Duty Session 348: Reclaim the Peko Fort

In the northwest of Ninetails, a lone Peko scout awaits the party. The party was informed to meet the scout under the cover of darkness, when the mist is at its thickest, in a small grouping of trees just outside the sight line of the fort walls.

Uta beckons the rest. "That's it. This is the place for the appointment. Let's see if our contact is here..."

The scout is ecstatic to see the party and runs up to them, breaking cover. "Oh damn I am so glad to see you all. I thought I was going to get stood up and have to wait out here all night...alone." The scout looks around, obviously a little jumpy.

"Anyways, normally we would handle this ourselves but there is some weird summoning magic that is happening on the top of the tower that we... well, need you to handle. It's really simple." The scout turns and points to the fort , visible by the tower, that appears to have some magical glow at the top. "Just get to the fort, over the wall, across the courtyard and you can get into the tower. Stop them from doing the magic up there and we can handle the rest." The scout smiles and nods , yep just that easy.

"OH and since I have met up with you I am not sticking around. Just let the hunter guild know if you succeed." With that said the scout dashes away through the mist in shadow in the opposite direction.

Uta blinks. It takes her all the time the contact needs to disappear into the distance before she timidly raises a finger, and barely above a whisper, she starts, "...My name is Uta Furore, Aerialist and Monster-Handling Musical Kung-Fu Nurse. pleased to meet you..."

    Merek walks along to the scout and party while he takes the time to adjust all of his gear, then he nods a bit to Uta, "I will assist," he offers, while he takes the time to smile and will relax, looking about the place.

    Happy to help (and show off) as usual, Fukaziroh was eager to come along and challenge something new to her. The possibility of treasure doesn't hurt either, but it's a lesser consideration to the sylph. The tiny battle fairy gears up and readies to take on magical summons, but doesn't put much effort into immediate preparation. This is the sort of thing she's literally trained for and doesn't need to prepare... theoretically.

    "Huh, jumpy little thing." she notes as the scout runs away. Then, slightly louder, "We'll handle it! We can handle ANYTHING!" she insists cheerfully. "Though don't spread that around, come to think of it. Weirdos will be asking us to handle all kinds of things and it might ruin our reputations! We'll decide what to handle, thank you very much!"

"How on earth did you even find me?" is what Uta said to Jazz. She hadn't been responding to Chimlinks, see. She'd been busy. Very busy. She had been neck deep in exploring every nook and cranny of one of Yamato's forests, working to ensure that she had artistically mapped it to the fullest extent. A challenge for herself. So when Uta found her and all but grabbed her by the tentacles to come along, she was left with little choice.

The 'weird summoning magic' tale, however, did at least 'peko' her interest. Mildly, anyway, even if she had been focused on her little book and her parchments the whole time instead. It's about that time that she starts paying any real attention at all.

"Call me Jazz," she offers to Fuka, given that they haven't met, just after Uta's introduction of herself.

"I can handle monsters," Uta offers, with a nod. "That's my specialty. Also patients. I can handle patients. And I'm qualified to handle injuried monsters, I guess, even though... why would I want to do that? Assuming they're not slimes, that is. That changes everything. Oh, I am deep into Scripture as well, so I can also handle The Truth."

After more rambling along those lines, Uta finally snaps out of it and smiles, "Hi Merek! Hi Jazz!" She turns to Fuka. "Oh, you two haven't met before?"

The party proceeds until they reach undead territory. Those familiar with Helena's forces might recognize one of the telltale signs of their encounters: en eerie fog swirling around the ground, its grip growing tighter as they march on. It isn't long before they spot the first skeleton guards doing their rounds.

    Fuka may not have directly met Jazz yet, but she knows the Undine at least a little by reputation and association. Plus they sort of met investigating a Palace Lands village at some point which might be in some other timeline. Never been introduced though, which is what's important. "Hi Jazz, I'm Fuka." the sylph claims cheerfully. "Jazz is a good name. Like, all that music and sax and stuff. I'm a big fan!" she blathers. "Oh, and I'm not good at handling others, just at handling my axe!" she grins. For once not making innuendo at Uta's expense.

    Once they approach the undead territory though, Fukaziroh puts on her game face. She doesn't say anything, just murmurs a few words as she summons artes to make the air - and the fog - swirl and gather helpfully. She is a sylph after all. It's her job!

    Merek lifts up a hand while he brings the fog around him with his magic. With that concealing, the man begins to weave away and takes the time to avoid all of the guards doing that patrol.

"I guess," is Jazuhanzu's reply to Fuka, casually, as if she's not really paying especially much attention. She's greeted, but her attention is now being directed towards the distant fort, the skeleton patrols, and more.

She observes Uta a moment, then straightens up and gives herself a shake, wiggling her fingers before nodding to Uta and darkening the shadows ahead of them with her artes. Easy enough for a specialist like herself. There, using more evasion arts, she runs from shadow gap to shadow, letting them hide her, her dark clothes, and her ridiculously flowing purple hair.

Fuka's arte creates eddies and lumps which provide just the right amount of distraction and cover to the Adventurers -- diverting attention of the skeletons with unusual (but justifiable) movement elsewhere, and hiding the Adventurers' advance. They certainly help in Enhancing Jazz's already superb Dark artes.

Merek has no need for that, since he provides his own concealment, and Uta-

Wait, where's Uta? Somehow, the Spriggan is there one moment, and the next- poof, gone. She's nowhere to be seen. Nobody can really tell /how/ she did it, but once they get past the skeletons, she happens to already be there.

The adventuring party manages to make their way to the large wall of the outpost. This stone wall stands a good two stories tall. Which is great for seeing an enemy from far away, however it does cause blindspots. The adventuring party has managed to find one of those blind spots and will be able to rest a moment before taking the next step, which is indeed to get over the wall.

It is just a plain stone wall, and only roughly 9 meters up.

    Eyeing the tall stone wall, Fuka has options. Air magic might get her up there. So could lofting herself on an earth spike. Both of those are rather uncontrolled though. If she had more functional wings it'd be trivial of course, but no use crying over that. No, the easiest answer is the simplest, or something like that. Retiring her great axe to its sheath, the small sylph sets about using her muscles instead. It usually comes as a surprise to those seeing her for the first time, but her small frame packs a lot of power. She's probably put more points into strength than any other stat, including her magic. It's a fun tool, especially when it comes as a shock to others. And so, up she goes! Kind of helps that she weighs basically nothing, being composed of mostly air and fairy magic and computer bits...

    Merek looks about the place and will assist the party while he takes the time to try and climb. He doesn't do a wonderful really job of that.

"..welp," says Jazz, "Looks like I get to try to run up a wall with some wind magic and, uh, evasion magics... I guess?" says Jazz. Magic can do it. And so can she.

Thus, Jazz takes a moment, giving the wall a look before backing up and then /running up the side/. Or at least trying to. It doesn't work as well as she hoped. Oh, she runs at the wall and then up it a ways, the way some people do with certain parkour moves in the real world. She even makes it further thanks to her magic than some might otherwise do, but even then she loses her momentum, forcing her to grab on to the wall and pray, for just a moment, that she can climb thje rest of the way over the hump.

... which she does, vaulting herself up and over the wall with a beleagured, tired sigh and a lot of muffled sounds of exertion left in her wake that were probably adorable because her voice is absurdly twee by even the standards of anime.

flopped to catch her breath, she raises her head to look out onto the fort from the wall.

Uta inhales. Once Jazz is out of sight, she takes some time to walk about and pick the section of wall which seems to have enough indentations and stones jutting out, no matter how subtle, to allow her to free climb on top.

Once she has picked the section she deems most suited to the task, she begins her ascent, which proceeds without any special incident.

Getting down off the wall is much easier, there are stairs and ladders and even a few ropes that easily would have allowed the Peko Knights to get down to the ground. Not to mention that winged races can just feather fall.

Once people hit the ground , one thing becomes obvious. The courtyard is booby trapped.

It appears the Peko Knights left a surprise for the undead. Whether it is the large amount of body parts of ghouls and skeletons, or simply that the ground looks like swiss cheese. One thing is certain, the courtyard has somehow been mined.

"Fascinating. Ghouls and skeletons, monsters which can actually lose body parts without shattering into polygons. I will have to research how that's possible, who knows, it might open up possibilities." Nevermind the very real risk of being blown to smithereens...

    Merek looks to the mines and nods along to the field, before he steps to make a pattern along the place, "Well, it looks like. We need to make the path," then he begins to weave along and manages to make it through that field.

    "Yeah, fascinating!" Fuka pipes up in agreement, or possibly sarcasm. She doesn't make an easy distinction between the two, and if she's mocking her friend for her obsessions she does so gently indeed. "I think we should be careful though, because I don't want to lose any body parts!"

    This is, in fact, irony. Considering what happens next.

    Fuka accidentally detonates a mine while trying to be careful. Collapsing to the ground with a shriek that kind of drifts into half-sobs, half-laughter, she lies there for a few moments, trying to gather her concentration and check if she's like... missing anything vital.

    "I'm done for!" she gasps out melodramatically, finding that while she's lost some health she's too tough to be permanently damaged from such a thing. No doubt she'll need nurse aid or the like, but it's not as bad as it could be. "Leave me, I won't make it!! Tell my wife and children I... love them..." she hams, clutching at her undamaged heart.

"If we're not careful, here, we'll be polygoners," remarks Jazz, straight-faced, to Uta.

Her tentacles twitch, however, befgore she just ... runs across.

Quick-like. It's very fancy, this trick, but, she absolutely made it with a considerable amount of effort. And magic. Magic helped.

"Fuka! NoooooooooooooooooooO!"

Uta's arm stretched out, the Nurse screams with far too real a concern. "Don't move, I'll take care of you!"

She looks around. She grabs a bunch of discarded monster limbs, and as she begins to leap and bound, she hurls them at the ground as hard as she can while still in mid air.

Most of the time the zombie-like limbs just hit the floor with a dull thump, or clatter in the case of skeleton parts,possibly shattering if their durability wasn't high enough. That's when it's safe to land there. But occasionally an explosion is triggered before Uta's foot can touch down, and the resulting detonation sends the Spriggan sideways -- she's even careful to spread her wings to catch the shockwave and be displaced farther away.

It isn't long before she's sitting next to Fuka. Re-enacting the stereotypical scene where she attempts to hold up her friend, she begins applying her medical techniques, starting with a diagnosis. "According to medical inspection, you're missing a leg."

Good thing she has medical inspection powers, or nobody would have found out!

Some downtime is taken to attempt and restore Fuka to full avatar integrity, and when the party can move again.

After braving a minefield, the party has reached the tower in the center of the courtyard. Unfortunately there is only one door, in or out and it is locked. In fact that are several locks, one could surmise this is one well locked door in fact. The door itself is rather sturdily built, with heavy wood, strong hinges. The most interesting sign about all this, is the door is new. Whatever is going on behind this door is meant to be a secret.

"Ok, team," Uta begins. "We will need some time to get through this and-"

An arrow plants itself into the boards of the door.

"Archers! Quick, let's do something!"

    Merek looks when the archers lift up their weapons to aim at the party. The man lifts up a hand while he begins to draw a shield upon everyone, then he nods a bit, "We can try to avoid it by using the cover!" He moves along with the party and swings magic to keep the party safe while he works.

    Of course Fuka's in some pain from her injuries, but not nearly as much as she would if there weren't pain-dulling measures in this world. She might be slightly in shock though, because she seems to find this hysterical. That is, equally as funny as it is distressing. Nevertheless she doesn't truly want to be abandoned to die, and is quite grateful for getting her leg regrown. This may be a game with no permanent consequences for death, but she's not one of those silly suicide cultists either.

    Once underway again, properly grateful for being able to walk (or in her case, skip) again, Fukaziroh seems in entirely good cheer. And when undead archers put the group under attack, she whirls her axe in hand and throws herself in the path. "I'll block the attack, get the door open!" she calls out, hiding behind the head of the axe. This is about as effective as you can imagine. The axe is pretty damn large, but it's not exactly great cover from arrows. Fuka can at least keep her vitals protected, but her health's on the decline once again from a series of arrows finding flesh. Fortunately for her, Merek's shielding magic is far more effective and she's able to dive under cover, looking sheepishly up at the Mage Knight. "Or that. That works too!"

When Jazz hears someone's leg is off, she just slaps a hand over her face at Uta's commentary on the matter. Still, as everything gathers back together, she's quick to throw up a defensive shield after startling at the arrival of the arrow. Sure, that works well enough for her, but she has to protect everyone else too.

Which she's doing.

Eventually, one of the arrows puntures her shield and lodges itself in her arm. She looks down at it. Looks up. Looks down at it again.

There is a sigh.

"That's my *writing* arm, damn it."

"Don't worry, Jazz!", Uta calls out. "I'll take care of it in a minute, and then it'll be as good as the day you spawned as an adorable little sea creature!"

Uta navigates her menu, and materializes her staff. She vocalizes a swishing song, with a solid bass part, but frequent upswings. Tendrils of light in earth tones surround the staff, and when she slams it to the ground, a shockwave departs, the tendlins sucked into the floor and spreading around, causing a bunch of stone wedges, the upper, slanted surface roughly the size of a trapdoor, to raise from the ground. Notably, the raised slabs all face the door.

"And now." She cracks her knuckles, and switches to a bouncy J-pop tune. Colorful tendrils dance on her staff, occasionally being shot at the slabs, where the tendrils rearrange in colorful circles of light that remain there, and when the verse is over, just before the refrain- silence. "SEWER CALL!", she sings, as the first notes that introduce the refrain, and slams her staff on the ground again.

The tendrils of colors radiate in a second shockwave, and from each circle, slimes keep being summoned -- shot, actually, towards the door. As the bouncy tune continues, a fusillade of slimes batters the door, eating away at its durability.

With the combined efforts of the adventurers, the door is eventually torn down, and they can rush up the spiral staircase that leads to the main room-- possibly with a short stop in the middle to toss a healing potion at Fuka, and take quick care of Jazz's arm. Better tending will have to wait, right now those archers might be chasing the team...

Upon the top of the tower, the walls have been removed and all that remains is the stairway entrance that the group has come from and the stone floor of the tower top. In the stone floor is an intricate and perverted summoning circle. Any summoner worth their salt would recognize that inlaid on the summoning circle is an extra layer to transform whatever is summoned. Into what it is hard to say.

Surrounding the magic circle are six vampire cultists , the one leading the summoning looks at the adventurers and laughs before saying, "You are too late, it has already begun. Now we need the blood sacrifices. The lot of you will do nicely."

As if scripted, the moment he finishes talking the cultists rush the party intending to sacrifice them to summon the creature.

    Fuka peers at Uta dubiously. "Sewer call? REALLY?" she deadpans. Not that she should throw stones here. When it comes to naming things badly, Fuka's a queen. There's probably a really good reason behind the name, and possibly a funny story too, but ... now is not the time. She rushes up the stairs with the others, eager to see what challenge awaits them - and treasure too! - at the top of the tower.

    She skids to a halt, peering at the cultists with her hands holding her great axe ready, twitching with eagerness. But no, this is not the way. Laying into the summoners with an axe would be therapeutic considering her recently-missing limb, but there are better ways. And an opportunity to crack wise! "Do you know the best way to deal with a coven? REMOVE THE C!" she cackles, listing a hand from the axe. "FIYAAAAAAABALL!!"

    Merek lifts up a hand and will throw an explosive potion into the vampire cultist people.

Oh no.

Jazz knew it was coming, of course, how could she not when a tower presented itself? But there they are: the worst enemy of every shortarse.

.../stairs/.

Jazuhanzu stares up at the length of the spiral staircase and then lets out a heavy sigh. She rushes up behind the otihers, struggling a little more than them on account of her smallness, and is breathing heavily with exertion by the time she reaches the top of it. Why, she's arriving even after the others, aft eer the declaration of the blood sacririce and what not.

She stops.

She stares again, her eyes lighting up with lambent, bioluminescent amber coloring.

"Oh, come on," she states, bluntly, before letting loose with blasts of scaling hot water. It may not be fire but it blisters all the same.

"The original technique si called 'Grave Call'," Uta begins to explain to Fukaziroh. "It normally summons the undead in large enough numbers to be a nuisance. I have modfied it to summon a bunch of slimes. And since you find slimes in the sewers instead of in the grave, well..."

Uta deal with the cultists with her own singing, which activates her staff and sends blinding blasts of Holy Light to devastate the group. Unable to see, they get caught in Merek's explosive, and between Jazz's hot water and Fuka's fireball, they end up both boiled /and/ roasted. How's that?

The cultist lays slain on the ground, slowly dissolving into pixels, obviously the party has saved the day. If that was the case though, why is there a magical charge still in the air? One may even notice that while the cultists are pixelating, their blood is filling in along the summoning circle. The cultists have become the sacrifice.

Then just as suddenly as the magic can be felt it is gone. It is as if the magic just failed to work. That is until large boulders begin to rain from the sky, into the center of the summoning creature. Moments later it stands to reveal itself to be a stone golem. The golem lets out a groan as the rocks begin to become stained, and grow mold, a green flame fills the monster's eyes as it stares at the party. Then with a fierce rage it begins to thrash and rampage, attempting to sate it's sudden need for the death of others.

With a magical resistant , physical resistant skin, it appears all that can be done is avoid the monster for all eternity. However as the rampaging monster continues on it's war path, the damage to the summoning circle appears to be creating a magical charge around the beast.

    Merek swings up and into the enemy with the weapon of his, though he takes a few strikes while red lines appear through him, then he tries to lift up the shield with him to magically protect the party. It doesn't look like he does all that well with that.

Uta flicks through her menu. Her staff shimmers away, to be replaced by-

...a koto? As in, the musical instrument?

She strums a few chords on it. A low chord, with a glissando that brings it to a higher pitch. Do-wooooom! Do-wooooooom!, twice.

It sounds vaguely likely an electric guitar, and- is that the opening to "Jailhouse Rock?"

"o/~ Hunters sent a party on the Undeads' trail o/~
o/~ 'Go forth heroes', they were told, 'you cannot fail' o/~
o/~ They passed the guards, the wall, the arrows, then that thing o/~
o/~ There were some knocked out cultists, saw some monster spring o/~

o/~...that's rock! Look, its body, it's rock! o/~
o/~ Everybody, dodge or roll, or block, o/~
o/~ that abhorrent beast is made of rock! o/~"

"...well that's not good," says Jazz as the cultists are at last defeated and then the horrible golem appears. "I don't think I got much there and -- " and then the rampaging monster is coming after her, at least for a time, and she's yelping and running off while blasting it from time to time.

It's super effective. Hitting rocks with water is always effective.

...eventually..

... in a few thousand years.

Jazz seems to recognize this and isn't exactly thrilled by having to run around, holding her hat to her head as she allows gusts of wind and water spouts she can slide along to help her escape its grasp, long enough for someoine else to take aggro.

"WHY DO I LET YOU TALK ME INTO THINGS, UTA!"

    Fuka's not sure they can't damage the rock golem, particularly with earth magic, but she's not as good with earth as she is with air, and she realizes it's probably not a specialty of the other mages as well. Fortunately she catches on to the degradation of the summoning circle, and realizes there's a better way.

    "That spell name of yours is pretty good." Fuka concedes, momentarily delaying as she pulls out her necklace. It's a bizarre, distressing thing she normally keeps well-hidden, as it seems to be made from bits of a number of different monsters. "Maybe we can make this one a RAVE CALL?" she suggests, presenting the necklace boldly at the golem, forcing it to turn its attention on her.

    "You know, sing some ROCK music?" Fukaziroh says with a cackle, turning and fleeing from the golem, using superior speed and agility to kite it around the tower floor, dragging it repeatedly through its own summoning circle. She might take a few hits, but that's the danger involved in tanking a boss and she's well-equipped for kiting so long as others can help heal her and shield her and the like.

    When she hears Uta begin to sing, Fuka grins and joins in. Getting the lyrics completely wrong much of the time, most annoyingly, but coming in strong on the chorus. She even manages to thread a little bit of mana into her lyrics to add to the aggro she's generating. Perhaps by being deliberately annoying with mistaken lyrics. It's a thing, definitely.

"Because no one can resist my charm and silver tongue," Uta teases Jazz, with her tongue jammed into her cheek.

"Not bad," Uta chimes in at Fuka's annyoingly wrong lyrics and her channelling mana into her song. "I honestly cannot tell if you are being annoying by accident or on purpose. Which either means you've mastered the art, or I seriously need to train you in it."

The party bids its time. It braves the attacks, sings suitably annoying songs to throw the monster off its flow, Fuka even kite-tanks. Uta is more the squishy type, and- well, gets SLAMMED into the wall a lot, glowing appropriately red. Jazz's water techniques might not be effective in damaging the Golem, but they do serve their purpose of keeping it distracted and at bay long enough. As for poor Merek... well, he's going to need some medical attention after this is over.

Which, well, it would appear to be now. When the summoning circle finally shattered, the Golem disappears, and what's left is a bunch of crystallized fragments, still flowing with Dark magic. "Well," Uta says, panting, as she approaches them. "...it would appear we made it." She picks up one crystal, and turns to look at the party. "Good job everyone," she exclaims, as she teeters her way towards one hole and plops herself in front of it. "My goodness, look at the vista. Jazz, come look at this. I know you like landscapes." She beckons to the others as well. "You too, Fuka! This tower is on the brink of structural collapse. You strike me as the type who enjoys a disaster about to happen." And finally, with a sigh and a shake of her head, she beckons to Merek. "And you. C'mon here as well. Gotta patch you up so you can recklessly sacrifice yourself once again, next time."

    Fuka perks enthusiastically at the praise and the call to check out the disaster. "Well, I do love spectacles." she claims, coming out to take a look. "Speaking of spectacles do you think I'd look cute in them?" she asks. "I mean, I wear them IRL and they're super cute, but I mean here too!" she rambles an ongoing stream with a rather low signal-to-noise ratio.

Uta turns to take a look at Fuka's face. She studies the Sylph's features for a bit, before offering, "Oh, uh. Uhm... I'd guess so?", she offers, uncertain. "I used to wear them as well outside of ETO, but, you know, it's so convenient to just not have to... you know what? You should ask Gwen about that."

    Merek looks about the place and nods to Uta, "Thank you! It was great to come and assist you. Always good to work on a little ranking up when I can!" Then waves.