just try all the ways until you find one!" Which with the equinoid takes off at a gallop, once again putting her messenger speed to use.

Just not very good use, as she ends up going around in circles multiple times, double backing several more, and eventually is just going to find the way by sheer dumb happenstance.

There are times when no matter how clever the Adventurers, the puzzle is just that much more difficult to make up for it. Many parts of the maze simply don't seem to make sense. They might take a path East, only to find themselves arriving from the North to a familiar patch of forest. Someone who had more cartography skill might be able to map all the strange ways that the forest jumps them around, but none of those gathered seem to be that skilled in it.

Eventually, after what seems like hours, it is by sheer dumb luck that they manage to find themselves free of the continuously repeating forest. However, what they find is an area that seems to be darkened somewhat. Everything seems to have been cast in a gray-scale look, with the leaves blackened and everything seeming withered.

"This... doesn't seem right." Mikage speaks for the obvious as they approach a strange looking structure that resembles a barrow. The inside of the structure is a mess of tangled vines, with strange objects strewn within it.

"I sense something is throwing off nature here." The Ranger explains, looking to the others. "We need to find anything that might be the cause of it."

Goldenblade nods agreement with Kauchemar, lost in the maze. She sighs as, at long last, she stumbles out of the maze, and with the help of a sword repurposed as a machete. The sight of the clearing with the small stone structure is a welcome sight after the maze of hedges, but the sight of the locks draws a sigh. She replies to Mikage, "That's no lie," about something throwing off nature. But she produces a set of small tools from a beltpouch and moves up to one lock at random. "I don't even know how I know this," she admits. "But I'm not complaining. It's got to be something in here, right?" She works the tools in one lock, pops the container open, then goes to work on the next. "One of these ought to have something we can use," she suggests.

Mainly through sheer luck the little group find the way to the exit and move on. Kauchemar almost immeadiately notes the dulling colors of the foliage around them. "This place is starting to look more my style... and that's probably not a good thing, hah!" she quips with a bit of self-depreciating humor. Even as she flicks one of the faded leaves, causing it to dissolve into dust. "Seriously though, something is draining the natural energies from this area. Almost like its.."

Cue brows raising at the sight of the burrow and it's overrun disarray. "Cursed." With a snort she shifts to her less statuesque human form so they can all fit inside to examine. Fortunately curses are something she is intimately familiar with, and after a bit of shuffling through stuff finds some manner of magic rod that she yanks free of the gnarled vines binding it. "Found one! Looks like it was a cursed wand of growth."

Kauchemar walks back outside, shifts back to her full form, and snaps the rod between her hands. Then drops it on the ground and stomps it under her hoof a few times to make sure it's good and broken and useless. Dusts her hands off afterwards. "That takes care of that."

"I think cursed is exactly the problem." Mikage comments as she starts to look through the various strange objects. She isn't exactly an expert at these matters, but by touching various ones, she eventually manages to find one that causes her to jolt her hand back.

One by one, the members of the party are able to distinguish a number of items that seem to be cursed among the tangled vines. Each of them coming away with at least one strange oddity to be destroyed.

As soon as the magic is gone, the leaves begin to change, shifting back to their original color, as if the world were coming back to life.

As they continue through the forest, it starts to grow thicker from this point onwards. It almost becomes difficult to walk, with dense underbrush and strange plants. "This might be what the Hunters Guild was talking about. They wanted us to see if we could collect any unusual plants." The Ranger, despite her connection to nature, seems as if she isn't exactly knowing on the subject. "Let's just gather up whatever we can."

Then, she hesitates, "But watchout for the vines. They almost look like they're... moving."

Goldenblade hrms as Kauchemar finds and destroys some magic rod. She, too, has found some magic gewgaw, locked in a safe, and it is left in a small, burning pile in a little firepit. She looks around as Mikage mentions collecting plants, and says, "I'm more worried about them collecting us." But investigating further, and proceeding on with the others into the forest, she uses what supernatural senses she does possess to walk face-first into the moving vines Mikage warned her about. There is a thrashing, and her sword emergest from a clump of vines, and after a struggle manages to cut herself loose.

Kauchemar is no Herbologist, but she has enough of a resonance with earthly elements to still feel an off vibe about the place. "That sounds like a good reason to keep my distance," she notes.

That doesn't mean she won't be helping though. Kauchemar releases her Binder Sword, charging it with negative energy and sending it chopping through the overgrowth. Then just picks up whatever is left behind, since she can't tell one thing from the other. The Hunter's Guild can sort out what's what, since they're the ones asking for it.

The sword is doing a fine job, probably because it doesn't have a weilder for the plants to grab onto, and being a spirit posessed metal object, is difficult to poison or spit acid at or whatever else predatory plants do.

The plants around them seem to give the party more trouble than they are worth. Every time they come close, something grabs at them, snaps at them, or tries to tie them up in vines. It means that they spend precious energy trying to ward off plantlife, rather than gathering the requested materials.

Enough to leave them with slightly lowered health-bars and combined with their earlier wanderings, a very noticable exhaustion effect.

As the journey seems to be coming to a close, the group comes to what appears to be the heart of the forest. A massive tree stretches skyward, the branches vanishing into the canopy. The tree seems to show many signs of past visits, with many carved symbols in the bark.

However, most concerning is that there is a giant chunk taken out of one side, as if by a very large axe. A very large axe that is currently dangling from the hand of a large ogre who steps out from the trees, adjusting his loincloth.

His nose twitches, the ogre grunting at the scent of Adventurers. "Uh... that's trouble." Mikage comments, reaching back for her bow.

Goldenblade struggles to pass the undergrowth, and when she does, she looks around, even as we pass yet deeper into the not-so-peaceful forest. She looks over to Mikage, looks up at the ogre, and mutters, "holy crap that's huge." But it's going to be a fight and no mistake, so she'll rush forward and pop her cooldowns, leading off with a massive first strike combination that chews into the gian't health bar. She keeps at it, doing her best to avoid it's counters and stepping lively as she stabs and slices with a frenzied almost-panic. "C'mon, you big ham," she growls, "Die already!"

Kauchemar huffs a bit. She's the least hurt of the trio, being the one that used a long-distance means to get through, and being fairly sturdy in endurance in general. She is starting to feel a bit winded from all the wandering around in that maze before though. She may be a quick footed messenger but she's not without her limits.

Nostrils flare as, much like the ogre itself, she catches a scent before they actually reach the center of the clearing around the massive tree he was trying to chop. "For celeste's sake, someone needs a bath!" Though when she actually lays eyes on the behemoth lumberjack she perks up, clapping her hands together. "Oh, excellent! Let's give you something you can't so easily cut through!"

The Nightmare digs a hoof into the ground to brace herself, clenches her arms in focus, and opens her mouth in that horrificly disjointed as if to yell as she tends to do. Except this time it isn't a yell, as again she spews out a cluster of darkness that takes the shape of barbed tendrils that grab onto whatever they can with crushing enervating force.

As the group sets to the task of dealing with the Ogre, it ends up being a bit of a trying experience. There are only three of them and they are already suffering from a level of fatigue. Still, together, they are able to muster up enough to drive the Ogre all the way down to the final health bar.

It is at that point that a rage mechanic seems to begin, and the Ogre turns, starting to chop into the tree. If the tree is the heart of the forest, then they cannot let it be destroyed! Luckily, with the monster's back turned to them, they are able to burn it down quickly with some of their most powerful attacks, causing it to give one final cry before it topples over and bursts into colorful motes of light.

Panting softly, Mikage's expression shifts from serious determination into a smile as she approaches. "Looks like we finished it off just in time." She approaches the tree, setting her hand onto it, only to have her hand come free with a sticky substance.

"Huh?" She sniffs at it, then rubs the amber goo between her fingers. "This... might be useful for something." With that, she takes out a vial which she must have gotten from Cyrus at some point in the past, and uses it to try to collect some of the sap for later.

Goldenblade is panting from the frantic DPS check that burning the boss down had turned into, and looks on as Mikage collects the sap. "Useful?" she wonders, and will collect some herself. "I can only wonder. Still," she muses, "It won't be the strangest thing I've collected here." She looks to Mikage and Kauchemar. "Still, not a bad day's work, I think."

Kauchemar huffs. She's really feeling it now, but job well done. She leans against the tree. "If I had to hazard a guess, this tree is literally the heart of this mysterious wandering forest. That it was damaged is probably how that corrupted burrow and the swarming plants were able to... take root." She snickers a little at her own bad joke.

Then grimaces as, in being tired, she didn't realize there was sap dripping from where the elder tree was damaged until she gets up from her break and it's stuck all over her arm. "Ugh. Gross, but probably useful." She'll scrape it off and into a storage object on the way back out.