2338/The Lich's Tomb

The Lich's Tomb
Date of Scene:	29 May 2015
Location:	A Dungeon in Orphen's World
Synopsis:	Orphen leads a party to explore a strange and mysterious dungeon with insight into the past!
Cast of Characters:	Deelel, 385, 626, 703, 768, 789

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Orphen (703) has posed:
The treck to actually get here isn't very difficult. While the gates are typically protected by the Tower of Fang, the gate in -this- small town is worshipped by its people as some sort of god, which they occasionally send gifts through. Which is why on the -opposite- side, there's a mess of food, broken glass, toys, clothes, and other things in a pile that people have to step before they can enter the gate.

Orphen guides everyone into the town, and explains, even if it's a lie, that this is Tower of Fang business, and they're here to take the job of handling the dungeon.

Once they're told how to actually reach it, they walk through the fairly typical looking renaissance village, so at the very least Orphen doesn't live in a medieval world.

From the village, they reach the forest, and through the forest they come to the side of a small hill, with shiny metallic sliding doors in the ground.

As they approach it, the doors automatically open to a flight of stairs. It only takes a few minutes to get to the bottom, into pitch black darkness.

Then, lights. Along the parameter of the ceiling, thin rectangular lights begin to turn on. It's difficult to tell from looking alone if they're covered in glass or what. They just look like pure light.

The floor is covered in moss and veins, while the left and right walls immediately near the entrance each have another metallic sliding door, and at the very end of the room is a third similar door.

"Well, this is a dungeon, I hope you're all ready." Orphen says as he holds a very typical adventurer's bastard sword. The room smells very... mossy, mixed with decay and electronics. There's even the slight hum of something under their feet, perhaps some sort of generator. "Which way do you all wanna go? I won't be responsible for anyone dying, except my adorable students, so we can put it to a vote."

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Yeah, like hell Kyra believes that this is 'Tower of Fang' business at all. SHE KNOWS WHAT'S UP. They're doing what they /want/. She doesn't say anything until they've reached the dungeon proper.

    "Of course I'm ready, Orphen! Dungeons are the Great Galianda Pasttime." She grins cheerfully, equipping the needlegun under her hoodie and loading it up with explosive darts. "Though this one doesn't seem that....old? Relatively. Maybe New Vegas old. Anyway I say we go straight down because that's where the good stuff is usually kept."

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna either looks like she belongs here, or looks completely, utterly, and totally out of place.

This is mostly because she came in her 'armor' ... but the Light Suit is rather atypical as far as most 'armor' that she's seen goes. Still, she arrives at the requested time, greeting Orphen and others with a friendly smile and a polite bow, and sticks with the group en route to the dungeon's entrance. She's accompanied by a diminutive figure, maybe a few inches tall (not counting the 'wings'/shoulder pauldrons), namely the robo-faerie Elner.

Yuna treks along with the group, trying not to draw too much attention to herself on the way through the town - and the way the doors open automatically gets her to raise her eyebrows a bit. The *lighting* prompts an even more interested look. "Not the kind of dungeon I was expecting," she admits, holding her hands in front of her and willing the Matrix Divider to materialize, the hybrid sword/rifle a somewhat comforting weight in her hands. If any monsters jump the group while navigational decisions are being made, she's ready.

"Hmm ... Elner," she asks, "are you picking up anything useful?"

The robo-faerie glances around at the different doors. "It would be fascinating to do a leisurely mapping expedition," Elner replies, "but without a clear idea of what we're looking for, I can't suggest which direction to go in."

Yuina makes a face. "Well, let's try the right door for now," she suggests, then looks at Kyra. "Unless you can tell which door leads to the stairs, or if there's an elevator we can use without plummeting to our untimely deaths."

Cory (768) has posed:
    Plenty's happened in the last few days to sour Chikorri's mood, but the young martial artist's still making good on her promise to help the Union out. So hearing that Kyra's tackling another outing into dangerous territory... Cory's decided to come to!

    "Don't bother trying to scare me with stuff like that - I'm going deep as it gets if I have to! Though I'm here for extra muscle, keep the others safer. Don't worry, I'm not gonna collapse the place on anyone!"

    She's looking eager as usual, practical bouncing on her feet. Cory's currently wearing the Turtle School gi, which means she's probably severely laden down with unthinkable weight.

Orphen (703) has posed:
"Well, I don't know where any stairs are, if there are any, but if we're going deep, I guess forward?" Orphen asks, looking back at the others. Then he starts walking to the door at the end of the hall. "If you can keep yourself alive, you can check the right door if you want." he notes to Yuna, then starts trying to brush some vines from the bottom of the sliding door so that it can actually open easier.

"This is obviously ancient technology, something built by the Nornir. This is nothing built by humans, probably at least one-hundred years old, from the war." The door finally opens into a rather spacious room. This room, probably a good 40 feet from left to right, 20 feet to the door across from them. Though there's also another door to the far right. Not that these are the things that would grab their attention at first.

There are no crazy bright ceiling lights in this room, instead there are four large bowls holding bright flames, flanking a large fountain of dark red blood. "That... that's not what I'd call a good sign. Looks like a place where some ritual happened?"

Deelel has posed:
Deelel follows along after Orphen now she's in formation with the group and she's bene oddly quiet so far. She listens to Orpehen as he gives more information for a moment tilting her head a little bit.

"Are you certain that ... it."

She stares at the blood with more than a bit of horror on her face.

"By my use, some sort of blood magic?!"

She now takes a moment, her eyes darting about looking for any signs of hostiles, traps or anything else of note.

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
DUNGEONS? HELL YEAH, DUNGEONS. Dungeons have loot and other fun things to poke at and Sarah Parsle is in the mood to poke at things. The normally subdued teenager seems... Agitated. Animated, even, as she zips along with a kind of strange, desperate energy to her movements. Through the village, through the forest, and to the hill, Sarah looks over the doors.

There is barely a pause as she steps forward to be faced with the true horror of this place: STAIRS.

She was told about stairs, bro. However, she doesn't seem to care, as she begins currying down them only to miss a step and flip turnways, bouncing down the remainder and hitting the floor painfully.

"OW!!" She yells on impact, lying there for several moments.

Orphen's intro just gets a handwave from the Sarah lying on the floor and she just immediately points in left foor. "I'm going that way when I can move."

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna nods to Orphen, "I *should* be okay, as long as the first door I poke my nose into isn't full of giant bloodthirsty vampire beetles or something that's going to pounce me before I ca..."

She trails off, glancing around, then pokes her head into the door that was straight ahead, taking a look into the chamber beyond and the braziers and the fountain of ... is that blood? It looks sort of like it, it *smells* sort of like it.

"Um. Well ... if there are undead here, this *does* look like a necromancer's ritual chamber ..." She backtracks into the entry corridor, though, to take a quick look into the chamber to the right, keeping the Matrix Divider ready to fire as the door slides open ...

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "Go deep or go home!" Kyra chirps without thinking too hard about that particular phrasing. Whoops. "I'm more used to exploring dungeons with at least one other person. Soloing for a backliner is pretty hard to pull off." Kyra adds, following after Orphen. "Oooh, so it's technology from a lost civlization. Neat."

    She's hesitant to be the first one to walk into the room-normally at this point Soan would be casing the place for traps. "A..." Kyra sniffs the air, "...blood fountain? Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty bad sign. -errr...Sarah? Are you alright?"

    She means that for both the stairs thing and Sarah's weirdly positive outlook at the moment that seems to have started...not long after they left Galianda, Kyra would estimate. How strange. "Though I strongly recommend not touching the blood fountain or the fire."

    Kyra gravitates to the door to the far right in this room.

Orphen (703) has posed:
The left door that Sarah chooses will be full of -fun-. When she gets up, it struggles to slide through the vines, but it finally opens. There's a very long hall she'll be greeted with. There are tiny inch wide holes all over the metallic walls, and also ancient runes etched all over them, looking almost Nordic, but not quite. At the very end of the hall are another set of sliding doors.

Orphen (703) has posed:
A few things happen now! As Kyra enters the Blood Fountain room and starts to head for the right door, the fountain bubbles, as if someone just let out a breath. Then there's the sound of dripping onto the ground. And soon, Kyra heads something say, "Skin... I need... just... I need skin..." says the man whose upper body has risen above the blood, liquid dripping down his body that is -completely- lacking in skin, all muscle.

"Kyra, watch out!" Orphen yells as he jumps into the room, and the door slides closed behind them.

Meanwhile, Yuna does something sort of -horrible-, and when she opens that right door, at least ten mummified people in white robes begin to walk forward, their eyes very bright and white, glowing as they stare at her and move forward, groaning.

Deelel has posed:
Deelel looks over at Orphen and Kyra

"He noted it was from anotehr species I think and I don't like the look of this."

She takes a moment focuse and the Dual Disc appears in her right hand. IT's a good thing too as smething now rises up she doesn't take a moment to start to focuys she raises her keyblade and tries to focus as flames build up about it's tip but it doesn't go quite right, as she has ahem not aimed it propelry rather than striking out against hte thing after Kyra? It goes iwld in the direction of Yuna and the mummies...

Cory (768) has posed:
    Well Cory did say she was coming to keep people safer and the squishiest person around she's judging to be Kyra.

    So she too is subject to one hell of a horror show. "Hyighkh-- what... AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! CREEPY!! PERVERT! FREAK!" Outright TERROR AND SHOCK are all she has to spare. She ends up backflipping several times until she's shoulder to shoulder with Kyra, shivering all over and eyes wide.

    "N-not our skin. Not yours! Where'd yours G-GO?!"

    Even her tail's straight out behind her and shivering.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna does two things as soon as she sees the mummies.

One of them is to scream at the top of her lungs, because undead are *SCARY*.

The other is to level the Matrix Divider at the nearest mummy and start shooting it repeatedly, straight in the chest. If she manages to blow it apart, she shifts her aim to the next - although by this point she's done screaming, if only because she ran out of breath for the time being.

It may help that there's a substantial dose of holy/light-element power being channeled through her weapon; she *is* about as close to a magical-girl version of a paladin as you can reasonably get - and undead are weak to holy power as a rule, aren't they?

Elner is just floating behind Yuna, roughly above her left shoulder, and monitoring as much of the situation in the first three rooms as its sensors can keep track of. Mummies, blood fountain with something that would probably freak Yuna out even worse coming out of it, and the passage to the left is .... well, Elner's got other things to focus its scans on than trying to figure out what's up with Sarah's passageway.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "...did you hear something..?" Kyra asks, her back turned on the fountain as she elected to certainly not start touching the BLOOD FOUNTAIN, worried that doing so would activate something. Soon she realizes, thanks to the muttering of the zombie (?) and Orphen's yelling that just stepping into the room triggers the appearance of the undead rising from the fountain.

    She whirls on the fountain and enroaching man, shrieking at his appearance. Being undead (or at least Kyra assumes) triggers a certain muscle memory reaction in Kyra.

    She lifts her non gun-holding hand at the skinless man and casts /cure/ on him. Zombies on her world were actually harmed by white magic, after all, and it was how a white mage could more or less tear through massive amounts of undead.

Orphen (703) has posed:
The mummy that Yuna aims at groans as flesh, organs, and electronic parts go flying from the back of it, which causes it to immediately fall to a heap at the ground. At least three are caught in the fire that Deelel sends in that direction, and the flames immediately melt down the robes and the mummified skin of those three, revealing skeletal bodies that are made almost entirely of what appear to be cybernetics covered in similar runes to the ones on the wall of this hall as well. Their eyes continue to glow white, and they seem to still have some human organs and muscle. Despite being on fire they continue to advance, the whole now 9 mummy horde trying to force their way into the main room.

The man in the fountain starts to climb out of it, screaming in pain each time he steps, staring down at his hands in horror with wide eyes. "They took my skin, they took my skin... but if I take yours... I Call Thee, Scream of Death!" the man shouts, aiming his finger at Cory, firing a bolt of incredibly powerful lightning. "If I have your skin, I can go home, they'll let me go home, the war will be over..."

"Damnit!" Orphen shouts as he tries to run over to Kyra and Cory, though he obviously can't make it in time to help with -that- attack. "He's a sorcerer! Try to stop him from being able to talk, I'll prepare something!" He holds his hand down, beginning to charge. "I See Thee..." he begins to cast.

But then Kyra casts -cure-, and he stares down at himself as skin begins to return to him, and he feels around his body, a sudden look of peace beginning to wash over his face. "I... I don't hurt anymore..."

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
"I'm fine!! Totally!! This was going to happen!!" She says, still lying on her back. That must have hurt a lot. Finally, she peels herself up and immediately begins pulling at the vines, taking some with her into the next room, dragging them along. She's not in the right room so she's not getting mobbed by undead for the moment, at least. She scurries forward, looking at the runes and the holes in the walls. "Oh, hey, this is a trap all right!!" As she yells, she CAPTCHALOGUES the SPOOKY VINES into her ENIGMA MODUS, overloading one of her ARRAYS and causing it to OVERFLOW. This results in the sudden propulsion of a JUNIOR BOTANIST'S HYDROPONICS SYSTEM appearing and being hurled down the hallway.

Sarah rushes in a second afterwards, apparently prepared to throw caution to the wind as she uses the plant-growing set to try to prematurely trigger the super-obvious trap and allow her to charge through before it resets.

She's making a /lot/ of assumptions.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Suddenly, this becomes a contest of casting. Kyra doesn't recognize the spell that the sorceror is casting but she assumes it's probably something quite powerful since it's got 'death' in the incantation. Kyra swings her hand to Cory, muttering something quickly, screaming, "SHELL!" at the end of it. If anything, it'll lessen the sting of magic if it gets down before the powerful lightning bolt strikes the Saiyan.

    Then, much to her surprise, the cure spell seems to be...working to return his skin? "Wait, you're not undead? How the hell were you still alive without skin!? How is this a thing! Also who the heck are you?"

Orphen (703) has posed:
Sarah makes a lot of -correct- assumptions, it would seem! Immediately sharp pikes begin firing from the walls as they're triggered, which allows Sarah to very quickly run through the hall, as long as she's sure not to trip on any fallen pikes. This leads her to the end door, which slides open to reveal... hard stone floors, only -lightly- covered in moss. The walls are stone as well. The entire room is lit by a small three flame candle sitting on the table, perhaps magically triggered by the opening of the door.

Sitting at the table are three bodies wearing white robes, which, if she ever goes back out, will notice are the same white robes as the mummies that are currently trying to rush past Yuna. There's also a single body at a smaller desk, hunched over. All of them are skeletal, decomposed normally, and there are grimoires sitting on the tables, as well as various books, perhaps also grimoires and other books, in bookcases sitting along the walls. They're all written in the same ancient runes that were on the walls of the hall.

But there's also a silvery chest at the very end of the room, somewhat small, about the size of a small water cooler.

Cory (768) has posed:
    Cory takes the bolt like a champ! ... that is to say, it absolutely flattens her. She goes flying into the cavern's wall and hits it like a brick. the WALL breaks more than she does, but that still took the wind out of her and scorched both her clothing and flesh. It would've been much worse though, had the Shell not appeared at the last moment and diverted much of the blast from reaching her actual flesh. "rrrgh... Magic!"

    Pain and anger has a way of overriding shock and fear. Quite a way. Grunting angrily, Cory slams a foot down and rises. A hand's raised and power begins gathering there, but after a second or two of sizzling Ki lightshow it sputters out. "Damn, can't use that down here... might bring the place down. EWWWW, you mean I've gotta get into melee with this guy?!"

    And the wind's already knocked outta her. That blow was nothing to sneeze at. Even so...

    Watching her is a bad idea. The chamber's filled with a freakish wind and... blink and you'll miss it!

    Cory briefly seems to be in two places.

    Employing the Afterimage technique, she just zipped circularly around the room to try and get BEHIND the Skinless Freak - "CALM DOWN, HORROR SH-- huh?" -- but seeing him calm down she pulls back at the last second and executes a quick backflip, looking on warily.

    And disgustedly. "... Ooo...kay...?"

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
On the plus side, that first mummy went down pretty effectively, and the fire support from Deelel is certainly helpful in reducing the threat ...

But the sight of the cyber-implants getting violently dislodged, and the revealed true form of the mummies under the robes, brings Yuna up short, her eyes going wide. "Wha.... Elner, are they - ?!"

"No independent vital signs," the robo-faerie speaks up. "They really are dead, Yuna, except for the implants re-animating them. Don't hold back!"

A shudder runs through Yuna's body as she aims at the next mummy, takes a deep breath, and fires another blast from the Matrix Divider, aiming higher on the torso this time. "I could use some more help here, if anyone's not too busy ... !"

Orphen (703) has posed:
Orphen seems to calm down as well, stopping in mid-cast. "Who the hell are you? And this place hasn't been opened in years, how are you still -alive-? What is going on down here?" he asks a million questions, reaching over to place a hand on Kyra's shoulder.

The man seems to be in his mid-thirties, though entirely hairless right now and with a very slender build. He jumps forward as Cory startles him, shaking and hunching down, arms wrapped around himself. "They're dead, they're all dead. It... it killed them, the war, they're relentless, they won't stop, they'll keep coming, we'll all die. We should have... we should have never used magic, never learned it... my skin..." He stares down at his arms. "My skin, my skin..."

"I... I think he's from the war. I don't know how he's alive. It had to be Nornir magic, there's no other explanation. Magic outside the realm of human understanding." is Orphen's only real explanation, sighing as he looks around. "We can take him back with us, but we need to continue, I have a bad feeling. Go forward, or the door to the right?"

Deelel has posed:
Deelel manges to burn away the flesh and rags of some of the mummies. She sees they are skeletal bodies?! Wait robots? These thing are robots? Well she thinks they might be for now she's going to stop with the magic,. She's going to just get to work with her blade. The insane rambnlings of the thing in the fountain? A magic user who had his skin removed. She's about to make an attack when she sees him healing and he's starting to calm down? Okay she's got a plan here. She now at wonders how they might deal with this. She'll trust Kyra to talk for now she was going to back up Yuna but the doors have closed. She halts turns face the man in the room keeping her blade slightly lowered.

Orphen (703) has posed:
Aiming higher causes the next mummy to go down -very- fast, apparently more critical vitals the closer to the head that one hits. There are 8 more, and they start muscling their way past her and into the main room entirely now. She could keep trying to fight them, especially since some continue to go after her. Though she could try to muscle past them and into the right hall if she wanted.

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
OH SNAP PIKES. Sarah engages some YOUTH ROLL action to follow her estwhile HYDROPONICS SYSTEM down the hall. She'll get it back on her way out.

She enters the next room, her eyes shining with undisguised excitement at seeing a bunch of corpses, a ton of ominous grimoires of ill intent, and a magical candleabra with a silvery chest.

==> GET ALL THE THINGS. ALL OF THEM.

Sarah produces her CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS once more and proceeds to fill up cards with A PILE OF ROBED CORPSES, a HUNCHED SCRIBE CORPSE, a BOOKCASE OF GRIMOIRES OF ILL INTENT (Since she sure can't read Ancient Runic), and then turns to actually pick up the candle in her hand and carry it over to the chest. The SMART thing to do would be to simply Captchalogue the POSSIBLY TRAPPED SILVERY CHEST and deal with it later. She's not in a smart mood right now.

She stands to one side and opens it, preparing to try to dive away if it happens to be gas trapped.

She is probably not really being as thorough as she should be today.

Deelel has posed:
Deelel manges to burn away the flesh and rags of some of the mummies. She sees they are skeletal bodies?! Wait robots? These thing are robots? Well she thinks they might be for now she's going to stop with the magic,. She's going to just get to work with her blade. The insane rambnlings of the thing in the fountain? A magic user who had his skin removed. She's about to make an attack when she sees him healing and he's starting to calm down? Okay she's got a plan here. She now at wonders how they might deal with this. She'll trust Kyra to talk for now she was going to back up Yuna but the doors have closed. She halts turns face the man in the room keeping her blade slightly lowered.

"I can get behind helping him. I know we'll get you out of this place sir. Orphen I say we head forward."

Cory (768) has posed:
    "...Not a bad bod, but you're uhh... uh... now you have skin, get some clothes." She ain't looking. She ain't looking! Instead she pulls out a case of Capsules, clicks one and *POOF*.

    She ends up tossing him a blanket from a survival kit.

    Other than that, she ends up scratching her head... and flahing a thumbs-up at Kyra. "Good thinking! Didn't know that would've done anything!"

Orphen (703) has posed:
What she finds in that box appears to be a thick leather-bound journal. If she opens it, it'll actually be written in English, even if an old stylized cursive. And even if she can't read English, this language is sufficiently known and modern enough to be read with the multiversal translation effect.

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
"SCORE!!" Wow, she's not dead yet. This calls for a RISK X3 COMBO as she opens the book and looks in it.

She'll stuff all this into her ENIGMA MODUS later after she's done reading. Maybe it'll be important for the others to know!

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
That's a lot of mummies, and they're already getting out into the corridor - which is a pretty bad thing.

Yuna adjusts, though, switching the Matrix Divider from rifle grip to sword grip, and starting to try and take the mummies out as quickly as she can. Ideally, she'd like to make a logjam of them in the doorway; it'd be even better if she brought out her shield, probably, but the Divider requires both hands to wield.

Orphen (703) has posed:
What Sarah found was indeed a journal. The first page reads:

February 2nd, 1709.

'The Nornir have agreed to work with us. Down here we'll create a sort of peace. This war, this genocide, it doesn't have to continue. I believe that they understand that both of our races will be doomed if this continues. In this highly secure bunker, we're studying magic that we could only dream of, and they've taught us their extremely complex language. We're all very hopeful for the utopia that will be built from our mutual work.'

- Firebrand St. Creed

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "Hey uh, sorry to point out the obvious but you're lacking in clothing too." Kyra points out pretty awkwardly, looking to Cory, then back to the man. See, she's on the right track and Orphen thinks this guy's story is pretty incredible too."

    Nornir magic, Orphen explains, which could meean space aliens to Kyra. She hasn't gotten around to reading that bit of Orphen's history yet. "I'm used to cure spells killing undead, not helping them like that." Kyra explains to Cory, "What Yuna said though-we should keep moving." Kyra goes to the door exiting the blood fountain room that was located on the right wall.

Orphen (703) has posed:
The man pulls the blanket around himself, sitting there, continuing to mumble to himself. "We'll all die..." he trails off, just shaking.

Orphen groans, then starts walking forward, holding his sword forward, just in case. But when the front door opens, it's just a long hall, lit by the bright ceiling lights again. There's no more moss on the floor, there are instead metallic panels, all with runs on them, some which seem slightly lighter colored than others. The metallic walls are also covered in runs, though they don't seem particularly trappy.

"Be careful, Kyra." he says before he looks back at Cory. "Can't you fly?" he asks, then crouches down. "I Call Thee, Heavenly Jump!" he shouts, before he jumps to the end of the room, immediately steps on a panel, and in the middle of the hall the floor drops open to reveal a large spike pit. He looks back, wrinkling his noes. "Er... oops."

Meanwhile, immediately on the other side of Kyra's door is a pool of orange liquid that gives off a very strong mana-like energy, and beyond that is a short hall, which has a floor with a discoloration that seems different from the rest of the floor. She can -also- hear the sound of fighting echoing through the halls as Yuna, somewhere around there, is very easily dropping the zombies left and right, until they're all laying on the ground, sparking and twitching. The sounds suggest that there's likely no door blocking Yuna's hall from Kyra's hall. But, y'know, ominous pool of mana in the floor and all.

Orphen (703) has posed:
The walls of Yuna's hall are covered in runes, though there don't particularly seem to be any traps. At the very end of the hall is a silvery sliding door, though there's also a left turn that she could make without entering any door.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    This time around, Kyra is very careful before she steps through the doors, mostly at Orphen's request. "How Soan does all this, I'll never get..hmm." She scans the room carefully and spots the strange discoloration happening on the floor. She doesn't venture any closer and instead pulls a dart from her inventory.

    From he spot near the door, she tries to toss the dart onto the discolored patch, attempting to trigger it.

Cory (768) has posed:
    "easily!~" Cory's voice just BRIMS with energy. But efore she leaves she tells the guy, "I dunno how long you've been down here. Maybe years. But there's nothing to eat so once you're done moping, get going."

    No she's not exactly too good at sounding sympathetic even if she's trying to be nice.

    "Need a lift?" She asks Kyra. And if kyra doesn't...

    Then she'll simply fly up herself to follow Orphen. "Craaaaazy place this is. What are we looking for, anyways?"

Cory (768) has posed:
    This leavse Chikorri blinking a few times. Why be hesitant? "Hold on, then!"

    So she just gets both arms around Kyra's gut and WHOOOSH, straight up!

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
Sarah relays the information which might or might not help them discover the SECRET OF THE LICH. She did her job. While she could continue reading, she'll choose to not spend more time doing that. She CAPTCHALOGUES the JOURNAL OF FIREBRAND ST. CREED, the SILVERY CHEST and last, the MAGICAL TRI-CANDLE.

On her way out she heads to the hallway that enters this area, and re-captchalogues her JUNIOR BOTANIST'S HYDROPONICS KIT and a PILE OF PIKES, which results in a clear hallway again.

Now she just has to get across it again. Well, maybe the trap is harmless now it's been triggered? RISK X4 COMBO!

Thus it is that Sarah just runs back down the hall from the other direction, heading back to the entrance room.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
"Elner, scan these markings, see if you can decipher anything of them ... ?" Yuna asks, looking over the chamber that was full of mummies when she opened the door. "And if you pick up any movement that isn't part of the group, warn us ..."

She makes her way into that room, thinking that she should PROBABLY rendezvous with the rest of the group. She's curious about what those mummies were guarding, though. ... if they WERE guarding something, that is, and not just stuck in there for storage or something.

Orphen (703) has posed:
When Kyra's dart hits the floor, a wave of prismatic light rises, as if it's blowing from the floor to the ceiling. It almost seem like colored rainbow air. When it activates, the pool of mana seems to bubble more, starting to overflow a bit. It doesn't seem to do anything particularly dangerous other than be a pool of liquified mana. It does, however, seem to serve a clue to what the rainbow light is.

When a bit of that liquid mana rolls over to the light, the mana immediately evaporates into nothingness. However, the dart is still sitting there, on the plate, completely unharmed, not being blown around or moved at all. Only the liquid mana seems to have been affected by the light.

Orphen walks back to the spike pit, peering over at Deelel through the metallic doors. They start to automatically close, though they're not locked or anything. "Hey! Get over here! It's dangerous to walk around in these dungeons alone!"

The wall markings that are scanned by Elner are... strange. The language is so ridiculously complex that most of it almost seems random. But parts of the language can be made sense of, here and there. Various random words can be deciphered, many repeating: Future. Outrage. Stolen. Filth. Ours.

The room that Yuna enters, though, isn't lit by anything except ancient wooden torches lining the stone walls. The floor is stone as well, except for the complex magical circle in the middle, where a purple hooded figure sits, its face shrouded in darkness. Yuna would then be able to hear whispers all around her, as if whatever was speaking was all around here. "I have transcended this plane, transcended the filth. You do not smell of our blood, our stolen blood, the abominations. Leave or die. We are the death of human sorcery. The death of thieves. Leave or die."

Orphen (703) has posed:
Sarah, however, sees the mess of robotic mummy corpses that Yuna left. The door continues trying to close on their pile of bodies, but keeps getting opened back up every time it hits them. From the entrance, Sarah can see down the long hall of the opposite door, and see Yuna at the end.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Kyra watches this reaction with some nervousness. She could tell that the liquid was filled with magic particles and it seemed to be evaporating in the light. "Hey Cory, could you remove the dart? I think that might be some kind of trap that vaporizes any magical particles in the area. Uh, in particular..."

    She removes a vial from one of her bandoliers, eager to get a sample of the liquid mana, "I think that if any magic user goes in there, they'll find their magic particles vaporized which would mean very bad news for me. So that needs to be deactivated."

Deelel has posed:
Deelel gets the man has had a lot of taruma how long has he been in pain without skin? She doesn't want to think about that, she can only hope they can help him get somewhere he can recover. She keeps ready and alert for more trouble. She's looking to Kyra for a moment and pauses she reaches into a pcoket and offers the man a food bar.

"Here this isn't much, just rip the wrapper off and eat the contents."

WIth that she pauses for a moment and then haul bitmap to catch up with Orphen.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna knows full well that she's not a sorcerer, and she's pretty sure she's not a thief. She's equally sure that whatever is whispering probably doesn't *care*, so she backs away from the circle and the purple-hooded figure, retracing her steps to the outer room. Elner, once it's done scanning the runes and recording what it can make out of them, takes a moment to look into the room as well, scanning the figure seated in the circle - scanning VERY thoroughly, just in case there are any useful details to be picked out via sensors.

Then the robo-faerie flits away, and both Yuna and Elner make their way back to the initial corridor as quickly as Yuna can walk, without breaking into a run. ... Probably without running, anyway.

Cory (768) has posed:
    "W...weird. You mean it'll drain your power if you get near? Let's see how it handles this!"

    Believe it or not, Chikorri DOES know how to exert restraint. She simply extends a finger and projects a thin beam. It's not terribly refined but it's intense enough to probably make the little dart and vial go KABOOM!

Orphen (703) has posed:
It, interestingly enough, doesn't seem to resist Cory's power! The platform completely explodes, and the rainbow light stops. Yuna will probably hear this explosion as being from behind her, before she makes it back to the main entrance where Sarah is.

Orphen, meanwhile, looks left and right. There are two short halls where he and Deelel are, and each have a sharp right turn. "So, which way should we go? I have no idea what you do exactly."

Elner, however, gets some interesting scans. Whatever that thing in robes is? It's completely dead. It's body is entirely calcified and dried up. It's difficult to discern shape beyond 'humanoid', it's dried up and decayed so much. But the most notable thing is -inside- of it. It houses an extremely condensed core of mana, almost like a bomb.

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
Sarah gets back unscathed. Awesome! The pile of robot mummy corpses cause Sarah to pause. DOES SHE STEAL THE ROBOT MUMMY CORPSES TOO?

OF COURSE SHE DOES. The PILE OF DEAD ROBOT MUMMY CORPSES get locked up in another encoded CAPTCHALOGUE CARD, added to STACK 2 with the rest of the stuff she's pried out of this place. She has NO IDEA if any of this stuff will be useful at all but hey, she needs source material for later, who knows what'll be handy?

There's a small explosion, and Sarah jolts to one side for a moment, blinking as Yuna arrives. Sarah's radio goes off about the spooky crazy SCARY THING and she nods, looking to Yuna. "We gotta blow it up!! I've got an idea!!" She exclaims, charging back down the hall Yuna traveled down towards the SPOOKY LICH THING. Standing in the doorway, she stares down the TERRIFYING APPARITION, a manic glee in her eyes as she trembles a bit, still absurdly animate for what is usually a gloomy-gus.

Her STRIFE SPECIBUS comes out, the PUZZLEKIND SPECIBUS disgorging her WEAPON OF CHOICE into her hand: a JENGA STACK.

She looks at the stack.

She looks at the robed figure.

She looks at the stack.

She looks at the figure.

Balancing it in her hand, she carefully, as the voices hiss around her, removes one balsawood block from the Stack, the Jenga Block held in her hand...

And it is hurled across the room towards the figure.

POK!

Sarah then turns and runs, expecting an explosion to follow her attack.

Orphen (703) has posed:
"You were warned." says the voices that surround Sarah now. The explosion doesn't -quite- happen in the way she may have intended. There's a sudden sound of cracking, then there's a sudden BOOM.

Flesh expands and rips through the robes, filling the entire room, spilling out into the hall. It spills out in both directions, its voice loud and clear to everyone. "You have been warned. I have waited here for a century, waiting for sorcerers to return here. The war will never be over, you will all be exterminated, and your allies as well. I can sense you, sorcerers, I sense your presence. Before it even has a chance to kill you, -I- will!"

The flesh that crawls along the walls and ceilings like some mass of veiny multicolored tentacles and organs is something that Cory and Kyra would very quickly see as it makes it down to their direction of the hall. Meanwhile, in the other direction, it's trying to grab at both Yuna and Sarah.

Orphen stops, grunts, then stares back where he and Deelel came from. "We might need to go back."

Deelel has posed:
Deelel looks to Orphen for a moment grinning faintly at him.

"I'm a multimedia program, well to start so think musician and artist. As for other skills I'm a good combatant generally. I'm still learning to use this keyblade and the magic it grants me. My people ... have never had magic before so far as I know I'm the first with access too it and the blade can generally open just about any sort of lock and does nasty things to things that have no business being on this plane of existence."

Okay she got a bit wordy but Orphen asked right? Deelel is scanning about looking for signs of anything that might be of note here.

Then things go stark horror as Deelel reaches into her pants pocket with her off hand pulling out a puck like item.

"I have explosives and I can set a time delay on them. I agree I think we need to."

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
"Uh ..." Yuna stares briefly at where the dead mummies were lying before Sarah captchalogue'd them, then follows her back through to the lich's chamber, asking as she goes, "So are you from Afterus, or did you come out of a different Sburb session?"

Yes, she recognizes some of what Sarah's doing - and when they get to the doorway to the room with the magic circle and the dessicated remains, Yuna makes a point of staying behind well behind Sarah, giving both of them plenty of room to turn and run when (if?) whatever she's doing has an effect that needs to be run away from.

So when the Jenga block gets hurled at the presumed-lich, Yuna is right behind Sarah in running away. She's not expecting TENTACLES, though; she actually lets the Matrix Divider vanish and pours on the speed -

And gets grabbed around the ankle, going down hard right on her face and chest. "Ulgh - NO YOU *DON'T*!!! We're not even magic-users!!" she protests, materializing not one weapon but *two*: a bulky yet sleek pistol in her left hand, and a similarly sleekly aesthetic sword in her right. And she figures she's going to need both of them, trying to cut or shoot through the tentacles that are grabbing for her, followed by trying to liberate Sarah the same way - once she's freed herself, at least.

If that's harder than expected, things are going to get really interesting, REALLY FAST.

(And Elner has exercised the better part of valor and teleported back to the dungeon's main entrance, with a little spherical forcefield glowing gold around the robo-faerie.)

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "That's exactly what I assumed it'd do, yes!" Kyra now edges into the room and helps herself to a sample of the liquid mana, slipping on a pair of gloves before she samples. She hears an explosion and doesn't think much of it until she hears the /voice/ "...what the...is that the lich?" Kyra looks up to Cory, then beyond her to see the fleshy mass starting to spill into the other end of the hallway.

    Kyra pales. "Undead, sure, but tentacles?" Kyra hastily puts the vial onto her bandolier and backs out the way they came into the hallway, taking yet more darts from her belts and loading them into her needlegun.

    These aren't explosives but instead a set of biological agents focused on inducing a disease that causes severe dehydration. She fires all four of the darts into the enroaching flesh before leaving the room. "C'mon Cory, let's go!"

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
"Oh, you know about the Death Game!! Yeah, me and my friends are out here from Predestination Academy for Gifted Ecto-Youths, AKA Death Game High!!" Sarah replies to Yuna.

Of course, her plan turns out to be a BAD IDEA when they get attacked by HORRORTERROR TENTACLES. Sarah yells, getting smacked aside and then grappled by horrible flesh-tendrils. Sarah's JENGA STACK goes flying, collapsing immediately as she loses balance with her hand, making her weaponless as she struggles futilely. It's up to Yuna and the others nearby to dig Sarah out of her stupidly triggered situation, because she sure as hell has no way out at the moment.

Cory (768) has posed:
    "You know I'm still not sure--" Cory's speech is interrupted for a VERY good reason. She can sense something WRONG filling the place. But she sees the thing she feels soon enough, and it gets her freezing for a few critical moments...

    "NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOOOOOOPE!"

    No way is she going into Melee. Instead she follows Kyra with the retreating strategy. Flying BACK the way she came but looking over her shoulder, a hand extended and brimming with Ki.

    "HAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAH!!!"

    Dozens of shots fly out, curving and spearing through the air to cover the whole damned tunnel and pepper it with explosions! It might make a hell of a mess. It might even collapse a chunk of the tunnel. But the idea is to keep those tentacles at bay for a bit!

Orphen (703) has posed:
"Alright, I've had enough of this. Come on Deelel." Orphen decides, running back in the direction of the Blood Fountain room. "Red Light Rockets!" he shouts, holding his hands out, exploding the sliding door in front of him. No more doors, screw the doors! He wants a clear view of -everything-. "Red Light Rockets!" he shouts again, firing what are essentially red Magic Missiles from his hand, exploding the door that separates them from the entrance room as well. The man in his blanket has curled up in the corner, continuing to shake.

"Everyone!" Orphen shouts, which, thankfully, everyone is finally in a position to hear. "Get in here!"

"How dare you... inject your human filth... touch me with your human weapons..." The tentacles begin to decay on Kyra and Cory's side, slowing down considerably as they begin to blacken from decay or explode from Cory's blasts. The tentacles on Yuna and Sarah start to drop, slowing down, being chopped, and starting to weaken. Partly from disease, part from pain and extremely heavy bleeding. "ABOMINATIONS, THE FILTH OF OUR LOINS, AN INSULT TO THE POWER THAT WRONGFULLY FLOWS THROUGH YOUR UNWORTHY HUMAN VEINS!!!"

The tentacles around Sarah continues trying to squeeze, but eventually Yuna cuts her out, and finally the mass begins to die down, slowing. "We... will... not... forget... our hate... is... eternal... it... will.. kill... you... all..."

Orphen stares down at the floor for a long moment, then looks back to Deelel. "Start setting up explosives. Whatever the 'lich' is, that's not it. But now I have a -very- good idea of what it is. We need to destroy this place, going any deeper will just be putting our lives at horrible risk. If we keep going, whatever we find is going to be a lot worse than that tentacle thing." He leans against the wall, trying to breathe, looking a little stressed. "I want to go back there and make sure, but it's too risky..."

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
Sarah screams and gurgles, choking as the tentacles threaten to crush the life out of her. she's just a 14 year old girl, what is she going to do against this thing?

Lucky for her, Yuna, Kyra, and Cory contribute to her not dying. She collapses to the ground, coughing and choking as she shudders in revulsion. That manic glint in her eye is gone, replaced with a sort of deep horror. "I'm..." She rasps, "I'm sorry. It was my fault." She says, shaking and crying as the last words of the entity resound in the back of her mind.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
It's possible that Yuna is going into overkill mode on the tentacles, but, well ... she's a girl, and they're *TENTACLES*, she has many reasons to go overboard trying to obliterate enough of them to make a clear, safe path for her and Sarah. The fact that they start weakening from everyone else's assorted attacks doesn't exactly slow her down, either - she doesn't let up on the tentacles until she's free and Sarah is free and the two of them are rendezvousing with Orphen and the others. Sarah's distress is enough that once running is no longer necessary, Yuna dismisses her weapon to give the other girl a tight, reassuring hug. "None of us knew that was going to happen," she says softly. "Don't take all of the blame on yourself, okay?"

Then she looks to the others, particularly Orphen. "I didn't bring bombs or anything," Yuna says, "but ... well. I didn't bring my partners, and some of them have heavier weapons than I do. Or, if a giant robot flying around isn't going to upset the locals, I *could* bring El-Line in ... if you think that'd be the best option."

If things are basically safe for now, Elner drops the forcefield and starts doing as thorough an architectural scan of the dungeon as possible - and offers the data to Deelel as it comes together, assuming it *is* coming together. It's easier to blow a place up when you know where the most critical load-bearing substructures are, right?

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Though heartened as the ki blasts and the agent-filled darts decimate the fleshy tentacle thing spilling into their side of the hall, Kyra's quick to back out into the blood fountain/healed man's room where everyone is gathering. "Orphen, what the hell is going on? What's down here?"

    She seems a little disappointed that they were unable to get deeper in the dungeon but at the same time, it's kind of overwhelmed by some crazy hateful eldrich entity screaming and declaring war on everyone. Still, she opens up one of her pouches and brings out several small bars of red brick-like material. She starts setting them around the room, which doesn't take long because she doesn't have very many. Kyra didn't come prepared for high-scale demolition today.

    Seeing Sarah, she goes over to the younger girl to help her up. "C'mon..." she says gently, "Let's get out of here."

Deelel has posed:
Deelel Says "I personally hate tentacle so You will get no argument from me."

She's got a small supply of photone grenade really. It's a darned thing just how many though a program can pack on their person really. She's going to get to work. She listen to the rant of this thing no it needs to go, oh it so needs to go, but she wonders how her keyblade might work against it. She then gets teh data from Yuna's partner and will send thanks as she start to adjust where she's placing the charges, she's also set them for remot detonation here.

"Haul bitmap programs it's time to end of line this place!"

She'll likely be the last to pull out once the last charge is placed.

Cory (768) has posed:
    Cory breaks her flight to instead skid to a halt protectively near Sarah and Kyra. In case anything else comes after the two of them. "Not sure WHAT that stuff is, but like hell am I letting it get any closer. C'mon, we're outta here YESTERDAY! I'll carry someone if it's faster. Out, OUT!"

Orphen (703) has posed:
"This is obviously a Nornir facility from the war. I thought, at best, it may have been a place where they committed war experiments or something. But that thing? That thing means we entered some kind of old combat zone, a place with weapons meant to kill sorcerers." Orphen heads over to the door to peek out at the entrance. "Those... those bodies. They're robotic. Some kind of psuedo Killing Dolls... which means..."

He looks back at Kyra. "The lich is a Killing Doll. We need to blow the place up and -leave-."

A scan of the place reveals that they've actually explored the majority of the dungeon. There were three more rooms beyond the Blood Fountain Room, with a single large room at the very end of the dungeon.

He starts heading for the entrance, making sure that the others are following. He's heading right for the stairs, marching right up to get the hell out.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna heads out as well, contented from Elner's map data (as the robo-faerie summarizes it for her) that the dungeon will be sufficiently destroyed with the explosives that Kyra and Deelel brought. She's probably not going to sleep tonight, after everything she's seen (which was fairly little, all things considered: a glimpse of the fountain room, those mummies, and the not-lich) ...

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "I'm going to assume you'll explain what that is to me later!" Kyra calls back to Orphen, "Though this does explain that one trap in the hallway! I was probably pretty close." And boy is she glad she didn't step on that because being zeroed out on MP is not the place for a Galiandan to be for long.

    Kyra takes Sarah by the hand to lead her out while she's still reeling from the unpleasant horrorterror encounter this place has served up to the girl rather personally.

    She marches up the stairs after Orphen, careful in her escorting of Sarah here because stairs are pretty tricky to those from Afterus. Kyra's explosives do not yet trigger-they'll do that when she /tells/ them to, and she won't until everyone's outside. It doesn't take her long to leave because she seems really eager to go.

Cory (768) has posed:
    Oh Cory's following alright. She's near the back in case anyone trips, so she can scoop them up instead of losing precious time, but she's HEADING STRAIGHT OUT. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, like a rocket! Her burning Ki aura's very visible by now... "GO!"

Deelel has posed:
Deelel it keeping to the back of the pack she's got an idea about whats going on here she'll be the last one out as she fleet th place once she's sure everyone out Deelel's going to turn about and arm the detoinator. She twists the top then brings her thumb down on it. A second later all of the light charges will detonate in powerufl blasts and should the man they rescued still be with them and alive she'll have made sure he got out too.

Orphen (703) has posed:
Once they're outside and in the forest, Orphen stands behind a large tree. The charges go off, and the side of the hill begins to collapse in on itself, causing huge mounds of dirt and debris to fly into the air.

When the dust clears, there's a large pile of rubble and the hill itself seems even more bumpy and uneven. "Well, at least with this, the Killing Doll should be trapped down there. No more undead, so, we can get our money."

The man is indeed out and alive, and Orphen immediately walks over to Kyra, reaching for her hand. "Let's go get paid, then we can eat at a tavern or something."

Sarah Parsle (789) has posed:
Sarah gets hugged. She nods to Yuna, but doesn't say anything, sniffling. She doesn't reply, just following along with her eyes downcast. Kyra leads her out, and her grip is strong. Even the DANGER STAIRS don't seem to dissuade her as she quietly leaves with Kyra.

Once outside, Sarah seems to just plop down and stare at the ground, withdrawn inwards as she lets things progress.