Duty Session 276: Spooky Scary Skeletons

The Lands seem to react to the time of year and festivals in pretty unique ways. While trick or treating happens in Carmina, other areas report mysterious increases in undead activity. A quest notification pops up for each of you, directing you to the Hunter's Guild. From there, a guide takes you to a location at the edge of the desert, where he points across the dunes.

"The largest concentration seems to be towards the oasis." A Hunter's Guild guide informs them, "So, head that direction and kill as many as you can. It should slow them down from reaching the city."

    Merek takes time to put on his dark attire, then he begins to adjust the scarf which he wears. The man nods a bit to the party while he takes a moment to spin the spear which he keeps with him. "Right, we will assist in any way we can," he offers to the guide, while he nods a bit to the party.

Looking around the gathered folks, Michio nods to those assembled, "I am Michio Asa, the Wandering Healer. I can provide support and utility."

And that's pretty much it, a succinct introduction as he looks around at the assemblage.

Goldenblade slept poorly last night. It happens sometimes. But through a yawn, she expresses interest in the quest, and nods as the agent directs us where to go. "On it," she replies sleepily.

Rylen likely is only in this area as a stopping point in his travels. The Pooka has a tendency to travel back and forth from the Ninetails Dominion in order to gather supplies and martial forces against the undead threat there. Luckily, despite the season, there doesn't seem to be any increase in the threat levels there, for now.

So, the performer and representative for Crescent Moon is able to take some time out to run a quest. "This should be interesting. I haven't been out in the desert since I went training with Xander before the tournament." He cracks his knuckles and bounces on his feet. "Kill some undead. Should be easy enough."

    Mizuki's hair has been brushed, tamed, and dyed red, falling not quite so shaggily down her back. She's dressed in a midriff-baring purple outfit with silver accents, consisting of a sleeveless top, a short skirt, silvery bracers with costume gems on the back of the wrists, and thigh-high boots (which are missing the foot part in were fang form.) The bared fur reveals that she has dark reddish-brown stripes on her arms and one continuous stripe runs down her back vertically with short, horizontal stripes spaced every few inches which only reach out a few inches to each side. Much like a very stylized, minimalistic drawing of a tabby's stripe pattern brought to life.

    When she heard a new quest had appeared for Halloween, she was eager to come try it out, but... it's in the desert? She slumps a bit. Sand could be awful with this costume... No, no, focus on the fun! She stands tall with a brightened expression, and speaks in a slightly different tone than normal like she's imitating a voice: "Fear not, Yamato denizens! A few undead will be no problem! Back home I had to fight my way through a horde of vicious glabnoks every Glabnok's Day!"

    It is halloween, she worked hard on this costume, she's *making the most of it dammit*!

Sun-leathered skin clings to the skeletal frames of several ghouls that can be seen shambling along the dunes over the horizon.

    Merek tries avoiding the skeletons that are within the ground. He doesn't do well with that, in fact he seems to be trying to flee to safe ground, "Ah, what!" The man tries to swing the spear, "The sneaky skeletons!"

"Rylen Corvus." The Pooka responds to the introduction, offering a relaxed sort of salute and a smile on his Elven features. "Mentor and Rep for Crescent Moon. Circus Performer by trade." He grins with a boyish sort of charm, and then offers a bow and a flourish.

He can't help but look over in Mizuki's direction, taking in both acting and her costume. The silver-haired acrobat isn't actually dressed for the holiday, but he seems appreciative of the extra effort.

Then, the group seems to be off into the desert. Having dealt with undead for a long while, Rylen is knowledgable enough to know that these aren't exctly intelligent or high level. "I know how to deal with these." He reports, then shifts to stomp one booted foot into the sand. Stone rises up from beneath it, two huge rocks hanging in the air.

Then, moving his hands together, the two rocks crash, creating a loud sound which is obviously meant to draw the attention of the ghouls.

    Mizuki looks at the array of wandering ghouls. Starfire would just charge in fighting, but as much fun as she's having doing this bit, she doesn't want to pull a Leeroy Jenkins on her party. She slumps. "I guess it's a good thing I've been turned into a cat..." she creeps over the sand and, somehow, despite her brightly-colored hair and clothing, becomes hard to pick out...

Goldenblade introduces herself as, "Goldenblade, bricklayer, Ceescent Moon." Though she's a general builder, in game, it turns out. And, when inspected, her actual name overflows the frame, even in its reduced font. She walks along with the group, fanned out a bit to the side, and she drops to a crouch when we spot the ghouls. When the others move, she will follow Mizuki, keeping to the lower terrain, using each little rise as cover, sneaking by the ghouls skillfully, even without her ninja gear on.

Rylen's stone-stomp sends two ghouls flying, and several others turn to see what all the ruckus is about. Mizuki's stonelike skin blends in nicely with a boulder, and also doesn't give the ghouls anything to scent! (Their eye sockets are hollow, after all, they probably don't see much). Michio moves swiftly from rock to rock, avoiding the ghouls' notice while Goldenblade engages her stealth mode.

Merek, meanwhile, almost trips over one of the undead as its stealth roll is over his perception check. He manages to flee, however, and it rubber bands back to the group it was with.

Finally, the party manages to make it past the ghouls with only a few minor scratches. It's not long before they run into the next challenge, however, which they hear before they see. Footsteps marching in pace causing bones to rattle eerily, carried by the winds over the sunswept sands. The land here is far too flat to hide, and the oasis lies to the other side of marching army. The party must figure a way past...

    Merek looks to the skeletons while he nods a bit to the party. "That's a lot of skeletons. Alright," the man begins to cast the magic that will bring a wall of the ground up, then he swings that into the forces to create a path for the party to use to reach them. It looks like he will be focused upon the support line. The man shifts the scarf which he wears while he guides along the support line.

Perhaps it is the heat of the desert, or maybe Rylen had sapped some measure of his strength when he had attacked the ghouls, earlier. Whatever the case, when he tries to pull up his own earth magic, it seems to rattle a bit, as if the beat of the skeletons was somehow disrupting it. "Huh..." The Pooka sounds confused.

He is, at least, able to offer himself some measure of defenses, letting the front lines of the skeleton fighters beat against a stone barrier, but it seems that he can't quite break their hold in order to attack.

"I'll try to hold them back, but I'll need some DPS help." He adds.

Goldenblade is about to dig in and form an entrenchment, because that's how she imagines you hold off a group like this, when Rylen calls for aid. She gives up on that project and rushes over, golden blades flashing darkly as they reflect the earth Rylen does get moving. It seems thay're tough, but they've got no mind for defense, so she cuts them deeply with each stroke, forming a defensive line, sort of, or at least an island.

    Introductions? "Oh, it's wonderful to meet you, friend Goldenblade! I'm Koriand'r from the planet Tamaran, but on Earth everyone calls me Starfire!" It's obviously Mizuki doing a bit, though.

    'They're throwing their bones?' Mizuki mutters to herself. 'How does that work, won't they run out of ammo? ...Oh right, videogame.' She slumps. 'I've been in here too long...'

    She starts dodging the attacks, when she notices the pattern: "Oh, I see! They have challenged us to one of your Earth 'dance-offs!'" Mizuki is not actually a great dancer or anything, but as she dodges to the rhythm, she starts throwing in little fluorishes; spins, moving her arms this way and that, kicks... it doesn't quite come together looking like a normal dance, exactly, but she does manage to make it look like the dodging is an effortless side effect of her dancing attempt! "This is pretty fun! And here I thought the undead would only want to fight... I didn't expect them to be down to, I believe the earth phrase is, 'boogey'?"

Rylen's earthen walls do little more than funnel the skeletons into a slightly narrower formation for the company to attack, but Merek makes up the difference by enclosing the skeletons in and making a narrow breach point, giving the party a strategic advantage.

Michio sends a wave of pulsing earth energy out from his palms, encouraging the plants to grow. Roots from deep beneath the sands, and cacti from above it, reach out to ensnare the marching cadre.

Goldenblade's slicing attacks hit the earthen walls at just the right angle, and the walls begin to slide inward, collapsing onto the skeletal marchers with a loud rumble, causing many of them to disperse into pixels.

Mizuki, meanwhile, gets down with her bad self. Her kicks obliterate some of the thorny vines, causing Thorn Bind Hostage's secondary effect to trigger and doing additional damage to the army, until finally they're dispersed.

The group continues marching only a short way before the derelict and decrepit structures of some long lost civilization can be seen poking up beneath the sands. Faintly the smell of the oasis can be caught on the wind, as though indicating the party is on the right track. Unfortunately, the path forward lies between a pair of buildings. As the party approaches the entryway, skeletal hands reach up from the sands, draped in lengths of cloth. Hands pull up the attached mummies, and the team faces yet another fight.

    Merek looks to the mummies while he thinks about it, then he nods. "Ah, well, I don't like to get wrapped up in these things," the man offers, amusedly. With that, he will begin to take a potion along the belt which he then will throw into the mummies. When it explodes, there is flame that begins to shimmer along the mummies while he begins to sweep.

Goldenblade huhs as Mizuki introduces her self as her costume character and she's so confused she has to do an inspect and think about it before she works out what's going on. She smirks, then sighs, "Kids today," and gets on with things while she does her dance-off. This game is /so/ confusing.

On the other hand, monsters attacking us out of the ground is kind of straightforward. Even -she- can work out the answer to that. It's FIRE. If Fire's not the answer you need, you're not using enough, she's heard, but in this case, she uses an elegant sufficiency to broil the monsters, whatever they are.

One of those wrapped hands actually reaches up and grabs Rylen on the leg. "Off, off!" He kicks out at it, then steps back, watching the mummified creature rise up from the sands. "Alright, looks like we need to clear the way."

He begins to go through what looks to be a martial arts kata, making a number of motions in the direction of the mummies. However, it has a bit of a delayed reaction. Still, when flaming rocks start to fall from the skies, impacting into the skeletal forms, knocking some over and lighting others on fire, it is an impressive sight.

"There. To make up for the trouble with the skeletons." He claps sand off of his hands.

    Mizuki is smiling happily. Playing this sort of character really is filling her with joy. It's why she made a cute catgirl to begin with... it just got all messed up and confusing when that became her actual body. She needs to find that joy in 'playing' Mizuki, after Halloween is over...

    But right now, the adventure continues! Scarab amulets? That feels like a movie reference. "Oh, do you want a dance off too? Someone demonstrated this wonderful Earth dance last night..." She starts to do the opening steps to Thriller, but... the approaching mummies are clearly not looking for a dance! She stops and puts her hands on her hips. "Rude!" And then recoils away from one trying to scratch her. "Hands off! If it is a fight you want, then it is a fight you shall have!" She keeps trying to leap to clear areas where she can conjure flames and throw them like starbolts at the skeletons, treating it like she's in a shooter and using her breath like a flamethrower when big groups get close!

Things get toasty as the party turns into a bunch of pyromaniacs. Merek begins the fireworks with a bottle of alchemist's fire, which splashes across several of the mummies. They're quickly consumed by the flames leaving behind pixels and the faint scent of crispy bacon.

Michio steps up and begins throwing punches enshrouded in violet flame, igniting a mummy and then moving on to the next. Goldenblade focuses her flames into a slicing blade of death leaving the mummies crying for their mummies.

Then, the sky opens up and Rylen obliterates the remaining mummies with his flaming hailstones of doom.

Walking through the path in the ruins, the party at last sees the surface of the oasis. Verdant plants sit along the water's edge, as well as the skeletal remains of a wide number of animals, and what may have been Landers? (Of course, not really, as Landers don't actually leave skeletons behind, but there they are all the same!)

A figure floats around the rim of the water's edge, periodically stopping to point at a patch of flora. As it does so, the plants wither away into blackened husks. After one such episode, the Reaper looks up and turns blue-starred eyes on the party, and an obsidian scythe appears in its hands. Without further prompting, it floats towards the party in attack.

    Merek looks to the scythe which swings along into the party. Except, the man lifts up a hand, "DIVINE SHIELD!" Magic begins shimmering while it protects the party, giving them space to begin their assault upon that monster. The man keeps the shield up while he watches the party take the time to fight, "Alright, I will focus upon the defense!"

Goldenblade blades out, she follows the rest of the party through the ruins, and hrms as she spots the floating figure. "It's Mister Death, about the reaping," she says, not that anyone will get that old reference, so she goes with plan A, and attacks with both swords. The blades drip with liquid fire as she spins and cuts, but the steel is pretty fantastic in its own right, and she does some reaping of her own, deflecting the scythe when it gets too close, and whirling and slicing as she fights the spectre of whatever it is.

One swipe of the reaper's scythe is enough to break through Rylen's defenses, despite the martial artist bracing against the attack. He winces, the thick red line of damage radiating across his abdomen. "I'm getting rusty." He grunts to himself, trying to shake off the pain that accompanies the health damage.

However, it does mean that when he moves to attack, his strikes are slow and easy enough to block. His presence in the fight seems little more than a distraction, for the time being. So, he grabs a hand around his stomach and steps back, shaking his head. "Should have brought her out to fight him."

It's hard to tell who he is talking about...

    Mizuki's feeling pretty good after that fight! But then they come to the abandoned watering hole. *obviously* a monster is going to pop out from somewhere... she looks around, ears turning this way and that... and then... STARES at death. She breaks character and breathes, "Wow... props to the visual artists on THAT... woah!" She's suddenly cut with the scythe, staggering back as her health bar decreases. One hit isn't so bad... but she's kept on the defense for a bit, until a tank can buy her time to cast Ozocubu's Armor and Condensation Shield. "Would that we could conquer the real death so easily... oh wait, I guess we kind of have..." still, shaken from its appearance, she focuses on the fight, using the frost armor to defend and waiting for opportunities to breathe fire on it point-blank!

"I remember this guy, I know just how to hit him!" Michio says as he charges forward. He crouches down and performs a flipping kick, directed right at the Reaper...

But it dodges. As though it had anticipated the attack.

A glowing line courses across Michio's back as the obsidian scythe flashes out, scoring a hit across his back. Michio's hitpoints flash as they drop by a full 20 percent, despite Merek's divine shield.

Rylen is similarly punished by the powerful attack from the undead mini-boss. Mizuki takes a smaller hit, then manages to get up her own defenses, and breathes a gout of flame at the floating death-dealer.

The Reaper shrieks at this attack, and Goldenblade follows it up with a double spinning attack from her firebrands, causing the creature to shriek before it evaporates.

Instead of the usual pixelated explosion, however, a wave of dark green energy, illiciting thoughts of poison and decay, pulses outwards several times. The skeletons around the edge of the water begin to rise... mummies from the ruins renew their march towards the oasis.

The party might just be in a bit of trouble.

Goldenblade might be in trouble, or she might still have more fire left. Dancing around with blades spinning, leaving a fiery wake as she slashes and strikes the skeletons and mummies, and what her blades don't smash gets burned by her fire. She's in full-on Blade Dancer mode now, twirling, striking, smashing, and burning, throwing out the damage like it's going out of style.

    Merek looks to that lich while he nods a bit, "Not the first lich, well... Let's see what we can do," he notes, then he lifts up a hand while he takes the spear into it, swinging that into the floor which begins drawing an entire field of frost shock along that lich. Then it breaks which brings the defenses away from it with a charge of lightning.

The sight of a Lich alone would be a frightening enough prospect to fight, but as that wave of necrotic energy moves through the area, it also brings with it all of those creatures that they had already fought, returned again from their graves.

"Not good. Very not good." The Beastmaster comments, taking a deep breath as he tries to push through the injury from the previous fight. "I'll try to slow them down. See if you can DPS that monster before it summons up even more of them."

Stomping once with his foot, Rylen motions as if pulling something from the ground, dragging up dried vines from below which wrap around some of the monsters, halting their progress and slowing their approach. The thorns will only be able to keep them at bay for so long, though.

    "Wait, you remember him? Are you sure it's the same?!" And then... it 'dies', and she breathes a sigh of relief... only for it to turn into a boss rush, with a second boss with a freaking DoT aura and adds! "Oh, come on!" She tries to keep using fire, but... she's been using her MP like crazy this adventure, and eventually is out! She's left overwhelmed, covered in adds as her ice armor begins to melt and be chipped away, HP bar dropping as she claws and bites and punches and kicks, trying to get a spare moment to drink a healing potion. "A little help here?!"

As Rylen's snaking vines entwine the nefarious undead minions, Goldenblade strikes at them with her mesmerising blazing strikes.

Merek, Mizuki, and Michio meanwhile might masterfully maul this malevelont mastermind.

"Pretty sure. Seems like he remembered me, too." Michio responds to Mizuki's query, even as the woman struggles to fight off the mounting wave of undead that manages to get past Rylen's control and Goldenblade's death.

Merek takes up his spear and electrocutes the Lich, leaving it vulnerable and wounded. Michio grins, "And I remember this fight, too."

As the Lich draws life force into itself, causing the party's health bars to slowly drain away, Michio draws upon his the last of his ki reserves and inverts it, turning his life force into dark energy. "A little salt enhances flavor. Too much will kill you. You like to eat life force? Choke on this! NIGHTMARE SPHERE!" Michio launches the ball of dark energy straight into the Lich's face. It seems the attack works as the Lich gorges itself over and past its ability to contain the energy. It cracks and shimmers, "Everyone, focus on the Lich!" Michio hollars. As the party launches their last few attacks on the weakened boss, it explodes into pixels, as do the remaining undead surrounding the team.

All that remains of the foe is a splintered bit of green gem that lands at the feet of everyone. As Michio reaches down to pick his up, it dissipates into nothing. "Yep, unique item. I figured as much, but hey, it was a fun journey all the same."

    Merek looks to the gem which comes with that look while he nods along to the party. "This will be wonderful for alchemy." With that, the man walks along to the party and offers a gloved hand, "I appreciate it. You all take care. I have things that I need to do about."

Goldenblade eyes the gem quizically. She looks at it, shrugs, and puts it into her inventory. "It's ... interesting," she says after a pause.