Duty Session 321: Travel with Triffids

    How long has it been? A month? Two months? Honestly the weeks, days, and months go by for the Salamander that he just stops tracking them.

Holidays happen, events take place, the Scale pushes and makes technological progress. Hell even the other factions and what has he been doing? Taking care of a farm and just-- trying to figure out where he is going.

The only reason Xander has moved away from the quiet farm life, instead of being solider boy he is, is because the news of this particular quest catches his attention-- and maybe...

Just maybe...

Losing some of his memories from that one death rattled him on some level. He needs to get his edge back; Maybe this will get it back.

    So, here is the dark scaled Salamander. Armored up, blade ready, shield ready, and waiting for the others to arrive. As he does so, he picks up the scene of a heavy perfume smell in the air. It makes his nose wrinkle a little. "... at least you can't miss them by smell." He murmurs to himself. "Like a bad date or a the wrong side of the neighborhood."

Shiruba gives her bow an adjustment tug on the string, satisfied with the firm resounding twang it gives. Always double check your weapons before going into dangerous situations, you never want something breaking at a bad moment. "Hopefully this hunt will go better..." she mutters, mostly to herself.

Then looks up, noticing who's actually arrived for the latest attempt at dealing with this misdirectly migration. "Wow, been a long time since I've seen you out in the field Xander."

Goldenblade is here also, also checking her gear. "Yeah," she agrees with Shiruba. "This mission's brutal. Hoping it goes better this time; last time we found the wrong thing, and it almost got us." She eyes her blades skeptically, but it's not like there's a rust and corrosion mechanic, that she's noticed. But those are things she checked her tools for, back in RL.

    Xander looks over to Shiruba with a bright smile on his face, "Yeah, decided to stop playing farm-hand and actually swing my blade around." Then looks to Goldenblade, than back to Shiruba, "So, you two have done this then?"

Carnivorous plants are always a fun mood. Gotta love monsters that turn the food chain on its head. There were always vegetarians who were super into the whole 'NO BUT ANIMALS HAVE FEELINGS' thing and 'EATING PLANTS CAUSES NO SUFFERING' and having plants that munch people's limbs off is as much a refutation of that worldview as one can imagine. It's also, helpfully, a very useful argument in favor of devouring plants. After all, they'll eat you without hesitation!!

EAT A BALANCED DIET, DOCTORS RECOMMEND IT.

"Just make sure to avoid sticking your face in any strange flowers, soldier," Prophylaxis instructs, prodding a nearby bush experimentally with the bottom end of his staff. "I can heal a lot of wounds, but I don't think I can replace chunks of grey matter. Though I'm certainly open to trying if you'd like to donate your body to science, or anything like that."

That's probably a joke.

Probably.

He's not in a strange mood /anymore!/

    "Hahaha! Those truffles aren't going to know what hit them! And then ate them!" Oh right, they need to save some for the quest, "I'll make sure not to eat them all." Yuuki nods confidently.

    The great and powerful Zekken has shown up to help with the triffid hunting today, even if she's not entirely clear on their targets. Even through all this time and all that's happened, she still seems to be the same old Yuuki, currently buffing up her sword with some blacksmith's oil or some such while waiting for the party to head off.

    Though at Prophylaxis's suggestion, Yuuki quickly quips, "Been there, done that."

\     Xander cuts Prophylaxis a look, "I make some dumb choices, but sticking my head first into things is not one of them." Pause, "Maybe an arm.. finger.. toe. Normal stuff." Then blinks as he looks at Yuuki, "... wait what?"

On the party moves! Deep brush and foliage makes things difficult. They need to find the tracks, before they lose them. Something that Xander is trying to do on some level as a Salamander. Using those natural hunting skills! Hard to say how succesful that will be...

Goldenblade nods to Xander. "Yep. It was hard." She gives Proph a very worried look. As for following the path of some plants through the forest, she will just follow someone else. She has no hope. She'll wander around, following Xander, attempting to look alert for what that's worth.

"We have," Shiruba replies to Xander with a nod. "Let's just say there's a high chance of having to deal with more issues than triffids. Large annoying fluffy issues." She doesn't get into a deeper explaination, because it's time to actually get to work. Despite previous difficulties in attempting this Duty the wolfen huntress is undaunted, using her environmental awareness to get a better scope of the area.. and actually picks up on something this time. "Hey, guys! I think I found something..."

    Yuuki puts her sword maintenance kit away and points the weapon forward, "Onwards!" And onwards they go.

    Moving deeper into trees, apparently they need to try and find something to help them locate the triffids. Yuuki looks around. Nothing immediately obvious. She starts running through the forest, looking for something. Anything. But she's not being particularly careful about it. Which of course just leads her to miss anything useful.

    At least she's enthusiastic!

"Indeed," Prophylaxis nods knowingly. He motions as if pushing nonexistent glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Yuuki here is my first successful example of my experimental grey matter replacement technique. I grafted brain-parts of a number of ancient, preserved samurai mummies to her cerebrum, creating the world's greatest and cutest swordswoman!"

(This is probably a joke.)

But it seems that there's some work to do, so the jests are put aside. They need to /find/ the ambulatory plants in order to capture them, it seems. The doctor frowns and... kneels near a bush, clutching a periapt containing a pressed flower in one hand. "I don't suppose you saw any man-eating plants go through here, did you?" There's a beat. The bush makes BUSH NOISES. Prophylaxis' brow furrows, "Oh I see, fine. A favor for a favor." The doctor snaps his fingers and the bush begins glowing with vibrant, verdant energy. It sheds a number of withered leaves and replaces them with fresh, green buds. "There. Happy?"

More bush noises. Prophylaxis nods.

"They went this way," he says, pointing deeper into the woods.

...Apparently he can talk to plants. Who knew?

    The group skilled together manages to figure their way through, though a few bumps here and there. Though Doc making talk with plants causes Xander to raise a brow at him. "... When did you start talking to trees, Professor Plantlittle? More importantly... do they yell 'help me' when you go to eat one?"

Once they continue on the path, they find themselves running into some very angry, hungry plants.

They are large. Hungry. Attempt to make anime horror movies for both the girls and boys with their tentacles. To Xander, like a good soldier, that means kill it! Kill it with fire!

The group actually managed to find some triffids this time!

... Those are some awefully big, awefully mobile triffids. "Whoa... ack!" Shiruba's awed sound turns into a yelp as the things clearly do not enjoy being disrupted and start lashing their tentacles around. She ducks, getting on one knee to brace herself, and pulls an arcane arrow from her quiver. "Stupid tentacle monsters... Good thing I didn't let Gwen talk me into wearing a skirt!" She fires the arrow into one of the lashing creatures, where it erupts into a blast of flame.

Goldenblade whews as Proph and Shiruba seem to have found the right way. She follows Xander until we encounter the triffids, and she nods, "That's more or less how I remember them. Never thought -that- much of them, but I guess they're famous."

And then, they attack. She leaps and skips and avoids them frantically, then channels fire like a flamethrowers, aiming one sword like a garden hose, but hosing the triffids down with FIRE. Because FIRE GOOD, no matter what James Hetfield says.

    Yuuki grins, "It's true. My brain is my best quality! Oh!? You found the truffles?" Some would probably question the accuracy of her statement.

    But sure enough, they appear to have found the triffids. Yuuki peering forth from the brush at the group. And their numerous tentacle limbs, "Ugh, hate those things. They don't look much like mushrooms though... Oh well!" The others appear to be preparing to unleash All The Fire. So Yuuki decides to act as a distraction!

    The imp jumps out into view of the triffids and calls out, "Hey uglies! Young innocent girl over here! Come and get me." She starts running in a circle around the group, her calls not likely being understood but her loudness making her a target.

    "Hyup! Hwah. Fwep~ Nope! Sorry, you're not my type." Yuuki jumps, zigs, drops and zags her way around the flailing tentacles as they try to grab her.

"It's a Relic thing. Technically I can't /talk/ to them, but I can pick up what they've seen recently. That one was too busy thinking about some kind of disease it picked up, so I cured it and it so happened to point out the right way to go," Prophylaxis answers with a shrug. "But no. Once they're cooked up and served, they don't seem to say very much of anything!"

But it does seem like that particular bush didn't lead him astray. There are monster plants here, that's for sure. "Hm, we should be able to sever the tentacles near the base, just watch out for the poisonous sap. Alternately..."

Prophylaxis... conjures a big haunch o' meat to his hand. He chucks it into the bunch of plants and watches as the creatures turn to begin tearing into the juicy treat... And slapping at each other for the opportunity to snag the morsel. "That should distract them a bit. Go nuts!"

    The dear doctor distracts, Yuuki adds to the flavor of distraction and pain. While everyone else decides that yes, fire is the proper way to handle this situation!

Sadly the carnivorous plants decide they had enough of their plant-bros being killed off and start to heal one another! "Oh for crying out loud.." Xander hisses as he uses his shield to knock aside an attack.

His choice of handling this new problem? When something tries to stave off burns-- Just burn it harder! So, the Salamander sends out even a big ball of flames at the plant life and their healing spores.

Goldenblade is just getting confident as she fans flames over the plants when they back off and regroup. "Hey!" she protests, then when they start healing each other, she pulls her bow from her inventory and plunks arrows at the triffids. Hopefully the wooden shafts in the area will provide some kindling the next time we fire them up, because her archery is poor.

    Yuuki's distraction, in combination with Prophylaxis's, appears to be working! And the fire is certainly effective.

    Though soon enough the triffids stop paying attention to Yuuki, who skids to a halt and frowns in annoyance. It's even more annoying when she realises why, "They're healing each other!? That's not fair!" Time to up the DPS!

    A dark wind rushes up around Yuuki, boosting her speed as she rushes straight towards the triffids and starts to cut into them over and over again. Chopping bits of them off like an explorer cutting her way through a jungle.

"At least it's not fast moving healers!" Shiruba retorts, remembering the incidents from their previous runs. Besides, the method the triffids are using to heal via spores are something she can deal with. Thundersnow Howl sparks and whistles like a rising wind as she draws back on it, manifesting aetheric storm energy into a projectile that she aims up amongst the triffids and fires. The whistle turns into a howl as the electrified winds churns outwards from the shot, drawing in the spores with the cyclonic vortex and blasting them away from the triffids they'd otherwise heal.

"They're healing each other, huh?" Prophylaxis grumbles grumpily. "Makes sense. Plants /are/ what I'd probably slap regeneration spells onto. But that's fine. There are ways around this." For example, by watching carefully for certain members of the mob to drop to low enough HP...

Prophylaxis whirls his staff through the air. The atmosphere trembles like someone had plucked a resonating string. Suddenly, the most severely damaged Triffids drop to zero hit points, blasted to bits by super high-speed magical projectiles.

It doesn't stop the heavier, stronger Triffids from healing, but it /does/ remove the number of enemies capable of casting healing spells AND the number of mobs overall!

    Damage and more damage, one by one, the monsterious plants fall into pixel light into the air. Only trouble is, they become angry. Very. Very. Angry-- and they are sadly not small!

The party now has to deal with berserk plants that sail their vines out to slash into their flesh like whips, moving directly at them to try to comp their arms off; If not their heads!

    There is a large number of them, far larger than Xander, by himself can defend off with just his shield to keep others safe, so he does a uno-reverso card at the plants. "You guys want to play dirty." His sword then lights up with glowing, white runes, "Then lets play dirty!" Then slams it into the ground.

A light aura shines out from where he slams his sword into the ground, creating, hopefully, a powerful enough healing bubble to keep people on their feet.

When the fight gets hard, Goldenblade brings out the big guns. Or at least the big firey blades. Swords weathed in flames slash ad cut through the triffids, cutting them down to size, though slowly. Frustratingly slowly. But cut, she does, the flames keeping them at bay while her blades prune one branch at a time. "Next time, I'm bringing hedgeclippers," she promises.

Prophylaxis does not do a good job defending himself or the party from this particular planty assault...

...Because he doesn't bother! Instead Prophy is healing people by hucking syringes filled with potent potions at the rest of his party the moment it looks like they might drop below vital HP thresholds!!

What do you mean the healing option was Light? That sounds like the words of someone who forgot that Pharmacy was a thing people could use to heal with!!

Shiruba takes a couple of steps back when the remaining plant life gets really wild. Tail lashes as the wolfgirl recomposes herself, the whistling of winds continuing around her as she, to the likely surprise of many, actually puts her bow away for the moment.

Instead she grabs something else off her belt. Her new Relic weapon, a throwing glaive composed of five curved bladed arms that end in sharp points. But more importantly, it has a specific enchantment that makes it more than just a weapon.

Shiruba charges it with the wind energy she's been building, using that to guide The Glaive of the Fallen as she throws it into the air with the ranged precision she's known for. With a windy wail it spins through the air, slicing through several tendrils to cut their reach and thus attacks short, the buzzing arc bringing it back to Shiruba's outstretched hand afterwards to catch.

"Sometimes the best defense IS a strong offense."

    Oh no, the plants are angry. They're trying to get their revenge! Wouldn't this make an awesome movie?

    Yuuki finds numerous vines slashing her way. She ducks and weaves her way through some of them. Others she meets with her blade to chop them off before they can hurt her. But with all the defensive action, she's having trouble finding an opening!

    But then Xander's heal bubble hits her. And Yuuki smirks.

    The imp dives straight towards the group of triffids, giving up defense in favour of attack. The tentacles start to whip into her, leaving behind strips of red. Thorns drag their way across her, adding to the damage. But the red light quickly fades, Yuuki's HP bar rising once more as the healz do their job.

    This leaves Yuuki more than enough time to close in and start slicing into the triffids at the source. Stab. Slash. Stab. Slash. Maybe a chop for good measure. Yuuki is going to town on these veggies like a professional chef!

    Once that part is done, Xander nearly goes down on his knee. His teeth gritting as his mana was almost fully drained. "Good work guys." He says with a tired breath.

Yet the ground rumbles, and what comes breaking out is a massive Triffid; The Alpha. It hisses out as it spews out toxic gas into the air. Its barbed tendrils were soon to follow as it lashes toward the group.

    Xander has to quickly force himself back up to his feet, as he uses his shield to block one of the strikes. "Doc! If you got a mana boost potion or something! I need that now!" What was the Salamander planning to do? What Salamanders do best! FIRE

His sword burns with red runes, as the enchanted armor he wears also glows red with runes Flames dance around the armor, down to his blade, engulfing the sword. With a mighty draconic-like roar, he spins himself around and swigs the blade, sending a flaming slashes one behind another for the Alpha angry plant.

Oh so now there's an option to use Pharmacy! I see how it is.

"Good God that's a big plant," Prophylaxis observes unhelpfully at the titanic Triffid looming overhead. Its brightly colored petals and the vague sense of irritation in his sinuses suggests that it is also /highly/ toxic. Well, fortunately Prophylaxis is well out of range of the worst it can do, but...

The others... /Do/ certainly need some specialty pharmaceuticals.

"I've got mana potions, I've got antidotes, I've got all kinds of immunity boosters. Come and get 'em!" Prophylaxis whips one hand out, a tendril snaking out of the gauntlet mounted to his arm. It lances over to Xander, delivering a potent mana potion and antivenom, before sweeping out to each member of the party in turn...!

Remote item use sure is useful!

Goldenblade rushes to meet the boss triffid, blades out, and he smacks her back so hard, she goes head over heels. Recovering her poise, if not her HP, she goes in again more warily, trying to time it with the others so as not to hog too much of the aggro. She doesn't want to be greedy about that. Darting in and out, her blades snicker-snick. They'd just snicker, if they could, her skills are not better than the boss triffid, and she's slowly realizing that she's getting the rough end of things, here. Taking heavy HP damage, she takes a more defensive stance, and so while doing about the same damage as previously, ie none, her swordplay now concentrates more on preeventing her from getting eviscerated while the rest of the adventurers deals the damage. That works out a bit better for her, in the sense that she manages to avoid evisceration...

Shiruba tilts her head to watch upward as an even bigger triffid rises out of the ground. ".. I'm starting to see why they need these culled this time of year." The Relic is tucked back in its spot so she can redraw her bow, and do what hunters do best -- shoot things. Moreso, she uses her skewering arrows to catch several of the tendrils and pinning them back against the Alpha Triffid's body, reducing the lashing strikes the others have to contend with.

    The massive plant screams out in pain, as it withers those tendril arms, before at last giving it up and poofing into digital dust! Queue the fanfare!

More importantly the party can no complete what they were sent to do, and it seems their reward? Is a very rare seed!

    One that Xander peers at in question, as his Salamander tail flicks. "Huh... Interesting." Before he pockets the seed. "Good work everyone," he goes to rest the flat of his blade against his shoulder armor. "And... It was good seeing many of you again. Glad this was a success. For all of us."

He gives a little thumbs up before he goes to walk on, looks like Xander is heading back into hermit, farm-hand mode, but who knows! Maybe this was the confidence boost he needed.

Shiruba takes one of the seeds and tucks it into her inventory. "It was good seeing you again too Xander... Though you've probably got a lot of other catching up to do. Don't be a stranger for so long this time!" But she's gotten use to certain people prefering to go off on their own for long stretches of time, so she's not too phased by him wandering off again afterwards.

TRIFFID SLAIN!

Triffid Seed get...!

...You know. If each of these seeds blooms into one of those giant Triffids, then they're going to end up with more Triffids just from adventurers taking their seeds wherever they go. Is this part of the Triffid reproductive cycle? Do they spread when adventurers forget that they're carrying Triffid Seeds end up dying in far-flung fields?

Terrifying.

"Well! That wasn't bad at all. Setsuna made this out to be something awful!" Prophylaxis says with a huff. "Well, regardless. Well done, people. I'm glad we made an impact here, and picked up some decent loot for the trouble!"

And nobody got eaten by a plant.

All in all, a good day's work.

    Yuuki cuts through the last of the triffids in her part of the clearing. She leans forward, catching her breath for a few moments before straightening again, "Phew! That was quite the workout." She turns to face the others and grins, "Still, we did it! Stupid plants thought they could beat us. Well, we showed-"

    A giant triffid comes breaking through into the clearing behind Yuuki, spewing poison gas everywhere.

    "-them?" Yuuki turns her head to look over her shoulder at the Alpha Triffid, "Ohhhhh, cra-" Another blast of toxic gas gets Yuuki coughing.

    But the imp is poisoned for only a short time, before the ever reliable Doc comes to the rescue with the familiar sensation of needle stabs. Feeling herself cured and protected against the poison, Yuuki turns to face the giant triffid, "So. This big boi wants to throw down? Too bad! Cause we've got medicine on our side!" Yuuki rushes forward, once more going into veggie chopping mode.

    Once the giant Triffid is dead, Yuuki leans forward, catching her breath for a few moments before straightening again, "Phew! Didn't see that coming. But thankfully it's over..." She looks over her shoulder for a moment.

    Thankful silence.

    Yuuki nods in satisfaction, looking at the extra loot she's been awarded, "Wonder what this might grow into... Not that I'm much of a farmer!" Echoing the sentiments of others, Yuuki gives a thumbs up to the party, "Good work, guys!"

Goldenblade ehs to Prophylaxis as he remarks about Setsuna making it seem bad, and says, "This was much easier than the last time I did it, and it was still pretty hard. The last time, we couldn't even find the triffids, and we almost got mauled by what we did find." She checks her blades now, but they seem not to be too badly damaged. She looks over the seed skeptically, nodding to Doc about the usual vector for propagating. "Yeah, I don't want to see what it grows into, either, Yuuki," she says.