Duty Session 205: A Dark and Stormy Night

    Wisteria has holed up in the bar to get away from the rain and storm, while also getting out of the SEA HQ, and not avoiding the festival itself by hiding in the tower at Vertina's place. She's nomming food and sipping juice, she still hasn't taken up drinking. The tall albino girl seems to be relaxed and happy to be killing time and listening to the storm outside.

Shiruba doesn't mind stormy weather! It's part of her theming, after all. But it's not really constructive to hunting, so instead she's sitting in here listening to the rain and wind play out their natural rhythmns outside while stuffing her face with food because that's her other love in life.

Goldenblade is at the bar and drinking up. Not drunk, but definitely drinking, as well as eating. The whole cooked food thing is so good after months of mush that tastes like gray. She doesn't much care for the rain, it messes up the concrete, so she spends the time inside, though she does own a heavy poncho, which is drying by the fire.

    Setsuna sits in the corner of the bar, with a warm pot of tea as he sips casually and seems to be trying to think things through. How can you tell he is thinking, because every few minutes he leans back and looks at the ceiling and his mouth moves but no sound comes out. Sometimes his fingers would dance in the air as he does this as if he was drawing, writing, touch screening something, however nothing is there. Normally his nightly routine had been to do this outside but the rain put a damper on that.

The door slams open with the wind. The rain flitting in around a middle aged Spriggan man. The adventurers and landers near the door start yelling at him to shut the damn door. The adventurers all get a popup.

<< A Dark and Stormy Night >>
<< Accept Quest: Yes / No >>

Shiruba pauses mid-bite, ears perking up as there's suddenly a Quest popup interrupting her. Glances at the door and the storm drenched fellow that just stumbled in.

That's really the best title they could come up with? Tch. How cliche.

... But she selects yes all the same, shoves the end of her meal in her mouth, and gets up to join whoever else actually accepts the notice.

Goldenblade of course selects 'yes'. Who doesn't do favors for randon people who've just come in out of the rain? "This seems interesting," she comments as she throws on her rain poncho. She looks up to the others who seem intrigued. "Let's do this," she says, checking her weapons.

    Setsuna continues to talk to himself and run his finger in the air lost in thought as he reacts to the popup and presses yes before even realizing what he did. As soon as the popup disappears though Setsuna stops and its obvious his brain is catching up with the immediate situation. Finally he stands and looks at the spriggan , "Never fails , you get lost in thought and theres a quest coming through the door. Well so be it." He grabs his cup of hot tea and throws it all back in one gulp...again it seems Setsuna is running a little slow tonight. A moment later he is sticking his tongue out and asking the bartender for a glass of water. He is sure the spriggan would speak up loud enough for everyone to hear the build up.

    Wisteria has never had a Lander come in and offer a quest, she's always had to go find them. So she's intrigued right away, accepting, tucking her food into her mouth and finishing off her juice. She aproaches the Spriggan along with the others who have decided to answer the call to ADVENTURE!

    He callls everyone over to him. "Time is short." He begins. "I've been tracking a group of air elementals. They're drawn to the storms this time of year." He explains. "They're one of our only sources of wind shards. So I need your help." The Spriggan wipes dark hair out of his eyes. "We need to find them before the storm ends, dispatch them, then gather as many shards as we can." Then, with that hopeful expression, he asks, "I can lead you, but I can't fight them."

    Wisteria smiles "Rare monsters during a festival? No better way to find something new or weird or broken." she says leading the way back out into the storm. The wind whiping and rain lashing. Sticks and trash and even small rocks, whip through the streets presenting hazards to the party before monsters are even spotted.

    As Setsuna downs his glass of water and sighs relief he nods his head and retrieves his staff from his inventory. "Somehow I should of guessed I was going to end up all wet tonight, " He comments before stepping out into the nightmare storm. As the wind and rain reminds him that this was not a night to be outside, he immediately does his best to raise a shield actually made out of the elements of the storm, wind and water, around the group. "OK! So where do we go from here?"

The truth is, Jazz would rather be on her own, watching the storm clouds somewhere more convenient to her interests, but Shiruba more or less grabbed her by the tentacle and dragged her along and thus she trails along behind her. Still, the weather seems reflective and unfocused, only half-paying attention to the goings ons. The Lander's offer of a quest assuredly perks her interest, though, a curious looks towards Shiruba. This is obviously her fault for being here, but you know, Jazz is going to go along with it. "Remind me why I let you drag me into this," she remarks to her. When he speaks of air elementals, she lets out a grumble. "Oh good," she mutters. Then: "Festival? Ah, I missed a thing, didn't I?" She lets out a breath and then weaves her hand in the air, creating a barrier of ice over herself and then draws a 'handle' of it down from the circular barrier.

Yes, Jazz just used magic to make herself a make-shift parasol of ice. The cold doesn't seem to bother her. Then again, she's an Undine and frigid, icy depths are probably of less consequence to her. The spots and scaling along the edges of her face glow lightly with bioluminescent energy.

"Right, then."

An ear perks up again as the Spriggan talks about getting attunded shards from elementals. This could also be relevant to some of her own potential future projects as well. That's certainly worth braving a storm for, right? She pulls the heavy weather jacket Gwen made for her out of her inventory and equips it while the elderly Spriggan is explaining. "Come on!" She excitedly grabs Jazu by the arm before she can back out again. "How often do you get to see a storm like this up close?! It's just as interesting as exploring!" Well there's your answer as to why. She's all ready to go stormchasing with little hesitation.

But even stepping back outside nearly has her bowled over by a blast of wind. "Goodness, it's gotten stronger..." She huffs, pulling the hood of her jacket up, and having to keep a hand on it so the hood doesn't just blow down again. "Lean into the wind as best you can," she offers the rest of the group, raising her voice a little to be heard over the roaring storm. Though even that seems to be causing some difficulty, as despite her familiarity with harsh weather conditions she's still getting pushed back, mostly due to the ground also being wet from the rain, making it harder for her to get proper footing even with her skills.

Goldenblade makes her way through the storm, blowing winds and horizontal rain whipping her overcloak back. She is getting pretty heavily soaked, clutching the cloak around her though it's blowing back and not keeping her dry much at all. She's steadily getting wetter and wetter, but then a gust of wind whips her cloak away completely, and she's just standing in the weather. "Gah, may as well be swimming," she mutters.

    Wisteria tries to bring up a shield of wind.... and tries... and sighs, the tall albino just accepting she's going to get wet... and lose hitpoints. She just tucks her head as she's pumeled with rain and ice and stones and garbage along the streets. The team makes it out to the edge of town, more bedraggled and shy some HP some fairing better than others.

    Their guide has a raised lantern, which seems to sputter as he tries to continue forward through the gale. "They really are putting up a fight." He has to shout to be heard over the storm. Then, during another gust of wind, his lantern dies, leaving the group in darkness

    "Could... use some of that Adventurer magic right about now." He laughs, water dripping down his face. "Should be able to stand up against this storm, right?"

    Some light, or at least a guiding figure would be good about now.

Shiruba pulls a pair of arrows out of her quiver. She doesn't trust any surface to be dry enough so she strikes the arrows together to ignite their enchanted heads. At least being magical flame they're not so easy to blow out or smother with the rain. "That will do in a pinch." She holds one up like a torch, and offers the other to anyone else that needs it.

    Setsuna takes a deep breath as they exit the town , his shield at least keeping himself dry, though he is still being beaten up by the wind. As the lantern begins to sputter and the request for help Setsuna shakes his head, " You do't need magic. You need science. " Kneeling, hich may be an excuse to get out of the wind some he cast some earth magic to pull a little certain something out of the ground, taking a wet powder into his hand and takes a few more moments of magic to pull the water from the powder before approaching the lantern and pouring the powder into the flame. The flame would begin to grow a bright white color, "See the power of science." Lets ignore all the magic used to get the handful of dry magnesium.

When you ask for light from Goldenblade, the old line comes to mind: It is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. She draws her blades, concentrates, and they burst forth with fire, blazing brightly even in the storm, the wind not quite strong enough to fan the flames back from the blades. It's surprisingly bright, or perhaps not surprisingly, for those who know her. She does seem to have an affinity for fire. Holding both blades up at shoulder height, she holds them away from her body so the fire isn't blown back in her face, and she will help light the way.

Seeing that the others have it covered, Jazz really does refrain from jumping in any further herself. Instead, she lets them do their part while she keeps her parasol of ice in place. Light, or flame, either seems fine with her. "I really ought to learn some kind of light ability," she mutters, more to herself than directly in response to a specific act.

    Wisteria shifts, wet fur is worse than wet clothes in some ways. The tall white bunny girl folds her long ears back. Caerbannog eyes are VERY good especially in the dark. She makes her way ahead of the lights. Eventually the party is lead out into the night and storm.

    Once out onto the plains lightning strikes seem to get more and more frequent and worse they seem to be starting to 'stalk' the party, one strike nearly taking out the Lander. "Look out this is going to get hairy." she says her hair and fur standing on end, St. Elmo's fire sparkling along her armor.

Goldenblade acks as that lightning strike comes close. "The hell with that," she mutters. She can see our objective ahead, so she kicks in what can only be called the afterburner, because as she takes off, there's a spark of flame. Ironically, there's less flame than with her other dodge; this one's so much faster that the flame burns out before it can do much damage. On the other hand, not even the lightning can catch her.

    Setsuna sees the lightning begin to strike and the only thing the necromancer can manage is a light buff of a dark aura before jumping out of the way. Jump again , jump again. "Hey this is easy. Compared to some games where dodging lightning only gets harder the more times you do it. I could do this all..." As if the game planned to let him get that far before shutting him up Setsuna is struck by lightning and knocked to his ass before he can finish that sentence. " Yep just like that other game."

Shiruba doesn't have as much fur as a Were Fang does, but what she has around her neck and composing her tail is definitely frizzling from the static in the air. "Don't stand still, don't cluster together or it will be attracted to arcing between us!" And then the wolfgirl takes off at a dash, jumping left and right on occasion as the lightning comes crashing down and having a few close calls. But she does avoid getting struck directly. "I hope nobody has astraphobia!"

Jazz seems to be evading the lightning quite succesfulloy, herself. Perhaps it's more like it's avoiding *her*, though. Then again, one can not be a witch of the sea without also being at least a little a witch of storms. Perhaps she's got some sixth sense as to where it's going to appear?

Either way, she's dismissed her icy parasol. No reason to draw lightning to it and it has fallen aside, melting quickly before evaporating into pixels.

"So far so good," she says, apparently. at least as far as she's concerned.

    Wisteria starts to move, and she's gone, a streak of lightning in and of herself. Moving with grace and speed of her monster progenetor, and in that new armor it shouldn't really work that well but Golden is likely familiar enough to know just how lightweight and mobile that turned out to be.

    The party makes it to ... a friging wall of wind and rain. It looks like a huricane ate a tornado from a disaster movie. "I've seen this before." The Spriggan guide explains, "They're in there. When enough of them group together like this, they can create massive walls around the eye of the storm. There has to be a way through."

Goldenblade, when asked to get through a wall of wind and rain, looks at the wall with a critical eye. Every wall has its weakness, and she's got something of an eye for it. "This way ought to be the least contentious," she observes, insintuating herself through the hurricane winds, having found, perhaps, the quivalent of an eye to that storm.

Shiruba stops and cranes her head back for a moment to stare up at the 'wall'. It's like a tornado actually stayed in one place instead of veering along a path. "Hmmm." She keeps staring at it, squinting a bit. Then dashes closer to the debris formation. "I'm going to get a better vantage point!"

She jumps and grabs onto a chunk of upturned land, darting across it and leaping off to grab onto a branch and pulling herself up onto the tree. "Hey, I found what happened to the rest of the forest. I knew it was intentionally stripped out!" Because of the upside down angle it's floating she climbs 'up' to what is actually the roots. From there she fires an arrow into another floating chunk, and uses the rope attatched to it to swing herself over one of the masses of water being swirled about the storm wall, kick her feet off a section of tore up wall, and dart across the smaller bits of rock and wood drifting about like stepping stones before finally parkouring onto the large slab of solid mass itself. It teeters a bit when she lands on it, but doesn't overturn. She crouchs down to keep from being blown off all the same, tail and coattails fluttering in the winds regardless. "Most of this debris is floating freely. You should be able to pull or push it around to get yourselves a path through."

She on the other hand continues to parkour climb up, just making use of the random chunks of scenery within the storm wall to do so.

    Setsuna recovers from his lightning strike as he stands up and moves along with the group, his hair standing on end despite the wind and rain. When they reach the wall of the storm he looks to the Spriggan ho explainshe situation. " We will just make a way through." A summoner's circle appears under Setsuna as he takes a deep breath before begining to chant and cast, " Mother of Nature, I call upon you to grant me your thorns and vines to wrap around this wall that blocks are way. " The wall of storm gains a section covered in thorny vines, weakening the walls for others.

As the debris circulates, Jazz does observes Shiruba's passage and doesn't even try to duplicate it. Instead, she clasps her hands together f0or a moment and bows her head, focusing.

"Deepest seas, crush the earth with your strength so that I can just get through this without getting mangled." VEry fancy, Jazz.

She lets out a sigh, having done what she could with her magic to stabilize a set of stone debris, both as shelter and a walkway for herself.% r
She'll make it throiugh, however things are wobbly and buckling quickly so it isn't likely to be helpful for anyone else.

    Wisteria summons up some of her Were Fang strength, and starts slashing her way through the debris. The vines growth and the guidence of Shiruba and Golden helps her make a path. Once they're through the wall and into a sudden area of peace and light winds.

    "There they are." The Spriggan gasps, seeming almost manic in his glee at finally beiing able to find them. "I can't help you here, but I'm sure you can handle it." Afterall, Landers aren't quite so immortal as Adventurers.

    The elementals are made of what seems to be pure wind magic. It's quite pretty, until the first lightning strike lands near-by.

Shiruba parkours her way down the inside of the 'wall' along pieces of debris to rejoin the party on the plain beyond. And there's their targets. But how do you fight the wind? Strike something that you can barely see and has less of a physical form?

Shiruba has an answer for that, as she draws one of her elemental arrows back in her bow. "Let me give you guys something to aim for..." She fires the arrow into one of the air elementals, which causes a bit of it's form to become more solid as the moisture in the air composing it's being frosts up from the ice arrow. This is how a clever hunter turns a prey's advantage into a weakness. She keeps shooting the elementals with frost arrows to give the party plenty of striking oppritunities. "These airheads just need to chill a little."

    Setsuna looks out at the elements and frowns as he considers how to reach them , even skeleton archers would be worthless in this wind. Then he remembers the pummeling he got once before. Taking a deep breath as he begins to work his summoning magic. "Those who fallen to the storms that have past, those who have been struck down in the middle of the night. To those that lay deep beneath my feet. Arise!" A large summoning circle appears infront of Setsuna as instead of multiple small skeletal minions appear, a large skeleton Golem at least two to two and a half people tall appears and charges head long into the elements, glowing with dark energy to make sure his attacks were magical. Somewhere Kauchemar was getting the feeling that one of her greatest hits was getting pirated, Setsuna was sure of that.

Goldenblade, having gotten through the storm barrier, proceeds until the Spriggan spots our target. She's not afraid of a bit of lightning, though. Particularly when she wields the power of fire. Her swords blaze, and an observer would be forgiven if he thought she were wielding lightsabers, except with flame effects all up and down the blades. She smashes the elementals with her blazing blades, smack after smack, subduing them pretty ferociously as she ducks and weaves with the fury of the storm.

When the reach the air elementals, at last, Jazz takes a more defensive posture, using shards of ice and shields of them to block the blasts or other torrents of violent air. Seems she's mostly ready for it, thoiugh in several cases their attacks simply bursts right throiugh. At oine point, she's even sent flying, as is the fate of the smol.

Still, in the end, she's all right and the lemenetals are being defeated, right? Right?

    Wisteria looks into the Storm... well the Elementals. The bun nods her head, drawing her sword. Her enchantments are sure to be enough to make the blade bite into even a magical creature. She leaps and starts her usual pinball attack pattern. The bun leaping from air rune to air rune to slash at the elementals. With Setsuna's undead behemoth and Shiruba's ice arrows to occupy them, Goldenblade and Wisteria are able to finaly cut them down to size. And Jazuhanzu isn't even hurt... badly.

    "Aha! You did it!" The Spriggan steps out, grinning ear to ear. Where the elementals had fallen, there lies a series of small shards which he begins to collect. "These will be very useful to the Mage's Tower." One he has gathered them up, he makes his way over, offering one out to each of the Adventurers. "Thank you all for your help. I couldn't have done this without you."

    He seems to avoid any questions on what the shards might be used for, simply offering them all a grin before he heads off into the night with his bounty of shards.

    Wisteria blinks and looks after him as the rain starts coming down again.

    Setsuna watches as the shards rain down and he does good for his word, he gathers like 99 % for the guy, and one for himself which he pockets. It's not like the hunter's guild was paying him for this. As the rain starts to come down again he would very quickly seek shelter for the night.

Goldenblade is panting hard as the Lander takes his shards, collecting her own reward and peering at it critically. "Lets get out of the storm," she suggests to her fellow adventurers, and heads out into the weather.

Shiruba doesn't ask any questions. Mostly because she's already considering what she can potentially put such an item towards, which makes her tail wag a bit with a hint of excitement. "It was our... well, pleasure is a bit strong, but I am glad we were able to help you out." The elementally charged shard is placed in her inventory for safe keeping.