5546/WANTED: Executor 13 (2)

WANTED: Executor 13 (2)
Date of Scene:	03 November 2017
Location:	Lumiere
Synopsis:	Boss fight time. Executor 13 faces a crowd of powerful Elites in a chamber full of custom-made torture equipment.
Cast of Characters:	974, Staren, 993, Count Kord, 513, Priscilla, Tomoe

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Carna (974) has posed:
    Wheels covered in spikes and restraints. Tables with buzzsaw blades built into them. Iron maidens, stretching racks, tubs of acid and boiling oil, branding iron, pliers for tearing off body parts, a dazzling variety of blades specialized for particular kinds of torture, boxes full of those black-steel roaches with latches for shutting victims inside, blade-tipped funnels with dozens of different substances and creatures lined up in pits and tanks to be forced into someone's body, whether by mouth or a newly-carved hole... Everywhere one looks, the large room is made by small by the cluttered impliments of torture, many of them invented over the impossible lengths of time since the world became empty of all life up to the present.

    And what they just witnessed was a Lantern having the concentrated essence of Despair in the form of molten blood forced into them to prevent their resurrection by removing their patchwork-soul's desire to do so against their own will.

    And the one behind it all, an enormous mass of muscle and flesh, the top half of his head gone, and only a vampiric, bat-like mouth of cavernous proportions for his lower half, now steps forth to challenge them after performing his grisly execution. Nozzles and valves implanted all over his body indicate the places where the Exector takes injections of blood, or whatever, to sustain the hunger infused into him by a twice-dead King in ages past. No doubt, the Executor has built up such a resistance to the blood-based drug that bestows the sensations of life once more upon the Dead forces him to keep finding new places to take in injections so that he can get more of the substance at a time.

    Though by this point, it is hard to imagine there is any of the drug left in sufficient quantity to appease the body of what amounts to a ghost who is so thoroughly addicted as to have become this towering, forty-foot monstrosity.

    As he lifts a gigantic guillotine blade with a handle attached as his weapon, the Executor steps forth with a terrible roar to confront the intruders.

    Outside, Luna has just had a terrible encounter with the corpse-bird things from which the fluid is extracted to prevent Lanterns from discorporating when they would ordinarily do so from suffering sufficient damage. A preserving enzyme of some kind, to ensure Unlit monsters have plenty of time to digest and extract Dead Lights from their prey, turned to the purposes of butchers and torturers.

    Everything about this operation screams that it needs to be shut down for good, but to accomplish that, they must first deal with the target they have come here to eliminate.

Staren has posed:
    Well, the decor certainly shows that someone's been... inventive.

    In places like this, it's almost a curse to have the sort of mind Staren does -- one with no 'too horrible to contemplate' filter. He can guess at how they'd be used. At least there's something else here to take his mind off it:

    The executioner. Or perhaps torturer is a better title? Either way, it is for once an opponent at a scale entirely appropriate for him to fight against in his mecha!

    Shame he doesn't have it with him.

    For the moment, Staren runs to get out of cleaver range. An opponent simply being big doesn't exactly intimidate him -- his weapons may not be as big as the mecha's, and he may not be able to fire as many missiles at once, but they're still designed to take on the same kind of threats -- but it certainly does present its own unique challenges.

    He wonders if all those tubes are weak points. It sure would be nice if they were.

    In the mean time, while trying to put some distance between them, he fires back wildly with the beam cannons. He doesn't exactly have to /aim/ at a target so big, but this is mostly to get an idea of how damaging his weapons are against this foe, without taking advantage of weak points. Have to establish a baseline before you can start experimenting, after all!

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     After what she saw in that cage, Luna is reeling a bit. But, she moves to join the others for now. She isn't sure if these creatures within the prison are creatures that need saving, or if they are monsters themselves that might deserve to be imprisoned for something. It is hard to consider them potential victims with their grotesque appearance, even for a pony from a land of love and tolerance.

     When she reaches the others, Luna is met with a sight that is not exactly better than the one she just left. But at least it is very clear that this creature is a monster that needs to be either subdued or destroyed. The others might think one of the butchers has made its way up here, but the image shimmers before giving way to the majestic pony princess holding her enchanted scythe. She doesn't look well though, obviously having some trouble with all the things she has seen and is seeing here. "If banishment to the moon for a thousand years was my punishment, then this creature's fate is sealed." she says, gripping her weapon tightly.

     However, as she often does, Luna does not attack with the scythe. Instead, her horn glows brightly with her signature pale blue energy before she takes to the air and fires a powerful beam right at the belly of the gigantic Executor. "Begone, fel creature!"

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord expressed no shock or bewilderment at the sight of the torture devices. He was, instead, visibly taken aback as he realized what was being used on the Lantern, what had been decided was necessary to dispose of those beings for good. He remembers the hordes of Unlit, and for a moment empathy flashes in his mind... the intense despair of rejection was enough to drive many of them to madness before it ever scattered their souls. He didn't feel too much hate for this, but what he did feel was revulsion. Pragmatism or not, it was a barbaric way to handle this, and it rankled everything in him.

    Which is why his weapon was tightly gripped in both hands, his scythe humming under the tension of his demigod strength. His fingers ached from the raw unhappiness in his gut when the incredible blood addict presented itself to them. He flapped his wings once to retreat from the creature's immediate range for a melee strike, and lifted his scythe in one hand. Then, he chucks his weapon as hard as he can at the core of the Executor's mass, trying to slice the creature. When it hits or misses, Kord holds out his hand to recall the scythe back to him, the weapon drawn back toward him through the air by an invisible force. It would be enough to kill an ordinary man, but Kord doesn't want to get close enough to get hit, acknowledging the level of threat at display here.

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna's disgust-meter is already off the charts. Coming across such a detestable assortent of torture equipment... her mind isn't quite creative enough - or morbid enough - to appreciate half of what she sees.

    But what she does understand is more than enough. And so the little fox bares its teeth at the butcher before them...

    Silver moonlight pours forth from the little vixen's flesh, and in a matter of moments she's growing, rocketing upwards in height to a full seven height of humanoid fox, arms and legs rippling with tight but poweful predator-muscle. The were-fox takes only a few moments to part her toothy jaws and BELLOW out out a screechy warcry with her muscles rippling in waves and gearing for battle before blitzing into action.

    With very human-like movements the beastform Finna has become reaches out into empty space and grasps solid moonlight. This little glimmer expands with a flash out into the form of a long and intricately designed bow made of a blue-silvery material that glows in harmony with her wispy moonlight aura. Tribal carvings run up both sides of the massive bow, a bow far thicker than any mortal could hope to draw. The string seems to be made of some ethereal, brightly glowing material.

    Finna reaches into her fur and draws out an arrow from the same nowhere-space that the bow came from... a rather sizable arrow fitted for the Moonsilver Bow.

    She draws it back with a vengeance, takes aim at the butcher of the dead... and fires!

    THe arrow ripples strangely halfway through its flight... and with a flash, splits into three. The trio of silvery meteors rocket off in seperate directions and ricochet symphony off of dozens off the implements until finally homing in on the enormous creature's posterior.

    "Vengeance time, you sick freak!"

Priscilla has posed:
    What disturbs Priscilla more than anything else, including the absurd collection of innumerable torture devices throughout time, is that the fact that she can inherently /feel/ the Executor is still a Lit. Not an Unlit, not a Lantern, not an automaton or some abomination of corpse flesh. This thing --this man-- had not died a second time at all. Something had done this to him while he yet retained his original form, and his original memories. It's something Priscilla wouldn't think possible without it staring her in the face, and that more than anything is confusing, and upsetting.

    Also, the guy is even bigger than her. That's really saying something. Even in huge mode, Priscilla pretty much comes up to his stomach. Fortunately, she hasn't revealed her presence at the moment, and so she gets one shot at taking advantage of it. The minute the Executor swings that cleaver, she'll be in the way, catching it on the haft of her invisible scythe to surprise and distract him, and then use the gargantuan, curved blade to slip behind his ankles and pull them out from under him (ideally, cut them off, but still).

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe just stares for a moment she knew things could get twisted in this world of the dead, yet? This was a new thing was a horror and a half though. She readies her weapon and looked up at the what is likely their target. She also tries to not think too hard about what she's seen she doesn't need to lose it in a situation like this. She thinks no of the horror she's has seen she's nor ready to jut make this shit burn, it needs to be brought crashing down.

The huge monster would end up hearing Tomoe chant as she's going to just start launching fire at it all the fire she can muster in a single spell casting. This should also hopefully pull the thing's attention upon her. She does not like the butcher and she intends to put an end to them.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Staren's beam cannons seem to be effective in the sense of dealing damage, though aside from irritated grunts, the monstrous soul doesn't seem to be particularly put off by the pain. Then again, it's hard to say whether he's feeling any pain at all, even as his leather flesh crisping and burning under the onslaught.

    Luna's attack likewise drills a hole in the massive being's body, pushing him back, and he just keeps walking into it, almost unaware. He releases another sonic burst of echolocation to gauge where his opponents are as he maneuvers his way through the maze of equipment, filling the room with the thunderous reverberations that sent the world to wobbling and swaying. Kord's scythe tears a deep gouge in the Executor's belly, spilling a black ichor mixed with calcified lumps of something-or-other onto the floor to be crushed under foot, but still without any apparent reaction despite the weapon returning to its thrower with a dirtied blade. Rather than blood, it is almost like goopy, wet tar, such is its putrified state.

    Unlike Unlit and Lanterns, who have had ages to lose all semblance of odor or signs of life, this being, who has clung to his addiction for so long, smells quite alive, in spite of the fact he is definitely not.

    The blind giant receives an arrow of moonlight in his back, sending him taking an unsteady step forward under the impact, but with another rattling echo that bounces off the walls as surely as Finna's projectile did, he determines where everything is again, and sets off purposefully. He swings his guillotine-club one way, then the other, sweeping aside all in his path through a combination of physical force and powerful rush of air. The weapon clashes with an unseen solid object on the swing aimed at Luna, cracking the ground beneath Priscilla's feet if she manages to retain her footing under the blow. The Executor hesitates momentarily, releasing another burst of echolocation directly at Priscilla at point-blank range. Of course, her 'perfect invisibility' prevents the Executor from finding her, and with her diverting the force rather than simply trying to tank it, so that she can move around behind to the hole Finna drilled into the enemy with her arrow, to scythe his legs out from under him, he doesn't have long to contemplate what is happening.

    He soon topples over, crushing torture equipment beneath him, right as Tomoe douses him in flames. Still, through rattling breaths, the Executor seems unperturbed beyond general frustration with the difficulty he is having, and gets to his feet, torture wheels and blades sticking out of him all over, oblivious to the fire coating his form and spreading to the surroundings.

    He raises his guillotine-club over his head and then brings it back down, sending a wave of black energy radiating outwards in a cone-shape before him. In an enclosed space like this, with equipment filling almost every part of the room, this might be about to result in something painful for those who can't find a place to be other than in that blast wave.

Priscilla has posed:
    Pricilla knew a 40 foot tall tub like this was going to be strong, but her joints still demand that she regret her choice of action when she has to soak the tremendous force through her arms and down through her legs anyways. Keeping footing isn't the problem. Her feet are practically driven into the stone, painful even for her supernaturally hardened flash. Taking its feet out is the desired outcome in return, but the crossbreed is baffled and perturbed by the Executor's total lack of reaction.

    "Even a beast that feels pain no longer shouldst at least be aware of such blatant wounds. It is not as if it feels them not, but as if it is not aware that they existeth. Such goes beyond a simple removal of the reflex." Of course, Priscilla can only guess at what exactly was /done/ to him, and now isn't really the time to heavily contemplate it.

    Invisible or not, Priscilla doesn't really have the room to be where the black wave isn't. The best she can do is draw Moonlight, and let its blue-white light flare up through her transparency (ironically, a non-drawback with the blind foe), swirling with motes of densely magical light. She turns its flat side towards the rush of energy, and braces against it with a flash of luminous souls, soaking as much of the attack as she can with the sword's powerful magic-repelling properties. "The nozzles and hoses may yet be a pertinent choice, Sir Staren!"

Staren has posed:
    Well, the damage is encouraging, but the lack of reaction isn't. Has this thing lost its senses of touch and pain? They could use that, though. Any attack that isn't especially visual... Something like a strong acid on its back might eat it away without it even noticing...

    Staren starts mentally marking the tubes for missile targeting, but before he can fire, here comes a wave of strange energy! He'll just have to hope his forcefield and armor can stand up to it -- against all but the most exceptional weapons, they can usually take at least a few attacks... it's what they're made for, after all! The forcefield isn't particularly strong against magic, but isn't weak against it either like it is to hails of bullets.

    If he's able to recover from that, Staren fires. A half-dozen minimissiles that steer themselves towards the places where tubes meet flesh before exploding in balls of fire. The damage should be substantial in any case, but Staren hopes if he can break the tube connections, it might deprive the executor of some vital nutrient.

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna takes note of the Executor's strange way of seeing in no time at all. Her own ears are pretty sharp and while she can't quite echolocate in this form, she definitely picks up on the pattern of echoes and his shape enough to realize what he's doing. "Sound-sight! Aha!!"

    Leave it to the shapeshifter to understand something pretty damned complicated and scientific, if only because she's used it before, right?

    Of course the Executor's lack of any and all pain sensitivity or reflexes prove troublesome. She was hoping he would flinch... but that seems to not be a thing anyone can count on this time!

    BLACK WAVES of awful things and torture tools were last on her list of things to expect though. There's little time to do more than shield her face with the her MOonsilver bow and arms. Nails and blades and wooden planks and other things slam into her at high speed even as the black energies rip into her flesh and tear out huge chunks of fur. All the while Finna howls in protest as she's pierced and slashed again and again..

    The wave passes, and she's on one knee, covered in nasty gashes and impaled with all manner of filthy torture tools from top to bottom.

    But Finna gathers herself up despite the pain and the bucket of blood dripping from her many wounds (which should be far, far more blood), rears her head back and SCREEECH-YOWLS. A shockwave of moonlight Essence courses through the room as her anima doubles in intensity. The dozens of implements are FORCED OUT of her flesh by new growth. With a snarl she draws back her bow again, with fresh arrows pulled from her Elsewhere pockets. Again and again she draws and fires, this time aiming for those strange tubes Staren was yammering about!

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe see that this thing seems to be alive or at least mimicing it better than anyone fromt his dead world she has ever met before and her fire is hopefully working to burn it away, she's not sure how much more she can dish out but she's not alone there are other people who are far heavier hitters than she is here. A fact she is most thankful for, at this point in time. She will chant again but she's cut off as the huge weapon is raised and the attack comes down. She's forced to get the heck out of te blast wave or get wrecked by the blast wave.

She now moves to getback to her feet but this will take a moment as he now tries to start casting again, for another torrent of fire blasts at the thing. Ranged is not her best skill but it's better than keeping up close to this thing, which would not prove to be a wise idea at this point in time with how it attacks.

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     Princess Luna would have avoided the slow strike from the gigantic creature, but the wind force is enough to send her tumbling even with Priscilla blocking the blow. She is forced to land again, but can't really tell where Priscilla is. And with that wave of black energy coming in she thrust out a hand and her horn glows brightly as she throws up a quick forcefield of her own. She winces and her mane and tail flutter in the intense wind as the black wave crashes over her, deflecting around her magical forcefield for a few moments before it starts to crack. She holds out a few moments, but soon enough the magic shield shatters and Luna goes flying back, smashing somehow perfectly into one of those iron maidens lying around. Her eyes widen and she screams as the lid comes crashing down.

     A few moments later, the iron maiden is exploded apart from within. But Luna is not unscaythed. She is left crouching on hands and knees, panting a bit as redness stains her pale blue pelt from multiple small wounds all over. She even winces and pulls one of the small spikes from her left shoulder. "W-well...it seems we will have to do better..." she says before standing tall again. She spreads her wings, then rushes in toward the monster with her scythe raised. She arcs up toward his weapon arm and curls up, somersaulting through the air before bringing her scythe down in an attempt to slice deeply and perhaps even through his elbow. She may not have a Lantern-killer, but her magical weapon is still quite dangerous and very sharp.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord swings his weapon so hard that an enormous streak of fetid gunk splatters across the floor and all the nearby torture devices, the blade shining in the gloom under the flash of everyone else's efforts. He keeps himself aloft, his feet lifted to prepare for a kick-off if he needs to retreat from a sudden lunge. But the others have the Executor suitably occupied, and so he has nothing to worry about while it's being thoroughly distracted. He observes passively as it moves through the room, reacting to their attacks, and one of its swings nearly knocks him right out of the air-- but it narrowly misses a direct hit. A spray of blood comes from under his cloak, but his armor and dress conceals the gash and its severity for now.

    He shouts in pain, and retreats further back, but endures the sensation after his blurred vision regulates. He uses the agony to focus on the battle and what others observe of the creature. Its echo-location... ah, yes. It really needs to be dealt with. He ducks away from shockwaves of energy, abusing his full mobility to its utmost so he can get into position. He ducks silently through the air, and brings his scythe up over his shoulder to viciously swipe horizontally at the 'ears' atop the mutant Lit's head. As he does, the scythe threatens to lop the protrusions off, but it's not the only thing he's doing in this attack. Wind magic follows the blade, lengthening the stroke of the scythe and emitting a buffeting of air that could just as easily blow out ear drums or even briefly stun even an ordinary target. His attack, however, puts him very close to the Executor, and it reveals his position in the air, so he is left very open to attack.

Carna (974) has posed:
    The shockwave, aside from the fact it is visible and possibly has some elemental affinity to it related to pain, seems to possess no particularly unusual properties to it. At least not that would be immediately observed. Though any hurt, wounds, or similar may stand out more than normal in the bleak cold that lingers behind. Oh, wait, that's probably it. It's an attack that increases the damage enemies take, or at least increases their awareness of it, by amping up their pain sensitivity.

    That is probably not an attack anyone wants to keep getting hit with, especially if its effects stack. Just once is enough to make all forms of physical suffering sharp as an icy razor to the senses. If it gets worse each time (and given this one's profession and works up until now, there is no reason to think it won't), the advantage of a hulk of unfeeling spirit-meat like this contrasted against very-much-capable-of-feeling-pain living folks could turn this into a battle of attrition that does not favor them.

    Thankfully, it seems some sort of result has occurred from targeting the Executor's injection ports. As they are blown out of him by Staren's missiles, and Finna's arrows, jets of pressurized red, completely unlike the black ooze slowly leaking out of the Executor's injuries, spray out of the gouged out flesh from the deeply implanted cylinders that extend into his body's interior. And THAT gets a reaction.

    A painfully loud roar of anger bounces all up and down the scale and echoes off everything (made even worse by the pain-amplification debuff) though still, oddly enough, it contains no pain. Even as Luna brings down her size on the thick arm of a mix of muscle and hanging skin, carving almost all the way to the elbow and leaving the appendange dangling by the joint, the behemoth just turns his back to his enemies and starts urgently walking towards the back of the room, and the gray cylinders of pressurized drugs he is reliant upon. He just grabs one of the large hoses with its even larger needles and jams it into his body without aiming for one of the injection ports. He starts pumping the drugs into himself to replace what was lost. In the process, his body begins to exhibit more signs of life. Beyond just odor, which includes not only rot but also sweat, his skin begins to gleam with that latter moisture as his lungs work to draw in air. Ah, yes. He is also breathing, as evidenced by the steam cloud forming before his mouth with every exhalation, not to mention the sound, if anyone can still hear things after the barrage their own ears have been taking.

    Speaking of which, as Kord releases his wind-infused scythe strikes at the Executor's ears (or what's left of them. They're half-gone already), they get cut right off. And while it is not certain that he is reliant upon them, the screech of pain that rewards Kord's attack, as painful as the screech may be, like a cloud of giant bats all blasting their chittering at once, a completely non-human-sounding noise, is an indication that he felt that.

    And some puzzle pieces might click there as the Lit turns away from his drug supply and turns back about swinging his dangling arm back and forth, the nearly-severed appendage now turn into a flail weapon as he tries to sweep away anyone who was standing too close.

Staren has posed:
    Okay, so the attack doesn't seem to bad. Staren's forcefield is damaged and he's sent tumbling away from the Executor. But while this is usually more annoying than painful, now every impact is like stubbing his toe or something. He cries out in pain, and groans as he gets back to his feet. He doesn't feel pain much, but when he does, it's usually pretty bad -- someone stabbing through his armor, for instance -- so he has enough willpower to push on, for now. The roar of anger draws his hands to his ears and elicits another cry.

    And then the executor stops paying attention... to reveal another weakness! Staren takes aim and fires at the tank, aiming to blow a big hole in it and derive the executor of most of this dose.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla emerges more or less unscathed by the blast attack, which is strange, but a relief. When she sees 'gigantic, seething black blast wave', she naturally expects some kind of heinous necrotic magic, or some such similar. It doesn't seem like a big deal, until an errant flying meat hook catches her across the cheek, and the glacially hardened killer crossbreed actually falters to clutch at the cut and hiss between her teeth. Oh fuck that.

    Even the blasts of sound hurt her ears, and she can't exactly turn those off. Even wincing at those, however, she can't miss the signs of (gross, filthy, unhygienic) life returning to the butcher/torturer, and Priscilla's suspicions of the 'drug' he is seemingly addicted to return in force.

    Kord has a decent idea with the ears, but on the off chance the Executor can still hear, Priscilla follows up with the mouth, so he can't keep screaming. Wresting herself free from the cages and chains, she whips her Lifehunt Dagger out of her sleeve, and sends the thing (the size of a greatsword at this point) hurtling across the room in a competition spin, aimed to plant itself straight in the back of the executor's throat, if not his spine (assuming that even /does/ anything), and thus make it impossible to keep screeching, all the while the blade eats away at his returning life force.

Finna (513) has posed:
Yep. That's a thing that's going on. The big dumb Executor is so completely out of it that, even as people wail on him, he's more concerned with his weird drug fix than his own life...

    Finna's lips - vulpine though they may be - do a very human show of pressing together thinly as nausea and disgust bubble up into view across her face. "....Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww."

    Plus all that weird OOZE burbling out of him that definitely isn't any blood she's familiar with.

    This? This is why she decided to use the bow. Even if her body's currently tingling WEIRDLY from the aftereffects of the black wave. She's healed all the wounds and they no longer hurt, but where the wounds were her flesh is tingling weirdly and distractingly from trying to purge that curse...

    "..... He's almost... pitiful..." She spits out, shoulders sagging during a brief lull of watching him instead of keeping up her fire.

    But keep on firing she still does. Arrow after arrow aimed at places she can only HOPE are at least SOMEWHAT important to his life. The plugs, joints, whatever.

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     The ear-piercing cry stuns Luna, leaving her clutching at her ears and crying out in agony. Her flight falters and she starts to fall before the creature finally stops. When she sees that the others are having quite a bit of luck against the creature, Luna's ears perk back up...only to get assaulted by the terrible sound of the bat screeches. When that passes, Luna is left on the ground, curled up in a futile effort to steel herself against the pain.

     It is a few moments before she can get a grip on herself, and in that time Luna is knocked away again. This time by that arm-flail. She manages to cushion her fall with her wings, but between her ears feeling like they are bleeding and the various other injuries she has now, she can't maintain flight. When sees what the others are doing she moves to help. With Staren attacking the storage containers, Luna uses her magic to try and reverse the flow of the behemoth's injector. Hopefully, this will pull the drug out of him rather than letting him get more juiced up. Of course, it might pull nastiness out as well..but Luna has pretty much gone numb to what she is seeing here. She'll have time to process or block it out later. Now, they are in a fight not only to survived, but to prevent the permanent death of this world's residents.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord is recovering from the blowback of his own attack when the limp club of an arm swings and hits him square in the middle. Having been clipped by his pain-amplification ability, he is just knocked clean out of the air. His cloak whips about with a clothen noise as he slams into the floor and BOUNCES off of it with a strangled bark of pain that sounded inhuman. He struggles to push himself up to his feet as cold knives of agony dig into his body to a degree he is not used to.

    "Hrrrrrh..." he growls, his eyes a pair of wide bright blue circles with pupils shrunk almost nothing, the irises almost overcoming the whole darkness in the helmet.

    He then surges past that pain. He drops his scythe, and he jerks his hands forward in a claw formation. Shadows build in the room, becoming an oppressive swirl in front of him, stretching from his feet and deepening the darkness in the periphery in everyone's vision. It doesn't quite blind anyone. Then he jerks his hands up like a conductor DEMANDING an upturn in volume, revealing his seeping wound and the great big gash in his ARMOR from the hit the Executor managed to clip him with, bare skin visible and seeping red blood. It must hurt like hell.

    It helps him focus on what he wants to do.

    Jagged swords of darkness stab upward from the ground, aiming for as many of those injection ports as he can. The shadows do not have the smooth shape others would be used to from seeing him do this, but an imperfect shape suggesting they could very well miss wholesale, but he relies on sheer number to try to overwhelm his target.

Tomoe has posed:
The shockwave could also be used Tomoe mused to bring the whole place down on this thing's head and make sure no one could ever make use of the horrors here ever again or so she hoped but could she trick the thing into doing that? That's the question and now she's got to worry about the massive thing's size and just how much mass it has to bring against her. Shemoves again as she did not wnat to make an easy target of herself. She sees it run for more drugs and he's got to be kept from them as best she can.

She dances back from the the thing not waning to get hit she is also trying to not puke, this ios just ... so disgusing tomoe is cracking slightly at the horror and then she leaps up casting this time a light ray spell trying to aim fo the thing's head it won't do much damage but it might distract hte horror for her allies.

Carna (974) has posed:
    One of the drug tanks gets blown up thanks to Staren, leaving only a severed cable dangling from his upper torso. The roar this time is strangled by Priscilla's sword thrown through his throat, causing a shrill whistling to get added to a new distorted cry. It's not as effective either for echolocating or as a sonic attack, though still generally unpleasant. Either way, with his chitterings both being unfocused and having a huge gap in them, and his ears being severed, he is BASICALLY blind. Regardless of the sound still being produced, it's no longer effective as a detection method.

    The continuous leeching of spirit energy by the blade doesn't help at all.

    The arrows from Finna continue to pound into the Executor as he swings his arm flail around wildly until it snaps off thanks to those silver arrows slamming into the elbow joint enough times to finish the brutal flesh-rendering that Luna started. The arm goes flying off somewhere and crashing into a bunch of stuff, sending a mass of scorpion-creatures pouring out of their container onto the floor.

    Luna's magic may not have the anticipated effect, but it has one potentially even more devastating as the Executor feels around numbly, grabbing the hoses for the other drug tanks and jamming them into his body wherever he can. Rather than reversing the flow, due to them not being hooked up to anything, the injectors start building up air pressure. The air bubbles flow through the mostly-non-functional circulation system as more and more air builds up, forcing it deeper. So more eruptions of crimson mist burst out all over, especially from the new wounds produced by the hastily-introduced hoses as it seeks escape. The drug can't enter properly, the needles continuing to vent around the fluids pouring into him.

    Blades of darkness slam into the hulk over and over and ove, tearing and piercing and impaling, locking him in place, and more of his calcified innards pouring out in a steaming heap as though he were actually still alive. Now unable to move, staggering on his feet, and missing at least one of his limbs, it seems the prospect of being chased down is now absent. That gives these more mobile opponents a better chance of avoiding harm. Especially since, without any other method of attack, the weakening, confused, blind and deafened Lit, can only resort to slamming down his guillotine club over and over, releasing wave of pain amplification after wave. He can't judge where in the room they are, so he just attacks one direction, and then another direction, and then another, sending wood and steel and concrete flying outwards in a deadly hail of shrapnel, insects, glass, acid, and all the other clutter that has been amassed here.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Tomoe's light ray sears into that cavernous maw, lined with a mix of human and over-sized vampire teeth, scalding the roof of his mouth and the back of his throat, melting flesh and causing Priscilla's sword to slip out of the Executor's throat. Now with a gaping hole in his neck to match all the other wounds, he can't even shriek anymore, instead just releasing whistling noises as he finally collapses onto his thoroughly demolished belly, too exhausted to continue. Unlike a Lantern, the Lit have many of the same vulnerabilities as the Living. They tire, and do not recover supernaturally quickly from exertion like a Lantern does. However, unlike both Lanterns and the Living, they are much harder to kill. That was, after all, the very reason why the Executor was put to work trying to find a way to bypass that resilience.

    So that the threat of actual complete destruction could be used to inspire fear and motivation to obey, so that all would unify in purpose and seek to find a way to reincarnate together instead of wasting time in selfish pursuits.

    And so now the Executor lies there, surrounded by torture equipment, quite a bit of it impaling him, missing body parts, covered in holes, the last of his blood drug hissing out of his wounds, seemingly accepting that he is no longer able to fight. He is like a hill. Like some great wounded beast. But still intelligent enough to craft all these devices and understand the relevance of concentrated Despair to the process of a Lantern's resurrection.

    But despie all his injuries, he is unable to die a second time.

Carna (974) has posed:
Chopping Grounds (Darkness) - <Lumiere>
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    Amidst torture equipment and wreckage, there are many victims lying around, pinned to the walls with huge spikes, dangling in bizarre contraptions and cages. Red silhouettes, featureless aside from their relatively humanoid shape, wander among the victims, crouching over them and feeding on the bodies. They gather around the others, circling and stalking them, but keeping their distance. At the back of the room is a huge pair of double doors where the drug cannisters are in the non-Darkness-filtered world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
Count Kord <Dripping Black Wounds>
Finna <Blood-Spattered>
Princess Luna <Cloak Of Skin>
Priscilla <Gone, But There's A Little Girl Dripping Paint>
Staren <Why Is He Covered In Eyes?>
Tomoe <Worms Pouring Out Of Her Chest>

Carna (974) has posed:
A White Room (Moonlight) - <Lumiere>
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    The torture chamber is gone, replaced by a large room with pale-white walls covered in crescent moon symbols carved into the marble, and various similar designs. In those instances where moonlight flashes, whether by arrow or blade, or personal power, the room is replaced with this, and bright light like a spotlight made of the ghost-radiance of moon cast down from above.

    Standing in the middle if a small girl with a huge mass of hair hanging down from her head and a ragged night gown. If not for the fact that she is the only thing to look at, she could just as easily go unnoticed. She has no presence. Looking at her is like looking at a wall. There's no sense of 'person', of anything being there at all.

    When the moonlight is gone, so is she, and so is the white room.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
Finna <Glowing Tattooes>
Priscilla <Gone, But There's A Child's Footprints>
Princess Luna <Radiant White Gown, With A Heart-Shaped Bloodstain>

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord does not come unscathed after his attack. He gets hit by a blast of debris in the middle of the Executor's wild flailing and thrashing. His wings beat as he flies and catches his footing. His vision blurs as the creature collapses, immobilized, unable to attack them any longer. He feels his body ache, he feels his skin burn, and he sees a world beyond the base spirit stuff everyone has grown to take for granted. He sees strange red beings, feasting on... he stares around as his eyes widen and wrinkles form under his mask, the disgust and horror much worse this time.

    They're feeding on the pain, he thinks.

    He scans the room, trying to ignore the hungry circling of predators as a hand goes up to his head, and a sickened noise emits from his mouth. He just saw he's covered in leaking, rotting wounds, as if his body is filled to bursting with a darkness beyond his mortal coil. He slowly composed himself, closing his eyes and then opening them again. Then he stepped through the room, ignoring the red apparitions purely out of spite, and finds his way to the canisters/door. His hand lifts up, and...

    Kord tries to open the door he sees in the vision.

Staren has posed:
    Staren hurries to dodge more waves, but even fired blindly, there's just so little room to run. He's sent tumbling, the impacts against his armored body making him cry out in pain now. At least the beast is soon finished. He stands with a pained groan and approaches the undying torturer. Trying to figure out... what the hell! A sometimes-living sometimes-not body with stone parts, what's even going on here? He's no doctor, but he has a basic idea of how bodies are supposed to work. What has /happened/ here?

Finna (513) has posed:
With the Executor now going completely topsy-turvy reckless, Finna has little trouble circle-strafing around him staying right ahead of his wild swings and shockwaves. He has no chance of catching her if he can't detect her. She simply seems to blurr and afterimage-step far from his grasp whenever he turns vaguely in her direction before he can bring that guillotine to the ground...and calmly fire more arrows at his blind spots. So she just keeps this up and keeps it up in a perfect rhythm...

    Until finally, the Executor goes down under all of their efforts...

    And she is somehere else entirely, tattoos glowing brilliantly enough to illuminate through her fur. She stops everything she's doing and just looks at the new surroundings she's in. Blinking a few times. Peering at the girl. Glancing briefly left and right...

    And then... it fades, and she's left staring at the 'corpse' of the Executor...

    Which, all together, has her slumping both shoulders and leaning forward defeatedly. "... What. It's that girl again."

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     The wild flailings are pretty easy to avoid, but Luna does have to deflect one more blast of the terrible energy. When things finally calm down, Luna stands carefully and takes a look around. She blinks in surprise when she sees the strange visions in the moonlight, and though she is still barely able to stand thanks to all the pain she notices that the visions only appeared when they used their powers. Luna fights to find her focus, and when she manages to get a bit of it she casts a spell. First she tries to break the curse that has been cast on them, but if that does not work she falls back on radiating a calming, mind-clearing aura. It probably won't get rid of the pain completely, but at least for everyone else it should lessen it by a large amount. And perhaps the radiating magic will bring the strange girl back into view.

     Luna looks down at her blood-stained dress, then around at the others that she can see before the vision fades. She is left confused. "A-...art thou all seeing strange..." she pauses, then shakes her head. "...er..out of place things?" she asks as she tries to restore the vision with her radiating magic.

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks at Luna. "We're in a horrible torture chamber inhabited by a mysteriously giant druggie torturer who's part alive and part dead. I think this is pretty much out of place /anywhere/."

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla is no more keen on enduring repeated pain blasts than anyone else. She actually winds up sacrificing her reach and leverage for being a smaller target, in the end, just to avoid as many as possible. Moonlight blazes as a starry beacon of soft, shadowy light with its repeated, parrying impacts with the black, as Priscilla fends them off as best she can, until the Executor falls, collapses, and goes limp. With a certain hint of vindictiveness, she approaches to deal the finishing blow . . .

    Only for the chamber to disappear entirely. Instead, she is left holding the glowing sword, and then raising it aloft like one would a torch in a dark tomb. Rather than stopping and staring, however, Priscilla resolves not to break her stride, and instead approaches the girl-that-is-not, asking only briefly to Finna: "Where was it that she had gone whence thou "rescued" her before?" with no small degree of mistrust. She isn't quite sure what she intends to do when she reaches the tiny, messy-haired girl, but the whole vision fades before she can do so much as reach out.

    "So this is what ails thee, Count Kord." she says, a little too quietly to be heard.

Tomoe has posed:
One of the drug tanks gets blown up due to Staren's actions, hopefully that will help, she is feeling pressed tough the horror of this place is getting to her, her skin starts to crawl and she does not want to stay here any longer than she has to. Her spell did hit it burns into the thing's head but not enough to fell it, something else happens, this is not what she was expecting to happen at all. She takes a step bacck she looks around confused for a moment and starts to back off she looks around for a moment.

"I don't want to stay here a moment longer than we have to."

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     Luna looks over at Staren with a rather large frown. "No...these things are quite -in- place here. They would be out of place anywhere else." She already doesn't care for Staren, but his snark and her pain do not help things at this moment. After her rather curt response, Luna shudders and lowers down onto a knee, the pain still getting to her. "Y-yes...let us leave as soon as possible." she stammers through the pain.

Carna (974) has posed:
Chopping Grounds (Darkness) - <Lumiere>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Amidst torture equipment and wreckage, there are many victims lying around, pinned to the walls with huge spikes, dangling in bizarre contraptions and cages. Red silhouettes, featureless aside from their relatively humanoid shape, wander among the victims, crouching over them and feeding on the bodies. They gather around the others, circling and stalking them, but keeping their distance. At the back of the room is a huge pair of double doors where the drug cannisters are in the non-Darkness-filtered world.

The door is covered in black hand prints. There is the Greek letter 'Theta' at the top, and writing is scrawled along the edges. It can't quite be made out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
A Locked Door <They Know You're Here Now>
Count Kord <Dripping Black Wounds>
Finna <Blood-Spattered>
Princess Luna <Cloak Of Skin>
Priscilla <Gone, But There's A Little Girl Dripping Paint>
Red Figures <Hunters Hunting>Staren <Why Is He Covered In Eyes?>
Tomoe <Worms Pouring Out Of Her Chest>
Wounds <Stop The Bleeding. They Can Smell It.>

inv
You are carrying a white symbol.
You have 1 frigid coin.

Carna (974) has posed:
    As Kord pushes on the doors, they rattle loosely under his efforts. They do not open, however. They might be locked or barred from the other side. However, for his efforts, there is a low moan that carries for several seconds. It is then picked up by another voice, which is shortly joined by two more. Soon enough, the sound of zombie-like groans and cries builds and builds, until there is a crashing sound and the doors bulge 'inwards' towards Kord. The wooden barriers rattle and shake under the attempts by whatever is on the other side to get through.

    There's a white mark at the top of the door. Was it always there?

    It is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet 'Theta'.

    Black hand prints, as though dipped in ink, begin to appear on Kord's side of the door with loud impacts of their own, overlapping until the door is covered in them, like there is a mass of invisible creatures all around him making sure the door stays closed. Eventually, the door bleeds and melts into the wall and is gone, the discarded ooze being replaced with the destroyed drug tanks, and the wheezing mass of eviscerated meat that is all that is left of the Executor.

    Soon, the Darkness vision fades as well, resolving back into the wrecked torture chamber. If there are invisible creatures here, stalking among them, other than Priscilla herself, there is no more evidence of them, whether red silhouettes are otherwise.

    Kord may feel a small additional weight somewhere on his person, as well as something very cold.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Luna's magic lifts the debilitating effect from all of them. Though still injured, pained, and perhaps tired, a pin prick is no longer like burning glass wiggling back and forth in the wound with every twitch, spam, breath, or other similar movement.

    The Executor is in no condition to fight anymore, but if they leave him here, will he eventually recover and resume his work? Come for revenge? Will allies heal him? And what of those bird-creatures outside? Do they just want to leave for now and let whatever happens happen?

    The hunt is not yet completed until their prey is eliminated. Leaving is a good idea, especially before more enemies are drawn by the noise, but maybe finishing what they came for is a good idea too.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord holds his hand up for several seconds after the horrifying visions fade, the creatures beyond knowing he is there. He feels his heart pound as he realizes at any moment that these things could actually realize he can see them and try to attack him... and he swallows dryly through the pain of his injuries.

    He turns to walk over to the Executor. He puts his boot on the injured creature. His hand reaches out and his weapon whips through the room, the scythe landing in his hand with a soft 'clink.'

    Then he holsters the weapon and leers down at the creature, his strange red and black tail swaying behind him. The gore and horror around him brings him back to the mind-numbing fear of fighting for his life, alone, in the wilderness, as a young man. He feels a streak of helplessness. And the best way to cure that is research. He was told something by Enark, informed of the durability.

    He just starts... jamming his claws into the beast, bracing his other hand on its body. He stabs his claws in over and over, each in a new spot, trying to find the correct way to kill this thing. So far, it matched what Kord knew about the Lit so far, except in its horrid mutations. It was some kind of addict of a horrible blood drug, but it was still a Lit.

    And Kord wanted to know if it really was impossible for him to kill one of these beings, and he will be determined to keep going until someone stops him or he grows too frustrated to continue.

Princess Luna (993) has posed:
     Despite the fall of Executor, a name Luna finds appropriate on more than one level, there are still those other butchers and the captured...things...downstairs. After asking whoever is willing to assist her, Luna heads down. She isn't expecting the butchers to be too difficult compared to the Executor, but she keeps her scythe at the ready anyway. And though it is quite torturous to deal with these grotesque human abominations, Luna makes sure they are all disconnected and freed from their cage.

     She also makes sure that any other captured creatures are released. Even though she suspects they might have to fight some of these creatures in the future. Or possibly as soon as they are released. The bird creatures seem especially feral to her, which is why she frees them from their bonds from outside their cage, then leaves the rubber bars. They are unlikely to stand up to assault from the bird things, but should hold long enough for the group to escape before being attacked by birds.

Priscilla has posed:
    For once, Priscilla has reason to be thankful for moon magic. Though she'd been doing a stand up job of grinning and bearing it, having the absurd amplification of her sense of pain lifted from her shoulders comes with no small amount of relief, visible in the straightening of her back and a long exhalation of tensely held breath.

    It is not a kind look that she gives the burbling and bleeding Executor. It is the kind of look that has all the time in the world to stand back and watch Kord stab and maim and mutilate the hideous thing until he's either satisfied, or too exhausted to continue, taking a certain amount of particularly savage, Lordran-bred pleasure in seeing it. Only if the horrific beast of a man outlasts the Count's tender ministrations does she step forward to end it personally, hacking its head from its shoulders with a full, heavy swing of the Lifehunt Scythe, and cleaving into its soul, bleeding it of the spiritual essentia within and absorbing it for her own.

    She'll have to remember to thank Luna later.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Blood-like drugs, putrified ichor that has replaced even the semblance of bodily fluids within the Dead, gas pockets that have formed from a combination of Luna's messing with the injection ports and simply trapped over the ages as spirit-stuff warped and altered, and occasionally organs that have become encased in something like bone, spray or leak or pour from the wounds Kord inflicts over and over to the injured and defeated creature. The Executor may have been expecting something like this, or some form of execution, but the general lack of response except grunts and wheezes as the ability to feel things is once again lost in the absence of the drugs, renders the hill-sized behemoth relatively inured to the further injuries being inflicted upon it, gruesome and thorough as they may be.

    The price for the extensive use of the drugs, it appears, is to turn even the ability to feel things that the Lit normally possess recede into a numbness -- the price for temporarily regaining the vivid sensations of the Living, even for a short time, is to lose what they already have, making the return to being merely Dead more and more bleak and empty, until their body is as unfeeling as... A suit of armor. Unable to feel anything, unless they have taken this drug.

    The same drug that becomes less and less effective the more they use it, requiring heavier and heavier doses. What might one do to keep getting their fix, rather than spend eternity in a sensationless haze worse even than one who has no sense of time anymore? What was the promise of something to alleviate the suffering of eternal residence in the Land of the Dead without respite, has become a curse upon those who partook.

    While certain statements were made about the method of receiving the drug that may have been taken a certain way during the events on Halloween, the bite marks in the Executor's throat that even now, all this time later, continue to stand out redly from the leathery, ancient flesh everywhere else, indicates perhaps that if Priscilla had fulfilled the role she pretended at during the Crimson King's party, she might actually have been playing the part of a monster that very much belonged at such an event.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Luna frees a number of Lanterns that had been locked up behind bars. Though initially suspicious or at least cautious after their capture and treatment, being released is being released. There are not a large number, as most don't get kept around long enough to require imprisonment, but a good dozen or so. They salvage or retrieve any equipment they can find so that they are armed and protected to make it somewhere safer.

    The bird things... Are a slightly different matter. Their backs are still broken. Even freed from their restraints, crashing to the floor with their great mass and smashing the needles and tanks of preserving stomach fluid that had been accumulated in the process and their ensuing useless struggles, they don't seem to be in any condition to make an escape. Given that they are incapable of comprehending concepts like 'gratitude' and would simply try to eat Luna if they were able to, disrupting this operation and destroying one of its leaders will have to suffice as a win when it comes to these things.

    They are also Unlit of some kind. Near-mindless horrors that only care about consuming the fragments of the native Dead, like the twisted thing they just defeated was. Any concept like mercy is utterly lost upon them. But hopefully Luna is satisfied with her efforts. That is about all that can be asked for at this point.

Carna (974) has posed:
    The unfeeling hulk is gradually torn apart more and more until Kord might be in danger of falling inside the hollowed-out meat pile and having to avoid getting smothered and drowned in cold, addiction-destroyed innards and slow, sticky, black tar-like ooze. At that point, Priscilla finishes the job, though even then, much like the butchers, and the Stone Devils for that matter, Executor 13 is slow to 'die'. He finally stops 'breathing' and moving, and slowly streams huge quantities of ghostly mist from his body. Dead Lights emerge and are split between all present in significant quantities, the chill fragments of a once-soul infusing their bodies.

    Priscilla obtains the husk that the Dead Lights came from, the soul of Executor 13 itself, or at least the vessel that it once was. It may be uniquely unsatisfying to receive, relative to other large boss-type souls.

    But when the Executor is gone, his huge guillotine-club remains, as well as a key ring with a single, blood-encrusted key on it, and an assortment of other odds and ends that were not part of his body and thus are left behind.

            You Obtained:
            Placebo of Guilt (Weapon -> Priscilla)
            Addict's Solution (Poison -> Count Kord)
            Wheel of Torment (Shield -> Tomoe)
            Bone-Encrusted Heart (Spell Focus -> Staren)
            Curse Breaker's Flesh Cloak (Armor -> Princess Luna)
            Giant's Half-Crescent Collar (Weapon -> Finna)
            Blood-Encrusted Key (Key -> Group)
            Memory Of A Madman (??? -> Group)

    Hunt Complete!