Duty Session 288: Is It Wrong to Pick Up Slimes in a Dungeon?

You all know the drill. There was a sign saying, 'Do not drink water!' And as you ask the townsfolk of Alne, they say that the water supply has been over-run by slimes, bubbling up out of the sewers.

Michio kneels to one side of the well, a soft glow surrounding his form as he meditates. Energy moves along his arms, gathering in one palm, them moving up and across his shoulders, ending up in the other palm, then back again. As the group gathers around the well, he opens his eyes and looks around, then hops to his feet.

"Greetings. I am Michio Asa." this to Lin, as he offers brief nods of familiarity to Sprites and Goldenblade, then looks towards the rope. "Shall we proceed?"

Goldenblade is here! She nods to Michio, then to the others. She introduces herself as, "Goldenblade," to Lin, though he looks familiar, and she nods a greeting to Sprites, who she knows pretty well. "How's the training going?" she asks with a smirk. "Tired of the drills yet? You may see the upgraded move here today, if I'm feeling froggy." Because if you feel froggy, then jump, right?

Lin does know the drill. He's not one to turn down adventure, even if the adventure seems to be 'We need someone foolish enough to jump down this well.' The Pooka bounces up tot he meeting point with a bright smile. "Hiii! Lin." He introduces himself while immediately leaning over the rope barrier and peering downwards. "Yup. Ready when you are."

As the party descends into the depths of the sewers by their individual means (Michio for example ignores the rope and just jumps down) ghostly game monsters begin making... ghostly game monster sounds. 'OoooOOOoo' they moan as they move in towards the party, preparing to attack.

SpritesHero's response is definitive, if not particularly elaborate. He inclines his head by way of acknowledgement, and utters a grunt to indicate that he's ready. For he is the strong, silent type. Right. More likely he just hasn't had a good cup of tea yet, and looks forward to the imminent...uhh...scents with less-than-enthusiasm. Luckily, Goldenblade bursts into his grogginess like a ray of mentoring sunshine asking whether you've done your homework. He has, but that's really not the point. "I'm lovingly barbecued and my legs hurt," he informs her with a groggy thumbs-up. "Things are going well. I look forward to your blaze of glory.

Goldenblade follows down the well by tying a rope to the top and lowering herself down, snickering at Sprite's misfortune. "Keep at it, Rob, you'll get there." She sets along with Michio and hrms at the floating moany slimes. What this calls for is FIRE, she seems to think, and she uses so, so much of it. But they are not impressed. Or affected.

Adventure awaits! Lin eagerly clambers down the rope, the tools on his belt jingling as he wall-walks downwards. He squints into the darkness and tilts his head to hear the spooky ghost noises. "A haunted well. Great. So I guess they have some unfinished business?" He reaches down and picks up his spellbook, casting a quick divination spell to try and determine what the spirits need. Then he just wrinkles his nose and looks disappointed.

SpritesHero, by contrast, does not use fire. He uses darkness. Because everyone knows ghost-slimes are weak to darkness. Well, not so much, but he's using thin magical blades of darkness to dice up any ghost slimes that come close. Which, of course, leaves the majority of the clean-up mess to others. But at least the slimes are smaller now, right? "We will come across a scene of slime-murder most foul," he intones, tones sepulchral. "A tale of jealousy and resentment, smothered with jam."

As Goldenblade begins channeling bursts of flame, the whisperings weave about, dodging them with ease, making a few attacks at the Blade Dancer.

Lin's book meanwhile reads, "Ask again later."

SpritesHero on the other hand is fighting darkness with darkness, effectively whittling down the health on individual spirits with his effecient arcane blades.

Michio contributes by kneeling down and drawing Ki energy from the ground beneath him, which he then uses to radiate an orb of light around himself, healing the party's wounds even while the health bar of the ghosts begins to drop. After a moment, the ghosts erupt into pixels. Whatever gooey unfinished business they might have had is definitely done now.

As the party travels on into the sewers, the water dries up, and a number of slimes with tiny green hats, bows, and arrows fill the hall. They stop, then turn towards the party and begin to pursue.

Goldenblade comes through only a few (dozen) HP down. She follows the others, she's a terrible navigator, and peers at the next bunch of slimes. Well, second verse, same as the first.

Waves of raw fire fan out from her, and this time, the slimes start to boil quickly. That's more like it. "Eggs are three minutes, I wonder how long you have to boil a slime for?" she wonders idly.

SpritesHero purses his lips and wrinkles his nose, a though these slimes were completely and utterly beneath him. Or maybe he's just trying not to breathe in any unfortunate odors. Certainly, he gives a distasteful little look around himself as he tucks himself into an alcove and just sort of...fades into the shadows. Silent. He'll let Goldie handle this extermination. Breakfast. Whatever it might be. "Not sure it matters how overdone they are," he comments once things have died down a bit.

Disappointed by his divination failure, Lin follows the rest of the group into the sewers. Wait, wasn't this a well? Why does the well join with the sewer? His mind wanders off into the lofty realms of civil engineering, only returning when it turns out that the party is surrounded. "Uta would know. Or she's scold you for cruelty to slimes. One of the two." He raises his spellbook and casts a quick spell, then throws long beams of fiery energy from his free hand.

"Ugh, I don't know, but they've got an even stronger sulpher smell. That is just awful!" Michio says. He ducks into one of the alcoves, then comes out a different one, behind the slimes. He begins throwing kicks, punting the slimes up into the air and towards the rest of the party. From there it's like skeet shooting.

"PULL!" and *PHOOM* there goes a slime enveloped in Goldenblade's flame.

*SHWOOP* and Lin's fire cuts through several slimes.

SpritesHero does the heroic thing, of course, and... hides.

*CLANG, CLANG, CLATTERCLANG* As the party passes into the next chamber, a number of slimes seem to be trying to fit themselves into rusted bits of pipe, then rolling and blorping around as though using the pieces as armor. They seem quite pleased with themselves, really.

Make them paaaaaay!

Never let it be said Goldenblade's not willing to try new things. Faced with these armored slimes, she tries a different trick: Roasting them alive with FIRE! It may superficially resemble what she did to the hunter slimes, but this is an entirely new ... well, no, it's FIRE, and she's broiling /yet more/ slimes. To make matters worse, the fire is superheating the metal armor, making it a broiling prison for the slimes that don't slime out of it quickly enough.

Metal slimes, huh? Now that's a novelty. For a moment Sprites stands there with his hands on his hips, lips pursed. It's not long, though, before he lapses into the strategy that seems to be dominant for this team: If a little fire doesn't work, more fire will. He lifts his hand, concentrates for a moment, and sends gouts of flame spilling over the metal slimes in front of him.

"Say," he remarks at length, conversationally. "Did you say your name was Lin? And you're an acquaintence of Uta?"

Lin's hand sizzles, surrounded by a wavy aura of fire as he continues through the sewers with the rest of the party. "Slimes on slimes. I see where this is going. There's going to be a giant one. There has to be some kind of Slime Mother down here." Lin may fail at divination but he still thinks he can see the future. When the metal slimes show up he lifts his hand and releases blast after blast of fiery energy. At the question from SpritesHero, he nods and lowers his spellbook for a moment. "Acquaintance sounds about right. We've got some common interests and end up crossing paths a bit. Why do you ask?"

"Is there anyone in Yamoto who isn't at least an acquaintance of Uta? Really? She's like the national mascot at this point." Michio offers as the party turns up the heat on the metallic slimes.

Off in the corner can be heard a high pitched voice, "I'm melting! Meeeeeeelting." And then it's done. There was just too much abuse for the slimes, or the metal they were wearing, and now there's just an empty room that looks like a scene from Farenheit 451.

But wait, there's more! As the party travels on, the smell actually manages to get worse. And you thought they smelled bad on the OUTSIDE!

*BLORP* goes the giant black flan as it lands in the middle of a fecund chamber, standing taller than any of the adventurers.

"Okay, that's just nasty." Michio says as he braces for battle.

"She mentioned you're pretty knowledgeable about relics, and strongly suggested that I contact you regarding the link between Bondrewd and a specific relic," Sprites continues to Lin, gasping out his words around gags. Criminy, that thing stinks something dreadful. It's no wonder that the bolt of lightning that zaps out of one extended finger just sort of....lances through a peripheral part of the slime, and does abso-lutely nothing of consequence whatsoever. It does do a number on the wall opposite, though, leaving a rather nice-looking scorch mark. Congrats, Sprites. If you wanted to maul a wall, you just did a good job.

Goldenblade follows along, quite happy at how this mission is going. And so much fire always cheers her up. So, when the Black Flan monster shows up, it's more of the same. With a bit of acrobatics and beating on the monster with her sword, but she's basically running so fast she leaves a trail of flames. Any faster and she'd go back in time. But time's standing still as far as the flan is concerned, it's got no hope of stopping her from slicing and dicing it as she likes.

"I'm pretty sure she knows everyone. It's basically her super power." Lin nods to Michio as he waves his hand in the air, dispelling the last of the fiery magic. "Did she now? Remind me when we get out and I'll see what I can answer." He wrinkles his nose and coughs as the smell gets worse. "Gross. Gross... I knew it!" Vindication! There IS a giant slime. He flips pages in his spellbook and switches elements. Electricity crackles around his body before gathering at his hand, then leaping out in violent blasts of lightning.

Michio is normally pretty stalwart, but the smell just overpowers him. The best he can do is conjure a little bubble of clean air around his head as he wretches and gags, waving a hand in the general direction of the flan. "You guys..." *blrep* "Got this.. good w.." *bralf* "good work!" he encourages the team as they manage to slice and dice and zappity zap the mini-boss.

And then comes the REAL nightmare fuel. Jiggly, wiggly, wobbly, wibbly, the Slime Drake.... slimes its way into the lives of the party.

Who is now, to a hero, covered in slime.

Michio sighs, looking down at his garb. "I really don't want to try to wash this stuff out. I wonder if we menu-unequip and re-equip if the slime will just go away. Blech."

Aw hell no. That nasty slime thing is -not- coming any closer. Sprites slaps the palms of his hands together, lips moving at triple-speed to invoke his spell. It more or less comes out as wibbly gibberish, but the system at least appears to recognize what he's doing. Thorned vines spring from the ground, wrapping their biting tendrils around the drake and keeping it pinned down for the group to maul. More importantly, it keeps the drake the heck away from Sprites and his clothes. "Perfect. I look forward to it," he replies to Lin, once the dire threat of stinkiness has been addressed.

Flap. Flap. This is the sound of our moistened, slimy doom. Lin is holding his nose when the slime wave arrives, mercifully sparing him from inhaling the disaster, but now he's soaked. "Super gross. Ultra gross. Mega gross." He curses, shaking his book to flick slime off the delicate pages. This time his spell isn't on the offense - a whirlwind forms around him, whipping away the slime in long oozing tendrils and forming a round shield.

Goldenblade faces the slime drake, and then ... it's times like this that people forget that Goldenblade is not so much a Blade Dancer as a Fire-Ninja. She simply vanishes from sight. Because she knows that fires not what you use on dragons. Even slime ones. Probably. She avoids the glorping mass, slipping in and stabbing it in the one place covered by neither its armor or its insurance. And she stabs in there a lot, until it glorps around to pull that part away and attack her. That's when she melts away into shadow, striking some moments later from an entirely new direction.

As Goldenblade does her ninja vanishing act, moving from place to place, Lin shields up.

SpritesHero restricts the jelly-dragon's movements, and the bonus effect of Thorn Bind Hostage is that each time the party attacks, the beast takes extra damage.

Goldenblade's slashes tear at the dragon's health, even as Michio moves forward to assist. Calling upon arcane energy to surround his fists, the Ki Master begins striking at vital points on the dragon, until finally it dissolves into pixels, leaving behind only a paw's worth of broken talons for the party to collect.

Turning to the group, Michio bows to them. "Thank you for the group up. That was well fought."

Goldenblade gives Michio a thumbs-up, checking her blades before re-sheathing them. "That went quite smoothly," she agrees. "Everyone was pretty much perfect, after a slightly rough start." Rough for her, anyhow.

SpritesHero is clean. Sprites is mercifully clean. Mind, he's still got the general stench of the sewer wafting around him--and yes, it is rather odd to think that a sewer is hooked up to a well in the first place. "Likewise. Thanks for the leadership. Do you think someone is trying to give the town Cholera?" he wonders, dubiously. "Do we even have Cholera?"

"Ugh! Get that mess!" Lin cheerleads the rest of the team as they beat the drake up, lobbing shields and attacks from the back line. When the fight ends he brushes slime from his coat and looks unsettled. "Well done everyone. That was... well. It would have been perfect if it were less messy."

"Agreed, thank you again." Michio inclines his head to Lin and SpritesHero, "As to your conversation, I couldn't help but overhear, and at some point I might like to show you my relic as well. But, another day. For now, I just want to go get clean."

"Agreed," Sprites concurs, lifting one arm to sniff at his sleeve. He nearly pukes. "Definitely another day." Once he's recovered, he pulls up his menu and, with quick if somewhat woozy tappity-tap-taps, sends contact requests to both michio and Lin.

"I'd be happy to. I'm trying to survey as many relics as possible to find a pattern, so hit me up on the chimlink whenever you have time." Lin smiles brightly at Michio and gives his spellbook another flick, trying to dislodge the last of the goop. Why is there so much? Why IS this sewer hooked up to the drinking well? Everything about this world is a mystery. He quickly opens his interface to send and receive the contact requests, then suggests, "Let's get out of here."

Goldenblade holds everyone up, "Hangon, you're right, of course, the sewer shouldn't be connected to the well. What's more likely is that this was originally a natural watercourse that fed the well, and people dumped into it upstream. So maybe we should explore and see where the sewage is getting in?"

"You go right ahead!" Says Michio, hitting the disband party button. "I'm sure I'll have to come back down the next time these things respawn, but before that happens, I intend to have a long hot bath." He waves and heads out.

SpritesHero sucks in a breath, squinting hard. He's arguing from conclusions today, which may be against personal policy, but dangit does he need a bath. A real bath, not a menu bath. "Probably going to need more than just exploration," he reasons, bull-headedly. "Maybe a concerted effort, with tracers from different.." hrk. "...parts of the overlying city. And a full team." Which, naturally, will not include him. "I'd anticipate multiple leak sites at minimum. Assuming someone wasn't just being a jerk and trying to poison the town. Come to think of it. Were the slimes keeping the town from getting poisoned?"

Goldenblade suggests, "Maybe we should call Uta? She'd know. The town'd have a cholera, just as you've said, if there were sewage in the water, so maybe the slimes eat that? But they just need occasional pruning?"

On his way to the exit, Michio tosses over his shoulder, "We don't even know if cholera is a thing. I'll tell you after I create a magical equivalent of a microscope." Then, he's climbing sprightly up a rope and is gone from view.

Goldenblade isn't going to stay down here on her own. She'll scale the rope as well, and vamoose. "We'll investigate and see, I guess?"

"Yes. Yes!" Sprites replies, grasping on to the proposal as though it were a branch offered to a man drowning in quicksand. "We'll have Uta investigate. I think that's the best course of action." And then he, too, is up the rope and out of sight.