Duty Session 228: Escort Quest: Artificial Stupidity

    With all the hussle and bussel of the next cataclysm wave and floor climbing and undead and everything it is no surprise like jobs like these pop up. A lander named Tim put in a request for an escort for him and his group to get help to travel to a near by shrine. They just want some easy protection, they promise it will take an hour tops. So here was Setsuna groaning to himself as he some how got caught up in another escort quest. It aggravated him so much he is just casually banging his head against a tree. When Tim asks if he is ok the necromancer responds truthfully, " I am going to do this but understand, I HATE ESCORT MISSIONS!"

    Miyako isn't too fond of Escort Quests either, to be honest. She just isn't going to say so openly in front of the clients. "C'mon, Ko-chan. They say this shrine is supposed to have a few interesting murals that I want to see." Looks like she has an excuse to take the quest, after all. "Might be something interesting in it."

"Escort missions aren't always the best," Kotono says as she hears the complaint about them. "Sometimes you find that the biggest enemy isn't the mobs but the target you're escorting." The girl proceeds to do a few light stretches before looking to Kotono. "Yeah, hopefully this shouldn't be too bad and you can look at your murals." She smiles a little. "I'm sure we can handle this."

Schneider has joined his Guildie Setsuna on the quest, and follows along, hoping to learn a bit more about gaming. He also wants to learn, "What's wrong with escort quests?" Because he's entirely new to gaming. He's here and looking a bit distracted, but apart from that, he's ready to go, smiling to Miyako and Kotono. "Escort quests are harder than normal ones?" he asks.

    Setsuna looks at the others and shakes his head as they talk about there own opinion but just sighs as he gestures the landers forward, " After you all. I'll take up the rear. " With that they are off as they begin to trek towards the shrine. They are walking and walking and walking and sudenly one of the landers say , "Oooo pretty birdie, here have some bread." Setsuna turns for a moment and shouts , "NO!" but its to late and the bird has informed their friend that free food is here and now the entire party landers and adventurers are being pecked for food.

Schneider will walk out more or less in front, though he's not really suited for scouting ahead. But someone's got to do it. He's watching the distance for signs of ambush rather than watching the sky, though that may change soon if his plans pan out, and so his first warning is Setsuna's cry of alarm. "Wha-" And then birds. "Gah," he grumbles, fanning away any that get to close. Finally, he gets his wits about him and shouts, "Spirits of Air, heed my summons!" Conjuring a small air elemental, it appears as a whirlwind, and sweeps some of the flock back and away, and he'll grab the Lander's hand and drag him away.

            "Here's to you, to me, and one and all,
            To the garda, and the gargle, and the trophy on the wall
            Here's to you, to me, and one and all
            The day that Darcy's drunken donkey won the race at Donegal."

    Miyako pauses in her song, letting the guitar rest from its shoulder strap. "Arise, ye spirits of wind, Children of Njord! Rise and bear your flock afar from this place, and let us pass in peace!" She swipes her fingers across a quick flurry of runes, the characters shining in the air where her hand passes. As she finishes, she claps her hands together, sending a burst of wind hurtling out at the assailing flyers.

Sometimes, it's best to use the elements to your advantage. And with a few runes, the breeze picks up with Kotono's command. "Let's blow these things away!" Whoosh, how the winds blow!

"Nice singing, Miyako," Kotono says with a grin as they work together to take out those hungry birdies!

    Spirits and Rune magic fly about blowing birds all around, if Alfred Hitchcock could see this he would never had used them as villians. Finally after the hard work of Schneider, Kotono, and Miyako , Setsuna looks over at the Landers and uses air magic to carry his voice, "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS!" Sighs and rubbing his temples he looks back at the other adventurers and says in his normal voice, " Well then now that the bird watching is over let us continue."
    As they move deeper and deeper into the woods, the light begins to fade and be swallowed by the darkness. Visibility becomes lower and lower and as one of the lander trips over a rock and nearly takes the group with them. It becomes obvious that unless one is capable of taming the darkness, the light may not be the only thing swallowed whole.

Schneider's whirlwind sweeps away birds, aided by the others. He's not that strong in air, but as a group, it seems quite effective. It gives him a good feeling about the rest of the mission, which is shortlived.

The Lander wants to go -through- the woods? "What part of dumb is this?" he wonders. But adventurers don't get to choose, do they? So, forest? What can he do?

He trusts to the darkness of the woods to conceal them, but it's not dark enough, is it? He gathers some of the gloom around them, wearing shadows like a cloak, hoping to make it through unseen by predator's eyes. Although his Dark powers are more related to being edgy and cool, he manages to conceal their presence. At least a little.

Tiptoeing is sometimes a good way to be sneaky, and sometimes just being light on your feet works too.

For a girl like Kotono, it's all about being light on her feet while she keeps an eye out. Every step is deliberately done to avoid making any type of sound possible. Somehow, she manages to sneak past.

        Some friends and I in a public 'ouse
        Were playin' dominos one night
        When into the bar, the barman came, his face all chalky white
        "What's up?" says Brown, "Have ye seen a ghost? Have ye seen yer aunt Mariah?"
        "Well me aunt Mariah be buggered," says he, "The bloody pub's on fire!"

    Miyako shakes her head, disliking the thought of going through the woods, but she's not about to just pick the client up and sling them over her shoulder to go around.

    Maybe she'd leave that to Kotono.

    "Alright, just try to keep quiet," she snaps, and tries gathering some spirits of darkness of her own to form a shield around the party. They seem to be more interested in her song, however, floating up to poke at the strings of her guitar and hum along with the tune she's stopped playing for the moment.

    Setsuna is not the best at dark magic but he can help boost the cloud of darkness and shield that is being put up by the others. Kotono's sneaky movement is a great example to follow as well and the necromancer gestures to the landers to do what she does. All together, the adventurers manage to take on the dark woods and have everything under control right before one of the Lander's freaks. As all adventurers know, landers are often timid creatures and when one in the pack runs they all run and all the Landers take off running, fortunately in one direction. They run from a deep dark forest into a deep dark cave and when the adventurers find them, one of the lander's appears to be nursing a bloody nose from running into something in the dark.

Schneider and the party make it through the woods unscathed, surprisingly. Or perhaps not, between the stealthy movement and the deeper shadows. But then the Lander's going through a cave?

"This guy's got a screw loose," Schneider sighs. But when the Lander complains about the dark, he sighs and says, "You want light? You want light? I've got your light right here."

Well, technically, he's got fire, pillars streaming from his hands to the ceiling of the cave and scortching the ceiling overhead. "That enough light for you?" he demands.

Once again, the runes come out, and this time Kotono thinks she's got what it takes to get some light going...

Except only this time it's but a mere fizzle.

"That wasn't supposed to happen..." Kotono mutters.

    Miyako has set her guitar away, by this point, trying to keep the music-loving dark-spirits quiet. She isn't terribly happy about heading deeper into the cave, muttering imprecations even as she tries to think of something she can do.

    In the end, she tries adapting her musically-inclined spirits to produce a sort of echolocation, but interpreting the returns proves... less than simple. "Why is it always the dark..."

    Setsuna follows teh landers into the cave and sighs heavily at the guy who is now bleeding. " If you wouldn't run off this wouldn't happen." As Schneider provides some serious light from the fire he takes a moment to look around the cave and points to a path, "Possibly a way out." Before Setsuna moves forward though he takes a deep breath and reaches down, taking a hand full of dirt. Blowing slowly into it , it takes on a green eerie glow before he sets the dirt in the ground. As the dirt settles the glow spread out, much like what one of his fellow adventurers would have seen in a theater when the lights are off. Really it's only with Kotono's and Miyako's magic in the air that Setsuna's own magic works so well, glowing brighter and finding the shortest path to travel.
     The party makes their way from the dark woods, to the dark cave, to the open plains in the bright light and now as if after everything the landers sit in the sun and begin to complain. They had scratches and were hurting and aching and who's bright idea was it to go through the cave. So now the party must place wet nurse to the landers.

Schneider keeps the fire of ire going through the entire trip underground. Exploder Wizard is not a class or title in the game, but it's Shneider's core concept, and he doesn't stint on fire, at least. By the time we're out of the caves, the Landers are probably a bit nervous.

They're also whiny.

"Rest? C'mon, you slackers," he grumbles. "These guys wouldn't last ten minutes at basketball practice." But one of the Landers is complaining about an injury, so Schneider will sit him down and give him a once-over, the way the coach would after an injury on the court. He knows just a bit of sports medicine, at least, but it seems to be enough here. "C'mon, let me look at that," he demands.

A few minutes later, Schneider sighs. "You'll be fine. Walk it off. C'mon, get moving, it's not that bad."

    Miyako, lacking entirely in healing magic, decides to go looking for herbs to help pep the fellow up a bit. Unfortunately, for a druid, she's terrible at actually *identifying* plants, especially medicinals.

    So when she comes back with a basket of mushrooms that are quite obviously poisonous, well, nobody had better let her feed them to the poor client. Or anyone else, for that matter, except maybe the wandering goblins.

"I can't go wrong twice in a row, can I?" Kotono whispers as she summons her runes again and, this time, tries focusing her mental energy into using the runes. "If I believe, I can do it..."

Again, another fizzle.

"Why me?" Kotono says with a sigh.

    As the Landers complain about aching and hurting , Setsuna looks at them and then does his best to look around in the plains for some form of herb. A pain killer, Prophylaxis had pointed it out at one point. He to comes back with herbs and items that may or may not be poisonous . As he sits down and offers it to the landers, and between the mushrooms , the herbs and the lack of healing. Lets just be thankful they have Schneider and eventually the Landers are on there feet.
     They finally make it to the shrine of the blind one and oh hey the birds are back. No wait those aren't birds they are harpies and theey are rather mad that Landers have invaded there land.

Schneider follows the Landers after we've chivvied them this far, and he winces as the Landers rush forward to ... get harassed by harpies, as it turns out. "Gah," he sighs, and tries to remember what works on Harpies. "You have to counter their song, right?" What songs does he know? His dad used to listen to all the American metal bands. Who'd he really like? He always played their record. "Big bottoms, big bottoms! Talk about mud flaps, my girl's got 'em." o/~

Sadly, the harpies are not repulsed by Spinal Tap sung off pitch.

"Okay, fine, we'll do it my way," he sighs. "GUNZENRO!" Flame shoots out of his hands, and it's far more effective than his singing.

This time the magic actually works, and Kotono succeeds for a change.

In the end, they barely made it through, but at least the quest is complete. Kotono hunches over before looking to Miyako. "That wasn't as good as I hoped, but at least it's done." She sighs. "Let's go find a place to grab a bite to eat and then rest."

            "I have done my bit of carving, figureheads of quaint design,
            For the Olives, and the Ruddocks, and the famous Black-Ball Line.
            Brigantines and barques and clippers, brigs and schooners lithe and tall
            And the bounding "Marco Polo" was the proudest of them all."

    Miyako breaks out the guitar again once the part is back in daylight and nearing their destination, relieved to be free of the caves and all the rest.

            "I was born in a Dublin street
                Where the loyal drums do beat
                And the loving English feet they tramped all over us
                And every single night,
                when me da would come home tight
                He'd invite the neighbors out with this fine chorus!"

    And on she goes, dodging and weaving and shouting out her defiance, until the last of the harpies disappears in a cloud of pixels.

    "An' tell all yer friends from me," she shouts at the fleeing birds, "Up yers!" She gives them a two-fingered salute before turning back to the rest of the group, stepping over to lean into Kotono. "That sounds like a remarkably good idea, m'dear. I feel the need for some fried chicken."

    As the harpies scatter and run, perhaps it was because of the magic, or because of Schneider's and Setsuna's singing. Either way the harpies were gone and the landers are now thanking them for all the help and giving them a mark to show they visited the shrine of the blind one. Without another word the Landers have scattered to do what they came here for. Setsuna himself just flops against a tree and yawns. He would head off eventually but dealing with Landers was exhausting and as he dozes off right there his last words are, " I hate escort missions."