Duty Session 313: Is It Wrong to Pick Up Slimes in a Dungeon?

Time for yet another round of slimes. Robert has taken up a position near the well, where he's already set up a sturdy rope ladder in preparation for the descent. Well, sturdy -for- a rope ladder, in any case. The neighboring townsfolk are ignored with considerable prejudice, and he simply stands in place, arms folded over his chest, staring downwards into the inky blackness beyond. "Really," he can be heard to grumble under his breath. "-Who- hooks wells up to sewers?"

"People who have problems with their sewers" Ayame offers as she closes, unslinging her shield and clasping it in a gloved hand, nodding up to Robert and smiling just a touch "It can work, if you isolate everything, and honestly, being able to access the well shaft from the sewers is good ... but this looks like it wasn't isolated" She glances at the well, and wrinkles her nose "Want a hand down there?"

"They keep throwing trash into the wells like it won't just accumulate and lead to an infestation of slimes and rats and other awful things, though," Prophylaxis complains, the doctor having become quite accustomed to trudging through sludge and sewage for the sake of civil hygiene. "I really need to think about starting some kind of... Public awareness campaign or something like that. How many sewer systems need to be riddled with monsters before people finally wise up to the fact that they shouldn't throw half-eaten meals into the local wells?"

It'll never happen. Laziness will always win out, in the end.

SpritesHero's jaw sets, tension playing up and down the column of his throat. He just stares. Stares some more. And finally crinkles his nose. "It's a miracle the town hasn't died of some horrible plague," he mutters. "-Clearly- not isolated. I bet it gets contaminated whenever there's a rain storm worth speaking of." He glances up to Ayame, expression softening just a touch. "Help is always appreciated," he answers, before shifting his gaze to Prophylaxis.

"Hey boss," he continues. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to try, but they just might think you're part of a conspiracy to manipulate them. Shall we?" And with that, he's up over the well's lip and clambering down the rope ladder. "If I yell and get eaten by a dragon-slime, don't tell Setsuna."

"Maybe you're focusing on the wrong thing" Ayame suggests to the doctor. She wrinkles her nose and sighs, grasping the rope for the well and using it and the ladder to make her way down. . The gloves help, as do her boots. The skirt? Not so much. She continues talking, looking up as she does so, her wings fluttering for balance "Make it easier for them to dump their trash somewhere that isn't here. Organise a collection or something to burn it."

The descent down the rope leads to a stone lip, and a tunnel that streams away to the north. Initially the tunnel seems both safe and abandoned--presumably safe -because- it was abandoned--but before long eerie moans and sighs can be heard to echo off the stone walls. It's hard to see the cause, though the sharp-eyed might be able to see a mist that moves as though alive.

"Not a bad idea," Prophylaxis answers with a shrug. "It may be viable to set up a waste-disposal company or something like that. Maybe something to segregate waste into recyclables, compostables and so on...?" It'd be something to pilot in Tolbana, for sure. They're going to need to consider such things as the town continues to grow, or they'll have a serious public health crisis brewing.

The party descends, and are soon accosted by strange... ghostly slimes? Slimes that have died and become ghosts? Or slimes which have consumed ghosts? Several seem to float toward where Prophylaxis is standing, where he radiates a strange, dark aura...

Oh, wait, that's just one of the doctor's mirror images, set up with a spell to attract and distract ghosts. "Shall we?" He asks, moving swiftly deeper into the sewers while the locals are occupied.

"We can definitely look into it. Who would be good to approach about that, do you think?" Ayame asks the two, lifting her hand and producing a little light from it; a light which only grows stronger as the ghostly slimes approach, drifts of scripture dancing on the edge of vision as she provides a safe circle for them to walk through

"Let's." Robert bypasses the challenge with an uncharacteristic brutality. No taking advantage of type weaknesses. No slinking through the shadows. He simply draws his sword (why is anyone's guess, but maybe he expects a corporeal ambush), and simply starts blowing away the ghost-slimes which are either confused by Prophylaxis's maneuver, or held at bay by Ayame's, with raw, untyped magic, pre-polygoning them before they disintegrate into shards of light. He leaves the establishment of the recycling plant to Prophylaxis and Ayame. Him? He's more of a biohazard waste disposal sort, and as they pass the decaying form of the...something that attracted the ghost slimes, he happily sets it on fire. He can't help it. It's the Scale in him.

As the trio continue onwards, the path turns around a corner and starts heading deeper. Oddly, it also seems to dry out a bit. There's not even the sound of dripping water. There are, however, the tell-tale squeaks of rodents warning of Adventurer approach. Squeaks which rapidly turn into undiluted panic as one of them is caught up by the spring-bounce of a nearby tabby-slime. It crunches. Firmly. The rat, that is.

"Me, mostly," Prophylaxis admits with a shrug. Being the guy ostensibly in charge of running the day-to-day business of Karluin, he's definitely the guy with the authority needed to get something of the sort running. From there, they can export the idea elsewhere.

Sprites sets a pile of refuse on fire, and Prophylaxis gives his silent, tacit approval. Burning trash is always better than just letting it sit and fester, after all. But up ahead is another, somewhat more active threat...

...Albeit one that Prophylaxis is actually okay with having around? "These aren't actually that bad," he explains, gesturing with his staff. Roots that have already sprung up from between the aging sewer walls suddenly experience a burst of rapid growth, becoming thick walls to cordon the tabby slimes away... And providing them a nice scratching post to sharpen their claws on. "Slimes are a mixed bag, and I'm not a fan of the idea of oozes predating on cats, but as long as they're spending their post-differentiated existences devouring rats, they're actually a net boon to local hygiene."

Less rats is always good!

"That's so much better" Ayame mutters as they leave the muck. She opens her menu and her finger hovers over the 'clean' function - before she sighs and dismisses it. Once they're out, certainly.

"Gosh. Are there things rats hunt? Are there, somewhere, little cheese slimes the rat-slimes hunt, which the tabby-slimes prey on?" She might be a touch acerbic as she follows the logic. Then her wand follows one of the slimes, and fire spits out, wrapping thin strands of it around one of the slimes as she picks it up with a flick of the wand to hover over them. Illuminating. And poinging gently.

Oh hey. Cat-slimes. Cats hate water, right? So too should tabby slimes. Pity Robert didn't actually load up any -real- water spells. Thus it is that he ends up splashing what amounts to party-tricks worth of water at nearby slimes. It...sorta works. But not really. It does get a lot of hissing noises. What it doesn't get is anything meaningful in the way of results. Other than, perhaps, a possible eternal grudge from the entire tabby-slime race.

A grudge that will, for the moment, be forgotten. The slimes have better things to do. Like rubbing up against Prophylaxis's reinforced roots, making a chorus of tiny, rumbling purring noises.

Or hovering overhead, wrapped in fire, crying out in mild distress...yet still poinging gently, as is the case for one that is appropriated as a lamp by Ayame. It can't be too upset. "So does it come down to a distribution issue?" he asks of Prophylaxis. "I mean, if the cats tend to be at the surface, where the rats aren't, then maybe there's a benefit to having sewer-dwelling cat-slimes. Even if cats do get eaten as a prerequisite. And." A pause. "What would cheese slimes eat?" he wonders.

The gently hypnotic 'poinging' is slowly overwhelmed by the less pleasant 'bonging' of a hammer against a bell. Or a heavy metal object falling down a flight of stairs. Up ahead the pipe they had been as seen better days. It has been torn asunder, leaving sharpened metal edges jutting this way and that. Metal edges which, evidently, have served as sustenance for a small flock of metallic slimes. They do their level best to bounce, as is their wont, but don't seem to manage more than an ominous, thunking advance.

"I'm sure there's some kind of cat-rat-cheese slime-hierarchy, but the specifics are far outside my wheelhouse. You'd need to ask Uta," Prophylaxis answers, giving the tabbies a generous berth as he makes his way around the pack. "I mean, the advantage to tabby slimes is that they're significantly hardier than ordinary tabbies. Less worry about disease, broken limbs and the like. So in some ways, yeah, tabby slimes might be a good addition to a sewer, but you'd need something to keep their numbers in check too, or they'll start reproducing unsustainably quickly. As for cheese slimes... Maybe they eat milk? Or bacteria? I don't know, maybe they're just milk slimes that are kept in a fermenter for long enough?"

Where's an Uta when you need her!?

At least the party soon comes upon a mystery that Prophylaxis actually knows the answer to. "Metal slimes," he grimaces. "In some ways, they can be helpful by processing heavy metals, for example. But I think they tend to eat pipes and structural supports too, nevermind that they can probably release toxins over time on their own. Better to exterminate them while we can."

With a sudden FWOOSH of flame, Prophylaxis hurls a barrage of blazing bolts into the advancing tide of metal slimes. If nothing else, it'll keep them at bay and melt through some of the ones at the front of the pack and dissuade the remainder from pursuing further.

"..." The noise comes from the back of Ayame's throat as she stares at the metallic slimes. And sighs. Her wings flutter in agitation, and the Sylph's ears lay down in irritation, before she twirls her wand and launches the flame-trapped tabby slime at the feral swarm, scything through them with reckless abandon, and bouncing it off walls.

There is, at the edge of hearing, the faintest sense of an 'eeeeeee'.

"I'm not one for slime ecologies" Ayame admits with a sigh "Mostly, I just want to try to find ways to keep things clear. Without needing to come down here and do it manually. Maybe ceramic tiling. That's good against acid, right?"

SpritesHero does....not look pleased. Not at all. In point of fact, the look that he gives those metal slimes is positively resentful. His gaze drops to the sword held in his right hand, as though in apology, and then he's charging towards those metal slimes.

What follows is neither pleasant to see, nor hear. While Robert's strikes are both poweful and true, diving through the slimes' semi-metallic exterior to fracture their underlying cores, they are also accompanied by the scream of metal on metal. Robert's sword does not survive the ordeal. Its durability plummets. It fractures, polygons, and bursts out of existence. Goodbye to sword #4.

Robert rapidly retreats back to the party, taking cover behind Prophylaxis's flames and Ayame's...uh...highly creative use of flaming cat-slimes. He pretends he didn't see that, and focuses instead on working kinks out of his hand. "I'll defer to Prophylaxis on that sort of thing," he says at last, picking his way past the hard and firm evdence of Prophylaxis's points regarding 'eating pipes and structural supports'. "I think I tried acid once on the tub. It seemed to work, but it was also probably not something I should have done."

Further on, the pipe narrows, becomes coated with a water-grease sort of film. Occasionally there is a puddle. Occasionally said puddle is aflame. This is not a particularly nice vacation-stroll, that's to be sure. But even unpleasant things come to an end. The passage opens up into a small cavern, thigh-deep in water that retains the oily sheen to its surface. And in the center of the cavern? A massive, brilliantly red ooze. Fire-type. "Well crud," Robert can be heard to summarize.

"Firing enough ceramic tiles to coat an entire sewer system is probably untenable," Prophylaxis says with a sad shake of the head. "And expensive besides. Stone is probably good, and maybe some kind of ceramic pipe would be better for resisting slime-corrosion, but metal is much more easy to maintain."

Robert's poor sword breaks! How many of those is he going to go through, exactly? And why is he going through so many, anyway?

A familiar scent catches in the doctor's nose. It smells... Like fire and grease and burning oil. He grimaces when he finds the awful red ooze waiting for the party up ahead, the surface of the sewage ablaze. "I'll try to keep the flames down," he says, conjuring jets of high-pressure water to cut through the burning plumes. Unfortunately, this particular grease is a little too viscous to be so easily dispersed...!

Ayame just shakes her head at the slime, and moves up, short little steps as her heels rap on the ground, setting up a rhythm which she chants to under her breath; calling on the shattered pixels of the broken sword to swirl and orbit her shield, as she moves to the front, warding the slime away with the cutting and slicing magic

"You're so kind" She mutters

Crud indeed. No sooner does Robert not-swear than he is lunging forward, attempting to interrupt the boss's actions with inky, cruelly-thorned tendrils.

He's too slow. Far too slow. More to the point, he's caught out in the open when the whole place simply goes up in flames. Flames which are, mercifully, to an extent kept at bay by Ayame's undead sword-bits and Prophylaxis's streams of water. The party is able to make an escape further down the pipe, but Robert is clearly on the charred side of singed, and faintly smoking. Nor is the party given much in the way of respite. The next boss emerges almost immediately, its translucent, glowing form burbling into view. Its surface seethes, occasionally forming face-like features. Or perhaps actual faces, their mouths gaping in silent screams.

SpritesHero is similarly not particularly well prepared for this boss, either. Beating the last bits of flame out, he lunges forwards with reckless abandon. It's not like him. Usually he's fairly well-controlled. Ish. But at the moment he just ploughs his way forward, blades of air shaving away bits of ectoplasmic ooze that splatter everywhere, as the core becomes more visible. It's haphazard. It's frankly sloppy. And while it -does- work, it's not particularly any credit to him.

Ayame, meanwhile, merely takes that simple light spell which she's had eminating from her wand, and twists and focuses it tightly, into a short, cutting beam that glows with power. Then she charges, using the blade of light to cut and hack at the ectopudding, until it's no longer there.

Then, once it's done, she sighs, falling back, stepping to a clear area with a little look of annoyance "I really hope this place clears up soon. I know we're doing work on it anyway, but ... seriously."

Fortunately, Prophylaxis /is/ prepared for this boss. The moment the ghostly goo rears its ugly head, the doctor promptly bursts into flame as if animated by some kind of cartoonish FIERY RAGE, but without the anger. "Right," he decides, wading through the haunted sludge, burning away the goo with every forward stride, until he's close enough...

...To unleash a final, fiery shockwave directly into the ooze's membrane...!

The ooze bursts under the onslaught, its core shattering, its hp bar zipping past to leave blank emptiness. And loot! Which Sprites doesn't particularly pay much attention to at the moment, instead leaning against the nearby wall to settle his breathing. "I cannot understand," Robert utters then, eyes rolling to the ceiling, "how Uta likes these things. As of right now. I hate slimes. Especially greasy slimes."