Duty Session 298: Obligatory Rat Cellar

It's a lovely day on the street, for the season, anyway - the wind has a bite, and howls a little as it rounds corners. The anxious-looking Lander merchant has flagged down a few Adventurers to help him with his rat problem. Jimmu is here, listening patiently as the merchant explains that it's just a little problem, maybe not even enough to bother with, but oh, if you could have a peek, he'd be grateful.

Jimmu tilts his head, his pointed ears twitching at the sound of scrabbling, that can be heard even from the ground floor of the building. "Big rats," he mutters, and scratches his beard. Then nods. "All right."

Oh, it's the rats again. It's always the rats.

"There's some... odd versions to be seen, if nothing else." Murmurs the Nightmare Were Fang as she ambles over. To someone that's been regularly active this is nothing new. "But I'll say nothing else, because that would be ~spoilers~."

Schneider enters the store with the sign in the window about needing help with rats. "Hello, then," he greets the owner. "Need help with rats, then?" He nods to Jimmu. "I'm Schneider. Dark Schneider." He grins widely, and channels a bit of air to make his cape swirl dramatically. "Rats again today?" he says to Jimmu. "You'd think they had a rat farm someplace, as many as adventurers have killed." He smirks to Kauchemar. "Oh yeah, and there's /something/ sinister, given some of the end bosses..."

"As long as they're not slime rats. Had enough slime," Jimmu says to Kauchemar as she ambles up. The Lander perks up as the adventurers gather, and he leads them to the door that goes into the basement. "Jimmu," the Spriggan says to Schneider. There's a brief, awkward attempt at a smile. The stairs to the cellar put the store's outwardly clean appearance to doubt: the smell of mold is immediate, and green lichen infests the damp walls and ceiling.

The bottom of the cellar is gloomy. Boxes loom, black and green with mold, and the lichen has become thick ivy. It seems to rustle and high pitched squeaks fill the air, even if there isn't visual sign of the rats. Jimmu looks about. "...here, rats. Rat, rat, rat."

A brow raises at that. "I take it you've been into the slime sewer as well, then." Then gives a brief nod of equine head. "Kauchemar."

Jimmu is spared her longer and more flamboyant introduction by virtue of entering the cellar. "Well, nothing so unusual here." She may be mainly a spellcaster by class and trade, but being a monsterous equine gives her some formidable physical presence as well, making it easy to shove several of the moldy crates out of the way and clear a path through. "Seriously, do they never clean these places? No wonder they always have rat issues turning up..."

Schneider nods to Kauchemar, and says, "I have. But ... I don't see the way out of here. Or wait, I seem to remember another cellar had come connection to a much larger catacomb. I'll bet this does, too, and that's where the rats are from." He has to use a spell to buff himself to punch through the wall that it sounds like rats are hiding behind. Pow! Pow! Pow! He bashes through the wall and into the space beyond, where he hrms and watches, puzzled.

Jimmu nods to Kauchemar. "Some of them are cute," he offers, just a little wistfully. Then his expression hardens. "Others aren't." As the other two move crates and punch through the walls, he unsheathes his rapier and hacks through the thick vine cover. Vines ooze sap as they move deeper into the short passageway thus revealed. He looks at the crumbling walls dubiously.

They reach the end of the passageway, and a stone door in much better shape than the rest of the surroundings. The runes glow an eldritch green, brightening when someone reaches out for one, then dimming when their hand moves away. Jimmu leans in closer for a moment, trying to hear beyond. There's only silence. He steps back so that they can all contemplate the puzzle.

Kauchemar stops to stare at the rune marked doorway. Supernatural energy crackles to life around her eyes, taking the appearance of the frames of half-moon spectacles made of ghostly flame. Her eyes slightly glass over, as if looking off into space.

Or more accurately off into time, as she divines through past attempts at the Rat Cellar mission, until finally spotting one of the times the doorway has been successfully opened. At which she rattles off the order the runes were activated. Then snaps out of the trance. "Open says-a-me and all that."

Schneider comes to the door and smirks. "They obviously don't know the power of my magic," he says portentiously. "Blonde Obsession!" he chants. "MACE!" It's not clear -why- he says this, but it does seem to crack the some sort of magical lock, allowing the door to be opened. What a strange spell! And not even a band name. Who knew?

"Blonde obsession?" Jimmu blinks and stares at Schneider with puzzlement. But the door is opening and surely that's more important. He does stop to look at the runes before they proceed. His lips move, quietly, before he adds, "Some of these runes are warnings. They just say 'many', though."

With that, he moves forward. The squeaks bounce off the walls, multiplying until they're loud enough that it's almost painful on the ears. They enter the domed chamber, and Jimmu screeches to a halt. There is a shifting carpet of fur and teeth and tails. Black eyes gleam in the darkness. The squeaks take on a certain intensity that they had lacked before...as one being, the horde leaps forward to try and overwhelm the adventurers.

Jimmu makes an entirely undignified sound of disgust.

Schneider can only offer Jimmu a shrug about the spell. He didn't make up the words. He proceeds on until Jimmu pauses again, spotting the mass of rats in the domed chamber leaping to attack. "GUNZENRO!" he shouts out, and flames are everywhere. Not -all- of them are his, which confuses him a bit, but a lot are, and his Gunzenro spell does flashfry quite a lot of the little pests and they pop off into little swirls of pixels before they can get close.

"Well, we found the rats."

Kauchemar just shakes her head a bit. "Only one way to deal with this big of an infestation." She makes a few ritualistic gestures with one hand, then snaps her fingers. A summoning circle briefly appears, then erupts with smoke and the smell of brimstone as a small fire elemental emerges from it, and is promptly sicced on a swarm of the rats to exterminate them via incineration.

Schneider sets rats on fire.
Kauchemar sets rats on fire.
Jimmu considers the situation, and decides that there is DEFINITELY not enough fire going on here, so he gestures, sketching a freeform incantation in the air. Between the three of them, the rats don't even have time to scream before the triple inferno reduces them to greasy ash, and the flames scour the walls. The fires die down, the elemental dissolves. Jimmu looks at the other two. "Not enough fire," he mutters dryly.

As they move on, the few remnants of the horde flee from them, but curiously not down a certain passage. So, of course, that's the one the adventurers go down. There isn't a squeak down here. No, this is a SCREECH. The rat looms out of the darkness, rising up. It fills the room and bares its teeth at them. Its curiously hand-like claws come up, and it roars a challenge.

"Oh do be quiet," Kauchemar retorts to the roar.

It's followed by using her magic to summon a blast of ice and bombard the oversized rodent with it, slowing it's movements and weakening it's vitality so the others can move into position and deal with it properly.

Schneider frowns at the roar, and roars back. Two can play at that game. He can also hurl -more- fire. Seems he hasn't run out. This time, it's a swirling fire turnado that wraps around this horrible thing, spinning inward and searing the flesh as it contracts, leaving it hugely vulnerable on top of burning it horribly. He smirks, straightens his tunic nonchallantly.

Jimmu doesn't speak back to the roaring rodent; he does make a repulsed face as the smell of the rat's breath washes over them. As ice and fire pound the rodent, he leaps to the side. The beast bites and tears futilely at the elemental attacks, its tail hitting the wall hard enough to make the stone shiver. The stench of burning fur and bleeding rat fill the air. Jimmu gestures and the darkness seems to gain weight, heft...an edge. He slashes his hand and blades of shadow assault the beast from its flank. In a few moments, the rat comes crashing to the floor. Breathing heavily, Jimmu asks, "Is that it?"

But of course, it's not. This giant rat has no LOOT after all, and what is a quest without loot. The Adventurers head past it, into the warren of tunnels. With some clever orienteering and memory of previous quests, they eventually find the tunnel that leads them to the small...dump? Treasure room?

One man's trash is a kobold's treasure, it seems. It chitters at them, and Jimmu holds up his hands. "Maybe we--"

"OURS OURS OURS!" The Kobold interrupts to screech. "All ours! Get them! More treasure for us!" The rats surge forward while the Kobold begins tossing treasures from its piles at them. Oddly, it only picks the sharp treasures, and soon forks are flying through the air.

Sharp projectiles rebound off the shield that appears floating in front of Kauchemar. Looks like this bardic summoner plays with more than elemental monsters.

"Pff. Anything you can do, I can do better.. and more viciously."

The other hand makes a few more ritualistic gestures, and several small summoning rings appear around her. Forks, knives and other cultury erupts from them, propelled by mischevious spirits to extreme speeds, to spear rats left and right.

Everyone knows how poltergiest love to throw around objects. Kauchemar is weaponizing that, and literally cutting down the rat population.

Schneider snorts derisively as the kobold claims his trash. "Yours? That's easily fixed," he says with a dry chuckle. "Kaizard, aruzard, kisk!" he chants, and it's quickly apparent he's going to use /that/ spell. It's horrible, it feels like evil power is building up as he chants, "Hansay Glossik! Unleash total destruction!" Which certainly sounds bad. "Sage of Hades," he intones, "use the seven keys to open the gates of Hell!" The spell is concluded with a command, "HALLOWEEN!"

This spell makes the others all look like a sorcerer's apprentice. This one /is/ big, and it has a dark feeling behind it, certainly evil, and so, so firey. It scours the room, sweeping up rats, the kobold, all the trash and most of the collected junk is at least singed. Much of the water is boiled away by the horrid hellfire. -That- was a distinctive spell.

Rat-kabobs! Rat flambe! The room is an explosion of magic, and Jimmu isn't here to make less of it. He eyes the rats trying to escape into their (occasionally flaming) burrows and begins to intone, "Nowhere left to run, the shadows hold only death, inevitable: Edge of Shadow!" All the little warrens and holes the rats had been seeking suddenly have edges, and skewer most of them.

The kobold, singed, forks sticking out of his arms, tumbles from his trash throne to the ground. He hurls his insults before diving for a hole uncovered by flame. He disappears down it before they can finish him off. Then it's just the Adventurers, alone with the corpses of at least a hundred rats.

Oh, and the TREASURE. Which, in this case, proves to be some plants. Jimmu scoops up one of the herbs and sniffs it. "Seems...okay?" A pause. "Do you think the Lander hates having to live on a giant rat pile? I would."

Schneider shrugs about living on the rat pile. "He seemed to have mad his peace with it. Though I think we've put a stop to it." He looks at the plant, shrugs, stuffs it into his inventory. "No idea," he says with a shrug.

Kauchemar takes a couple of the odd plants. "You never know when something might come in useful." And drops them in her inventory. "If not for yourself, there's always someone looking for help with some project, or crafting, or so on." She gives one hand a dismissive twirl. "They probably don't notice until the rats start getting into their stores and houses."

"But...respawning." Jimmu frowns. "It just seems sad," he says, after a moment. Then shakes his head. He tucks the plant away in his inventory, then smiles at the two of them. It's a little more natural than the attempt made at the beginning of the question, his silver eyes showing real appreciation. "This was good. Thank you both."

The adventurers have made the city - or at least this one very small part of it - safe from rats!

For now.