2602/Killin' Dragons For Fun And Loot

Killin' Dragons For Fun And Loot
Date of Scene:	10 July 2015
Location:	The Great Mountains
Synopsis:	And also for profit.
Cast of Characters:	12, 546, 566, 604, 756, 787, 804, 824, 828, 834

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Mordred (12) has posed:
    Those who answer the call of the bounty, request, quest, adventurer's note or whatever you want to call it, have been given the coordinates of a newly established Warp Gate within the Great Mountains of the Multiverse.

    It is halfway up a massive mount that the artificial structure, a large golden archway inscribed with magical runes and styled after dragonic heritage, would deposit killers, adventurers and bored hobo karate masters alive. The great platform of rock was sculpted directly out of the mountainside, a though a balcony to admire the land below.

    The size of this mountain would put a dozen Everests to shame, and it isn't even the largest about. Looking down and far, one can see the vast Rookery and the field of dragon eggs. Union flags are raised all around the perimeter down below, as Confederate camps on and off attempt and fail a breakthrough.

    Far past the Warp Gate is set of massive stone gates barring entry into the mountain itself, but we'll get to opening that in a moment. For now, the five foot tall unarmored form of Saber of Red, aka Mordred, waits with arms crossed near the Warp Gate, a long red and gold coat slash jacket on, with jeans and a white t-shirt underneath, and biker boots.

    She's holding a box of pastries and stuffing her face with an eclair right now.

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
"Sir me!" MORDRED greets his Servant counterpart, he's dressed in his usual tightly fitting cloth suit with clasps. His Armour is standing idle in the distance, within vision range but certainly not within anything that can be called close. "Glare-NT and I are ready to do anything of importance related to these dragons. Forgive me, my mental energies have been preoccupied with other, more personal matters, and the details of what we were doing today appear to have slipped my mind."

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     Raine had been keeping himself busy these past few weeks. Busy in the sense that he hadn't done anything that put him in the public eye of the elites much at all. Transporting jobs mainly. Ship this here, get me that thing, wade through some small time space pirates and get me that other thing. Nothing too crazy.

     He was frankly pretty bored. Thus, when he saw the notice for this bounty, he was all over it. Something exciting!

     Making his way to the given coordinates, the black clad youth appeared from out of the warp gate, and promptly began to look around. "...Oh, this place again." He mumbled wryly. "Looks like I just can't shake it off after all." A flippant shrug and he caught sight of Mordred, the female one, pretty quickly. Followed by the male one.

     "Yo, one of you posted that hunting job?" He asked, tone cavalier and careless and a bit of a grin on his face. He approached, arms folded behind his head lazily as he did.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    'Killers, adventurers, and bored hobo karate masters.'
    SHIN WAS TOTALLY THAT THIRD ONE! THAT MEANT THIS WAS DESTINY!
    Just like it was destiny that he found those repeatedly posted bounty calls while browsing on his cell phone. A cell phone which promptly chirps in Waze's voice, "You are currently... At the Rookery. You have arrived at your destination. Would you like to take a picture to help other Waze users?"
    Shin lifts up the camera and takes a picture of the mountain and the battle down below, "Woo. Okay! Gonna update my Twitter..." He taps at the keys, writing a quick status update. He publishes that and then puts his phone into his pocket and adjusts the coat. Backpack and Bike were left on the other side of the warp gate back in relative safety.
    "Huzzah. Shin Tokuyama has arrived! Alright, time to see what we can heroically fight and loot, in true protagonist fashion."

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     Geralt doesn't usually hunt dragons. Generally speaking, in his experience, dragons are hunted by man and there's a way to find a compromise. But has has fought dragons, has even beaten one. If a notice has gone up requesting dragonslayers, there might be a reason for it.

     With any luck, it'll be more simple than his previous job in the Multiverse.

     The Witcher wears his characteristic leather and chain armor with his swords, one steel the other silver, across his back. "Heard you've got a bit of a dragon problem," he says.

Fiora Laurent (824) has posed:
    Given the surroundings, Fiora arrives with a mantle of fur draped around her shoulders. Though, beneath that, she's ready for some dragon slaying. A polite nod is given to Mordred as she approaches, one hand set on her hip and the other on the hilt of her sword. "Good evening. I trust we'll be off soon?" She glances around, at the others who've answered the advertisement. After all, dragons are dangerous. It's best to deal with them in a group.

"Hail." She offers in greeting, to her fellow slayers.

Sieg (566) has posed:
    The fact that Sieg is here doesn't really have anything to do with the dragons that people came to fight. It's entirely incidental, as a matter of fact. Mordred is a friend of his, and he's not much of a fighter under ordinary circumstances. Maybe he could be, and maybe he'd like to be, but going out to murder creatures for no particular reason isn't really his style. Especially not beasts like dragons. As it is, his body is already horribly unoptimized simply for regular existence.

    Fighting monsters is difficult enough when they're as feeble as zombies.

    ... So he's here from the very start, looking on in blank confusion as people file in.

    He brought his own snacks, but it looks a lot less horrible and fatty than what Mordred is eating. Just a sack of rice cakes and a couple of bottled waters. Sieg has pretty bland tastes in food, probably especially from the perspective of big eaters like Mordred and her family.

    "Um..." The homunculus looks between Mordred and all of the others who are rapidly assembling, putting together bits and pieces of information based on appearances and statements. "Saber, what was that about dragons?"

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    There's a newcomer in town and they're on a HOVERBIKE. A fairly quiet one, at that. The motorcycle-sized vehicle comes swooping through the warp gate moments after the portal crackles to life, with a rider tightly clutching the handlebars. It's a blonde woman in an outrageous outfit that doesn't scream 'dragon slayer' or even 'monster hunter' whatsoever.

    If anything, the mechanic's work pants, bomber jacket, and old-fashioned aviator's goggles speak more of grease monkeys and maybe pilots.

    "Hope I'm not late to this party! Have you folk put any consideration into the unusual DANGERS to be found in a dragon's lair? If not, you'll be awfully glad I'm coming along. Valentha Summers of Lazlo, Techno-Wizard." The young woman's smiling brightly, as if NOT CARING AT ALL they're all on the doorsteps of an ungodly amount of draconic monstrosities. "I'll be your best friend if you get cursed or misplace a lung... for a share of the loot, naturally."

    Curiously, her hoverbike is incredibly quiet. There's only the sound of wind from it, no roaring engines driving its front and back swiveling turbines.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    From behind a rock nearby, a grey-skinned and black haired girl with two swooping candycorn horns pokes her sleepy head out from behind her perch. "Yo." She calls, raising a hand to wave. Once.

    More waves would be more energy. Gathering up her pillow, sleeping bag, and cushion, she drags the camping-sleeping arrangement over to the rest of the group.

    "I heard there was some prime murder-adventure to be had, so I showed up early to rest up." Epicea explains, storing her sleeping arrangements in her SYLLADEX (which causes their immediate and unexplained? disappearences).

    "Hey, gimmie some of those tasty snacks, I'm post-nap starving." She asserts, wandering right up to Mordred with her hand out.

    Yep.

    This won't end poorly.

    It'll work out fine.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    "Yo, Sir Me," the female Mordred greets her male counterpart, evidently already all too used to the matter. She'd keep her hand raised in answer to Raine's question. "That'd be me, yo."

    Shin's enthusiasm isn't missed, the blonde Servant grinning. "Good to see someone's psyched as hell. And," she turns to look at Geralt, "Wouldn't exactly call it a problem per se, more of a critical void in my schedule needing filling with pointless genocide. But, if there needs to be a point..."

    She shuffles into a pocket, pulling about two dozen paper slips out. They're of various origins, languages and designs, but all bear the portrait of a different dragon and a numerical value somewhere on them. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out these are bounty slips for a few dozen dragons from all over the Multiverse. "Then here it is. Number of these assholes are wanted. Theft, murder. Eating people. Having pointless egos larger than this mountain. You pick any of these marks up and you'll be doing someone somewhere a service."

    If people want to help themselves to the bounties she'll leave them out.

    Fiora gets a brief wave of her own, owning mostly to Mordred not recognizing her. Sieg would get a much warmer welcome, as the box of pastries (still containing numerous!) is handed to him. "Murder! I dunno, and looting. Pillaging. Returning the favor. I hear dragon parts and blood are great for magecraft, maybe you can figure something out to help your Rider win his war with this. Or just be the guy with the most valuable monster bits in play." Shrug. She's no Caster.

    Valentha gets a more dismissive greeting, Mordred as uncaring as she can be. "I hear a lotta talk but I want to see a lotta doing instead." And then Epicea demands a cake. She is given an eclair. "Like that. That's guts. Want something, get it. No fuss."

    With formalities out of the way, the Servant strides towards the massive stone gates. Her armor forms over her body in a gush of red and blue magic and flames, sans helmet, and she pulls a fist back, before slamming it into the gates. Red magic seeps from the impact and spreads massive cracks up and down, and the gates burst inwards into a hundred shards of jagged stone.

    Within the mountain is a massive hollow city, sized for dragons. Magical lighting lits the place up, but everything ends up tinted gold by the massive quantity of gold coins and jewels just strewn about everywhere.

    A million heads could live here in comfort, considering at a glance it may be the home of a few hundred to a thousand dragons, of various sizes and colors. Many sleep still, atop the gold, atop the great buildings or under archways. Three medium-sized ones, having heard the commotion, are already swooping down towards the gates from high above; these are about twenty feet tall. One is green, one white, and one black. They're pretty stereotypical dragons in appearance.

    Mordred just sort of points in. "Well, get to it, before they get to us."

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
"I see. Worthy enemies for a knight, then." And because apparently today is a day to be dramatic, MORDRED jumps down a cliff once he's inside the mountain. His Armour is already flying to follow, and before he can hit the ground, he hits the cushy chair inside Glare-NT. He then goes flying towards the dragons and his amplified voice booms, "Foul serpents, murderers of man, pillagers of the defenseless, unchivalrous beasts. I AM MORDRED, and I am your demise!"

Because that won't go wrong, at all.

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     There we go. Theft, matters of ego, those don't concern Geralt - but the murder and eating people, that is something he can handle. He picks out the bounty notice with the most murderous dragon on it. That'll be his target for this venture.

     Mentally, Geralt's already reciting what he knows about dragons. Intelligent, but they can't speak. Watch for the fire and know that they'll maintain an altitude advantage. Watch the claws, but watch out for the jaws - they're instant death, even for a Witcher. Immune to poisons and practically immune to any oils he might concoct that increase bleeding. Who knows whether these will apply to this dragon, but Geralt has no reason to think that they won't.

     He's come prepared though - his silver blade, freshly sharpened, and enough potions to increase his combat abilities to stand a chance in a fight. He's already chugging one and he groans, his veins turning dark and standing out against his flesh. Seems painful.

     If the cave is dark, there's no issue for him. What might be an issue, however, are the three dragons swooping down! Geralt rolls, evading, and draws his silver blade.

Sieg (566) has posed:
    "They would be, but I don't stand a chance against dragons." Sieg replies to Mordred, matter-of-factly. He doesn't seem bothered by it. As far as he's aware, his limited resource has a hard cap on it. There's no sense in going -out- of his way to use his command seals, so he's definitely not going to go out of his way to get involved in the hunt here. He frowns a bit as the junk food is handed off to him, his nose scrunching up a little at the smell of it. Eclairs are too rich for his taste.

    An eclair is taken from his pile and passed to Epicea. That girl looks -strange-. What IS she? He blinks towards her until Mordred steps forward and exercises a little bit of power, smashing open the gates in front of them and causing a huge mess.

    There's no way he's getting his hands dirty with these dragons. They could swallow him hole, so he ends up hauling around a pile of snacks in his arms and trying to keep out of the way.

    "If there's anything left that nobody else needs, I may take something, but I don't think I'm of much use here. It's really strange of you to expect a Master to step out from behind his servant, Saber..." It's not true criticism, just a puzzled observation.

    Of course, if Rider -were- here they could deal with this really quickly. Or at least, Sieg thinks so.

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     Raine smirked and took one of the bounty slips, looking over it. "Well, this guy's got a pretty sizable rep." And he whistled in appreciation. "And look at that bounty. Guess that's what happens when you burn down a couple dozen villages, steal their treasures, and then destroy anyone who comes after you." He chuckled as he spoke, saying this all so casually.

     He simply stood back at that point, watching as the Servant strode up to the closed gates and just...well, punched them right open. "Guess that solves the other problem." Cracking a smile, Raine strode on in with the others, scoping out what looked to be like a massive city. Magic lights here and there, the hue of gold lingering just about everywhere. "Yep. That's about right."

     And then there were dragons. Most of them were still, thankfully asleep. But a number had heard the commotion of the gate's opening, and were swooping down for their position. "......Heeeeeeey, Fragarach? How do we deal with dragons again?" He asked, uttering a name that belonged to no one here while staring up at the oncoming threat.

     A figure appeared in the air behind him at that moment, light shimmering with her form. She was dressed in all white, looking more like a ghost than anything. Her sleeved arms rested around Raine's shoulders and she eyed the dragons. "Hmmmmn....well, why don't we do what we always do?" Grinning, the air around her and Raine grew really, really cold suddenly.

     All around them, multiple ice spikes formed, growing larger and larger. A couple dozen at least. "Frost Lance!" The spell's name was uttered and the girl, Fragarach, directed an arm forward. At her command, each of then burst forward, sailing upwards at high speec and aiming to impale the descending dragons. Raine just smirked and didn't move, letting his familiar do all the work.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "Hell yeah, I'm psyched. First I'm dealing with Angels and Demons, then I'm dealing with crazy weird ghosts, then back-ass racist people, and now dragons. Fuckin' Multiverse is dope as hell!" Shin says, clapping his hands together enthusiastically, hopping up and down on his feet as he mulls it over.
    His hands rub together, thinking over the challenge of fighting dragons and looking around the room. Lots of cool looking people here, plus that frail kid that looks like a dating sim protagonist. Shin takes his peek out over everyone as they're all ushered inside.
    Of course, his thoughts of beating up dragons are quickly robbed from him as he begins to realize the biggest well of killing intent in the room isn't coming from the pile of riches. Slowly, he looks to the side.
    His yellow eye sets on Mordred, "Hey hey. You're like... the strongest thing here, right?" He asks, before abruptly aiming a spinning heel kick right towards her with a big grin on his face. There's no hostility behind it, or malice, or ill intent. In fact, the huge smile indicates more of a childish enthusiasm to fight someone strong.
    Of course, she's a Servant, he's ostensibly a stock average human, and there's about 7 points of power difference between them. She probably won't even have to put down her eclair to block it.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    Now eclaire'd, Epicea noms away happily. "Fuffin' shweet." She notes, between a face-full of tasty pastry. Everything works out better than expected. Which is to say, exactly as it should.

    Epicea holds her chocolatey treat in her sharp toothy teeth, as she pages through the hunt bills, checking out WEAKSAUCE McFOODMULE. Look up! Look down! Look at food pile!

    "Alright jerko, let's find one for you and your snacks." She notes, picking through the bills.

    CRAGMAW THE TERRORMINATOR... Nah.
    HORRORJAW THE ROASTER... Meh.
    SORN, SCALE-LORD... Feh.
    Smallfang the Annoying... Hey-hey, we've got a winner!

    Grabbing the bill for the chumpiest of chump dragons, and a few extra on the very low-end, Epicea turns to Sieg, handing him the hunt bill for SMALLFANG THE ANNOYING, taking another pastry. "Alright, let's go..."

    There's three dragons approaching. Geralt is getting hyped up! But he can't fly. And neither can Epicea!

    Drawing back her arm, she aims carefully... And a fluffy pillow appears in her sticky chocolate covered fingers. And then, like a gunshot, she hocks a pillow at the BLACK dragon. "HEY COME DOWN HERE JERK, THAT GUY-" She points at Geralt. "GOT ALL BUFF AND READY FOR YOU!"

    Epicea is helping.

    Also that pillow hit like a brick doing freeway speeds.

Nox (546) has posed:
    Nox doesn't /do/ standing around. He doesn't do early, he doesn't do late, and he certainly doesn't do 'waiting for other people'. As such he arrives only when the gates have actually been opened, having spent every minute before it on preparation. 'Arrive' is kind of a fancy word though. He more or less simply appears, winking into existance with a fizzling snap of blue static. He takes a moment to look at, or rather look down at, the assembled Elites, little clockwork ticks following the movements of his head as he fixes each person in turn with the featureless, glowing eyeholes of his mask.

    "I see you've gathered more than a few sympathetics, Sir Mordred." He's consciously left off the 'madame', from actually paying attention to the many times it has come up. "Or at the very least, more than a few individuals who fear dragons less than their bills. Haha. No, I'm happy to see it. I was beginning to wonder if the entire multiverse worshipped the ground the old beasts stepped on." Within the space of a minute, the rocks around him are crawling with noxines, the tiny mechanical insects beeping and chittering in synthesized whines as their number steadily thickens. "You or your Master are welcome to the money if I happen to kill any with a bounty on their bloated heads. You know what I'm here for."

    As the first trio of dragons swoops down, Nox swivels to the side, snapping one arm out from behind his back and precisely levelling his palm at the white one's head. The aperture in his hand flicks open, briefly pulsing with a swiftly intensifying light, before discharging a streaking line of blue-white fire through the air, set to violently explode on the first thing it hits. He has pre-existing experience with dragons, and even though he's been warned that Our Dragons are Different, he may still be overestimating their power a little bit, judging by the size of the boom involved for what should have been a potshot.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Valentha quirks an eyebrow.... only to sprout a slight grin. "Sooooo. It's one of THOSE operations. No order at all."

    Sieg is given a peering. "You ever hear what they say about handling heat?" At about this time, the gates are split open, and DRAGONS START FREAKING OUT.

    "If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen!"

    She is not scared whatsoever by the appearance of the dragons. Even as Shin gets so distracted. How much of that is putting on a brave face though, well, that's hard to say.

    The woman's gaze snaps straight to the white one, then glances over some of the slips before she pockets it. "Wanted for propping themselves up as a god and exploiting the ignorant. Not the usual fare of miscreant behavior. Perhaps I'll-"

    Almost faster than the eye can SEE, Valentha's whipped out a revolver from within her jacket. What she might hope to do with that isn't so obvious, but she's glad to still be on her Hovercycle! The turbines whip into full speed to take her skyward. It appears she intends to use it as her mount!

    "Don't fight in here, you'll wake the others! I'm not responsible for you guys mismanaging aggro!"

    Her target is the white. Instead of using the revolver, she takes out a small gadget that looks kind of like a cross between a frag grenade and the claw from a 'get a stuffed animal' game. She simply flicks off the safety, pulls the pin, and HURLS it for the incoming white after letting it 'cook' for a second.

    With expert timing the 'grenade' goes off. There's no explosion. Instead the sound of searing and crackling energies blazes from it, the 'claw tines' expanding and forming the core of a lattice-work of mystical netting. The enormous net expands around half the white's body before clamping down. It's a painful situation to be stuck in, since the net binds without any apparent adhesive and will take considerable effort to tear.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    MORDRED's Armour soars up towards the dragons, taunting them vocally; it is the black one that answers, a roar that loosely translates to a human voice. <OUTSIDERS WITHOUT OUR BLOOD ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. I AM RANKOR THE SIEGEBREAKER, AND I WILL BREAK YOU.>

    Geralt's slip is for a great golden dragon, roughly a hundred meters tall. It is called Tharus the Armless, oddly, but by far it has the highest bounty of any offered ones within the fold. Given its size, there are not many places within this mountain it could be; a great deal of these buildings are just a few meters short of being able to accomodate such a beast. There is a larger cathedral, built of gold and diamond exclusively, near the 'center' of the city though. It won't be hard for him to find it if that's what he sets his sight on.

    "Don't buy the hype. There's more than one kinda dragon out there. The badass ones're a minority," Mordred huffs towards Sieg, before shrugging. "I doubt anyone's gonna be able to carry every-fucking-thing off. Gonna be plenty left for you."

    Raine's slip reads Syrreth the Ruthless, a red dragon reputed for mass pillaging (but mostly, burning). It seems large, but a great many of the beasts sleeping below are large. A closer look at the massive hoard might help.

    For now, ice lances pelt the incoming dragons; the green one is impaled from numerous angles, shielding its blood-brothers. The blows are lethal, sending the beast crashing down into a pile of gold, but waking a dozen smaller wyverns and drakes up.

    "What, me? I dunno, lots of people here who're pretty--" Badass, she'd say, but Shin's coming in to strike. Mordred's empty fist quickly raises to catch Shin's foot, without putting any weight behind it to avoid harming it-- still, that seemed to take all her speed. "Heh, that's what you wanna do? I mean, -I- don't care. I'll fight you bare-handed, give you a chance." Well, with gauntlets, but, the point remains. Mordred is a swordsman, and without her blade Shin can cross the gap at least enough to challenge her.

    Epicea has a hunting bill for Smallfang the Annoying. It doesn't say what size it is but it says it's The Mayor of this joint. There's a massive town hall down that way, just gotta brave the DRAGON-SIZED STAIRS first.

    To Nox, Mordred gives a grin, insofar as she can while occupied by Shin. As he discharges his energy cannon towards the still incoming black and white dragons, the wyvern flock from below streaks into view; his blasts fell a few, but eight remain of various colors and sizes (though they're at most only slightly larger than a person).

    To note is that most of these dragons have sizable energy reserves for Nox's purposes. They are nowhere near the power of the dragons he is used to, but they're a fair few steps above draining random trees and peasants.

    The white dragon roars ind efiant to Valentha. <I AM NERROTH ICEBREATH, GOD OF ICE AND VENGEANCE. YOU ARE NOT ONE OF MY WORSHIPPERS, NOR DO YOU SMELL LIKE FAMILY.>

    The grenade blasts him back; it tears one of his wings off outright, and the beast SMASHES into the great stone in front of the group.

    The white dragon breathes his fury, holy and ice breath both onto the ENTIRE GROUP that has actually stepped inside; the breath weapon isn't that strong. This guy has a lot of bark. The black dragon breathes a cone of lightning and acid towards MORDRED'S ARMOUR, continuing its sweep town to slam into him if able! And the wyverns are swarming Nox, fireballs raining, along with claws and bites if he stays still too long.

    The noise and commotion seems to be causing an uproar in the city, as more dragons awaken.

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
"Unwelcome? You insult me by insinuating I ever intended to be your guest. Have at thee!" MORDRED shouts, amplified /loudly/ by his Armour's speakers. He then draws his XTE Lancepack, and starts aiming as the weapon heats up the plasma to extreme temperatures. "Rankor the Siegebreaker, I am laying siege to you, and this siege will not be broken. Surrender now and I may yet show you mercy, fight, and the only mercy you will receive is a quick death." A small blast of near-fusion hydrogen blasma is fired at Rankor, "This was your only warning."

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     Geralt breaks into a run as the vast cavern decides into a full-blown dragon-on-Elite melee. He sets his eyes on that golden, diamond-encrusted cathedral in the distance and heads right for it. No time for subtlety, no time for taking it slow and careful - there's a horde of dragons and many more smaller wyverns and drakes that risk swamping him if he doesn't move now. He's capable, sure, but enough normal men could overwhelm him - much less enough dragons.

     His silver blade sings as Geralt dispatches any smaller beast that is fierce enough to come after him, the decoction in his veins granting him unbelievable agility and stamina.

     He's never fought a golden dragon, although he had fought one of their children and, if she was any indication of them amongst the Multiverse, then he's really going to have his work cut out for him in that cathedral.

     Might have to get double the pay for it.

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     "Annnnnd that's one down." Raine muttered, looking about at all the chaos with an amused smirk, but otherwise no real urgency. Wait, was that one guy in the suit attacking Mordred? The Servant one? ....Ah, well, whatever floats his boat. As long as the job isn't ruined in the end. "Right then, let's see..." He glanced down at the bounty in his hand and read over it.

     "Syrreth the Ruthless... I'm telling you, they can't make this shit up." He chuckled and looked about for any particular red dragons. ...With how huge most of these things were, it was ironically like looking for a needle in a haystack.

     Fragarach looked down into the depths of the city, squinting her eyes. "You should try going lower. That is, if you don't see him nearby." An apt suggestion.

     And a sigh escaped from the young man in black. "Always with the extra work." He rubbed the back of his head and stepped towards a ledge. "Welp, handle the landing." He said to Fragarach, and then simply leapt from the ledge, sailing downwards without any equipment whatsoever. Fragarach rolled her eyes and vanished from sight in a shimmer of white light.

     Down, down, down, and then down some more, it looked like Raine was going to go splat, but at the last moment, his fall was broken and he landed onto the next level in the depths of the city in a light jog, slowing to a stop. "Heeeeeey! Syrreth, my best buddy! Where are yaaaa? I've got a bounty to cash in, so let's make this quick! Please? Pretty please? I mean come on, it's pizza night!"

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    DOWN comes the dragon, and Valentha follows suit. She lands, only to hop off, putting herself between it and the dragon. The moment she sees the very telltale signs of a BREATH WEAPON about to fire off she... raises her arms in wild gestures, chants out a few words, and rapidly weaves together a spell from crackling blue power dancing between her fingers. With a single gesture she directs it, and an ENORMOUS gout of flame resembling dragon's breath of a more traditional style slams into the divine ice.

    The two will probably cancel each other out, but as an added bonus? It's gonna get REALLY steamy and hard to see. "Well, perhaps I'm not." Comes her casual answer.

    THEN she uses the revolver. Each pull of the trigger, surprisingly, is silent. There's no BANG, no muzzle flare, just a mere wisp of a ripple crossing the distance faster than the eye can see.

    'ripples' that will hit like a freight train.

    "Puny God-Dragon. You've a long way to go before reaching what the Dragonwright pantheon did. I for one would rather not see another join their crew."

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "I can't get too rich off missions, or I have to give up the hobo life. So I figure I eschew piles of gold and junk, maybe fight the badass babe running the show," He admits, his foot coming back after she catches it. It taps down on the ground and he hops on his feet a little, smirking at her, "Sorry. Badass knight. I heard you hate the other one," Mordred's dislike of feminine terms is known. She's screamed on the cross-band at least once about it.
    Thankfully, Mordred is sparing him the embarassment of taking out her sword, which would result in a one-sided stomp that probably laid Shin out in only two or three attacks, "I appreciate that, giving me a chance. It's crazy how powerful people are around here," He adds, flexing his hands to pop his knuckles.
    "Teach me some stuff, if you can. Let your fists be the teacher and our battle a lecture~," shin says, lunging in towards her. He has a good sense for his speed, so his hands lash out in swift jabs. They're straight, pretty simple, but very fast and with a good bit of impact behind them. Nothing that could really threaten a servant, but they're just fun-brawling.

Nox (546) has posed:
    Currently in Nox-vision, the gaudy glittering of tasteless piles of gold and gems is filtered out into a faint, greyish hue against black, the ashen silhouettes of various buildings and rock formations populating the void like ghosts. It's only the living that stand out, glowing as soft and noiseless, bluish flames of varying brightness and intensity. Predictably, nothing present compares to Grougaloragran, but their energy density is still very significant, and there are quite a lot of them. These are favourable circumstances.

    Nox doesn't waste the energy trying to block the breath attack indiscriminately targeting the entire group. The Confederates present are out of the way and fine on their own, and he really doesn't care what happens to anyone else here, simply out of pragmatism more than anything else. He zaps himself out of existence as the holy ice falls on him, jolting to a point a few dozen meters in the air. Before he can really retaliate, a swarm of scaley nuisances accidentally intervene, demanding his attention for the time being.

    With their size relative to him, there's no need to use anti-boss magic. Instead, Nox extends his arm out to his size, clasping the steel-grey hilt of Aiguille as it flashes into existence with the clattering of interlocking gear teeth drawing along its blade. He teleports directly into the mob, reappearing halfway through the motions of a forward lunge, and rams the blade straight through the ribcage of the nearest wyvern with mechanically augmented strength. Teleporting again disposes with the need to pull the sword free, allowing him to zip from target to target, slashing and stabbing from the surprise angles, aiming for lethal but not instantly fatal blows. The purpose of doing so becomes clear as the noxine swarm begins to filter in, alighting on any wounded and/or dying dragons like a flock of butterflies and puncturing them with multitudes of stingers, swiftly draining out vital essence to fill their glass abdomens until only skeletons remain.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    Draconic breath weapons suck. Thankfully, Epicea has her bill and with Sieg handling the provisions, expects him to follow the PRINCESS on her QUEST to slay the DRAGON MAYOR OF STUPIDTOWN.

    Which means she's not there for STUPID HALITOSIS-FACE over there to hork ice or fire or whatever black dragons breathe (it's acid), and in fact already half way off in the distance, at an easy jog, two-fisting eclairs as she goes. She has her priorities straight.

    And so, as everyone else deals with EPIC BATTLES...

    Epicea and her candycorn horns are off mostly-unmolested (the others, like Geralt, are doing their best impression of Sword-Rambo) to find the CITY HALL.

    At the door, she finishes off her patries, licks off her fingers, wipe them on the walls near her, and then tries to boot the door open.

    Even if it's sized for huge Colossal dragons. Eff it.

    Booting open doors is what you just have to do. It says so right in the contract.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Project MORDRED:
    Rankor for all his talk is blasted back by the shots, his scales searing hot already from the impacts. In pain he screams rather than roars, and a number of large winged humanoids take flight from halls of stone carved into the mountain walls. Each of them black, armed with draconic spears and shields, they resemble men more than dragons, if not for their scales and wings. <MY CHILDREN WILL TEAR YOUR METAL SKIN OFF,> Rankor shouts. The warriors fly at the Armour from every angle, spears extended, some spitting fireballs! It's unlikely their spears can pierce the metal, though they could probably scratch it deep with repeated strikes.

    ~~ Geralt of Rivia
    The Witcher sprints, avoiding the breath weapon of Nerroth and dashing down the stairs into the dragoncity proper. His steps displace gold coins and gems with every stride, and many a times must he avoid the tail or head of a still sleeping or indifferent dragon. The cathedral, as he reaches it, is guarded.

    Two gold dragons of medium size (~15 feet ish) stand proud at the massive door; the Witcher will have the first strike, if he chooses to use it, or he could look for another way in.

    ~~Valentha Summers
    The flames and holy ice cancel one another out, with Valentha's revolver drawing the next shot immediatly after. The downed white dragon is obviously hit numerous times by the projectiles, before a spell circle lits up under it. The air grows extremely cold; rather than a directed breath weapon, it opts for magic. Ice lances and blunt maces form in the air, assaulting Valentha from every direction! This seems to require Nerroth's focus to aim, though.

    ~~ Raine Arland
    Raine walks on gold and gems, passing through columns and past uncaring dragons. Some eye him, some remain asleep. Something slithers under the gold, and a red fin can be briefly seen breaking the sea of coins like a shark's before plunging back in. One wonders how deep this hollow city must be and how much gold is here.

    But it turns out Syrreth is no dragon, but a wyrm-like serpent. A massive red-scaled head suddenly bursts out of the coins, trying to eat the man! In and out-- if it misses, it aims to plunge back into the gold behind Raine.

    ~~ Shin Tokuyama
    Mordred laughs. "Fair enough. Guess hobo's a title you care about, huh? And yeah, you call me babe again and I'll skip being nice. Teach you, though? I don't teach. I ain't a noble fighter with skill and finesse 'nymore."

    The multiple strikes impact the steel of Mordred's armor, and she backs away, letting go of his foot. The armor is dented, and she clenches her fist. Without any worthwhile technique, her foot slams down on the ground, cracking the marble and sending a burst of red prana along the crack, to make it burst out under Shin. It's a small geyser at best, but it's a nice blunt, magical impact either way.

    ~~ Nox
    With Nox's speed, dispatching a small flock of wyverns is no hard task; they fall one after the other, unable to keep up with the teleportation. There's a deep rumble below, before a great blue dragon rises from the gold piles, darting straight for the clockmaster.

    He has likely seen her on a hunt bill, Mylant the Broodmother. She'd enslave villages and kingdoms to tend to her young, and when they are too old to care for them, they become food. Great company, these dragons.

    But before she would impact, a burst of magic of her own causes time to slow down, and she reappears above Nox, breathing down a column of ice and lightning. Teleportation? Time shenanigans? Likely just a powerful spellcaster, as some dragons pride themselves. As fate would have it, she has PLENTY of energy to eat.

    ~~ Epicea Chelid
    Down down the troll goes; like others, she passes through the corridors and stone halls of the great city, reaching the town hall. As she opens the door, she finds that the town hall is one massive room, over a hundred meters high-- and judging by the pile of coins, it may have been two hundred originally before they filled it and had t

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Epicea Chelid
    Down down the troll goes; like others, she passes through the corridors and stone halls of the great city, reaching the town hall. As she opens the door, she finds that the town hall is one massive room, over a hundred meters high-- and judging by the pile of coins, it may have been two hundred originally before they filled it and had to build a new door.

    Sticking out of the gold pile is the head of a massive prismatic dragon. The head alone is easily thirty foot in height. The beast stares her down. Its teeth are blunt, and its voice squeaky and annoying. <I AM MAYOR SMALLFANG. WELCOME TO THE DRAGONCITY. I WOULD GREET YOU, BUT I'VE BEEN STUCK IN ALL THIS GOLD FOR A MILLENNIUM HENCE.>

    Epicea may now notice the bounty is written in draconic.
    And from this city.

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     Two on one, not good odds when they're fifteen feet dragons. They don't seem to have seen him, so, Geralt decides to maintain his advantage of stealth. Taking a deep breath, Geralt holds his focus on the cathedral and then exhales, taking sight with his Witcher senses.

     If there's a way in, whether it's a hidden passage or some way of climbing onto the roof and dropping down, he'll find out. With another way located, he'd immediately move to enter the cathedral through that hidden entrance - quietly, quickly, so he hopefully passes by the two golden dragons like a wolf in the night. Besides, they're not his target. Tharus the Armless is.

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
Though the spears may do little more than scratch Glare-NT, the firebreathing is a somewhat different matter, melting away the ablative plating that protects both the Armour and its Knight. No major damage has been done yet, but if this keeps up, it's only a matter of time. "Coward, you would hide yourself behind your troops. Lead from the front, not the back, if you have any shred of dignity." The XTE Lancepack is dropped, and automatically returns to its proper storage place on MORDRED's Armour. He draws the Monofilament Broadsword, and starts making rapid slashes towards his assailants, choosing a slightly dirty but very pragmatic approach: Target the wings.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "The wandering part is. Gotta keep that travel alive, keep goin. I can't lose sight of the end goal by getting distracted by gold and stuff," Shin says chipperly, "You gotta know how that goes. You really want something, gotta focus," He makes a focusing motion with his hand, whatever that would look like. Use your imagination.
    Mordred's exploding foot slam does send him backwards, tumbling end over end in the air before he lands and skids along the ground. He coughs a bit, some blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, "See! You already taught me something!"

    "POWAH!" He coils back his fist and then slams it into the ground. There's a ripple of ki and energy before the ground under Mordred explodes with a HUGE blast of fire and energy, "GEYSAH!"

    "Hey! Are you okay?" He shouts as he waits for dust and smoke to clear.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Geralt of Rivia
    Cathedrals have a lot of windows; that tends to be a given. In a city inhabited primarily by large lizards and scaly cats, windows break often. Climbing a pile of treasure chests to the side, or a weapon rack, who knows, there's just so much here, Geralt can slip in through the side without trouble.

    The cathedral murals and windows (those that are intact, anyway) depict various dragon-related myths, the sort of stuff you expect out of them; there's a creation myth, clearly depicting a dragon creating the Multiverse. Another depicting a dragon destroying it; another a dragon governing over a darkened world of shadows and nightmares. It's all false, but they've built their ego up in here, isolated, with none to speak to but their kin.

    Tharus the Armless sleeps, the massive golden dragon resting on an altar befitting his size. Dozens and dozens of chains are wrapped around him-- some planted into its scale by harpoons. At their ends are the dismembered arms of, judging by the armor, knights of various orders. There must be at least fifty, invarious states of decay, from bone to fresh.

    It sleeps, literally resting on its laurels.

    ~~ Project MORDRED:
    Rankor's children try to stop the pilot and his Armour, but one by one they are cut out of the sky-- whole, or enough to send them down wounded regardless. The Siegebreaker's mouth glows with green electricity even as the blade and machine slams into him, manging only barely to avoid having both of his wings cut off in favor of having a large gash torn into its side.

    <YOU WOULD ATTACK OUR CITY UNPROVOKED; I NEED NO EXCUSE TO BURY YOU WITH ALL MEANS I HAVE!> A breath, and the corrosive lightning is unleashed, hopefully point blank! And hopefully before MORDRED pushes any further in with his blade.

    ~~ Shin Tokuyama
    The surprise of Shin just emulating her Prana Burst with only an instant of observation catches Mordred full-on, and she's blown back and slammed into the wall behind her. When the smoke clears, she can be seen grinning, wiping the thinnest streak of blood from under her mouth.

    "Oh man, NOW we're talking. So that's your style, huh? But how hard can you push it?" Her foot slams down again, cracking the ground, but not to send magic at Shin. She plunges her hands into the cracked marble, lifting out a huge chunk of it with her strength, and essentially tableflipping it towards the karate hobo. When in doubt, pick up boulder, throw boulder.

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     "......Nothing?" Raine whined, looking left and right. "Oh come on! The guy's gotta be huge! He can't hide in THAT many places, can he? I swear-"

     A giant mound of gold coins shifted slightly, and then suddenly Syrreth burst out from within, creating a cacophony of jingles as coins hit the ground. ...And also as the apparently serpentine creature dove forward, attempting to devour Raine whole.

     "WHOA HEY HEY HEY--" He panicked and then dove aside, tucking into a hastily timed roll. Once he recovered, he looked back to find Syrreth gone again. "Tch! Where the hell...?" He swept the area with his eyes quickly. "Damn, that mugshot was a total mislead!" He grumbled and held a hand forward. "Fragarach, it's time to party!"

     Fragarach appeared again, with an unimpressed frown. "Can you not utter such stupid things? Thanks." And then her form began to glow white. It was enveloped fully and then she shifted shape to that of an ornate sword, which Raine grabbed hold of and held at the ready.

     "Alright, Syrreth, my best buddy! Let's try that again!" Raine yelled to the air, eyeing multiple piles of coins, unsure of which the dragon would pop out from next.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Suddenly Valentha has reason to actually go on the defensive. When ice projectiles start forming she rapidly chants out another spell again. There's no circle and her lips move fast enough it's a wonder anyone can speak clearly like that. But such is the discipline of a wizard facing a hailstorm of ice spears.

    Radiant blue energy flies from Valentha's fingertips. Some of it forms into a thick suit of translucent glowing armor around her. The incoming spears and other hazards slam into it. Some of them pierce through, but greatly slowed. Her legs are pierced, her side is pierced. The clubs smash against it and the armor shimmers more and more weakly. But despite the pain, the blood, Valentha doesn't seem to be paying it much mine.

    A disciplined mind can shrug away all but the worst of pain, and remain focused.

    "You've been quite naughty out there, haven't you? It seems some want your head!" Though Val's tone doesn't sound conviced towards this idea.

    Secretly too, she probes the dragon's thoughts, if she at all can. Surface thougghts taht are in reach, to see how much of the reports might be true.

    "Just WHAT lead to that?!"

    Once the speech is finished with, she calls down the thunder and the whirlwind alike. Lightning forms above the white dragon and slams down hard, with a rumbling BOOM of thunder accompanying it. EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE INDOORS.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "I have a lot of styles! Travelling combat vagrant and all!" He brags a bit, adjusting his footing as she compliments him, "But the core style is the Geiha Genkou Ryu. That's what I le- WOAH!"
    That style roughly translates to 'Earth and Heaven Warcry Fist'. He didn't say much else because she did something he can't: Ripped a boulder out of the ground and heaved it. A massively impressive feat for him to behold and one that he has to adapt to fast. Few opponents have seen him dip into the more ki-centric aspects of his style, and up until now he mostly was fighting with regular martial arts.
    He shifts his stance, feet moving into a more solid footing as he brings one hand up palm facing the incoming boulder. He steps forward as his other hand comes up and darts forward. The boulder meets his fist and explodes into debris and stone around him, dust filling the air.
    Of course, such a defense was meant to centralize his damage to a single point, since he lacks the skill to negate such an attack. And so, as the dust clears, his left arm is hanging at his side and dripping blood, pretty messed up from punching a boulder like that. Right arm's still good, though, "Gotta get serious! Secret power!"
    "HUOAH! COBRA KAI TIMES TWO!" A swirl of red energy surrounds him swirling and rippling and creating a pretty cool wind. He dashes in towards Mordred with a new burst of speed. His legs are apparently still good too, since he's launching an agile flurry of kicks, his feet trailing red energy as he moves!
    Really, though? The Cobra Kai Times Two isn't an actually effective move. Shin's not actually reinforcing HIMSELF. It's one hundred percent him trying to razzle and dazzle by creating a cool looking light show that makes him trail swirls of excess energy when he punches or kicks. It doesn't benefit him at all.

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
"I listed the series of provocations that made me attack before I launched a single strike. If you need me to go over them again, I have no objections, but something tells me that your ideas of provocation are different from mine, foul beast." He went there. MORDRED called an intelligent dragon a foul beast. Of course he's about to get blasted by corrosive lightning from point blank, and he doesn't seem to be trying to dodge. That's because he's closing in, and while the corrosive damage forces the self-repair systems to essential self-destruct to compensate, and it leaves the entire ablative heat shielding destroyed with parts of the underlying armour severely weakened, his remaining systems are still operational.

And it just so happens that a big, heavy, insanely thin, sword is thrusted towards the very same maw that did that damage.

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     Some part of Geralt takes in the sight of all the murals with some muted fascination. He's not sure if any of it is true and, really, he's not the type to care. But still, some measure of him appreciates the sheer scale of the art, even if it wonders about the ego behind it.

     It seems many people have tried to kill this Tharus, and all of them have failed. They've tried, sure, but the lingering smell of burnt flesh tells Geralt that they weren't much of a match. Just roasted in their armor.

     He's going to have to think this through. A dragon that fierce, all it'd need is one blow to open him up. Geralt pauses and pops the cork on another potion - he drinks it down, only barely flinching as the concoction burns through his veins. Strength, brewed from werewolf extract.

     Geralt creeps towards the altar, quiet as a cat, silver sword in his hands. Hopefully, he'll be able to bury his blade in the beast's brain or heart before it wakes up.

     Hopefully.

Nox (546) has posed:
    With the wyverns dead, Nox is free to move onto more valuable targets, letting the noxines harvest the spoils of battle far below as he turns his attention towards the inner city. Before he chooses a spot however, a quarry comes to him instead, saving him the work of selection, if also denying the freedom of choice. "Mylant, wasn't it? Of some utterly pointless title." he says to himself more than anything else. "A dragon too lazy to care for its own young. Yes, I think you'll do nicely." He casually flicks the blood off of Aiguille, sweeping it upward in a perfect arc to aim dead on at the charging blue dragon, only for it to disappear the moment before he pills the trigger.

    Being someone who uses teleportation in combat himself, and being easily able to sense that energy signature, Nox is able to anticipate where the dragon ends up, throwing his hand over his head and expending some of his own magic to interpose a wall of luminescent, interlocking clockwork holography between him and the breah attack. The magical energy breaks on the barrier like a pressurized stream against a stone, surging around its edges as its face crackles with the force of the clash.

    Nox doesn't do the chump thing and wait for the torrent to abate. He knows where the dragon is, and so while it can't see him through its own stream of ice and lighting, he reorients his sword to point straight down the middle of the stream and retaliates by instantly firing a roaring, man-sized column of that unnatural, neon-cyan fire straight through its center; the lance of energy bubbling and screaming in mid-flight.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    Epicea strides through BORING halls.
    She meanders through stone STUPID walkways.

    She arrives at the newer door, kicks them open, and, readied for an EPIC ENCOUNTER, raises up a fluffy pillow! Nope. There's a massive pile of gold, and buried in it, is a rather annoying chromatic dragon. Dull fangs, and not much of the body shown.

    Epicea uninterestedly checks her bounty bill, holds it up for visual inspection besides the dragon's head in her vision. "Yep, that's you. I actually expected... different. Well, this is good too..." She yawns.

    "Yo." She raises a single hand, before having to squeegie a finger in her ear, that tone getting to her. "Yeah, yeah, let me help you out. Do you have... Like, a sceptre? A staff? Some sort of really posh stick around here? I need it to... leverage... you out of that pile. You're really stuck in there. A whole millennia, huh?"

    She paces around the room, looking for the thing she described, hopefully with a nice big scepter-head. With some weight to it!

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Raine Arland
    If anything, a beast the size of Syrreth can't hide. Its every slither in the gold coins sends waves across the gold, tremors that can be felt and traced. As large as the area is, paying attention to the shifts of the treasure piles isn't hard.

    There's a rattle, a gem falling off its pile of gold, and Syrreth bursts out again, repeating the maneuver. It doesn't seem to have arms, upon further inspection; truly closer to a snake than a dragon, but that's some varieties of wyrms for you.

    OMNOMNOM Raine?

    ~~ Valentha Summers
    Nerroth Icebreath's thoughts are haughty as hell; a king he thinks himself, a god, whose purpose for existing is to rule. Every other ten years he would venture out and subdue a kingdom, make them worship him for lack of knowing better, and leave when he grew bored of it, generally after killing everyone if it came down to it. And he thinks no differently here, even amidst Elites.

    <MY BIRTHRIGHT, AND THAT OF ALL DRAGONS.> it answers.

    But thunder and lightning pelt it, still caught in the net and grounded. Nerroth writhes in pain, with such ferocity he manages to lunge himself forward JUST close enough to try and swipe with one of its clawed 'hands', and then follow with a tail swipe. It seems to be near the end of its rope.

    ~~ Shin Tokuyama
    "Cobra what."
    Kick'd. Repeatedly. Mordred's body slams into the wall again, and the armor, rather than being just dented, is showing real signs of being worked into caving in painfully, especially around the chest. The only respite Mordred has is that Shin's putting a lot of emphasis on being showy; she's kind of the opposite. With red light building up around one hand, she suddenly reaches out, trying to grab Shin's foot before it can connect its hundredth blow; and rather than keep him still, she tugs.

    Given any operating room at all she's going to use the vagrant like a bludgeon against the wall. You know, gently. Not lethally. That's a lot of wriggle room. Failing catching him, she should at least force him back from her attempt, and she can launch the burst of prana out of her hand towards him. Poor man's rocket fist.

    ~~ Project MORDRED:
    Mordred is right, dragons don't typically consider provocation in the same light humans do. THEY EXPERIENCE TIME DIFFERENTLY, IT IS JUSTIFICATION FOR HEINOUS ACTS. Hush.

    Nonetheless, MORDRED drives forward, and with a clean strike, he cuts Rankor the Siegebreaker's jaw open. The beast falls to the ground below, crashing into the gold, slain. As its blood taints the treasure, its remaining children flee.

    ~~ Geralt of Rivia:
    Through the use of shady potions of brews, the Witcher creeps closer and closer to the sleeping beast; it would not wake, so confident in its guards and home. Geralt has his choice of opportunity targets, the eyes most obvious of one. Given its size, getting under it to reach the heart would be hard. Wherever he does choose to pierce, he cuts deep, Tharus waking with a thunderous scream of pain.

    The strike is assuredly lethal-- but lethal doesn't mean instantaneous. Off-balance, with a blade through either eye, skull or chest, the golden dragon takes a deep breath, and then unleashes a cone of red hot plasma through the cathedral, rather than boring flame.

    It bleeds, and it cannot aim.
    Truthfully, it would struggle to even keep track of the Witcher if he were to move too quickly. Fifty dead knights' arms and chains might armor the beast, but it wouldn't be fifty-one today.

Project MORDRED (804) has posed:
His foe vanquished, MORDRED raises his bloody sword in the approximate direction of the heavens. "Justice has been served, may your children ever remember the cost you paid for their inheritance." And since he's in no position to start a fresh fight, MORDRED starts to leave, shouting as he passes, "Sir Me, thank you for letting me me take part in this challenge."

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Nox:
    <WHEN YOU GIVE BIRTH TO A BROOD OF A THOUSAND, YOU MAY JUDGE ME, HUMAN!>
    Alright well that answers that, really.

    Mylant the Broodmother's breath attack so shielded, she lost sight of the clockmaster in the bright clash of magic, and his beam of light crashed straight into her. It pierces through completely; a queen is rarely fit for battle, despite what the game of chess would try to sell you.

    Heavily weakened, possibly mortally wounded, Mylant crashes onto a stone platform, struggling to remain on all four of her legs. She roars, evidently meaning to gather her brood up. Now would be a good time to silence her, lest she get that done.

    ~~ Epicea Chelid
    Smallfang the Annoying (so called because his teeth, claws and fangs are hilariously small compared to his size, and he also can't really do anything but bark with his annoying voice) screeches something, translating loosely to: <I HAVE A LOT OF STAVES. SOME OF THEM BELONGED TO ROYALTY I GUESS. LOOK AROUND.>

    Amidst the gold and gems are swords, cups, plates, chain shirts, basically everything you'd find a good dragon's hoard. A kingly scepter or five are certainly to be found, or even just a peasant's quarterstaff that's had a layer of gold molten on top of it.

    ~~ Project MORDRED:
    Girl!Mordred will give Male!Mordred a thumb up as soon as she has a moment to spare from Shin holding her attention.

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     Okay, Raine definitely saw that one coming this time. He grinned as his target burst out from another pile of riches. "There you are!" And without bothering to dodge, Raine angled his sword forward, holding it with both hands...and then jumped forward.

     He wasn't going to...yes, yes he was.

     "You want something to eat? Then chew on this!" With blade outstretched, Raine aimed to meet Syrreth head on and pierce through it's body. To help his cause, a furious plume of red magical energy blossomed out from the tip of his blade, enveloping him entirely in his charge.

     ...He's done dumber.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    Shin is absolutely bludgeoned into the wall, his back slamming into it with a tremendous amount of force. He lets out a cry of pain as his back hits it, and Mordred can tell he at least has some real good damage soaking ability. Not amazing, but enough that her hits aren't gonna kill him.
    When he can finally wrestle himself free from her grasp and get some distance, he finds a Prana-Rocket (Procket) Punch that slams him in the gut and sends him sliding back. He slouches over a bit and skids to a halt, coughing a few times and wiping a good stream of blood from his mouth after all those big impacts. He lifts his hands up and grins.
    "Okay. So I know I'm not allowed to say you're a babe. We established that," Shin notes, reminding her that he's respecting her rules, "But if I were to say that if there was a hypothetical third girl, completely separate from this situation, but who looked like you and had your abilities and attitude, and if I said THAT hypothetical girl was hot, would you still be offended by the tangential compliment?" He has no attack, taking a few moments to catch his breath and breath as he inspects his stance. The left arm, broken as it is, doesn't stay up long before falling down. The right arm is still up and in a defensive position.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Telepathy cannot peruse memories, but what flashes of thoughts surrounding the events Val picks up, stoked by trying to FORCE Nerroth to actively thinking about it, is not pleasing whatsoever.

    Valentha fixes the rageful dragon with a glare filled with the ferocity of a mind that's lived centuries. There's something UNSETTLING about it. Something deep and furious. A human might well flinch and lose all sense of themselves. A dragon? Perhaps not, but they'd never be expecting such a look from a human... right?

    There's another burst of magic and some wild gestures, but it doesn't quite seem like the previous spells. Something's odd about it, but...

    Instead of standing in one place, she rushes INTo the claw swipe and drives an elbow right into the dragon's palm. This SHOULD do nothing, but instead...

    Instead, the blow's cleanly absorbed with a show of impossible strength. The tail swipe slams into her side hard, nearly bowling her over. Were she truly human that would've knocked the wind out of her, perhaps crushed a rib. Or even blown her in two.

    But instead she simply coughs out a little blood, then whips out the revolver again. Dozens of shots fly from it for Nerroth's head. Never mind that it should've had only six bullets, she just KEEPS SHOOTING! Ripple after ripple.

    "Dragons, gods? A pity, you must've grown up without any moral fiber in your diet!"

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     Geralt doesn't hesitate - above all else, the man is a professional. Gripping his silver blade in both hands, Geralt drives it deep into Tharus's eyesocket and into the brain behind. Stronger than most with a blade made to kill monsters, all heightened by mystical alchemy, the blow should bite deep. With a shout, Geralt /twists/ his hands and the blade and he leaps clear, dragging his sword free as he does.

     Tharus awakens, blind and angry and lethally wounded. All there's to do is to survive and let the wound do the beast in. Making an arcane gesture with one hand, Geralt makes the sign of protection, creating a orange shell around himself to absorb the dragon's wrath.

     And then he's running, trying to put something between him and the mortally-wounded dragon.

Nox (546) has posed:
    Mylant has failed to help Nox's opinion on dragons. Worse still, she doesn't seem to have anything interesting or useful to say, and she certainly isn't, personally at least, an opponent capable of fighting at or above his level. That might change were she to summon her full brood, but Nox isn't about to give her the chance, the moment she rears back her head, he flashes through space, disappearing with a flickering, ghostly blue afterimage and apparating with the same directly in front of the wounded dragon. Without preamble, he plunges his blade straight through her throat, deliberately aiming for the vocal chords. He presses until the crossguard is right up against her scales, and his mask is less than a foot away from her face. So positioned, he hisses something through the metallic reverb of his helmet, too quiet for anyone but the soon-to-be deceased broodmother to hear.

    "If you had a thousand children, then you should have become a thousand times the parent. I won't hear your worthless excuses." With that, he twists the sword in his grip and yanks it out sideways through Mylant's neck, probably severing some important arteries, even if she's too large for him to hit her spine. He doesn't even wait to see if her heart stops beating before calling in the noxines to blanket her body. He stands on guard to see if she'll attack again, or if some of her children had heard her and are about to come running, but ultimately he has no compunctions about simply letting the drones harvest her alive.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Raine Arland
    One can never fault a swordsman for being too dramatic. Leaping into the wyrm's mouth with his blade outstretched, and releasing magic at that, Raine cuts through the inner, weaker flesh of the 'dragon', piercing through and dragging the blade along. Before long he's out the 'back' of the beast, landing atop gold coins, covered in blood. But alive!

    Syrreth the Ruthless, though, well. The large bisected beast slams onto his pile of gold, rather dead.

    ~~ Shin Tokuyama
    It's probably lucky for Shin that Mordred's been working on her temper, or that'd likely have tested her patience to its limits. She sighs, giving a dismissing wave of one hand. "Fine, fine. Compliment taken. You're pretty surprising yourself. So you just pick shit up after seeing it done once, swing it into your own personal style? Must be freaking handy at times."

    ~~ Valentha Summers
    Between having one of its palm broken, or at least sufficiently battered something definitely CRACKED in there, and being pelted by more shots from the revolver, it isn't long before Nerroth Icebreath is more Nerroth the Unconscious. There's always the opportunity to just kill him, but since Valentha didn't go out of her way to, capture is an option. The bill certainly didn't say he needed to be dead.

    ~~ Geralt of Rivia
    In the cathedral, it's not obstacles you'll be lacking. Not only the dragon's hoard of objects, armors and weapons, but the solid metal pews, altars or even pillars of the building all offer mostly suitable protection from the plasma breath combined with magic.

    Before long, the ferocity of the breathing slows, and slows, until the glowing hot 'flames' die, and Tharus falls to the cathedral floor, shaking its foundation. The guards peek inside, draconic heads communicating a look of 'well, fuck this' before they fly off.

    ~~ Nox:
    Nox puts a sword in Mylant's throat.
    Her one weakness. We'll never know how he knew.

    The gurgles and roar attempt to answer Nox's snark and answer, but instead just fail to produce worthwhile words. The blue dragon crashes to the ground, as the small mechanoflies swarm in to feast on the body's magic. There's enough to make Nox happy for a while here, especially if he helps himself to the others' kills too.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "Woohoo! Compliment taken!" Shin says, stopping his stance to reach into his breast pocket. He writes down a note for having met Mordred in his book. It's probably best she not see what he wrote, though. 'Mordred - Fight Buddy, Fourth Love Interest?'
    A note just below it: 'Still sussing out that field. One confirmed, three unknown.'
    Gotta keep the people he meets all nice at catalogued. He snaps the small notebook shut and puts it into his suit coat again, "Uh..." He stops to wipe some blood from his mouth, "Sorta how it works. I'm kind of a prodigy. I'm on a journey for TOTAL MARTIAL ARTS MASTERY! " He shouts that last part, "And to find out my story. So I learn stuff. Got the Core Geiha Genkou Ryu, some boxing, taekwondo, judo. Lots of regular martial arts. Some of it takes a few times worth of watching, or weeks of training, but projecting Ki was something I could already do. I just... tweaked it a bit and took inspiration from you," He laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head.
    "Really, though. You're the awesome one! That good unarmed! Some day, I'd love to see you fight with a sword," He grins, taking a more relaxed stance and looking around a bit.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    Epicea finds a pair of FUZZY POINTY-EARMUFFS fall out of her inventory, clattering into the huge pile of GOLD, and with a quiet 'sah-weeet' grabs them and puts them on, feeling much better about not having to listening to SMALLFANG'S HORRIBLE VOICE. With wonderful fuzzy silence around her ears, she wanders around, hefting up staves here and there and giving them experimental swings. Not enough heft, hollow end, poorly balanced... Most of the staves are just that - lame and expensive. No value as weapons!

    Then she finds the peasant's staff, capped with a nice big ball of gold. Pretty much a mace, at that point.

    But still a staff! She can work with that. Hefting the big capped stick, she heads up to the dragon again. "Ok. I'm ready." She drawls, shouldering the staff.

    Then she rears it up and swings it against Smallfang's head, aiming to brain him and either stun or seriously concuss the dragon. She swings a few more times to really get the dragon good and staved in. Maybe it survived! She's got a ticket for that too.

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     And that stupid gambit actually worked. ...Albeit very, very messily. Raine emerged from the back of the beast, drenched in blood. "....Okay maybe I didn't think this through that well. Ugh! It smells like crap!" He groaned, inspecting himself. Well, that's what happens when you kill something from the inside out. typically.

     "Oh god, the smell! The smell!" He whined, releasing his sword, which began to float into the air of its own accord. "Fragarach! Water spell, water spell quick!"

     The sword transformed back into the white figure and she was covered in blood as well, having previous been the weapon that killed it. "I can't believe you did something to utterly stupid! Have you lost your mind?" She huffed and raised an arm, magic energy building around her. A large bubble of water formed above them, floating still for a moment before it descended, crashing down into them. Usually meant to be an offensive spell, but she'd dialed the power back a bit.

     "Ah yes! Sweet aquatic refuge!" The young man wiped his face and hair of blood at the very least. Nothing to be done about clothes though. Once that crisis was taken care of, Raine finally looked over towards where he'd seen Syrreth crash. "....Yep. He's dead." One look left, and then right, and then he scuttled over to his corpse, grinning as he began to pry off scales, fangs, whatever he could remove. "These might come in useful later! Fragarach, grab as much gold and gems as you can!"

     ...And the moment the fight's over, they stoop to thievery.

Geralt of Rivia (828) has posed:
     On the ground, behind one of the melted pews, Geralt lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Tharus is slain and he's still one one piece - that's all he wants.
         He grips his blade once again as the guards investigate and, again, is quite relieved when they book it. He's not sure he has the energy to take on another - he's not a young man anymore.

     Geralt rises, sheathing his silver sword and drawing a carving knife from his belt. There's some sadness in this, the loss of some intelligent beast - but it was a monster and it had to be done.

     With his knife out, Geralt begins cutting away at the scaled neck of the great beast, taking it head. A trophy, yes, but more importantly - proof of a job completed.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Down goes Nerroth. Valentha pushes the offending tail away, wincing slightly. THAT DID SMART, and she's been impaled here and there despite the efforts to put up a barrier.

    But she pays the fallen dragon little mind, instead strolling easy-as-you-please towards the nearest pile of LOOT.

    And promptly starts just SCOOPING IT INTO SACKS. Priority's given to gemstones and anything that's -not- just raw currency, but she makes sure to grab one goodly sack of gold too.

    What must be hundreds of pounds of it, easily. Yet she ties these to loops on her pants and jacket with ease.

    MORE sacks are stuffed in her hoverbike's cargo compartments.

    In the end, she emerges from the gates with her hovercycle literally being dragged by a chain in one hand, and NERROTH WITH HER OTHER HAND, BY THE TAIL.

    It's not easy going. She has to heave and ho, but the white dragon does budge until she's gotten him past the gates where Shin and Mordred are sparring.

    "You were SAYING?" The blonde woman grins impishly at Mordred, dropping the great tail and adopting a very laid back air about the whole procession. "Where do they want him?"

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Shin Tokuyama
    It's probably for the best Mordred can't see his journal.
    "Total? Ugh, good luck with that. Probably as many martial arts styles as there's people out there, so. Got a god damn long road ahead of you. Probably a fun one though, pickin' fights for shits and giggles." Not one she'd mind, she thinks. It'd depend on a lot of stuff.
    "Maybe. I've got more than one, depends on my mood which I use." And whether or not the bloodthirsty one is awake. Mordred takes a look inside the mountain, frowning. "Aww, damnit, we missed all the excitement. Now where am I going to get a dragon tongue to slap shitty dragons with when they talk big and don't deliver?"

    ~~ Epicea Chelid
    <OW. STOP. NO. STOP THAT. OW. HEY THAT'S. OW! NOT FAIR. OW.>
    The great prismatic dragon, for all its scales shine like a rainbow and no doubt have the most value of anything in this room, can't do anything but complain in the most irritable of voices humanly possible. And eventually through repeated blows, the great dragon suffers from a concussion.

    He's less unconscious and more rambling about insane stuff now. Apples. It's a rant about apples right now. No, wait, it's spoons. He's complaining there are no dragon-sized spoons. Also his tail has been itching for like fifty years and he's hungry since peasants stopped sacrificing themselves to him.

    Now it's trains.

    ~~ Raine Arland
    Gold, gems, barely magical swords and suits of armor, dinnerware, offerings. There is a lot of stuff all around for looting, depending on the size of the man's pockets. The dragon's scales, blood or organs are no doubt a decent prize too.

    ~~ Sieg
    Though the boy has mostly gone idle, Mordred will go out of her way to retrieve huge chunks of dragon for him. A heart, scales, fangs, teeth, claws, tailtip, eyes. Anything that might have decent or semi-decent value for magecraft. Unfortunately she's not very delicate about it and likely to get blood all over Sieg when she hands him the prizes.

    ~~ Geralt of Rivia
    That's a huge head, but where there's a will there's a way. The beast is covered in chains after all. Chains are useful to drag a giant dragon ahead back with you. Either way, his killing feat will find him unopposed once he walks out, other dragons smarter than to pick a fight with the group of dragonslayers at this point.

    ~~ Valentha Summers
    Loot and carnage is always the name of the game.
    Mordred glances at the girl, crossing her arms. "Well, that's doing alright. Sure, you pass. Uh, nowhere. All yours. I didn't actually need anything, I was just bored. I'll take its tongue, though, if you want. I REALLY want a dragon tongue. Gonna need to non-decay spells for it too, hrm." Oh well, that can come later.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Cue Valenth making a really weird face. "Yuck. Whatever for?" It's not as if she doesn't have any idea.

    But she's going to fake having none!

Nox (546) has posed:
    With business concluding for pretty much everyone else, Nox starts wrapping up. The front half of the cave and parts of the city are filled with computerized chittering and chirping as the glittering swarms stream in, crawling over the dead dragons like flies on a carcass. Well, perhaps almost exactly like that incredibly literal analogy. It isn't long before the air is filled with little points of blue light racing back and forth, like especially purposeful and well organized fireflies. The mechanical bugs occasionally stop to pop little flashes of light from their shutter eyes, taking pictures of the dead bounties as proof for later, in case someone actually needs to claim them after their corpses have been withered into husks once the valuable parts have been stripped out of them. He teleports back to the entrance, eying Mordred and Shin. "I was wondering what was keeping you."

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Valentha Summers
    "I know a couple of dragons who are huge egomaniac assholes about themselves and their species. Next time they do that shit in person I want to slap 'em behind the head with a dismembered dragon tongue. It's gonna be hi-la-rious," Mordred answers with a wide grin.

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ~~ Nox
    Nothing will oppose the glowing mechanoflies, though it's worth nothing the mountain still has hundreds of dragons around-- granted, most of them not even half as noteworthy as those that were just completely butchered. So 'threat' is a very relative term. They eye, they make angry noises, but they don't dare strike. Some return to sleep; some simply don't care. Like humans, having so many of them in one place means they don't all get along. There might just be those dragons who are happy you guys did what you did!

    To Nox, Mordred just jerks a thumb back towards Shin. "He wanted to brawl, he's pretty good. Woulda been really shitty not to oblige him."

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Or, perhaps Val THOUGHT she knew what the answer might be. The wide-eyed, taken aback look that announcement garners is genuine.

    Valentha blinks, and adjusts her jacket. Some of the dangling sacks jingle. "Well," she begins, having difficulty of finding words, "Unique."

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    With the dragon concussed, Epicea discards her sturdy beatin' stick and moves up to the concussed dragon's face, taking more pillows out - one in each fist. She then proceeds to jam them in nose-holes, firmly plugging them up. Then, with her blissfully quiet earmuffs of not-hearing-this-asshole prattle, she jams up his throat with a surfiet of thick cushions, before sitting down on his nose and getting out her phone, starting up some beepy game as her eyes droop. "Yep. That's right. Just take a little forever-nap, and everything will work out great for everyone."

    She can wait. She's got time.

Nox (546) has posed:
    "I see." Nox says in a tone that doesn't especially indicate one thing or another. He looks to Shin a second time with a loud, mechanical tick. "Well, I'm glad it was a worthwhile use of your time. If you need the spending money, I seem to have killed one of the bounty dragons. I have no use for gold coins." The noxines come back from the mouth of the cave, converging back into dense streams which swerve around him and dive into shimmering portals that open ahead of them, like circular panes of rippling, frosted glass. The sound of buzzing wings drowns out everything else for a few seconds before they close. As Valentha speaks up, he moves to face her, but rather than bothering to turn all the way around, he teleports on the spot, reappearing in exactly the same place but facing a different direction. It's a little jarring. "Unfortunately, fanatical racial patriotism seems to be an all-time favourite of dragons all around the multiverse. I think a little humility would do them good, personally."

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    Shin pops his back a bit. That broken arm is already getting lifted up again and flexed, so that shows you how fast he can recover sometimes, even if it's still pretty busted up, "Long path, yeah. But it feels like my thing. There's a lot of people that talk about wanting to be the strongest, wanting to be the best, I know. Hear em all the time."
    He ponders, grinning at the knight, "It's a good way to meet badasses, though. Allenby's been fun to be around, plus that Saying Girl bothers me, and uhh..." He blanks for a moment, "Kre... Chri-stin-tia?" He stumbles over Krezentia's name. He shakes his head, "Anyway, shit! Sorry!" He says to both Nox and to MOrdred, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, "Saw a total badass, got sidetracked with a brawl. Didn't mean to keep you from getting your dragon tongue on."
    He awkwardly rocks on his feet, studying Nox. Dude seemed conceptually yoked, but in a way that probably meant he didn't wanna funsies-fight. So Shin just gives him a polite nod, noting to him about dragons, "That seems to be a Western Dragon thing. The uh... weird racial patriotism and superiority. Eastern Dragons, you don't hear much about. Not a lot."

Raine Arland (604) has posed:
     After poaching as much as he physically could, Raine and Fragarach made their way back up top, having to bat away a few minor wrms and drakes in the process, but nothing quite as dangerous as SYRRETH THE RUTHLESS.

     He wound up chuckling. "Syrreth the Ruthless...oh man that name is going to have me laughing for days."

     Eventually he'd made it back up to spy a veritable swarm of dragon corpses. "....Uh...wow. You guys were busy up here, weren't you?" He smirked after commenting such, and stepped forward. "Annnnnd the dude in the suit is still fighting her. Wow." He slowed to stop, deciding to spectate. Fragarach silently floated to a stop as well, arching a brow curiously at this display.

Valentha Summers (834) has posed:
    Slightly taken by surprise at the sudden teleport, Valentha flinches, but fixes both eyes on Nox fearlessly. An imposing man or not, she doesn't seem to fear him in the least, no matter how much a fish out of water this young woman seems to be in this crowd. "The nail that sticks out will be hammered. There's plenty in Lazlo far more upstanding than this." She shrugs helplessly, as if this mess just couldn't be helped. Still showing the bubbly smile too!

Mordred (12) has posed:
    ALL IN ALL:

    Dead durrgons: Rankor the Siegebreaker, Tharus the Armless, Syrreth the Ruthless, Smallfang the Annoying, Nerroth Icebreath, Mylant the Broodmother, about fifteen wyverns and drakes, about ten humanoid half-dragon soldiers.

    Loot: If you could reasonably justify it being in a massive dragon hoard, it's in there. This includes scales, organs, body parts, whole corpses or just harvested magical energy from the dragon corpses. There's probably some decent-ish +1 weapons or suits of armor in there, but nothing incredible. Quality of life baubles like magic rings that produce light or minor level 0-ish spell effects, that sort of haul. Anything more major may need an upgrade app if it's not covered by your powers already!

    Also cash from turning in the bounties. And all the gold coins you can carry. That one's kind of a given already given the hoard(s) and all.

    Mission: pillowing success.

Epicea Chelid (787) has posed:
    With the dragon dead, and Epicea's game coming to a sad blee-dooo, she slides off the chromatic dragon and down the pile of gold coins, to look at her SWEETL00T.

    With one massive 'zoit', the entire pile of coins rapid file into her sylladex, going chunks at a time and then consolidating into one giant pile of inventory space.

    STUFF GET!:
        >OBSCENE PILE OF GOLD COINS
        >+1 PILE
        >CHROMATIC DRAGON CORPSE

    "Cool." Epicea notes, before getting some rasberry jam and lightly flicking it on herself and smearing some on her cheek.

    Then she heads back, looking 'bloody' but smelling pretty sweet and jam-y.

    "Yo. Back from kicking all the ass, it was pretty epic...ea. Just append 'Dragonslayer' to my list of titles. Man, everything worked out great, yeah?"

    And nothing of value happened that day.

Shin Tokuyama (756) has posed:
    "Wow! If I'm appending Dragonslayer to your titles..." Shin stops and looks over to Epicea as she returns, "That means that, if I combine all the titles I know you as..."
    He puts a finger to his chin and thinks for a long moment, "It's... only Dragonslayer."
    He holds out one finger to her, "One title. I only know the one. Your name would be two, but right now just one."