Duty Session 233: The Mountain Memorial

During the time of the Firefly Festival, it is common for people to seek out old memorials in order to pay tribute to those who have passed. However, not all remembrance sights are easy to reach and some have been overrun by monsters over the years. A group of travelers have reached out to the Hunter's Guild, looking for aid from Adventurers in order to trek to a memorial stone seated high in the mountains. It will be a dangerous journey, but they seem willing to brave it in order to honor their ancestors.

OOC: This quest is only available during the Firefly Festival. This quest is largely 'Combat'-concept based.

Difficulty:    Easy
Rec. Party:    3+
Rewards:       1
World Rewards: None

Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

Wisteria has picked up the quest to protect the Landers on their trip to honor the old dead. She's put out an open party request because escort missions are always something that needs a party, but doesn't usually need a SPECIFIC party. The tall albino woman relaxes by the gathering place for the Landers waiting for enough adventurers to gather up.
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek walks along and to the place where the quest will begin. He nods a bit to the party, the man looks like he's about to collect pieces for that project which he's doing. "Alright, I will assist in whatever way I can," he notes.
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang has been getting more involved in the public quests and things going on, so when an event party request goes out nearby, she will respond. She arrives prepared, her sleeves rolled up, her long hair fastened in a large but neat bun, a serious expression on her face. She bows her head to Wisteria, and asks, "Are you the one forming the party for this event?"
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

Twirling her knives and somersaulting along, it's the ever nimble and flexible Kotono herself. And yes, Miyako is here too. Upon arriving, Kotono realizes it's an escort quest, causing her to roll her eyes a little before glancing at Miyako. "Just what I needed, another darned escort quest." She sighs and looks down at her feet briefly before looking back at her. "Let's hope this goes according to plan."
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    Yep, there's Miyako, sauntering along beside Kotono, guitar slung across her back. "Hey, it's better than a fetch-chain. At least this is one-and-done, not "oh and now I need fifty rat-slime pelts"...." She claps the taller spriggan on the shoulder as they join the group. "Don't worry, it's like all quests. You know how plans go."
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna walks up to the gathering group and gives a scornful look to the Landers, before he looks at the party and sighs. " I heard from the hunter guild that this was where we were gathering to ...lead these peoople to a shrine? I am in the right place right?" Looking around at the others he takes stalk for a moment before doing his best to get things ready and looks at one of the Landers again, "I ask all of you, very nicely. Please don't do anything stupid. Please!"
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

    Wisteria smiles "Yes this is the right place, but we're going to a memorial, the Lander version of a graveyard, so that everyone can pray to the lost Landers of yester year." she says and adjusts her new armor, a dark aura and feeling eminating from the pale woman in her purple and black.

    The first leg of the journey is uneventfull leading up tot he first slopes to climb up into the mountains. Once they're higher up the mountain as the trees begin to thin, there are a number of large bears around something they've killed. Obviously some kind of encounter given that there is a corpse that the bears are all chomping down on. When the party breaks from the trees the bears take the party for scavengers or attackers and rush the party with great growls and bluster.
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang will walk along with the party, a bit off to the side, so that if something does jump out, it'll have to get past her to get to a Lander. On that side, anyhow. As the first leg of the journey takes us upwards, she wrinkles her nose. She looks up as the bears are spotted and begin approaching. Not good. Her martial arts is for attacking people, she has no illusions that it'd work on a bear. You don't just karate-chop a bear.

But what she can do is part of the mystical suite of powers the game's saddled her with. She doesn't understand it very well, but she can do certain ... things, and other things happen. It's not terribly exact, but ... it looks a bit like tai chi, but as she moves her hands, the air begins to swirl, carrying our scents away from the bears, hopefully reducing the threat they sense from us.
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek takes a look to the bears, while he nods a bit. The man begins to shift the magical staff which he wields, while he begins to draw a wind wall along to make it confusing for the creatures, then he walks along with the party, "It's probably best we play that safe!"
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna tilts his head at the armor of Wisteria, it was impressive to say the least. and even more then impressive intriguing. It wasn't anything to do with his own projects though so suddenly he pushes it aside and turns back to follow along with the party. As they reach the bears he tilts his head for a moment trying to come up with a plan and then follows along with the others. As others use air as a wall he takes more offensive approach , lashing out with blades of wind hoping to disuade the bears ffrom continuing.
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    Miyako hmms to herself, wanting to sing, but keeping quiet in deference to their clients' pilgrimage. She stays near Kotono, but keeps a watch on the woods to their side, pausing and signaling with her hands when she spots the bears approaching.

    "You just have to know what they really want... which is usually food, or you -out of the way-." She swipes a hand across her menu to bring up her inventory, and pulls out... a nice, thick, juicy steak, that she was saving for her and Kotono's dinner. She lays it (plated) on the trail, then backs away from the animals, beckoning the others to clear the path as well.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

It's strange how the element of air works sometimes. Sometimes it can be used to keep you breathing. And sometimes it can be used as a protective method as well.

With the usage of runes, Kotono uses the power of air to keep things under control. She doesn't mind the steak being used as bait, Kotono plans to treat Miyako to a nice dinner after this anyway.
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

    Wisteria uses a few air runes to amplify her voice, and then shifts forms, the tall albino girl now a tall albino bun girl. Then she breaths in and screams, it's a horrible sound that monsters recognize as the war cry of the caerbannog. This mixed with extra food, disorienting winds, and shifted scents gets the bares to snatch up new meat supplies and run off to go enjoy it elsewhere.

    The party continues following the trail around a curve in the mountain which then leads into a dark cave. It soon becomes evident that it is an abandoned mine. "Keep an eye out... ambushes are likely in areas like this." she says, once theoretical knowledge becoming useful the longer she stays stuck in this world. And it isn't long before she's proven correct with the indications of kobold occupation, and not much beyond that when the obvious ambush is proven to be a kobold attack, the little lizard like creatures attacking with crude rusty weapons.
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang watches with satisfaction as the bears are lured away from the Landers and the Landers are led away from the bears. Not a crisis, then. She looks around to see that everyone's moving off, now, and will proceed along, until we find the dark cave. She lights a torch and enters with the party, keeping an extra close lookout. The dim shadows are flickery and unsure, so she whispers a small charm she learned in the game, and the torch gives a bit more light, thohugh not much.

"Ambush!" Yeowang warns as the kobolds leap out suddenly from the darkness. From then on, it's hand to hand fighting, but the pests are quite small, and the savage kicking they receive at her hands and feet is something they won't forget for the rest of their lives. Which is not very long. Unfortunately, she took a few good hits as well in the ambush, and she looks a bit worse for wear.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

Let there be light...

And Kotono provides some light to help out with this battle against those pesky kobolds. She attempts to use some of her magic in an attempt to blind the kobolds briefly while the others go in for the attack.
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna hoped that all they had to deal with were natural things like bears, they were simple enough, especially with the war cry of a caerbannog. It was quite impressive. So forward they go and as they trigger the ambush he smiles, "Given everything I have fought in the last month , this is welcomed. " With a magical circle wrapping around his arm, runes appearing related to earth magic before he presses it against the ground and spears of rock erupt from the ground, taking at least one of the kobolds down.
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek looks to the kobolds, while he tries to bring about a light to the place. He doesn't manage to offer enough for the whole of the party, "Well, it looks like we'll need a little general assistance!"
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    Miyako pauses a moment as the party reaches a barrier. "What's this?" she asks. "Someone wants to play Stab?"

    She exchanges her guitar for her naginata and walks up to the group of kobolds. "Okay. Let's play stab."

    Whirrr*squilch*whomp*slumph*squilch*whomp!
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

    Wisteria joins in the battle against the kobolds. The bun girl steping forward in the shuffle run of the samurai before lifting her lead foot and stomping down, sending a cascade of spikes up and through several kobolds. While the fight does lead to some damage to the party the Landers are kept safe and so she's satisfied. She leads on through the path and after a long time the path leads out onto a different mountainside view, likely on the other side of the spur they climbed up to start with. This side of the mountain it seems is ruled by Dire Eagles. They begin swooping in and divebombing the group trying to protect their nesting grounds with cries of outrage and violence of tallon.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

How do you shield yourself without a shield?

In the case of Kotono, when she hears those wingbeats, she crosses her blades in front of her and attempts to block like that... but it's no use.

The birds swarm on Kotono and she's forced to drop into a ball and roll a little to get the pecking mass off of her. When she gets back up, she's looking like she's gotten a few too many pecks... and not the romantic kind either!
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang trudges through the cave with the party and the Landers, and breathes a sigh of relief as we make it back out into the open air again. The relief is short-lived, though, as the journey takes us along narrow ledges. Forced to go single file is bad enough, but suddenly there's a squawk, and dire eagles are dive-bombing us.

It's hard to defend the Landers when they're stuck single-file, but she manages to hurl ice crystals that burst when they strike their target, and the birds are flash-frozen, and plummet immediately. No way to tell if they thaw before striking the ground, but they don't come back, and that's the important thing.
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek begins lifting up a hand which will draw a shield about the party. He walks forward along while he nods to the people, "Well, it looks like we need to avoid all of these," he notes. The man doesn't look like he's focused upon fighting, instead upon protecting.
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna looks at the the birds and grins, " Ok fine, monsters wanna monster, then lets monster. " A dark magic circle appears under him and the bones of the fallen erupt from the ground and instead of forming a shield around him they do something different. A new trick if you will. They fly forward and bind themselves to one of the bird, covering joints and bone structures. Even forming a sort of helm over the bird's head. With a dark aura around the monster Setsuna turns it on it's comrades, and he appears to be smiling in regards to his own actions.
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    Miyako is becoming resigned to there being all sorts of idiocy along this road. She walks with her weapon in hand, now, ready and expecting the next fight. Narrow ledges make for an obvious ambush point for flying mobs... and here they come, alright. "Oh, yes, what will it be this time? Eagles? Sorry, we're not heading for Mount Doom today." She shakes her head and starts inscribing a series of runes, holding her weapon in the other hand. "Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire inside's delightful... so since we've some place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." She chuckles as her spell goes off, raining hail down on the huge birds, ice-darts pelting their wings and bodies.
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

As the party protects the Landers and the Landers make their single file way through the bird effluvia and past the nesting site, Wistera joins in. Slashes of her katana are followed by arcing blades of darkness that slash at the birds. Once the landers are clear she nods her head "Lets get going." she says leading the party to join the Landers and move on to their next exciting encounter on this long walk with Landers.

    As the chill increases and the darkness starts to pull in closer, the path works its way around the spur of the mountain going higher. The path is getting less and less pathy, less well made and trod. The lack of path the Landers insist is the right way eventually reaches a bridge... that looks to have seen better days, like maybe before the scrapped princesses. As the party moves to start the passage across the bridge a giant hand reaches over the edge of the chasm and is followed by the massive troll it is connected to. Time to take care of business, or at least battle, but that's a big part of Adventuring business.
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang breathes a sigh of relief when we get past the single-file chokepoint on the pathway, following further up the mountain with a steady tread. At least she's not tired, she's got an athlete's stamina, it seems, continuing without a problem until they come upon the ruined bridge across a chasm in the path.

And then the troll appears, blocking their progress, and she sighs, trusting to her natural agility to avoid the troll's strikes as she hammers it with punches and kicks. It's tough as hell, and kicking rock is punishing for the kicker, also, but she pummels it relentlessly, though her agility is inadequate to the task, and she's getting slammed hard for each kick that connects. This is not going well.
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek looks to the troll, and nods a bit while he takes a moment to begin finding the potion along the belt, which he then will throw into the troll. It explodes, blasting into the creature with the flame that begins to draw along.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

Trolls. You can't live with them and you can't live without them.

Unfortunately, Kotono doesn't like trolls, whether online or otherwise, and she's not about to join their club either. Sometimes, it's best to avoid things like this, and that's exactly what Kotono does here.

Zipping along, she avoids that club like its nobody's business. Which is exactly how she wants it!
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Up the chilly path they go , where they will stop Setsuna does not know. Now they were to cross a bridge that looked in worse shape then he did. Setsuna almost feels pity for the bridge as he carefully begins to cross and then sees the troll. " How cliche is it that a troll is guarding a bridge?" From a circle of magic Setsuna produces a whip of fire as he strikes it out towards the troll trying to keep it back for now. "Hurry across the bridge before the troll strike it." With the warning given he rushes himself across as well.
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    Up the mountain. Through the cave. Along the narrow ledge. This is hitting all the tropes, isn't it? Of /course/ there's a Narrow Bridge. "Utterly and completely," she answers Setsuna as she starts to quick-walk across the bridge, trying not to put too much pressure on what might be fragile crossbeams.

    It's that carefulness that gets her, in the end. She's just a little too slow to get out of the way of a swipe of the troll's club, and it leaves her dangling by one hand from the side of the bridge. "Bloody /hell/," she swears, and starts clambering back up. No more time to take care now, just hurry up and get moving, girl!
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

    One would think that a samurai might have a suit of armor crafted from the drops of bosses and quest rewards so that she can take a better beating. Not Wisteria, this suit of armor is crafted for maximum movement the bun leaps and then starts to pinball from rock to rock, passes along the troll leaving long red sweeps from her sword. The caerbannog and it's hit and run quick pass attacks seem to have been given to it's werefang decendant. It isn't long before fire and quick foot work have the troll's health bar down in the red, and then the monster is an evaporating mass of light pearls that vanish.

    "Well... that was a good test." she says knocking her armored fingers against her Do. "Lets keep going we shoudl be to the top soon." she says after she's informed by the Lander.

    The party continues climbing until the memorial stones are just coming into view. Unlike other memorials it seems this one has become infested by a Yetti and not undead. The monster lobs a chunk of rock down at the party. Looks like a boss fight is in the offing.
Yeowang
Tolbana - Main Square

Yeowang is sore and tired and lower than she'd like to be on HP as a Lander calls out that it's not much farther. It's not an easy climb, though, and the howling wind and cold don't help. But what really doesn't help is the massive yeti that has made its home up here. She leans aside as it hurls a huge rock toward the party, grits her teeth, and advances.

For all that she's bruised and sore, her concentration is deep, and she advances with the others, remaining in shadows, or at least keeping low on the aggro table.

This allows her to plan and aim her initial strike like an assassin, and if this were a regular person, they would be very unhappy. As it is, the attack drains a noticable chunk of HP, and now it's a dogpile, with her avoiding counterattacks while hitting it as hard and as often as she can. Kicks, mainly, that's her best source of power, but hard punches when the timing allows, and her punches aren't soft, either. Even with gloves, her punches were brutal, and in this bare-knuckles world, she could do considerable damage.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

A yeti? Or the abominable snowman?

Whatever you call it, it's here and it does not look happy.

To make matters worse, despite Kotono's best efforts at planning her attack in advance, she ends up hitting nothing but air. She's forced to run away to avoid becoming the yeti's next... whatever it wants to do with her!
Merek
Tolbana - Main Square

    Merek looks to that Yeti, and begins drawing the greatsword from the back while he begins to swing into it. The man shifts along and keeps fighting with the creature and will assist with the party fighting.
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna was sure the troll would be , trols make good boss fights for missions like this. So obviously that should be it. Then the yeti shows up, of course a yeti shows up. "Yeti again another monster to fight. " With his pun made he throws a orb of raw magic at the Yeti attempting to draw it's attention to him while others do the real damage. He was fairly confident he could keep out of the way for at least a couple of moments.
Wisteria
Tolbana - Main Square

    Wisteria smiles at seeing there is a boss fight, and the smile isn't a plesant one. The bun girl's lips pull back and her mouth is filled with ragged razor triangles, set in missmatched rows like shark's teeth. Then she's walking up the mountain to the Yeti, not going into her usual flurry of leaps and bounding attacks. Instead she waits until the Yeti targets her, and then the dark aura that has been clinging to her armor makes itself know. Spiked chains of black energy snap out and lash into the Yeti starting to bind it into it's own shadow. It's movements becoming slow and clumsy, the chains pulling erraticaly and making the beast stumble and miss it's attacks while also grinding into it's fur. The binding curses the albino girl has worked into her armor make the monster much more managible and allow the party to drive it off. "Test two successful, now that's what cursed armor should be." she laughs, a bright cheerful laugh that is a bit concerning coming from someone with teeth like that and a wild combat glee about them.

    Then it's time for the ceremony, and she steps back to let the Landers do what they came for. After the touching ceremony the youngest Lander hands her a stone before continuing on to the others each getting their reward in turn.
Kotono
Tolbana - Main Square

It wasn't an easy journey, and Kotono found herself hitting a few hitches here and there... but they made it successfully.

Looking to Miyako, Kotono says, "All right, we did it. That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." She sighs. "Although, I could've done a lot better."

Shrugging a little, Kotono says, "Let's go get something to eat and then take a nice rest."
Miyako
Tolbana - Main Square

    After clambering hand over hand along the bridge, Miyako is quite ready for this quest to be /done/. So she doesn't hesitate at all when faced with the yeti. "Look," she says, tiredly. "Just... please let us pass. We're not here to take anything of yours."

    Unfortunately for her it's not interested in talking. Sad.

    Well, that makes it fight time.

    Fortunately the fight is quick, and she can relax with Kotono. "I agree, let's see what Hifumi's got on the fire tonight, hey?"
Setsuna
Tolbana - Main Square


    Setsuna takes the piece that is offered and looks at it, he had planned to inspect it but instead stops when he sees the picture on the stone. He just stares at it a moment , a tear forming in his eye before looking at the young Lander, "Thank you." He turns away and waits to escort the landers back down the mountain, though he may spend it more staring at the etched stone then anything else.