Duty Session 253: Totally Typical Tomb

     The meeting had been set, those who had been looking into her postings had been invited to a location! ...That location, for whatever reason, being a graveyard. Look Pela was just thinking of mysterious places. And mysteriousness! Which is why she chose a mysterious place! ... She might not be good at this.
     Especially since the only 'disguise' she's wearing is a large cloak that covers most of her body, and a little hand-woven mask that just hides her eyes but like. There's... only so many 'super short cat girls' in the world, so how effective this disguise is going to be in general is debatable! ... Regardless, she has a few sets of papers that were charcoal rubbings hidden under that cloak as she stands there, off in a corner, waiting for people to arrive. Doing her best not to look conspicuous. She's not doing a great job right now.

    June has picked up a quest because if you're going somewhere, you might as well grind XP as well right? And she goes about getting the quest done in the way she generally does... she's walking through town towards the exit that leads to the graveyard that the Hunters Guild wants cleared out.

    Along the way she shoots party invites to any adventurers that seem to be not doing something else. June is bad at planning... well she doesn't try very much and so PUG is her go to for clearing quests.

Yeowang is here because she heard that there was a mission to do, accepting the party invite with a nod of greeting. She hasn't done very many, and is still in the getting-her-feet-wet stage of the game, having had a late start in the advanced content, such as it is. She will bow formally when she arrives, her long hair done up in a tight bun, and looking quite serious and a bit formal, or whatever passes for that here. "I am ready," she announces.

After the intensity of the last few weeks a Duty run is going to be like a vacation. That and the Tomb Duty when it pops up is a good time to work on her various undead tactics so Shiruba is all for joining in on a run, PUG or not. Though seeing a few familiar faces is a relief. Yes, even one of them being Uta. She'll take Uta-herding over dealing with things like overpowered goblins and mysterious ghoul stalkers that have been the norm of life lately.

Staff held in her hand, Uta wanders into the place with the determination expected by someone with a mission, a mission they are deep-set in carrying out and nothing, /nothing/ in the world is going to hold them from being there at the appointed place, at the appointed time.

She slams the tip of her staff on the ground, and announces, "I'm ready to eradicate this goblin nest out of Mac Anu!"

Eastal may be a far cry from the Ninetails Dominion, but the emergence of any mysterious undead stronghold is always a concern, especially in a place that had only recently been liberated of a major goblin infestation. Prophylaxis is therefore present, waiting amidst the cool, cloying mists for the attack on the tomb to begin...

...But then Uta arrives, and the doctor just sort of turns and stares at her. "...Uta..." Prophylaxis starts, and goes to place his hands on her shoulders. He looks at her sadly, and then says: "...Mac Anu is on a totally different island. And these are zombies, not goblins."

    June looks at Uta "We're in Shibuya." she says and sends the woman an invite to go clear out the graveyard. She continues to walk along, the middle aged woman in her best Red Sonja cosplay. Then heads on out with her ragtag pick up group in tow... or at least she presumes they are. Until sh egets to the gloomy foggy graveyard and spotting Pela sends her an invite too. Has she forgotten she had a meeting? Maybe... will she remember later... probably mid combat halfway through the clearing of the graveyard.

    When the team arrives there is the sound of a trumpet being played, surprisingly when the player of music is found he lacks most of the equipment for playing trumpet... and might not be a he... no one is going to measure the pelvis midcombat. The skeleton plays a mind numbing little tune that is probably intended to disable the party for other monsters to take advantage of later.

     Oh look, most of Pela's favorite people are here! ... Okay two of them. Which kind of says a lot about the number of people who are 'Pela's Favorite People' really. Still, she's getting a random party invite from June, which leaves her sitting there, blinking. Huh. Were these people just here and unrelated and ... wait why was it getting all creepy and stuff?
     Pela frowns a bit underneath her little woven mask, adjusting it a bit to better cover her face. Not that it helped much since she got a party invite which meant her name was right up on the screen. She should have thought this through better. Hmm! Oh well. Also Uta is saying nonsense. So at least things were relatively normal?
     Kind of. Beyond that there was a mission starting rather suddenly that she wasn't prepared for and aaa. Especially as, rather suddenly, there was a /dooting skeleton/ that was playing a little ditty there! And being really noisy. And possibly dangerous. "...Chose the worst place for this." She mutters to herself, and then... well. She tries to focus enough to cast a spell real fast! ... And ... she just kind of... can't quite even focus to summon her magic yet, instead just mumbling under her breath and unleashing a little crackle of energy that swirls in a circle in front of her. Yep.


Her spell fizzled.

Shiruba stops, her ears slicking back at the now obnoxiously familiar sound of the skeleton with the horn DOOT DOOT DOOTing through the graveyard. "Not this time." She draws a couple of normal arrows, and fires them in the skeleton's direction to help scare him off in another direction. "We're not here for any skeleton dance musical numbers!"

Yeowang eyes the trumpet-playing skeleton skeptically. "I'm never sure what to think when the game gets silly," she says. "Am I supposed to treat it seriously and do serious things to it, or is there a way to be in on the joke and play along with the creators?" It seems like a place for skills she doesn't know much about, so she can only shrug and make her best attempt.

In this case, her best attempt is pulling out the hunting bow she's got and putting an arrow to the nock. She's used western-style bows, though not often or much, but she makes the effort. In this case, her arrows sail clean through the skeleton without making contact at all. So much for her skill as a hunter.

Uta blinks. "...oh.", she says, and the Doctor will feel his hands sink a little as Uta's shoulders droop. "...well, uh... I still... can be useful. Like- hey, wait a minute." The Spriggan cranes her neck to look at Pela over the doctor's shoulder,. "...who is that mysterious figure out there? She looks the kind to stand up dramatically and announce, 'You may have wondered why I have gathered you here, today'"

Suddenly, trumpet-playing skeleton!

Uta looks... not impressed with its performance. "Not /bad/, but it's a bit mind-numb-- ok, it's bad. Here, let me fix that."

Without warning, she begins to SLAM the skeleton's phalanxes with her staff at the right moment and point, to force it to press different pistons on its trumpet. The skeleton may want to dodge or get away, but Uta manages to wuxia her way to dog it, leaping and spinning in the air as necessary, and always, /always/ hitting the right note at the right time.

With a stick.

Uta receives two firm, consolatory shoulder pats. Oh Uta, what will we ever do with you...?

A familiar sound trumpets over the sound of adventurers gathering. Prophylaxis turns, his staff whirling with arcane energies that sally forth and smash unceremoniously into the skeleton trumpeter...!

Not today. This duty is not going to become a dooty on his watch...!

"So," he asks in Pela's general direction as he slings another spell. "What's with the... cloak and mask, exactly?"

    June sees the party really just treating the poor musician terribly... but it's a clear the undead quest so clear the undead she will. She moves into a martial stance. "Powers of light, grant your servant the power to crush the undead under hoof..." she spins into action leaving a trail of light to smash a final blow into the skeleton breaking down it's animating force.

    June looks at Pela, notes the mask and hood... and where she is... and starts speaking aloud in Quenya (Elvish) which is translated by the 'system'. "Damnit Junie... you were suppose to meet about the engravings." she knuckles at her temple "Stupid stupid, you have to remember your meetings... no you don't have a secretary here, and no your phone doesn't beep and remind you, and no you don't have a 'calendar'." she airquotes at her self. "But you have to do better or how will you get back your place as one of the strongest on the server huh? Besides you know that language doesn't translate and you can have a private thought once in a while again. So why would you forget?"

    As she keeps walking along the party comes across what is likely the cause of all this mess... a summoning ritual that seems to have gone baddly given how everything is scattered around. "Alright... I think if we can work this out maybe we can finish whatever they screwed up." she says in Japanese "Then we can just beat whatever boss they tried to summon and hopefuly clear up this whole graveyard infestation." She isn't dumb, her mind is just... dented around the edges a bit.

     Well, luckily other people were being more effective in their attempts to take care of the dooting skeleton! Because Pela was not doing great at it herself. She taps her lip thoughtfully as she watches the fight going on. And then, well. Then Prophylaxis asks the important questions.
     "...Uhm. ... I was setting up a meeting to share my information with people trying to translate the ... alv language stuff. And trying to be sneaky." Says Pela. Who was still kind of sort of trying to be sneaky in that she is making her voice slightly deeper and stuff! ...The fact that her tail was waving a little and ears were perked up kind of ... showing her most obvious traits.
     She ahems softly, and then pauses, looking around a bit, starting to make her way deeper into the tomb with a soft hum. Let's see. "...Would have worked better if the dungeon hadn't activated." She mutters under her breath.
     She pauses as she walks to the center of the graveyard, staring at what looks like... some sort of... ritual or something? She frowns at it, her head tilting ever so slightly. "This seems... wrong. This rune is out of place, that one is scratched through by someone stumbling around like an idiot..." She starts to mutter under her breath as she examines the remnants of the ritual. "...This might be the source of the undead infestation in this tomb." She adds thoughtfully. "...If we fix this we might be able to fix this particular one. For now at least..." She pulls out a piece of chalk to begin to fix the ritual circle, working without thinking about it, her tail swaying behind her attentively. The movements of a confident cat.
     She pauses at June's comments. And then the talking to herself. June gets a concerned look from Pela, who moves over to June, pausing just long enough... to draw out a small baked roll and hold it out for her. As well as a charcoal rubbing of a certain set of tablets recovered from the underwater trip recently. And then she was back to her work on fixing the ritual.

Yeowang is once again having difficulty with the game. It seems to be some magical puzzle, which is something she has no experience at. She can do normal sorts of puzzles well enough. Academically, she'd always gotten full marks. But this is wildly beyond her experience. "Ritual?" she asks.

But as to what might be out of place, or, indeed, what might be going on is entirely lost on her, and all she can do is watch mutely as everyone does things. They look like they know what they are doing. She'll .... supervise. IE, stand around and try to stay out of the way.

"Oh, yes, those tablets. I'm sorry Pela, things have been really busy as of late, I haven't been able to look into it myself." She's not going to mention that she's sort of doing a Guild Leader and a half work, on top of the Goblin issues. Shiruba crouches down next to the ritual site and inspects the various markings made around it. Runs a finger alongside some of the glyphs, her tail flicking as she snorts. "Pela's right. These are clearly summoning runics, but they're not in the correct order to regulate the arcane flows properly. Whoever it was botched it, and probably didn't realize it until they were already dead." She shrugs to Pela. "That or one of the undead tried to summon a more powerful monster and failed."

She just pays little mind to June's rambling, as there is this matter to focus on instead.

"Oh, well." Prophylaxis shrugs, "If you just wanted to talk about the alvish inscriptions, then I'm all ears! I don't exactly have much of my own other than a phrase I'd picked up from a certain Traveller, but if my mind might be of assistance, then I'd be glad to lend it." That is, of course, if she's willing to share that information with a SCALE EMBLEM ALLIANCE MEMBER.

(But at least Prophy is nice, right? Right.)

"Ah, incidentally, you were looking into the herbs of the tower, weren't you?" Prophylaxis asks as they make their way into what seems to be... /some/ manner of ritual chamber. Odd, it reminds him a little bit of that gnollish ritual, but... It feels significantly less ominous, for some reason. "I'd encountered a number of interesting mushrooms on the third floor, and a peculiar cactus on the second. One of these days, I'll have to share my notes. But first..."

This ritual-- what happens if they finish it? Resurrection magic is /powerful/ stuff. If they could figure it out... But then, it looks like it might need more magic than he'd be able to supply on his own. So. "Uta," he calls, lobbing a mysterious blue crystal at her. "I'm going to need some help channeling enough mana to get this thing operational again. Use that if you feel like you'll need to clear your head to get the job done."

What is that supposed to mean, exactly...?

Uta is already on it!

Kneeled on the floor, she is already busy trying to complete the markings there. Tongue sticking out and all, she is tracing careful curves, vaguely ellipsoidal, with a dent on the side and-

( ^_^) ( 'v') (-A- ) ( o.o)

...yes. She's drawing slimes.

"And then Mr.Slimington went to visit Mrs. Slimson, and he took along its little cat... named... uh... Tabby. Tabby is a good name, yes yes-"

When her name is mentioned she turns her face up to look and-

*chime*

That crystal hits her straight on the forehead, glowing blue for a moment.

Uta stares, her face frozen in the last expression it had one moment earlier.

And then, it's a blur.

First of all, with incredible rapidity, she snatches the crystal in mid-air before it can shatter on the ground.

Then, she starts to wipe all those smile doodles. "The /heck/ am I doing?!", she exclaims. Once she's done, she stands up, fists on her hips, and walks around the marking the way a detective would do at a murder investigation. "This is a type III cycle we are dealing with." She snaps her face at the wolf Cait Sith. "Shiruba is right. They permutated the symbols based on the oder of the Theranic Arcana, but this kind of ritual relies on the slightly more obscure Qing Configuration. The energies of a hero need appropriate spiritual resonance and a correct application of discipline to attune to, and not only these people misarranged them, it would appear that a medium-to-large sized male fell down, prooobably struck on the front, and then dragged away in..." she swipes her hand in the air, to mimic the movement. "...that direction. Hm. But I digress, it's time to get this right."

That said, she hunches down again, and in a far more dignified manner this time, she completes interlocking doily-like design of mind-boggling complexity in a surprisingly short amount of time. "Surprisingly similar to the design in Lockington's Arcana, 1653. I wonder if the designers of ETO had consulted that book. In college we mostly checked it out for a laugh given how ridiculous it was, but..." She perks up. "Oh, Pela, thanks! I will be ecstatic to assist you in the endeavour of attempting to make sense of the Alv language. I was quite proficient in philology before ETO, but it remains to be seen how my out-of-game skillset in that regard will translate into the game..."

    June watches the procedings and then reaches into her scalemail bikini and pulls out a flat disk made of rings. Each engraved with different lettering systems. She holds it in her fingers and spins it, the rings starting to flip through each other like a complex gyroscope. Different letters on different rings light up and flash in various patterns. She leans down and smudges out a bit of the writing in the circle. "You have to substitue using in game text, if you try to use other lettering you'll get an error. The menu always defaults to an in game language when it creates something." she says and moves to another place to change out some lettering. "We wouldn't want to make a mistake that the original group screwed up, that would just be embarassing."

    She takes abite of the roll she was given and pulls the rubbings out to look at them while everyone works on the rest of the spell. "Enne... enne enne enne... I need more words that don't translate." she says with a wistful sigh. "And you might need to learn scripture if you haven't already for your philology to apply properly... but you might not. Alvish is a strange language I've found... difficult to translate but I'm seeing some interesting cominalities in their lettering." she chews her lower lip.

    And then the spell goes off. "Lets see what we summoned shall we?" She asks heading down into the crypt. When they come to the door she looks at it and hmmms. "Puzzle door... classic... wonder if they actually worked a cryptographic sequence into it or if it's one of those time sink puzzles you just have to brute force?"

Yeowang follows the others along and blinks curiously at the puzzle door. "What's this about?" she wonders. She's quite good at some puzzles, but this one's got far too much magic and in-game lore and other things that she has no clue about! Ask her about corporate management or international relations. Or MMA.

She looks into the writing, though, and tries to decipher it, but she can't make hide nor hair of it. She frowns as she concentrates. It doesn't help, though.

     And then it happened. Shiruba just straight up set her name. Well, any semblance of stealth is immediately out the window now. And Pela actually puffs up her cheeks a little as she looks towards Shiruba. She doesn't say anything, though, just puffs up a little! Huff! ... It's fine. Probably. She gives a small nod. "Yeah.... everything's all messed up here." She continues. And then Prophylaxis makes that comment!

     "Oh, uhm, sure, I'll share what I have!" Pela says, finishing up her work on the ritual circle, before standing up and walking over to Prophylaxis to hand him a few papers. Rubbings from the markings on the Fort Ouph teleportation circle, rubbings from the Chaos Gate, and rubbings from the tablets found at the bottom of the ocean.
     The talk of herbs gets Pela's eyes glimmering behind that little mask, as she lifts her hands to just pull down her hood. "I hadn't started yet. Distracted with other things. The cactus, that is the hallucinatory one yes? What about the mushrooms? What do they do? The third floor is the one with the lake right?" She pauses as he draws attention back to the ritual. "Oh. Right. Uhm." She pauses.
     "... It should just need to be repowered and stuff and ... some magic words? I dunno them though." She shrugs helplessly! Regardless, everyone else had things in hand it seems. Especially Uta who she just kind of ... stares at as she talks like that. She knew Uta was smart, but her actually /talking/ like that... she frowns a bit thoughtfully. But then they continue on!
     She pauses in front of the puzzle door. Just kind of ... silently staring at it. "Oh this is an easy puzzle, it's... it's... you just move the... pieces... I..." She pauses, staring at it silently. Her eyes seemed to almost go fuzzy, as her lack of all of the skills she used to have settles in, and she finds herself just... completely unable to read the puzzle. "...I..." She frowns a bit, going quiet and starting to mutter under her breath quickly, her gaze shifting around quickly, and she just... moves over to the side to let to others take a crack at it. While she works at calming herself down.

Shiruba stops and looks up at the door. She actually smiles a bit. "Now this is my kind of puzzle!" She walks over, jiggling one of the 'pieces' to check how they move. "Okay then." She starts shifting a few around, moving blocks to be able to move other blocks, and eventually completes one of the marking. "It's a cryptographic sequence, yes. Like a big sliding puzzle lock on a vault door." She starts moving a few more pieces. "Someone get that one from down the corner there, moved to the opposite side, and there's a few in the middle that should actually be the edges.. you can tell because they have the sides that don't have a marking that lines up with another piece..." She can't move every puzzle piece herself so she gives out suggestions to the others as well. Strategic puzzle solving!

Uta's brain goes into overdrive. Prophylaxis feels just a /little/ bit bad for the little sketched out slime-faces, but not so much so that the pride and accomplishment shining on his face are in any way diminished. "Well done," he says with a nod. Truly, that crystal is a miracle of medical magic. It's amazing what a little concentration and mental clarity can do to a cluttered mind.

"That's the fourth floor," he says to Pela, with regards to the massive lake. "The third is heavily forested. The Landers there utilize a form of hallucinogenic mushroom that seems to enable greater connectivity with the natural world. Like psilocybin but with actual spirits. I'm looking into using the two to create more treatments for patients suffering from chronic mental health issues. Hopefully something comes of it." But what, exactly, is a great big ol' shruggerooni. Still, from how Uta is responding to this treatment, the doctor has high hopes.

No ghost is summoned, but they are confronted with a puzzle-locked door. Prophylaxis pulls a notebook from his inventory and begins scribbling inside. He's taking the time to slip copies of Pela's research into the tome for later perusal, but then uses the subsequent blank pages to start scribbling out potential solutions to the lock. "Mmmn. Sequence might matter, too. We don't want to spend /too/ much time on this, but I think maybe if we move these in order..."

Then maybe they'll be able to get where they're going fast enough to avoid an inevitable tide of zombies. That'd be nice.

Uta walks towards the front of the door, keeping a somewhat relaxed posture despite her gaze being all focus and business. She taps her chin when confronted to the shapes of the door, and after a nod, she quietly begins to move them around. It isn't immediate, but after a bit of a complex dance, every piece clicks into place; yet, Uta doesn't even look when this happens. While her hands slide the parts on one corner of the puzzle, her attention already multitasks on a different section. "Aand... yes... that one... and that... Oh, good point Shiruba, yes, you're right."

"I still have some samples of Cactus Juice in my inventory. Is that the cactus it's from?", Uta asks. "Oh, and yes. I /do/ have the Scripture skill. The longer I think about it, the less and less the random character generation seems... random. It feels like whatever force decided my avatar had a purpose." As another piece falls into the appropriate slot, she continues, "...I just wish someone told me what this purpose was."

"I agree with you, June. We need more words."

"The Doctor has, indeed, produced something remarkable with that crystal." Her excitement is back for a moment, "It's /so amazing/!", she exclaims, fists clenched as she spins on the foot she had just set down while walking, does a 360 degree turn, and resumes walking as if nothing had happened, "...being able to be like this again all the time... just imagine!"

    June pulls out that flat disk again and flicks the gyroscope rings into motion, the leters flashing and flickering as she stares 'through' it at the lock. "Yes crypto is in use... good." she licks her lips. She gives a few instructions for changes to order of operation as puzzle peices slide around.

    Once the door is open she puts her disk away back into her bikini. The party heads down the tunnel exposed, and into a distractingly full room of treasure. Imeasurable wealth all just waiting to be looted. And take up all that time the Doc was worried about, letting a zombie horde eat everyone from behind.

    June starts looking at the treasure picking up this shiny thing or that, her free hand moving of it's own accord to pet the nearest fluffy thing... be it Pela's ears or Shiruba's tail well that's up to fate.

     Pela was mostly not even listening when others talked towards her. Temporarily just... too absorbed in the disconcerting situation where she just... couldn't even... try to do anything with a puzzle because she was literally unable to descipher it. Sure, she /heard/ everything, and even made absent 'uh-huh. Mmhmm.' kind of noises at them. But it was going in one ear and out the other.
     Hmm. Wait. The door's open? The door's open. She blinks a few moments, coming back to her senses as she looks up towards the others. "What? Hallucinogenic mushroom? Cactus Juice samples?" She blinks a few more times, shaking her head and giving a soft exhale. Ugh. "I wish Nanami were here." She mutters under her breath, before moving on silently through the passageway... until they come to the room full of fake treasure. And her ears are pet.
     She freezes briefly as her head is touched, but she doesn't... actually immediately pull away, instead looking towards something in her moment of frozen-ness. "...This is all fake and worthless." Pela states straightforward and simply. "Probably a trap. Don't take anything."

The group enters the next room, and Shiruba lets out a snort as her tail gives an amused flick behind her. "When I said vault I wasn't expecting it to be literally a vault of treasure." Pause. "Or is it..."

The wolfgirl walks off to one pile of loot. She pulls out her longbow, using the crook in the end of one arm to hook a bejeweled necklace and lift it off the pile. She stares at it... and then snarls as she flicks her bow to whip the necklace off and back into the piles. "Those aren't jewels," she barks, "They're polished glass! It's fake." She turns back to the group. "Anyone else find anything that's actually valuable?"

Her tail keeps flicking, it might not be such an easy fluff to catch at the moment.

"Ah," Prophylaxis starts as his vision is briefly filled with the jingly-jangly glittery-glamoury goodness of a room full of PRICELESS TREASURE. He frowns slightly and walks up to a pile of coins... And gives it a good ol stabbing with a razor-sharp scalpel. He inspects the damage and nods, "Yep, pyrite. I'd bet all of it is some kind of pyrite or brass alloy. Nothing spectacularly valuable, but..."

His eyes gleam greedily for just the splittiest of seconds, "...I'd wager I could probably still find a market for it. Even if it's just melting all of it down and making metal fixtures out of the usable bits."

"Indeed," he says of the EXTREME DRUGS that apparently grow rampant in the tower. "I think they'd be worth examining. Psychedelics and hallucinogens can actually be quite effective at treating things like PTSD and depression, you know!"

"I will have to pass here," Uta announces, hands held up in front of herself in a disclaiming gesture. "I have no relevant skills to the task at hand. Neither in this world, nor had them before the Apocalypse." She just waits in a corner for everyone to be done.

From her vintage position (and lack of action), Uta spots the charcoal rubbing. "Oh, I'd like a copy of those if possible. I can provide these...", she says, and after flicking through her menu, she brings up a hand-written letter with a pair of lines of Alv script in it. "Estelle gave me a copy of her report about one night they went to look at one of the Moons through a telescope during the Firefly Festival. Among the things they saw, there were two lines in Alv script. I can add these to the corpus- as soon as I find the time to make a copy of them."

Yeowang's talent for mercantile endeavors lies less in the realm of identifying valuables and more in the realm of management. On the other hand, she's seen wealth before, and a room full of gewgaws does not impress her. She'll wait, with poorly disguised impatience, as the others work out what to take and what to leave. She doesn't have anything going on that could benefit from the raw materials, so she'll just cool her heels.

June pets Pela's ears as she checks several things in the piles of loot. "Yah it's all junk... useless crap probably intende to keep us here looting until zombies poor down the tunnel and murder us all. Come on, lets go it isn't even really worth looting... I mean you can take however much you want to load in your inventory if you want to." she shrugs "But I'm not lugging it all around I'll forget why I have it and then it'll just BE there ... kami above that would be anoying."

    June heads down the tunnel letting Pela have her ears back. Then they find the ghost that was summoned with the ritual upstairs. The image of a salamander in samurai armor. At the approach of the party a ghostly apparition of the person in the picture. "Greetings young heroes. You have this opportunity to prove to me that you are worthy of the legacy of a hero." He draws bladesand reddies for a fight.

Yeowang is offered the chance to prove she's worthy of the legacy of a hero, and she doesn't hesitate. Leading off with her best move, she attacks, but it turns out it's not good enough. She looks very annoyed for a moment. "I swear this game can't keep up with what I wany to do," she grumbles, though it looks fast enough as she strikes at the ghostly apparition.

     That offer and that new piece of the puzzle. Pela actually turns her full attention, ignoring other mentions and comments on the treasure. That didn't matter, she didn't actually care. No. She immediately went over to Uta, and pulled out those three sets of charcoal rubbings (Which were probably several different papers since the chaos gates weren't exactly small). This was more important than crappy loot that isn't worth anything! ...To Pela at any rate. In spite of her mercantile skill, she didn't care much about making money.

     "...Please give me a copy when you do and make enough copies that we can spread them to other people woking on it." Pela says with a quick nod and small smile. And then. Uta recieves a rarity. A hug. From Pela. Who then continues on quickly, humming with an almost uncharacteristic cheer. She didn't even mind that her ears were being petted right now. June seemed nice enough.
     Progress! Met with... a ... legendary ghost! Or something like that. Pela looks towards the ghost curiously, and then that talk of that opportunity. "...Hm." She tilts her head. Did she care to be a hero? ... She /was/ working on making a name for herself. She takes a deep breath, before pulling out a slip of magical paper, beginning to draw on her magic. But she accidentally pulls out the wrong slip. As she starts to cast an air spell, she instead is ... using a fire rune. Which still results in a relatively spectactular effect!

     ... A burst of hot air instead of a cutting wind like she'd intended to use!

Junk rather than treasure, disappointing. The group moves on, but Shiruba perks up a bit when they get to the heart of the tombs. "Look! Memorial paintings! This must be someone important's entombme--" Cue the Legendary Salamander warrior appearing. "--As I was saying." But for once this undead wants an honorable duel rather than a despotic siege, and that's fine with her. "This is perfect! A training oppritunity!" Her eyes flicker with cold blues for a moment as she conjures an armor like layer of ice and frost around herself. "Have at ye, sir noble hero!"

She fires a few bolts of lightning from Thundersnow Howl, but it's not enough to stop the hero from swinging hardily and crashing his weapon into her, sending the wolfgirl pounding against a wall. Already several portions of her Frost Armor are cracked and breaking off. "He's got quite a whallop to him," she remarks, before dashing back into the fray. "But it takes more than that to keep us down!"

There is a moment of awkwardness.

Uta hesitates, considers.

And then, another very, very, very rare thing happens.

Uta hugs Pela. A quick hug, but it counts.

"I will write you a copy as soon as this mission is over."

"It is a honour for us to be able to encounter the likes of you in this duel," Uta announces, and bows. She assumes a fighting stance. "Let's start!"

She launches into the battle, dodging the incoming attacks with a ridiculous amount of acrobatics, attempting staff-jabs which end up being parried. She eventually leaps back to a further distance as more Adventurers rush in, and Uta slams her staff on the ground again. She intones a chant, whose melody alrternates between a crystalline call and am oppressive response.

The staff lights up at different points, in different colors, depending on the pitch of Uta's melody; once the musical chant is complete, the gem flares and shoots out two bolts of magic, a red one which strikes and envelopes the hero, and a green one which envelopes Uta herself. More intense spots of energy flow from the hero, through the staff, and back into Uta, and as they do so, the hero's HP bar gets depleted, and Uta's gets replenished. "Hit it! Hit it while I keep it busy!"

"Another samurai ghost...?" Prophylaxis wonders aloud, his brow creeping toward his hairline. "Wonder if he has anything to do with that one ghost on the cliffside? Ah, well. If it's a challenge, then I've no choice but to make an attempt."

It is, however, just an attempt. Whatever this spirit is, whatever he's doing in this place, it's clear that he deserves the honors with which he was buried. The loot in the treasury may have been little more than piles of false gold and theater jewelry, but this resurrected warrior fights as though he deserved every glittering grave good. Prophylaxis whispers a curse as binding after attempted binding is slashed clean through by the samurai's blade, not even a single thorny vine manages to slow him down.

Perhaps the others will have better luck...?

    June bows to the spirit and then a shift takes place, iron scales growing over her body as she sprouts iron bull horns. Her mouth elongates into a muzzle as her feet shrink into hooves and an iron scaled tail lifts the back of her cape when it wags a bit. "Oh light of the heavens, spirits of purity, empower this servant with the blazing light of your wrath. Let us bring light unto darkness, and crush this worthy foe under hoof." she says as a golden halo begins to form between her horns and she starts to glow with a radience that is not kind to undeath. She charges in, the glowing holy warrior giving it her all, moving with a speed and fluid grace one would not expect from a mini metal minotar. But she is rebuffed again and again. In the end the party is left battered and beaten, but the hero stops short of killing anyone. He looks... pleased? The hero stops and puts his swords away. "Congratulations young heroes, take my favor and go forth to raise your own Legend in the world." the hero salutes the party and then fades away. The pall of undeath lifts from the graveyard with his departure, and each player has a Hero's Favor item in their hand.

Shiruba gets up, dusts some of the frost flakes off herself, and then bows to the Legend as he fades away and murmurs a brief prayer of gratitude. Then rights herself, and deposites the Favor into her inventory. Clasps her hands together. "Well, it's nice to know there as some undead that aren't total assholes." She glances back down the path they came. ".. I wonder if that ritual we saw was someone trying to turn him into a corrupt spirit. With that kind of fighting prowess..." She shivers at the thought, her tail bristling.

     A long fight! A battered, beaten pela is left on the floor, having sometime in the middle of the fight discarded the mask and cloak -- probably for mobility. And she had fought hard! She did her best and gave it her all. Using a mix of melee and magic to attempt to fight hard! She's not the last to fall, being basically a tank with support and DPS sub-roles, resulting in her fighting further... when a particularly rough strike goes for someone else, she dives in the front. And she's down and on her knees, out and barely able to keep conscious, her health blinking at one little sliver.
     And then... the fight ends. The hero stops attacking them. And even gives them a token of its approval, while leaving them in a now-purified graveyard. "..." She slowly begins to push herself up to stand again, shaking her head at Shiruba. "...Let's not even talk about that." She looks towards Uta. "...Thank you." In response to pre-battle things.

Uta bows to the hero as she, battered up, receives her token. "Thanks, o noble hero."

When that is taken care of, she will, first of all, thank Pela with a "...don't mention it," ith a bit of an embarrassed smile, then continue her discussion about the matter of cracking one of the world's most tantalizing mysteries.

"For the record, I have also been working on a phonograph. It can both record and play back sounds. People are hypothesizing that the strange language Landers sing in might actually be Alv, or at least related to it. I plan to start recording songs soon. Maybe we can cross-reference the script with those songs, and see if we can see a pattern in them." She looks around everyone. "Oh, by the way -- if anyone learns of any place where Lander Songs are sung, please inform the others, so we can record them and add them to our collection for study and preservation purposes." She turns to the rest of the party. "If we accumulate large enough a corpus to actually be able to have a statistically meaningful accumulation of words, as opposed to a pile of hapax legomena, we could try and apply Zipf's law to try and segregate the words or lexemes into classes that could hint at their function. Well, that would be assuming that this language follows the rules of more normal languages, which is not a guarrantee at all. Nonetheless, it is a route worth persuing."

She turns towards Shiruba and Pela. "You two are absolutely right -- before anyone can attempt something funny, I think it's best if, yes, we seal this hero's spirit again."

She kneels down, and those complex geometric patterns from earlier are drawn again. "Pseudo-Lockington's Arcana patterns and sealing variant of the Qing configuration," she rattles out as her hand zooms around making chalk marks. "That's what we need. And, once again, we need to ensure the correct balance of balance /and/ imbalance in the flow, to hinder attempts at attuning. And... uh.. and... uh... where was I? Oh, yes. Tabby went to rub itself against Mrs. Slimson, and she told Mr.Slimington, 'my, your Tabby is such a nice tabby, Mr.Slimington!' 'Thank you, Mrs. Slimson...'"

And there she goes again, tongue sticking out and doodling slimes all over the place.

She looks happy.

"Can we really consider the ghost of a hero to be the same kind of 'undead' as the zombies and skeletons running wild all over the place...?" Prophylaxis groans, body covered in crackling red pixels. He spends a moment or two jabbing his arm with syringes filled with healing potion until the flickering damage indicators finally disappear completely. "...Well. No matter, it looks like we came away with his approval regardless. Definitely stronger than that other samurai ghost, though. Or maybe there were just more of us that time...?"

...Oh well. It's fine. Uta's mental clarity buff's run its course, too. "There are a couple," he says. "Places I know where Landers sing rare songs, I mean. The Igneous Temple is one, and the other... If you find a bunch of chims, they tend to resonate with a song. We might want to try setting up a phonograph near people suffering from various Moonlight afflictions, too. Might just do... something. Not exactly sure /what/ precisely, but probably 'something.'"

    June nods at Uta "From the one word I've got fully translated, or I belive fully translated for use with the gates Enne... I think that we're dealing with a writing that may be phoneme based, which makes the lexemes very valuable at least in learning the pronunciation of the words as we find them inscribed. This can be checked against any spoken or sung Alvari words we encounter, so the phonograph will be most helpful in translating the script, positional use and context may be our only real hope for discovering meaning, as Enne describes the act of desiring and outcome, or I suppose wishing for something... at least without further context this is the useage I can determin from the chaos gates."

     Oh gosh. The jargon. The speech. The technical terms. Pela is just kind of sitting there, still a bit punch drunk from the fight, and listening. And just... kind of ... staring. Her eyes are slowly starting to spin a little as she listens. Aaaand then she just kind of. Opts for the easiest option and response. And she flops over. Yep. Just wait for the natural regen to tick your HP up a bit more Pela, that'll help make this less ridiculous.

"Oh, yes, but the Chims just hum tunes, they don't speak words," Uta explains, still doodling along on the ground. "I would be glad to visit this Igneous temple. I know there are some Churches where some rare songs are sung. I have tried arranging appointments with the appropriate authorities. Too busy to speak with an Adventurer at the moment." She mumbles, "I get the feeling they're ignoring me on purpose."

"Now we have libraries, too. Hm..." She looks up and taps her chin. "...I wonder if any of the books we have acquired contain any Alv script in them..."

She stands there frozen in thought for a few seconds, then shakes her head, and goes back to her slimoglyphs. "Anyone feel free to contact me if they find any song or spoken reference to Alv! I'll make sure to procure a shellac cylinder every time we find a new song."

A little more blinking, then she stops, stares, drops everything she's doing, and instead of kneeling, moves to /sit/ on the ground. "...uh. Hm. I doubt the phonograph will be able to extract much from those people -- it's a crummier version of our ears, pretty much, and our ears don't get much out. But I had already been thinking about some graphing attachment for the phonograph, and starting a project to explore magical ways to detect vibrations that would be compatible with songs."

"...But that might take too long and might be doomed to failure. I'm looking into alternative ways of finding out the lyrics to those."

"Enne... interesting. Very interesting. It's a start, yes. The crack to insert our crowbar into."

    June shifts back into her human form, eases Pela's head into her lap and pets fluffy ears because KITTY and teammate needs healing... and it's just as easy to drop a repth or three through ear petting as any other way. She nods "Yes, the best, best, best part is... I know what Enne means... I can read it... I can speak it, I can hear it... and IT DOES NOT Translate!" she giggles like a schoolgirl and keeps petting Pela and healing the caitsith.