Duty Session 255: Karluin Reclamation - Keep

    The Scale Emblem Alliance had managed to push their ways in and setup a small foothold camp in the middle of Karluin, right outside the large keep. A few tents and a small fire is the only sign of a presence with a few guards protecting the camp. In the middle of the camp Setsuna was waiting for the rest of the group, ready to begin an assault on the keep, and trying to clear out the source of the goblins. Hopefully they would find a lovely teleportation crystal inside just begging to be shattered.

Prophylaxis is also here. Of course he's here. He's definitely not in two different places at the same time, ha ha ha why would you ever think that?

>_>

Regardless, the goblins still need to be rooted out, and someone needs to do the rooting. So he is here! To do rooting. Excellent.

Schneider is here and ready to go, though he's a bit distracted. He's sitting on his haunches, a heavy tome open across his knees. "You know, I've been looking at the heroes of the Scrapped Princess War. It's an interesting story." Clearly distracting, as he's doing that while everyone else is preparing to kill goblins.

Another day another run and here is Miho her tail swishing as she does so.

"Sounds like lore worth following up on Schneider. This is our world now we best need to know it's history right? These damn green skins keep coming." She checks her Katana for a moment and otehrwise seems ready to go.

Now it seems Tenko is wandering her way to the tower this time. There is a lot of help that's needed here, and helping is what she does. When she spots the other group that is working towards helping the folks in Karluin, she decides to join them, the masked kitsune doing what she can to just tag along, for the moment. She's being very quiet, as usual, however.

    Setsuna looks at Schneider and tilts his head, " Oh yeah taking an interest in the wars? You know you could always see if you could ask our friend for any information. It is like Miho says though, its not a bad thing to learn about. " As he steps forwards he looks at Prophylaxis who for a moment Setsuna would sear he looked like one of those mirror images and just before Setsuna can examine it closer the tactical officer coughs loudly. " The reports of the keep Sir, " Handing the information to Setsuna, the Necromancer spread it out and looks at it for a moment. " Um yes it is the tactical information, in fact I think it is a map." He squints for a moment trying to read it before passing it on and noticing Tenko. " Excuse me do you read map?"

Tenko takes the map for a moment and frowns, "I'm afraid I'm not much in the way of map reading. I am more of a painter." She replies, as she slides the map back over, to see who else might have a chance to make heads or tails of the map.

Schneider nods to Miho about the lore. "Yes, exactly," he agrees. "There's waaay more depth here than I expected. They really went all-out." He nods to Setsuna about an interest in the wars. "So much of the current politics and geopolitical situation seems to be rooted in the aftermath. And the fact that heroes keep turning up is interesting, so I'm looking into that time period." But there's briefing meterials now, so he'll mark his page and look over the briefing materials for /this/ mission. "Interesting."

Miho says "I am too, it looks like it could be coming back to haunt us. I'll tell you if I dig up anything of note myself. I tend to just make things. I have to wonder, humm let me get a look at the map." She'll take a look trying to read it her tail swaying as she doe so. She''s not the best at this and it goes rather pooly for her, when all is said and done. "I'm afraid I kinda slept through this..." She went to high school in America after all...

Prophylaxis may or may not be a mirror image Prophylaxis carefully and meticulously disguised in such a way that he's able to be in two places at the same time.

But probably not, and only because he's not actually allowed to do that because of THE RUUUULES.

"Pretty sure there's still a secret door under the bridge somewhere," Prophylaxis says with a shrug. "Judging by these notes, I don't think the goblins plugged it yet. Makes sense, since we didn't exactly push too deep into the goblin encampment the last time either."

     Setsuna looks at the map finally and notices something as well. As he holds up a point on the map to the group , " So what about we go in right here?" As he points at the spot on the map Prophylaxis explains it before he looks to the group for consensus. With consensus given they move forward. " Ok so we sneak in here, and I am sure it will be smooth sailing the entire way." Turning back to the others as they approach the entrance and Setsuna reaches to pull on the door, and the damn door is locked with no keyhole. " I hate puzzles."

Schneider follows out with the others as SEtsuna directs everyone where we're going. Sneaking along, or at least trying not to make too much noise, he pauses at the locked door. "Well, so much for that plan," he says. He doesn't even notice the lock on the door, he's proceeding straight to fireball. Works on most doors. "Brain, Brain dead," he begins...

"Guys," Prophylaxis says of the hidden door, or rather, the lack of a hidden door. "There's a problem."

"I don't remember where the door is...!"

Tenko thinks she knows where the door is. But she feels like she's right...Then she's decidedly not. She can't lockpick a door that doesn't exist.

"I can't seem to find it." The kitsune says, as quitely as she can manage while the group still can hear her, "We don't have a lot of time to keep looking, either."

Again they get rolling and she looks over to Setsuna and follos after him she looks at the puzzel and makes a face, her tail moves about like an annoyed cat's. Don't tell her that she will yell she is not a cargirl. "I do too, there's a time for them but not in a place like this."

Maybe there's a switch or key around here somewhere. She has no luck in the end finding anything.

    Setsuna looks at the door, and approaches it and feels at it and checks the hinges and checks the hinges hinges and the type of dirt it is built on. All very scientific stuff before he looks back at the others. Looking at the others as they all seem to have a problem and notices the fireball being created into Schneider's hand. "My friends and especially those prone to using fire to solve problems. May I suggest the age old thing to do when you come to a lock door. " Setsuna casts knock on the door, as in he truly just knocks on the door.
     After a moment of waiting it seems like it works as the door slides open. "Ha, " turning back he looks at the group with a smug look having not seen the mob of goblins behind him. He hears them though and nods his head a little before asking, " There is a group of goblins behind me isn't there?"

There's a group of goblins behind him.

And then each one is booped in the face by a swarm of magic missiles.

"Yep," Prophylaxis answers with a shrug. "Or at least, there /was/ a group of goblins behind you. Now there's a group of goblins with a bunch of bloody noses."

Schneider continues casting, you can't just not cast a fireball. It'd be wrong. "...Obey your blood oath, come forth from the land of Avalon. Fire of Gehenna, become a fiery blast and burn everything around us! EXODUS!" And unholy fire rushes out, passing right by Setsuna's face, to broil the goblins emerging from the secret door. See, there's a happy ending after all.

Tenko has access to all the elements when it comes to her magic abilites, but in this case she opts to use water into ice. She conjures up a miniature storm in her hands, and uses it to blast right at the goblins as they emerge.

"Best to take them out before they manage to alert the others!" The ice storm rains right on top of the goblins, weaking their armor for the other magical attacks

Miho says "Or expostives depending on the game. Should tell you about a game I was in Highschool. Good stories there." She'll keep working This is how thing pan out as they get a group of Goblins, She wordlessly draws her Kaatana. She then leaps upon them hacking and slashing as she goes...

    The goblins die, as magic of many varieties fly around Setsuna and the necromancer ducks low to the ground. As the sounds of Goblins dying erupt behind him, he turns magic energy around his hands, and they are all dead, in fact at that very moment Miho is stabbing the last one. "Ok well good job everyone. Lets keep that up." As they move in to the underground passage , they move into a strange chamber. This chamber at first glance is a very obvious puzzle room. You have metal torches rearranged in a certain order, unknown symbols on the ceiling. The blocks can move and illuminate some of the symbols. Definately a puzzle room. "I know a Imp who would love to spend a few days in here."
     It would be helpful if some puzzle expert was here because the goblins really just caused everything to be in disarray. Probably because it appears several goblins were living here, they died a few moments ago when they opened the secret passage, but they moved the puzzles out of the way. They will have to either solve the puzzle or go towards a more brute forced solution.

Schneider looks around at the puzzle situation and shrugs. There's torches, torches need to be lit, right. That's a pretty direct application of FIRE. Mind you, when you use as much as he does, you're burning off the top inch of torch that's not supposed to burn, but they're alight. Job complete. He looks smug. Not just anyone can do that.

Tenko could light the torches but it seems someone is already working on htat, so she's going to work on trying to push blocks out of the way.

She's not that great at puzzles, she'd admit. So if someone wants to direct her where to move the blocks to she will, otherwise she's going to just keep pushing until a path opens.

Miho is happy to take out more goblins, it's always good to get rid of the western cousins of Oni right? "Oh which imp would that be Setsuna?" Mihop would be pussing on ahead and she'll pause for a moment she sighs and will take a deep breath she'll breath fire to light the troches totally showing off to her companions.

"Probably the other Pro," Prophylaxis says as he enters a... Familiar place. Half-familiar. "...Wow, they really did /not/ waste any time mucking it all up again..." He murmurs, before looking to the goblin shanty.

A fireball appears, hovering atop one finger like some kind of basketball set into a delicate spin-cycle. "Well, let's clean the place up."

You know what happens now. Fire. Fire everywhere!!

    Setsuna looks at the torches and grins as he to just throws fire everywhere to light as much of the torches as possible. With the torches all lit a door opens and the party is able to move forward. The passage slopes down and leads to crossroad and with that they find themselves in a prison, filled with captured adventuers and landers. Of course if there is a prison, there is a warden and he too is infront of the group and looking very upset. However the prison is rather dark, perhaps bright light would disorient him.

Fortunately, Prophylaxis is a damn wizard. While he doesn't get to fight a special happy-time boss today, he /does/ get to deal with a hobgoblin with a critical maladaptation towards light and light-adjacent things.

That is to say, he gets to use his staff in the way that all wizard staffs were intended. "Light," he commands as the air-aspected gem at his staff's zenith blazes with inner radiance. A stored electrical fuzz spell, perhaps? Whatever the case, he shines it right into the hobgoblin's awful face...!

Schneider huhs as we've found the goblin prison, and just as he's about to suggest freeing the prisoners, the warden shows up. Well, that's easily fixed in Schneider's world. "Slayer, slayer, dark thunder of Balmor! BAL VOLT!" Raw energy slams into the warden. And it seems Schneider's powered up a bit, that looks more powerful than his Bal Volts had been in the past. The warden's certainly not happy about it.

Tenko's ice powers are not as useful as she would like. Maybe she should stick to fire like she usually does! The ice rain doesn't have the same effect on the Warden as she would have wanted, but it seems to be working well enough to make the other members go to work! She's happy enough to be supporting the team.

Things now gert reallyc razy the fin their way to a prison there are other Adventuers here and even LAnders worse there's a big gobling which she'll take severral shots at it iwth her bow. She does not want to end up taking any more time than she can she'll help with getting people out but they have to move. They can not stay here much longer.

    Setsuna looks at the warden as he ets out a whistle and from behind the group a skeleton knight jumps forward and charges straight into the Warden to hold him while the others do the damage dealing. The warden falls and the keys for the cells are retrieved, and the prisoners are freed. Now the only thing left to do is to try and get all these people up to the surface and away from this keep before everyone else becomes prisoners too.

And now, it's a matter of escaping with the prisoners. Sadly, Schneider's an Exploder Wizard, not a Defender Wizard, and his magic shield is not sufficient to defend the weak and weary prisoners against the remaining goblin giards. The guards are slaughtered, of course, but the point is defending the prisoners, and that's the part his magic shield is not quite up to in his current magic-low state.

Tenko is usually offensive focused, but it seems that when she wants to, she's able to put up defensive walls.

Ice walls shoot up from the ground at the command of the kitsune, intent on blocking enemy paths and allowing her to help defend the landers and adventurers that the group is helping to escape.

The hobgoblin falls and dissolves in a haze of red light. Prophylaxis nods, satisfied. "Well! For once we've actually fought real goblins in the goblin-infested castle. Who would have thought!"

But... This place is unsettling. What would goblins be doing with prisoners? What kind of people would they even /keep/ as prisoners? As it turns out, some Landers working for the Hunter's Guild. Prophylaxis frowns and turns to lead them back out into the light of day. He periodically stops and conjures walls of thorny brambles over the corridors and passages that Tenko overlooks. No goblins will be coming to retake their prisoners today-- not if he has anything to say about it.

Miho is finihed with the fighting in the end and focuse on helping to get people free of the cells. So they can all get out of here. The good news i they rescused quite a few people out of this nightmare. All and all a good day.

    With the prisoners free Setsuna helps by using his hunter's eye to point out where Goblins are around the corner. Some may be missed but the rest of the team has it covered and eventually the party and the prisoners make it to the top. As the adventurers and landers that were once prisoners scatter, a few landers stop and give the party a gift, a sigil of their guild, the Merchant's Guild.