Duty Session 168: Gnoll it All

A powerful Berserker gnoll and his allies have been wreaking havoc through the low-level forest areas at night. The Adventurer's guild needed a brave, capable, cunning, and reliable Adventurer to organize a party against this menace.

Instead, they got Uta.

A few invites were sent out to her contacts, and soon a small party was assembled. Once everyone has arrived, she starts pacing in front of the group, and begins, "Gentlemen. You might be wondering 20286=why I've gathered you here tonight." Her expression explodes in an uncountenable smile. "OH MAN, I've always wanted to 20286=say that!" She then looks down at the group and frowns. "Wait. There are no gentlemen in this group... ah well, close enough." She clears her voice, and resumes in a more serious tone, so well delivered one might actually believe she /does/ have leadership capabilities. As soon as she's done with a quick summary of the situation, she's interrupted by a howl. "...ok, I guess it's time to stop briefing, and start sneaking our way past the guards. Well, either that, or wrangle 'em full on. Up to you." She starts sneaking towards the direction the howls comes from, but turns one last time. "Oh, sorry, I forgot the round of introductions -- feel free to take care of those, but, shhhhh." One finger is placed vertically across her lips, and she continues in a whisper with exaggerated mouth movements, "Do it quietly."

Kauchemar just rubs her temples with a hand a few times. Uta is being... Uta. And it looks like her, Jaz, and whoever this vulpine is have been dragged into making sure the Spriggan doesn't get herself lost. Or killed. Or worse. Yes there is worse in this world, don't question it. "In other words, a typical day for Adventurers." The fox is eyed again. "The name's Kauchemar. Remember it." A sly, slightly sinister smirk thanks to the viper like fangs follows. "It'll be haunting your dreams tonight."

But before she can do more to be annoying they've got howling and rattling bones from skeletal dogs. "Oh, finally, something MY style when it comes to first encounters." She twirls her lute flamboyantly by the neck before grabbing it as appropriate and starting to play some sick tunes to charm the calcified canines out of attacking.

Yes, she's playing a medieval style cover of 'Who Let The Dogs Out'. What -else- would she be playing at the moment?

"Why am I even here, Uta? What is it this time? I've got ... ah... oh brother..."

Jazz is finding herself more or less dragged along, pinching the bridge of her nose as she is once again in another fine mess on account of Uta, and well, she's just going with it for the time being. A roll of her shoulders at the call of 'gentlemen not applying'. "Eh, it applies," she says of herself, apparently fine with that appelation, yes.

And thus, the 'adorable saucer-eyed Undine with the head-tentacles and witchy maid garb' has a feather duster over one shoulder, picking her way through the woods quietly along with the others. Kuachemar just earns a look like she's comitted a grievous sin on church property, while Estelle gets a bow of greeting.

Seems she already knows everyone. No introductions necessary.

As the skeletal dogs sniff near to her, she simply waves her hand in front of one of them, "Go," she tells it, and, well, it goes. Seems she has some power over the undead.

"... really?" she mutters towards Kauchemar.

Estelle is there in all her foxy glory, tails idly curling and flicking behind her as she listens in to the brief summary - and smiling softly, yes, at how Uta starts things off. Especially since, no, 'gentlemen' isn't really applicable to the four of them. Still, she does pay attention, ears perked and alert, at the proper explanation. "Before we get in too close, it is good to see you again Uta, Jazz. We're under welcome stars, so everything should go well." She does curtsy back to Jazz in response to the bow, while properly appreciating Kauchemar's night-palette - though she can't help but smirk, with a brief laugh, at the talk of haunting dreams. "And a first hello to you, miss. I'm Estelle Mancer, Astrologian. It's a pleasure to meet you... though be careful, should you try my dreams; the stars watch over me."
    Still, she does turn to follow after Uta, even as one ear turns to listen to the nightmare's music. Her own words carefully enunciated; "Oh quiet Chamaeleon fair, hide us from the enemy's stare," soft sparkles curl around their bodies, as the Wave Arte starts to take effect, "shield us from their questing sight, that we may avoid a vicious fight." And then they curl up and around, sinking into bodies and causing them to go... partially translucent.
    A buff to reduce threat range, and make sneaking their way past the hounds easier. Even as some of them are charmed away from their duty by song and witchcraft.

Uta watches in silence as the sparkles of magic work their, well, magic, and give the adventurers a translucent appearance. Her smile widens /again/ as she raises one hand to eye level. She looks at it, flips it, stares through it, flips it again. She turns to the rest of the group and whispers, "Look at me! I'm invisibl- wait." Realization hits and makes her frown. "...nevermind."

Now that everyone has had an opportunity to work her magic, she pushes on herself, the silence in her actions so uncanny that it might lead credence to the theory that this is still a VR videogame, and the process taking care of Uta's sound effects crashed.

Further into the trees, the forest gives way to a clearing, and a low ranking, hyena-faced gnoll guard keeps going around in circles, mumbling to himself.

Uta extends one open hand to stop the group, points at the guard, and nudges her head towards him. She flicks through her menu and materializes her staff themed after a caduceus, and stands ready to jump out and use her martial arts to, as Shaolin Monks would put it, "whack him good"

"I could've done invisibility, but I wanted to save resources for a group like this." The vixen consoles Uta, giving her should a brief pat as she passes alongside. Still, between everyone's talents and their effects on the guards, they're through the outer cordon. Leaving them to deal with an actual guard, it seems. She considers the situation before they get too close, humming softly to herself; the sound, thankfully, doesn't carry. She glances left and right, considering the others, and then back again.

Then she gives a simple nod.

"Sagitta strike hard and true, as if by one of the mighty drew." Her hands make a drawing motion, as iof she was holding a bow and taking aim - and a bolt of light gathers in the gap between her hands, taking on the appearance of an arrow. When she looses, the barely-visible bolt of light flies forward - and catches the gnoll in the head with an angry little flash, staggering it for a moment.

"Go!"

"I never miss a music cue. Even a bad one," Kauchemar replies cheerfully.

She points her lute at the new threat and strums a few times to give a sonic shot but by that point everyone else is already pummeling him.

Waving the large, ruffled and purple feather duster, Jazz is keeping an eye on her companions. Especially Uta. Uta requires watching. One never knows when she'll find a slime or a girl from the menu! She gives Estelle an appreciative tip of the witch's hat and takes a moment to focus. As she does, her lengthy purple curls seem to waft slightly about her, as if she were in the water....

... but then Kauchemar's sonic shot is fired and she jerks with surprise, falls on her bottom, and discharges a shot from her feather duster (really, it's wand type?!) that impacts the tree above the gnoll and drops a pile of branches on him.

Well, it helped?

Uta leaps out of the bushes with a scream, swinging her staff at the gnoll guard. The gnoll guard, still reeling as a result of the arrow and the branches, unsheaths his sword, screams, and charges back.

Wood slams against metal, and thus begins a majestic battle of Good versus Evil, with Neutrality as a referee.

Blows are exchanged, and in a flurry of punches, kicks, jabs, slashes and good old fashioned beating your opponent upside the head, Uta and the team manage to dock the Guard's HP to 0, and make him shatter into polygons.

"Good work, team! Nice and clean, the others don't suspect a th-"

The sound of a horn echoes through the air, and as Uta turns, she notices a gnoll in armor riding a massive wolf-like demonic creature, standing in a nearby creek.

"Oh no," Uta says, as a spear comes flying towards them...

The Astrologian is grinning, at the clean take-down of the gnoll guard. Even if she's hiding that smile behind a hand, at Jazz's contribution to the fight. To stumble and yet help with a crashing branch... There's a shake of her head - and then her ears perk, at the sounds of splashing water and the horn call that follows in its wake. "... Tch." She eyes the demonic wolf and its master for a moment, and then she 'smiles' - though it's more a baring of teeth, the flash of fangs. "Oh, you think your amphibious wolf is impressive, do you?"

"The waters churn and crash, and from the depths many heads thrash." And lo, the river does churn and swirl, whipped up into a violent fury as the cold light of the stars settles into it. "The Hydra rises from the deeps! Beware, beware the breaking sweeps!"

With the sound of breaking oars, the crashing waves rise up in the shape of the Hydra's many heads - curling and binding about the wolf and its rider, and squeezing tight about them as the hungry manifestation tries to drag them back into the waves. Permanently.

Kauchemar taps the strings of her lute a few times after Jaz jumps. "Sorry." Fiddles with the tuning knobs a little. "That sour note did make you BRANCH out though, so all's well that ends well." She gives a nod towards Estelle. "You've got quite the style there. Very... Starstruck."

Any more punnery is interrupted by the blare of horns and the charging of a mutant wolf with ugly gnoll rider. "Oh look, this one is doing it doggy style." Please someone make her stop.

A creature of dreams and nightmares. A creature of the night, when the moon is out. The moon has always had mystic connections to magic and illusions, and it controls the tides of the real world. That's the roundabout logic that she'd give for having a rather strong connection with the elements of water. "Let's put this bum on ice."

As Estelle surrounds the warg rider with watery hydras Kauchemar conjures up a frigid wind and flings it into the fray, ensuring that once they're wet from the hydras the monsters freeze over until they crack and shatter.

Jazz's only response to the pun is a sigh.

Still, she takes another moment to focus when the strange, demon wolf creature emerges. She ducks down a moment, moving off to the side in a quick set of jerky movements and nearly trips over her own skirt. She looks down at it with marginally veiled irritation before righting herself, intoning quietly (and tweely), "Darkest abyss, spin to me your -- is that a hydra? Huh." She got distracted, okay?

Estelle's Hydra wraps around the wolf-mount, which struggles with all its might. At the outset, the outcome of the battle looks uncertain: the two opponents take turns in having the upper hand, without a clear victor.

Kauchemar's wind covers the struggling creatures in a sheet of ice, as expected, stopping their movements and allowing the hydra to drags the wolf down into the water, as cracks start to form onto the surface of the icy shell...

There is silence as the monster tangle disappears under the surface. Flecks of exploding light can be seen beneath the ripples. The armored gnoll and its monstrous ride are seen no more.

Uta peeks out from the bush she had ducked into. "Are they gone now?" Seeming convinced that it is so, she steps out, and leads the party further on.

The eyes of the gnolls scrutinize the adventurers from the darkness, and while Uta is unsettled by them at first, the continued exposure eventually breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds reckless lowering of her guard.

"On your left, you can see the menacing eyes of gnolls lurking in the shadows. On your right, conversely, you can admire, who would have guessed, even more eyes menacingly looking at us. Ahead of you, there is a gnoll who can create blades of blood out of- wait, wait, WHAT?"

That's another encounter down, only a few more to go as the party moves on to the next... oh boy. An armored gnoll making weapons out of crimson liquid. "I've heard of bloodletting but this is rediculous. Even I'm slightly squicked by that, and I'm the macabre one!" She snorts loudly through her nostrils and reslings her instrument, already starting into another musical bit. "I know how to deal with someone that uses blood magic..."
You use something that doesn't have any blood left for the blood-weaver to manipulate.

"o/~ Elemental battling, it's a summoner's forte.
With the eerie and the spooky to escort me on my way.
My hooves are stomping fire, but my voice with chill your bones.
As I summon zombie skeletons to mosh pit to my tones! o/~"

That is an apt description of what happens as a good dozen or so animate skeletons rise from the cracking ground... only to start dancing along. They swarm around the blood-weaver, their wild flailing and gyrating motions threatening to bludgeon the brute to death while keeping him penned in away from the group. While Kauchemar is, of course, still jamming her tunes.

"o/~ I'm the Bard of the Dead! A true death metal band.
Dark overture for the Underworld, played by my horrid hand.
I'm the Bard of the Dead! Dark side celeberty.
I'm upward bound from the underground, the nightmare's rhapsody! o/~"

The fox looks... satisfied, as her conjured Hydra works out. As it drags down its frozen treats beneath the waters, ice and bodies fracturing as they're crushed beneath the 'waves'. The river goes still, the starlight glimmering from its depths goes dark, and silence returns to the clearing. Only for Uta to break it, with a twitch of Estelle's ears as they turn towards the sound. "Yes, they're gone now."

Still, she looks to the gnoll conjuring blades of blood as the Spriggan brings attention to them. Though she can't help but clap, while Kauchemar plays her tunes. "... I'll admit, I was half expecting 'Spooky Scary Skeletons'." She muses aloud, thinking back to olden days of browsing the web. Still, she sobers up; the existing blades are still there, after all.

"Scutum, shield of the skies, I bear you now to protect my allies." She starts to intone, her hands moving as if to gather something. A shimmering veil of light starts to gather around each of her companions - and the grappling skeletons, as well. "A bulwark of stellar might, to guard in the darkest night." And it anchors into place, moving alongside them, even as it screens them from bloody blades and whatever rocks and arrows their audience might send their way.

... offense seems dealt with. Jazz focuses, thus, on protection. Mostly her own, at the moment, water flowing up and in front of her person in a fine mist of icy shards that seem to solidify as soon as the gnoll with the blood blade comes forth. Seems she's bracing and ready to protect her comrades, though it hardly seems necessary. In fact, there's a hint of distance in her eyes, like she's just not quite fully engaged here.

Try as he might, the Blood-Weaver can only hit so many skeletons with one slash, but so many skeletons can very well hit one Blood-Weaver at once. The monster's bar is quickly eaten away, so the angered monster roars, arranges what looks like blood to squirt in a spray all around him, and one sphere of sanguine spikes solidifies, to be shot all around in an area attack.

Estelle's shielding spell materializes around them just in time to stop the projectiles headed their way.

This gave Uta time to close her eyes, and hold onto her staff with both hands. She vocalizes an aria, and a beam of light shoots out of the gem atop her item. When the last note is hit, she lifts her staff, above Estelle's barrier, and a beam of light shoots toward the Gnoll. Together with a synchronized leap of the skeleton, that is enough to shatter the opponent.

"Victory!", shouts Uta, fist tossed in the air. "In your ugly face, Haggar the Barbarian! I wish I could-"

Thump.

Uta stops and blinks as the terrain under their feet vibrates.

Thump.

Thump.

THUMP.

At each thump, the ground shakes a little harder, and at the last one, downright deafening, Uta stares up at this massive, monstrous, snarling mass of muscles of a gnoll barbarian covered in blood.

"...ladies and gentlemen, our wishes have been granted. Allow me to do the introductions. Adventurers, Haggar. Haggar, Adventurers. Estelle, Kauchemar. Kauchemar, Estelle." She returns to look at Haggar. "I hope you did not-"

When Haggar lets out a deafening roar and splinters a smaller tree with a punch, well, time for niceties is over. Boss fight!

As she launches into the thick of battle, Uta has a sudden realization. "...Dang! I used 'gentlemen' again!"

Kelp.

There's kelp rising up from the ground, snatching at the Gnoll barbarian. Grabbing at his boots, twining around his arms and pulling at them to slow him down. The kelp has sprung from the ground at Jazz's insistence, a wave of. her hand followed by an invocation.

"Let grasping ocean vines drown your murderous intent.. something something..." She sighs.

The vixen cants her head, considering the new foe that stands before them - even as the lingering light of her shield still clings to people. "... Hm. The stars do not bless /this/ ugly mug." She declares, nodding. Still, she readies herself, tails curling behind her as she considers her options. Her shield is still in place, and her allies have shown no lack of talent so far. So she steps out of her Support Role for the moment. It's also a change in her chants.

"Strange is the night where black stars rise,
and strange moons circle through the skies.
But stranger still is
    Lost Carcosa."

A mass of Dark magic gathers above the barbarian's head, and slams down upon him... but it breaks over his skin, doing little, and leaves Estelle frowning. "... Note to self. Work on that one more. The Stars apparently dislike me calling upon the Void, and I will need more practice using the two in tandem."

A beat. "... also, are you alright, Jazz?"

Kauchemar strums a finale riff as the skeletons collapse upon the pixelating remains of the blood-weaven and return to the ground from which they were summoned. The nightmare returns the instrument to her back afterwards, grinning. "Nah, that only comes out when I'm feeling playful. That edgelord wannabe deserved a drum beating." She nods towards Estelle. "Good timing with the starlight barrier though. Though I don't think that was Ha--"

She doesn't get to finish correcting Uta before the real Haggar makes himself known by smashing through the tree line. "--As I was saying, here comes the final act. Over here, tall dark and ugly."

The nightmare grinds a hoof into the ground to brace herself, fists clenching at her sides and a sadistic look briefly gleaming in her eyes. Her tail flicks a few times, almost like a metronome setting the rhythm, as she takes a sharp inhale.

And then her mouth opens even wider, unnaturally so, thanks to her monster physiology. It's an organic amplipher for the horrific sound that emits from the depths of the bardic beast to assault Haggar's senses as the hellscream's waves of darkness pound through them and into whatever tiny brain is in that thick skull!

"Jazz. We are trapped in a mysterious world and under attack by a murderous hyena-monster barbarian covered in blood. Things like these don't happen every day, Jazz! Savor the moment! Enjoy the pleasures in life!"

"Jazz is like that," Uta explains. "She's the most adorable creature you have ever laid eyes on, but somehow she doesn't like it. I think she explained why at some point, but..." her eyes glaze over.

She shakes her head. "Sorry, I kind of lost track of things. Where were we?"

Kauchemar launches into her resonance-based attack. "Oh, right! That!" She inhales herself, and begins singing a tune. As usual, her staff lights up and is enveloped by tendrils of color as her aria proceeds, and when the final crescendo is hit, it... just doesn't stop. It grows, louder and higher, even louder and even higher, until the last note is a deafening (but still pitch-perfect) blast, a cannonball of sound and magic that sends visible ripples through the air, shot at the opponent, the modulated waves overlapping and interacting with Kauchemar's, in the most devastating resonance-based attack this team has probably seen up to date.

Unable to do much by being bound by the Kelp, the monster falls to the ground, writhing and snarling, and it is not long before it's reduced to an explosion of polygons.

Uta pants. "We did it... we did it folks!", she says, fist tossed in the air again, while a few high-quality monster pelts drop where the Barbarian used to be. "...I guess we get to... take the skin of our enemies and... wear it? It's... not weird at all, I suppose?"

Kauchemar sighs softly. "As morbidly amusing as that would be Uta, I don't think that's a gnoll's hide. More likely something they killed for food or what not." Even Haggar isn't cruel enough to skin his own kind... is he? Maybe they're better off not knowing the answer.

"I'd prefer not to think about it!" The fox chips in, even as she collects up one of the bundles for herself - briefly running her fingers through its sleek fur. "I'm just going to tuck it away until I've forgotten where it comes from, and then use it." She nods to herself, and then gives a twirl in the starlight. "And, see! My reading was right. Tonight was most auspicious, just as the stars foretold."

Her hands end up clasped behind her back, tails swaying back and forth as their patterns shift and twirl. "Such is the blessing of the Heavens, to see the champions of the Earth through their trials." There's a very emphatic nod, though her grin is a /touch/ mischevious.