Duty Session 352: The Deadly Caves Of Toxic Death!

"There have been sighting of a Manticore here in Westelande," Uta had explained to the party as they journeyed through the dunes. "And a customer came to the Monster Barn, and asked me specifically to capture one for him." She sighs. "I /could/ have told him that my speciality is /handling/ monsters, not /capturing/ them, but that's not how business work, you know, so I just- wait, actually, I might have told him exactly that." She frowns in concentration. "...long story short, we're here to capture a Manticore. It must be in these recently re-discoverd caves."

As the group approaches an area of desert previously undistinguishable from the rest, mirages dissipate, and reveal a ravine. A scorpion scuttles by, leaving prints on the sand. Uta turns to the rest of the party. "Thank you for assisting me in this adventure, by the way!"

* * *

When the team arrives, she dismounts from her mount. "Ladies and Gentlement, the Gorge of Death!", she announces, and points to a rope ladder which descends into the ravine. "We'll be going down there. The system of caves is at the bottom of this chasm."

    "Well, that... Seems like a thing for you to do. Although, getting people to assist is the best," Merek will note to Uta. The man wears the dark attire with the beltcape about the waist. He does take the time to check on his weapons while he follows with the party.

Wisteria shrugs "Hey, unexplored caves is just kinda what I do.. I'm not great at catching things but there might be glitches or hidden easter eggs down there." she says with a smile. The tall albino girl in her dark armor with ominous smoke drifting from the metal, and dark sword buckled at her hip doesn't really match the happy smile and lightly excited tone of voice, but folks are use to Wisteria by now right?

Schneider has signed up for the quest, because it's Uta, but he frowns at the idea of capturing a monster. "That's not really my specialty," he admits. "If you want it fried, sure, I can help with that. Capturing's going to be tricky." He hopes the client won't mind if it's lightly singed. That seems like the minimum he can do.

Caves, he has no issue with, but he shrugs nonchallantly, looks around expectantly, and gets ready to move out.

Gwen was soon to head back to the Palace Lan, yet when Uta said she needed help? How could Gwen say no also this monster was a danger to the local landers too. So here Gwen was in all her towering terror? Or is it glory? She looks at the gorge.

"A bit like Bagers Canyon, wonder if there are whomprats down there. So we need this thing alive huh? I can keep it's attention on me! I'm a big girl I can take the abuse."

"Well, yes, /technically/, we're here to clear the caves from venomous monsters," Uta replies to Merek. "Capturing a manticore is more of my own thing." She thinks for a moment, then continues, "Technically, the Hunter's guild pays for the elimination /or capture/ of monsters. They just want them gone. And here's the thing, we can keep the monsters we capture." She turns. "I will, of course, reward people approriately for helping me, on top of what the Hunters' Guild will pay us for the base job. I /did/ tell my customer I'd need a extra hand in catching this monster."

"We have no idea of what awaits us, Wisteria." She points around. "These caves are a recent re-discovery. There's so little we know, so..." She grins at the Caerbannog Were Fang. "Plenty of options to feed your sense of wonder, huh?"

"It's only the Manticore that we need alive during this mission," Uta explains to Schneider. "All other monsters? Fry away. That'll be appreciated."

"...Whomprats?", Uta asks, eye twitching. "Do I... do I want to know?"

She sighs. "I fear we will need all the tanking we can get. We don't know much about what's in the cave, but one of the things that made it through the grapevine is that whatever it is, there's lot of poison involved."

* * *

Once the discussions are taken care of, Uta will spread her wings with a dull 'fwhomp', and jump off the ravine. She might just be feather falling, but her smile as she enjoys the breeze past her face as she feather fall speaks of the ecstasy of flight. Or, as close as she can come to it right now.

* * *

After descending the rope ladder (or feather falling), the Adventurers take stock of the caves. Greenish wisps of vapor waft out of some of the caves, and pool for a moment before a gust of hot desert wind dissipates them. "Those are the caves with the more dangerous creatures, but the better rewards," Uta points out. "We'll be literally breathing poison if we go in there, so we'll need potions, antidotes, or plain old holding our breath for a long time if we decide to go that way." She scratches her chin. "Better rewards, but also higher risk." She gestures in the distance. "Or we could go that way. No gas coming out, so it should be safe to breathe in there. Still, we might not find anything of interest."

    Merek will nod a bit to everyone, while he takes the time to use his alchemical kit to begin making potions, then he brings that to the party, "Alright, these should assist with poison resistance," he will offer, and nods along to people.

Wisteria shrugs and opens her inventory "Earth and darkness are my speciatly, and enchanting comes with Alchemy as a side job." she says "I've got plenty of potions for when my experiments go wrong." she says handing out poison resist and antidote potions.

Schneider looks relieved that this won't be all monster wrangling. Not that he couldn't do it. He just probably couldn't do it. When Uta takes the leap, he will leap, too. The cognizenti will recall that humans do not feather fall, but hat he does have is a parachute, which he yanks the ripcord after a short fall, and he more or less featherfalls into the yuck. "I don't have a gas mask on me," he points out, and he doesn't have any alchemical gas antidotes or anything. Looks like he came unprepared. Well, he brought the boom. So, if it needs exploding, he's good to go. Just toxic gas, not so much. Then again, there's his legendary regeneration. Or wait, that was just in the source material. He's not really Dark Schneider, just a player pretending.

So this was going to be an interesting run Gwen thought. She would look to Uta and nods

"Ah so clean out the trash and catch the last one for your dark purpose? You are going to try to cross it with slimes ain't you?"

She beams like the noonday sun at this as she falls in to take the lead as she's well a big girl as she said. Soon she's climbing down the rope ladder and come in for a bit of a landing Gwen will check her bags.

"I'm already loaded I have antidoes."

She'll hadn them out for people to use once people need it.

"I will neither confirm nor deny that I will keep a couple of tissue samples before passing on the whole specimen," Uta replies to Gwen, in a teasing tone.

The Spriggan then approaches the green poison that wafts out of one cave, and inspects it. "Hmmmm." She flicks her inventory open. "I think I might have some antidotes for this particular poison in my inventory if the poison resistance wears off." She turns to the rest of the team, and accepts one of the potions of posion resistance. She gulps down its contents, makes a face, and rubs her mouth with her forearm. "That should do it." More menu navigation, and her staff shimmers into view. "Alright team, time to go in!"

The Adventurers venture into one of the more challenging caves. The the air swirls around in a vague greenish hue, its flavor carries hints of wasabi with an aftertaste of bitter almonds. The first thing that faces the adventurers is far too steep an upwards incline. The wall is crawling with critters: scorpions scuttle up and down, snakes slither in and out of cracks in the rock, and spiders the size of rats compete to destroy each other's webs when one of them builds too close to the other. No big deal for the creatures, but the party will need to build some reasonably sturdy structure to climb forward: attempts at using simple grappling hooks or basic rope structures will result in the spiders mistaking the rope for a rival's web, and swiftly melting it with acid. Luckily, it seems that there is some sort of previous structure in place, which indicates that someone has been using these caves in the past. Perhaps the Gnomes? One can also help by circulating the air towards the entrance, still relatively close.

    Merek will try to assist with the power of his air magic to draw away the poison and towards the front of the cave. It doesn't look like it's that successful, although it seems that others of the party are managing well enough.

Wisteria looks at the possible construction job, isn't really the type and starts trying to bring in fresh air to make the resistance potions last longer. However she specializes in darkness and earth ... poisoning is usually something she's doing TO someone not protecting them from, and really she just isn't much use overall.

Schneider knows bupkiss about spiders, and is inclined to fireball the whole cave and be done with it. But in the close confines, a blast might be a bad plan. What he -can- do is summon a small air elemental, and have it circulate the air, keeping it fresher, and confusing the critters sense of location. That ought to kepe them off our ropes for long enough to make our way!

Gwen is many thing she is also a maid when you get down to it.

"You and slimes Uta? Is like me and making sure you and everyone else looks good."

She grins but bacxk to the maid why maid? She starts to chant causing wind spelsl one after the other to help clean out the bad air.

Enough people succeed in pumping poisonous gas through the exit (and confusing the critters) that, in the meantime, Uta can comofrtably build a really rickety- what is that even? A stair? A ladder? A very elongated bookshelf?

"...It's not great, but it should do the job done. C'mon, folks!"

The item holds barely long enough for the party to make it past this cave, and venture into the next one.

As the party ventures inwards, the gas gets thicker, and the air takes on a yellowish tint and the aroma of rotten lemon. The whole cave consists of smooth, black rock organized in opaque cubes of crystal. It's like a warehouse stacked with obsidian crates. A relatively uncommon monster is leaping about, one which experienced players of Elder Tale Online will recognize: dark purple, spherical body, about the size of a small Adventurer; short legs with long feet, huge, malevolent eyes that take up most of its face, and instead of a nose, a long tube which keeps pumping out yellowish gas at every leap. Its name upon inspection is << Toxic Jumper >>', but the playerbase has always jokingly referred to it as 'Dire Q*Bert', especially given how it moves by hopping about, and covers the patches of rock where it lands in colorful poison.

The creature is too poisonous, and evasive too fight directly; the Adventurers' best option is to rush to the next cave by not being squished by its venomous feet, or to somehow affect the crystals in the cave through Earth magic. Artistic minded people (or Loremasters) can glean this individual's specific aesthetic preferences in his jumps, and therefore guess where it's going to land next.

    Merek lifts up a hand while he begins to sweep along, making each of the crystals begin to break away while the creature tries moving along each of them. Then he's making a way from the place with that party.

Schneider grimaces as the deadly Q*Bert-like Toxic Jumper attacks, and he reflexively throws up a shield to block the attacks while we rush psat. "DAMEDO! Magic Shield!" he shouts, and the faintly glowing shield springs up, and none too soon as a glob splatters across it. Since the others are skipping this fight and moving to the next room, he will follow, though he says, "Weren't we here to kill monsters? Seems like we're slacking here, doesn't it?" Not that he could have hit it, as fast as it was moving, but he's got volume fire spells that incinerate whole rooms.

Wisteria stomps, small quakes rolling out and sliding a 'staircase' of cubes out from the normal jumping range of the critter. Then she starts jumping up the blocks, each leap an expression of her strength and nimblness, each landing sending a little quake to draw a new cube into place. Bounce bounce bounce goes the not currenly a bunny until she's at the exit.

Gwen griuns "The point is we got it done, right Uta?"

She would now finds they have a new thing to deal with and Gwen shifts from? Fashion monger to Paladin in a blink of an eye. She will now chage at tehhing to keep it's attention 0on her while allowin her allies to dos omething about it. Hopefully this mad plan doesn't get her killed and somehow? It works...

"Agreed, these monsters are far too high level for us," Uta whimpers to Schneider. "I think we've learned our lesson -- next time we should stick to the easier caves."

Uta marvels at Gwen's sudden shift, with a whistle. "Speaking of Slimes...", she says in the Sylph's general direction, then intones a catchy J-pop tune, tendrils of light and color dance in sync on the handle of her staff; they focus into the gem at the top, and beams of light shoot out, to hit various crystal walls, and planting colorful circles on them. As the bouncy tune hits the chorus, which goes "SE-WER CALL!" slimes jump out and bounce about, confusing and making the Toxic Jumper take a new route.

The party pushes on. The air is now an intense orange with a piercing reek of sulphur. The malodorous vapors thicken faster than expected, eyes start to water, and a feeling of nausea begins to overcome the Adventurers.

"I don't get it... we had /potions/ to protect us from the posion!", Uta laments, her face turning an unhealthy shade of whatever color that is. She weakly flicks her menu open, and inspects the gas. "What the- this is not the same poison as the entrance. It /changed/!"

Uta groans, and rummages through her inventory again. She materializes an improvised set of flasks, and moves to prepare a healing potion for the rest of the team. "...Let me see about... making..." She rubs her eyes and wipes her forehead. Her hands tremble, her swaying in place indicating that she has troubles standing up "...something..."

Schneider laughs dismissively as Uta groans about the air. It's awful, but guys have an image to maintain. "It's not that bad," he claims. "I mean, the locker room after a hard practice, -that- was bad. This is like the kitchen at Denny's." Admittedly, the health department shut them down, but ...

    Merek looks to the slimes while he thinks about that, then he nods while beginning to work on making more potions for that poison to resist it, which he offers to everyone in the party.

Gwen says "We got this if we play smart Uta and don't worry I came perepated."

She will plant her feet to the groun and start chanting something. /She will over heal the party while others work to puzzel this out.

"Sanctuary!"

Brightly llit squares appear under the party's feet and will keep healing them through it by brute force if needed.

Wisteria shakes her head "That was a universal poison antidote I picked ...." she looks at her status effects and then goes hunting through her inventory hunting for her poison resist. "Good against MOST poisons... do not put Universal in your item name and then most in your description you stupid... ooh."

The squares of Gwen's Sanctuary replenish the team's HP; potions are passed around, Light magic is cast, and thanks to everyone's combined efforts in Alchemy and Pharmacy, the team is soon in good enough a shape to proceed further.

The next section happens to be a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. When the Adventurers reach it, the source of the unusual gas becomes apparent: the team is suddenly charged by a bull-like creature with metal scales. A Gorgon, whose appearance is glitchy and unstable, keeps puffing out reddish-orange clouds of petrifying breath at every snort and grunt.

"/Definitely/ stick to the easier caves-", Uta screams, as she barely manages to jump off to one side and roll on the ground. She pants as she sits there, and watches the monster glitch through a solid wall. "Just /what/ is that thin-" She looks down in terror, as the tips of her fingers harden, and the gray stone texture spreads along her fingers, to her palm. "The /heck/ is happening here?!", she sxclaims as she jumps up in shock, the poison now hardening and graying out her forearm. If people examine her, they'll notice a status effect of "Right Arm: << Petrified >>"

Schneider gets past the change in toxic gas only to find the source is ... glitched, on top of everything else. "Well, crap," he grumbles, hurling a fire spell, though it does no good against the gorgon. Since this looks like another one to evade, he will try to work out its path and be where it is not.

This is successful at first, but when he's almost past, it glitches through a wall the wizard thought it would respect, and smacks him hard. "Ow!" And he throws up another explosion and dashes off before the dust settles.

Wisteria shakes her head as she looks at her status effects "Petrify..." she says trying to look through her inventory even as she slows. "Wait... it's a glitch! I knew we could find glitches in a place like this.... now how to kill a glitch..." she shakes her head "No I don't think we can fight this my anti petrify potions aren't working something about the glitch I think... gotta just find th way out." The slowness though is making it hard for her to use normal methods of high speed mapping to find paths out of labrynths.

    Merek will take the time to dodge about with the skill of cryptography to make it easier to get through the corridors. With that said, he does not get issues with the status effects, all the same this doesn't look like it's overall a wonderful experience for the party.

So the whole affair is play8ing out better than it could have. "Well we need to see it through to the end Uta!" She will now turn her attention to use now she look at th nature of their party's problem. Gwen then fin hair tuyrning to stone and part of her body as well she stares for a moemnt at this. She however does have an idea. She gets out her threads and starts moving to pull and Ariadne.

Uta scrambles for her life. She attempts her best to escape the Gorgon, but the monster is too fast, too much of a cheat (passing through walls? Seriously?), and she's still freaking out about her arm. She's constantly distracted, looking at it, trying to move it, but failing. It's like a nightmare. Eventually, she runs into the Manticore again. She shrieks, attempts to wield her staff -- but she clearly isn't as capable with only one arm, and the monster huffs at her and sends her flying. She lands with a thud not far from there, and soon the hard, gray surface of rock spreads across one of her lower limbs.

Left Leg: << Petrified >>

Limping, exhausted, terrified, Uta, just like the rest of the party, manages to reach the exit of of the labyrinth thanks to Gwen and Merek's combined efforts.

"Don't worry," Uta says, in a tone probably meant more to reassure herself than the rest of the party. "We'll be able to resolve the petrification effect for our limbs once we're out of here. A healer with the Pharmacy skill will help with our limbs, I'm sure." She turns to Gwen, and noticing that her hair is petrified, she frowns. "...or a... hair stylist with the... uh... what skill does one use for hair styiling in this world?"

The party pushes on, and the atmosphere, deep red by now, is so saturated with miasmic fumes Adventurers might be wondering if there is any air left in it. The nature of the poison changes again so, as expected, the previous potions and antidotes start to fail; supplies are running low, and there just is no time to prepare more. The Adventurers won't survive for long if they don't get out soon.

Queasy and exhausted, they finally stumble upon the final room: a tall, wide cave, where a most impressive monster lurks: body of a large lion, with clawed feet, face of a monstrous humanoid with sharp fangs, and the tail of a scorpion. It is rumored that it is such a powerful monster that it can swallow lower-tier Adventurers with one gulp. As the group steps into its domain, the chimeric creature hisses, rears its tail, and launches towards the party. The fight will be tough and lopsided, and not in favor of the Adventurers.

Schneider stumbles into the final room with an impressive monstrous humanoiod. Tail like a scorpion, and big enough to swallow adventurers whole. But Schneider is tired of not fighting. That's not what he came here for. He came here to charbroil some monsters, and he goes with Plan A, which is Burn Everything. Plan B is Plan A, but hotter, so his backup plan may be questionable. "Brain, Brain dead. Obey your blood oath, come forth from the land of Avalon. Fire of Gehenna, become a fiery blast and burn everything around us!" His body is surrounded by fire, and he propels it at the humanoid, shouting, "EXODUS!"

And that, as they say, will leave a mark. It drops it a good fraction of its HP, and Schneider follows up with a torrent of fire-based DPS bright enough to glow blindingly, hurling the torrent at the moster with unbridled fury, watching with a grim satisfaction as its health bar drops steadily from the party's efforts.

    Merek will lift up a hand to being drawing a magic shield about the party, and will assist in tanking to keep them prepared for fighting with the creature.

    Wisteria would drop unholy murder but Uta wanted to keep this one. So she skips in close enough to take a swipe of claws and drop back again. The smokey shadow drifting from her armor solidifies and snaps into the Manticore, dark chains of black energy lashing it to the ground. However they're intended to slow and debilitate not capture so other folks are probably gona have to do more of THAT work.

Gwen finds she's still turing to stone slowly. AS wonderful of a foutain statue as Gwen would make a face. "I can do it but we'll need time. Which we won't have till after but if anyone becomes a statue I will make sure you are used awesomely and artfully." She's joking right? She has to be joking. As they poush on against the soft timer of the debuff. She will stare the thing down and work to use various spells mostly elemental to pin down the monster so Uta can do her thing.

Schneider's massive blow to the monster's HP is a boon, which emboldens Uta to proceed. By now she has started to get the hang of her partially petrified body, and through a combination of using one leg only, landing on her good arm and pushing herself up with it, and employing her wings in conjunction with Air Magic for simple steering and halting, Uta zigzag-leaps all over the room when she sees a window in Wisteria's engaging the Mantcore. She uses her petrified arm as a spindle for rope, which she progressively unwinds and lays around, and drops over and under the boss, taking advantage of the latter's leaps to rush under it.

The only thing that throws Uta off and cause her to stumble is Gwen's comment about artful usage of petrified Adventurers. "H-hey! I seriously hope you won't-"

Close-up to Uta's eyes, which pop open in sheer terror.

Cue to mental image of Gwen, back at her shop, with a petrified Uta used as a mannequin to show the Sylph's creations. A time lapse which cycles through winter coats, breezy spring ensembles, sundresses with large hats, swimsuits, winter sweaters and woolen hats-

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!", Uta screams. Since her thoughts aren't publically accessible, people might misunderstand her screaming as her not wanting to lose the battle with the Manticore, and with one final leap, she pulls and tighten the rope, which bundles the Manticore into one package. As she struggles to get free, Uta leaps in the air one last time, tosses a reinforced net on the beast, and lands on the ground, panting.

"...good job, everyone!", she says, finally, when a hint of relaxation creeps on her features once more. "...now let's get out of here and see about healing our status effects, okay?"

Schneider had, in fact, forgotten that we were here to capture this beast rather than killing it, but a lot of monsters aren't vulnerable to capture until their health bars are low, so it seems to have worked out anyhow. He lays off the DPS after Uta swoops in, so as not to incinerate her, and will assist as best he can, though that turns out to be 'not very much'.

"So, this was our goal?" he asks. "That wasn't awful. But yeah, we could have been better prepared. Gas masks next time...." He will help with the monster collection, if he can, and then help with GTFO. Hopefully the ladder's still there!

Gwen is very confued at Crys's scream, she'll look at her and will fire off a defence buff on her firnd without thinking about it. She thankfuyl though they are able to bring the creature down and now she looks ot Uta nodding. 5R
"Aye we should once we're outside I'll get to work. I also brought snacks!"

Wisteria sits down, she never even shifted forms. "Well... that could go better.. it'd be easier if everything wasn't WAY over level. But there's a genuine glitch, outside Ezzo. That is something. I'll have to tell Gilgamesh about this one, and see if we can study it..." she hmms

"This was our goal, indeed," Uta nods at Schneider as she slumps to the floor to catch her breath. "DEFINITELY pick the easy route next time..."

"I don't think I have seen anything like that before, no" Uta says, with a frown. She rubs her temples. "Something strange was going on with the Rats, last time, but-" She frowns. "Were there glitches? Hm."

Her thinking doesn't seem to lead anywhere, and she shakes her head. "Too hard to remember. Anyway, you have a point here. Definitely something worth investig- oh, hey. Speaking of Ezzo and glitches. I remember you mentioning enchanting and resonance. I would like to go to a cave in Ezzo and perform some investigations. I can't be positive, but I suspect there's... some form of 'resonance' going on in a specific Gnomish cave, following specific patterns. Would you be able to help there?"

All of a sudden, Uta squints. And sniffs. And squints.

"...A whiff of fresh air!", she exclaims, as the manticore keeps snarling and growling in the background. She grins to Schneider, "We might not need that ladder, after all!", slings the rope coming from the monster's net over her shoulder, and begins to pull. "Let's follow this draft, I think we've found a way out!"

And then she stops. "Wait, snacks?"

The prospect of snacks makes her pull harder.

Schneider nods about the manticore, and when Uta finds the exit, or at least a fresh breeze, he will follow her, chivvying along the manticore like you would a poorly trained dog. "Go on, then. Move! Hup!" Not a Monster Handler by any means. As far as Ezzo and glitches, he can only shrug, though that reminds him, "I maybe have some leads on what we talked about the other day. Clues in the Tower we hadn't run to ground yet." He will, then, be running them to ground ASAP.

    Merek walks along with Uta and takes the time to check on everyone, while he thinks about it. "I'm glad you are succeeding. There are a lot of personal quests these days, I wonder if they are like mine. I am planning to bring what I found to the Bandit King."

Gwen keeps her word as they get out and she does have food, she has cookies and taffy it looks like also some meat.

"BAndit King?"

Uta beams at Schneider's revelation. "Excellent! Hopefully that'll help with our research!"

"Bandit King, former leader of the Ezzo Empire," Uta rattles off to Gwen, absent-mindedly, as she continues to pull the Manticore with only one functional leg and only one functional arm. "The Mysterious Creature of Mysteriousness. Always in armor, always concealing their identity. All that is known about them is that they're a Spriggan. End of story. People don't even know if this 'King' is really a 'king' or it's just a name. As far as we know, the Bandit King might even be a she."

"I honestly don't know, Merek," Uta replies with a sigh and a shake of her head. "As far as I know, I'm just a Monster Handler catching a creature for a customer. But I'll let you know if it leads to anything?"

"You know I've suggested you have that item appraised," Uta continues to Merek, "but as we've established, it's just a suggestion. You do what you think is right."

    Wisteria nods "I'm happy to help checking on things like that, I don't know if long range resonance will even work in the EDZ." she smiles and shrugs alittle "But it's worth a test."

Schneider nods to Uta about his lead. As far as the Bandit King being a woman, he wonders, "Wouldn't she be a Bandit Queen, then?" He looks over to Merek, though, and wonders, "Did you need something appraised?" He doesn't get to use that skill very often.

    Merek looks between everyone and nods a bit, "There's someone that can do it special, I think. And tell who the maker is. Although, if you like... You can do a normal inspect," he offers to Schneider, then he speaks to Uta and Gwen, "Well. The Bandit King might not even be... The person we think it is. I will tell you that, at least."

Schneider will take the item from Merek and inspect it, then run a somewhat higher-level inspection, because he's privvy to things. He doesn't seem that way, maybe at first. He seems all about Fire, on the surface, but there's more to him than that, it seems. But he won't trouble Merek with what he finds. That's just the sort of guy he is. Merek's got enough rope to hang himself as it is.