Duty Session 238: Obligatory Rat Cellar

    June has as is her MO, accepted a party quest without having a party. Now she's looking for a group. Sitting around out front of the Hunters Guild building just shooting off party invites to anyone who doesn't look busy. The middle aged woman dressed in Barbarian Princess finery while looking like your aunt who works in a book store, is writing. She's got parchment and pen and is writing. Not the most intimidating figure to be running a hunting party but hey there she is.

Schneider was walking by, on his way to somewhere else, when a ninja-invite comes at him from nowhere. "Huh?" But he looks at it, shrugs, and accepts it. Another glance around confirms June as being his party leader, so he heads on over, smiling widely. "Hey there," he calls. "Got some rats to incinerate?" Because incineration is Schneider's specialty.

Random party request? Why not! Lin wastes no time in accepting the random invite. What's the worst that could happen? The cheery pooka practically charges in the direction of the rest of the party. He shouts out a cheerful, "Hiiii!" as soon as other party members come into view. "What's going on?"

    Setsuna was coming to the hunter guild to try and look for a source of books for the libraries that are going up across Yamato , however when he gets the random invite he looks around and spots June as he acepts the quest. It wasn't like his reason here wasn't one he could put off. Approaching the group, the party would see that he is no alone, but in fact has a monster 'companion' in tow with him, a skeleton knight. " So whats the plan for the party?" Setsuna questions as he looks among his party members.

    June looks up and smiles at Schneider. "Well don't know they'll need incinerating... but probably." she says rolling up her scroll and tucking it along with her pen into her inventory. She stands up stretching as she sees others accepting, there's enough in the party to actually activate and share the quest. "Just the usual rats in a basement." she says to Lin and Setsuna.

    She leads the party over to the indicated shop and waves to the lander running it before heading down the stairs. And it's dry and dusty with lots of rat tracks. And there are just spider webs and cobwebs everywhere with tiny spiders all over. "Looks like we need to finda way past... and don't suggest setting fire to everything... we're still under the shop."

Schneider follows June and the others to the shop where the Landers seem to be having a problem with rats. Heading down below the shop, he looks around curiously, but ... "They're complaining about rats? I'm surprised the spiders haven't eaten them all." The exploder wizard, compelled not to use fire, waves his sword around, but ineffectually. It accomplishes little.

    Setsuna and his monster body guard follow along with the party, through the shop down into the cellar and stands there for a moment before he begins to look around to find a wall or a passage to go deeper. Finally he notices a wall that looks out of place and he tries to shoulder push it, only to find it non budging. " Nothing here." he shouts to the group.

"Rats, rats, rats." The mundanity of the quest at hand can't dampen Lin's spirits. Shouldn't be a problem, not unless they're of unusual size. And whoever heard of such a thing? He bounces along with the group to the directed store, lifting his spellbook from his belt as they approach the cellar. "It's a classic quest, right? Everybody's got rats in their cellar. It'd be more unusual if they didn't."

    As Setsuna and Schnider poke about hunting through spider webs without much success, then Lin starts a bit of a breeze to help push the dust and cobwebs about. Followed with June going through a few martial arts movements before air seems to gather in her palms and she shoves the whole thing out pushing into Lin's spell. The combined air magics flatten all the webbing to surfaces except a small area in the back where it blows a hole through them causing a tunnel to be reveiled.

    The tunnel is along winding passage way of rough stone that looks to be carved rather than built. Then it splinters into many side passages and loop abouts, u-turns and dead T junctions. "Don't get too seperated, mark dead ends when you come out of them, and please try not to fall into any pits or get eaten by ROUSes when no one can see you."

As the others find the tunnel, Schneider will follow along and try not to get lost. At first, that's not difficult, but after a while, but becomes complicated, and a few minutes in, he pauses to pull a small book from a pocket, and a small quill. He sketches out what the route he thinks we've already taken is, and he continues to update it as we move along. It winds up being quite a maze by the time we make our way clear of the confusing passages.

The cellar starts slow. No surprise to Lin. You've got to build some atmosphere for these things before getting to the real excitement. "ROUSes? I don't think they exist." He asides to June as the party wanders through the maze of corridors. "Then again, if this is how they make their basements, anything could be down here..." The pooka takes the practical approach to being lost: at every junction, he puts a small mark on the wall to indicate which way they came from and which way they went.

    Setsuna looks over at June and tilts his head for a moment at the mention of the ROUSes, "So what about being eaten by such creatures while we can be seen?" The necromancer attempts to deadpan as muhc as possible after his question as he steps forward and notices a few scratch marks on the fall and a few droppings here and there. "It would appear that some of such creatures went off in a this way direction."

    June wanders, trying to find good tracks but it seems she's managed to not find much in the way of rat tracks, lots of adventurure tracks but that's just her party. Schneider and Lin manage to work out paths as they're being walked down, and Setusna manages to find the tracks that rats have left to hunt down the rats that have traveled down these tunnels.

    "Well if you get eaten while we can see you, we can try to save you. And at least we'll know there are ROUSes trying to eat people." she smiles glad party managed to find the exit even if she wasn't able to contribute much more than pep talks. Then there are squeaks and deep thick croaking sounds and near dog whistle squeaks and screams. Then around the corner they come to a horrible mockery of a taijitu made in rats and violence.

The good news is, they're out of the maze. The bad news is, they're at ground zero in a war between two groups of rats. Schneider thinks about this for a moment, and the glint of anticipation in his eye fades as a tactical look appears on his features. A silent spell is spoken, or perhaps not spoken, and a pale shield appears around him. He walks through the ratty room without concern. Apparently rats of either color have no interest in him.

    Setsuna looks at the rat on rat violence they had found as he tilts his head and then looks at the others, " So if we were to you know, just leave, wouldn't they just solve the problem themselves?" Setsuna's logic was that they came down here to kill rats and the rats are killing rats. It seems to be an easy enough job to just sit back and let it occur. So he follows Schneiders approach and puts a shield up and works himself around the fight. Best to let things like this sort itself out.

The maze isn't so bad. Lin bounces along, dragging a finger through the dust and marking each intersection in a careful manner completely incongruous with his careless mannerisms. "Hunter's Guild wouldn't be called in if the rodents didn't have some unusual quality. Surely." Rounding the curve with the rest of the party he sets eyes on the warring rat tribes. His face gets a little more serious and he starts flipping through his spellbook. Buffs, buffs, party buffs. Here we go. He expansively waves his empty hand while muttering the spell, surrounding the party members with shields.

    Schneider Setsuna and Lin all vote for the path of least resistance and simply protect them selves and June with shields that can let them walk through one of the two groups while being ignored. June on the other hand jumps down in the middle of the fracas and starts throwing hands. The small middle aged woman doing surprisingly well for a single unarmed fighter between two swarms of magic angry rats. She doesn't do nearly so well as she'd like, eventually giving up on reducing either horde more and climbing out after the rest of the party.... just with far fewer hitpoints than she started off with.

    The path continues on until they come into an area oddly devoid of rats. Chunks of metal are strewn about, twsited and chewed. In the center of the chamber is an ROUS.. in make shift platemail. Apparently it got smart when it got big... or maybe it's just weird magically induced instinct to put on armor. Whichever it is, the rat roars... for a given deffinition of roar... and attacks with bloodlust in it's eyes.

Schneider leaves the swarms of rats behind, and we investigate this surprisingly large maze-like ... place. He's not sure what to call it. It's certainly more than a cellar, and it's almost as complicated as a small city. And like a city, some neighborhoods are run by ... well, if rats were people, this would be a gang boss or something. A massive, armored rat standing like a person, coming at them now like a berserker.

"Zako Damero!" he shouts out, holding up one hand, and a shield flares up just in time. Whatever the armor is, Schneider senses his fire would be a bad plan here. Maybe a sniff of sewer gas? Maybe the oily sheen on water? So he'll solve it the old-fashioned way, with a sword.

A glittering bubble of silver dust surrounds Lin, trailing footsteps of glitter behind as he walks through the rodent melee. It's not so bad - the rats on the early levels of Aincrad are fiercer. He relaxes and tries to avoid getting any more aggro than he has to while navigating the melee.

The next room is much more intimidating. "This one looks friendly." Lin states dryly. Spellbook still open to the same page, he casts the same spell. Glittering dust, more than enough to protect against the mess outside, should work fine for the big one.

    Setsuna looks at the metal rat thing and smiles, " I remember this thing. It kicked my ass last time that I had to deall with it. " This time though he brought muscle as he sends his knight in , instead to go toe to toe with the beast. The skeleton's knight rusted and chipped sword clanks and sparks against the beasts armor, but the knight was nothing if not meticulous and damn it , blood is drawn.

    Setsuna goes in for violence Schneider goes for a sheild and violence, Lin opts for not getting stepped on. The rat chooses violence, much violence. June well she's as bad as the rat is, she shifts forms, suddenly an iron scaled bull woman with anger management issues is charging the berserk rat. And really when your SKIN is iron you shouldn't get into a grapple with someone who rips metal and chews it for a hobby. While the party does take the rat down, Junie is left on the floor a bit low on hitpoints and having to dip into her bag for a health potion. "That... went less well than you wanted didn't it Junie? Real smart diving into the jaws of someone who literally chews metal... you SAW the chewed metal... you're an idiot." the words are delivered in Sindarin (Tolkien Elvish) but the translator lets everyone overhear her 'inner' monolog. She does get up to her feet and snorts green fog before nodding to the exit. "This way." she says in Japanese "Saw it open when he droped."

    It's back into the warrens and arou nd and round until they let out into a chamber with torches on the walls, runic symbols drawn on the floor in what seems to be blood, and power radiating from them makes them glow. At the center of the circle is a strange rodent faced man with a thick robe. He chants, arms up channeling energy into the circle which steem sto start making rats pop out of red and black portals. "Well at least we know where all these rats are coming from... and probably why so many are mutated by magic."

Schneider smiles as the rat-man-creature thing finally falls. "That was ... rough," he admits. He follows the others through the maze of rat-filled tunnels in search of the source of the infestation, and after some time searching, we find it. A rat shaman with runic symbols on the floor and ... now appearing: another pair, summoned through magical portals, it looks like.

Shneider grins wryly. "This is gonna leave a mark," he says menacingly, and chants. "Kaizard, aruzard, kisk! Hansay Glossik!" The words may sound like gibberish, but that's authentic magical gibberish. A sort of a dread feeling fills the air around him. Something very bad is about to happen to someone. "Unleash total destruction! Sage of Hades use the seven keys to open the gates of Hell!" Finally he shouts, "HALLOWEEN!", and an enormous explosion fills the room, like a portal into Hell. It's pretty bad.

    As they walk along towards the next room Setsuna looks over at June, " Don't fret about trying to beat the metal eater with metal. If you go against your nature it is more likely to not work out, so its better to just do things like that. Much better chance of things working out." It is the best advice he can think of giving and as they turn the corner and come face to face with the pied piper of Rattington he grins. " With him gone the rats should clear up." Setsuna's eyes and the skeletons knights eyes both light up as the bodyguard seem to know the exact weak spots to strike under Setsuna's direction.

With the rodent civil war seeming mostly harmless, Lin is underestimated the enemy. The weaker all-party shield doesn't fare well in the fight against the ROUS. Why was it even wearing a helmet? Who clothes a rat? Did it clothe itself? Did it look in a mirror and say to itself 'I look fabulous.' before going out to chew on a pile of metal? Lin's first impression of the rodent wizard is dampened by his thoughts being elsewhere. "Ohhh, you thought it looked fabulous." The final thought in the chain is blurted out as the encounter's adds spawn.

He's been defensive for far too long. It's only a couple of pages off in his spellbook to switch to a powerful offense. Blue light dances on the basement's stone walls as he shouts the words of his spell, electricity crawling around his body as he raises a hand and points directly at the enemy caster. The ensuing barrage of powerful lightning bolts was probably too much for the enclosed space - thunder rings off the walls in time with strobes of brilliant blue light.

    Setsuna powers up his death knight and sends it to deal with the adds, and Lin is dropping lightning on the summoner, before the world turns to fire as Schneider decides the better part of Valor is Overkill. June... sits down. Gets out her book and pen and starts writing out the runes and drawing the pattern of the circle. She reaches into her cloak and a small disk comes out resting in her palm. It's made of many rings and she taps it, the rings starting to spin and flip, June's eyes glow. Then she does a bit of swapping around, looks at the glyphs again and then cackles like a mad woman before she bounces across the circle, her foot landing one limb of a particular letter and she scuffs. Smearing away and breaking the power flow to that arm of the figure. Something happens, the spell seems to change and there is a scream as the boss's last hitpoints are depleated when his next portal opens bisecting him. "Never mess with a Linguist!" she says with a laughs, before reaching her hand out and catching the spinning rings as they fall. She puts them away with a smile. "Nothing is as good as when brains beat brawn." says the woman with a reputaion for punching problems in the face until they stop moving.

With every member of the adventuring party dropping their inhibitions and going all out, the fight is brief. Fire and lightning bathe Setsuna's skeleton in a hellish glow as June slices the enchanter in half. Lin smiles brightly, bouncing on his toes like an enthusiastic child. "So! Delicious, I'm sure." He sticks his tongue out. "As if anything could taste all that good in here." He brightens up immediately. "Good work team!"

Schneider is grinning with a kind of amused satisfaction. "First time I've gotten to use that spell," he admits. "Worked pretty nicely, I think?" He smirks about the rat meat, but shrugs. "I'm sure I'll need food for something or other," he admits. "It'll come in useful."

    Setsuna watches the rat summoner pop in to a pretty sparkl of pixels as he wanders over as he looks at the item drop for a moment and tilts his head, " At least it comes pre-wrapped?" He puts the item in his inventory before he calls his body guard over and then looks at the others. " Good job everyone. That was well done." He says as he looks among the faces, making note of each one and commiting to memory for a moment before smiling, " So who wants to get out of the rather large basement?"

    June grins "you want good tasting food then you should check out crecent burger, or the Isekai Ryoken depending on which end of the world you're in." she offers. "The owner of the IR even has a menu item that uses this drop." she says and shrugs laughing. "Yah lets go turn this quest in and get paid." she says with a smile. "The walk back should be less ratty at least." she says before leading the way out, waving to the lander along the way and letting her know that the rats are gone for now. It's a reoccuring quest they could be back under any shop any time really. Then she's heading to the guild to turn in and get the party paid.