4689/Contract of the Gods' Forge - Crystal

Contract of the Gods' Forge - Crystal
Date of Scene:	16 October 2016
Location:	Great Painting of Ariamis <PoA>
Synopsis:	The darkest depths of Seath's basement are explored. The living failures are found, as is the shiny shiny.
Cast of Characters:	Priscilla, 1052, Reiji Arisu, Sanary Rondel, Staren, Tomoe

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Priscilla has posed:
    Though the main areas of the Royal Archives -- formally involving the now-deceased Duke in the title -- have been well cleared, well restored, and filled with signs of frequent use and living by the scholars and sorcerers that flow constantly in and out, there are many levels deep beneath the already massively vertical and high-vaulted tower on the mountain.

    Some of them are currently accessible to sufficiently qualified researchers and magic users, comprising an entire second tower's height straight down, under constant low, dark, blueish lights, where every inch of every wall is occupied with books far too large to be for people to read, and the gearworks that maneuver the complex stair and elevator systems above protrude all the way down.

    Others are still not. Down at the very base, where bars start to appear ominously in the walls, a contingent of sorcerers that looks more like a camp has apparently finished their work, and said work apparently requires Priscilla's sword Moonlight, forged out of the soul of the previous owner of the Archives who had filled and sealed these strange locations. A full week of unsealing work has been done on what is assuredly a dangerous, further sub-level, and none of them seem to be eager to go any further, packing up and trudging back up the excessively tall spiral staircase in a hurry.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Letty might not be entirely up on the history of Anor Londo and the Archives, but what she /does/ know is that the large lady with the fuzzy tail needs adventurers to explore a dangerous section of the Archives.

Color the elf interested! She's all but bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, checking out her arrows and bow, and generally being full of nervous elfin energy. Her twintails bob and sway as she peers over the shoulder of one of the sorcerers just before they flee.

"Oh, this is going to be so exciting! Maybe we'll find an amazing magic sword, or bow! Okay, okay...I've got rope, torches, anti-venom, a collapsable pole..." Yup, she's checking her pack too. Unlike those fleeing sorcerers, this young elf seems more than ready to get to work. It's an adventurer's calling, after all.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    It's been a while since Reiji's been in here-- though the Archives themselves are still all too familiar to him. He did, after all, spend weeks in here preparing for the ritual that restored the world. As dangerous as this particular branch of the archives might be, the architecture is unmistakably the same vaulted library that expands through the rest of the structure.

Still, no reason to be unprepared about all this.

    Reiji puffs a small cloud of blue-grey smoke out of the corner of his mouth, a thoroughly smoked cigarette burning through its final dregs tucked between his teeth. He's come in full regalia, red body armor covering all of his most vital parts. A rack full of weapons clatters in his left hand as he stares off the railing of a stairway and down into the depths of the mountain.

"Why does it seem like the most dangerous things in Lordran are always underground?" Maybe it's because deeper means older? Hmm.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
Poking around in Lordran has been something of a mixed bag for Sanary. On one hand, fighting drakes and fixing a giant's eye! On the other hand, deathtrap gauntlets and giant libraries full of things that make her feel stupid! Still, it couldn't be /that/ hard trying to find a few books from the Archives for the Fangs, could it?

     "I guess. Mm... Just what kinda Archives are these supposed to be, anyway? Ain't it supposed to just be books and...?" She trails off while not making it particularly clear whether she's responding to Letty or Reiji, instead focusing on not bumping into anyone in their haste to leave even as the group heads in deeper. The healer's packed her usual gunaxe and a heavy shield today, the latter slung over her back and backpack. Just how many books is she being tasked with grabbing?

     "Nice change of pace from the stuff above ground, at least. Don't gotta worry about anythin' with wings that way."

Staren has posed:
    It's certainly been awhile since Staren was last here. After nearly getting killed last time, he has somehow never bothered to return to this place... Until now. This time, he has his armor (lesson learned, there) but as he rides the elevator down and sees how many lower levels there were, a quiet 'wow.' escapes his lips.

    He follows the others, not seeming overly concerned that Confeds are here. Lordran missions are a place of truce, after all.

    "Kalameet was aboveground. Flying in the air, actually." he replies to Reiji.

Tomoe has posed:
Sheena better known as Tomoe to the Multiverse at large had once more come to this world. She was taking a moment to look over the Royal Archives to enjoy the view. Without death traps, or hordes of undead hunting her down. It was nice and the place was grand and being restored had made it even more so. She was just enjoying the view for a moment but she would not delay too long after all she had work to do here. She would soon be joining up with every one else. Letty was new to Tomoe and she smiled a bit at her.

"This place looks so much better now that it's been restored. I went through here before it was nightmare to deal with. Hey Reiji and that could be it. " I don't honestly know."

Sanary gets a bit of a look for a moment but a simple nod. Hey anyone coming here is helping Priscilla our and she doubts they'd pull anything.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla withdraws Moonlight from the last, unwinding characters of the double door gateway's probably dizzyingly complex seal, disintegrating fully in a few more seconds. The glow of the blade fades from its ghostly, cerulean blaze to its more usual soft, nighttime glow as she puts it away. She even does the kind work of pushing the massive, iron shod doorway open, so as to prevent people from having to group up and strain with it. It is, after all, sized for its former owner.

    "I wouldst certainly mind not if thou were to find more ample compensation for thine willingness today, but do recall what thou art here for the explicit purpose of recovering. There is sadly no explicit description of the Ember itself, but even strange as it may be, it shouldst at the least retain the same functional form as others." She makes gestures with her hands to indicate a cubic object the size of a minifridge. To Reiji, she says "In this instance, because it was desired to be well-hidden, though I cannot imagine it to be any worse than the danger that once roosted in the observatory."

    Inevitably, if anyone wants to get anything done, they must proceed through the doorway. Once they do, they immediately meet with a very flat, very wide, and very long staircase, almost like a ramp with how its broad descent makes the steps appear as if they almost aren't there. The ambient lighting plunges to almost nothing -- a trivial inconvenience for a blind creature anyways -- and retains only the faintest of its nonsensical, deep blue hue.

    The sublevels appear to be arranged somewhat like the sub-tower above them, as a deep, vertical, cylindrical shaft, but free space is at a premium, as the floors are a stacked series of wide rings that circle around each arbitrary height, with only ladders up and down, and a hole just wide enough to drop a helicopter through in the middle.

    There are books here of course; utterly preposterous things the size of an entire man or larger, bound to shelves in wrought chains and visible seals, some of which seem to actively struggle against them. A few have been left scattered on the floor, as if recently used, pages open, rendering themselves as entire carpets on their own. There are also a much greater number of alcoves between them, all of them even more heavily barred than above in addition to being more frequent. Spare parts to some kind of gargantuan machine lie haphazardly about on several levels, and they contribute to the combined echo of unsettling squealing, whispering, weeping, burping and gurgling noises below, audible over a low, vertigo-inducing, binaural whine.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Twin elven arms cross. She lets out a little pout. "I...I haven't forgotten! One coal for the big blacksmith and his friend!" Protests Letty, before peeking through the now open door. She quickly lights a torch and holds it up as she steps forward through the door, casting light on that blue-hued stairway down.

And down they go, the elf happily taking up scouting position. Though she doesn't have her bow drawn, she has her hand on the thing, ready to relinquish the torch at any moment.

The noises below as the get deeper chill the young elf's bones, but she keeps following down. Occasionally, she'll peek into the barred alcoves, seeking any sign of coals, creatures prowling, or treasure in general! Luckily she's brought her lockpicks today.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
"It's not like a... Real ember, is it? 'cause that'd be kinda hard to pick up unless..." Sanary squints at Priscilla briefly as she pantomimes the shape and size of their target, letting out a half-whistle soon enough after that. "Big for somethin with that name, then... Huh. How big are the books, then?"

     Luckily for Sanary, that's answered for her once she actually catches sight of a few! She gawks at the size of the massive spines and carpet-like pages, staring in disbelief at the absurdity of it all. How's she even supposed to carry one of those back?! She sighs lightly and keeps heading down the staircase, peeking down each time before jumping just to make sure she's not plummeting into a hole. That shield comes forward soon after those noises start becoming more audible, though, and the healer even starts conjuring up floating spike balls ready for hurling as they descend further.

     Perhaps tellingly, though, she's avoiding looking directly at Tomoe and making sure her hat's on firmly to keep her head covered. There's probably nothing significant about that, nope.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    "Well, if Seath wanted this place hidden, he sure did a good job of it," Reiji answers as they begin moving ever further downward. "It looks like not even Lezard has been down this way, and he practically runs the Archives anymore," the exorcist observes, idly peering at the oversized tomes stacked on the shelves.

    As the dark sets in, Reiji's eyes narrow ever so slightly, the smoldering ash at the tip of his cigarette casting a faint halo of light around his head. Not that that's nearly enough to see by. That elf raises a torch, but just having one seems like a bad plan-- and so Reiji unsheathes one of his swords. Karin's blade catches fire, lighting another torch to push back against the encroaching gloom.

But then... There's something else down here, isn't there?

"What is that noise?" Reiji murmurs. "Priscilla, do you have any idea?"

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe watches Priscilla make use of Moonlight for a moment he looks at the blade as it does it thing and she looks at her friend.

"Hey I'm just here to help. I did promise you my aid as long as I was able didn't I?"

She notes to Priscilla and she falls in step with the party. She'll head on through into the next room and will be trying to make her way forward she does pause to chant a short spell, gold runes dance about her and a sphere of light appears at her shoulder.

"Geeeze I forgot how this place was."

She's going to fan out and start to look about she also doesn't seem to make much note of Sanary she's too busy on starting her search here.

"Noise? Oh please tell me this place has been fully cleared out..."

Priscilla has posed:
    As what seems like it is a minority occurrence, no oppressive, supernatural darkness bears down on the twin torches, nor even Reiji's cigarette, and attempts to snuff them out. This is just regular-type darkness, though certainly intimidating enough with the distance of the ceiling and bottom floor lying so far away and deep in impenetrable shadow. The light cast outwards reveals oddly pearlescent, checkered diamond tiles, and old brass-gold and tarnished silver gilding on every railing and ladder rung.

    It lights up the contents of the giant books as well, several of them in peoples' collective ways and spanning the entire path, scrawled top to bottom with sigils even more arcane-looking than the gothic/runic marks used as the universal language. It seems almost like it'd be a bad idea to tread on the paper, despite the fact there is no way they aren't magically protected. They seem ridiculous, until one remembers once again who they were intended to be handled by.

    Priscilla says- oh. Priscilla's not here. Well she could be invisible but . . . no she's probably not here. At all. It's damn difficult to tell where she goes when one isn't looking directly at her (and even then . . .). Why hadn't she followed anyone when she technically owns the place? It's her dad's basement. Her crazy dad's scary basement that probably featured somewhere in her childhood. Those are pretty well known for spooking even adults coming back to their home of birth.

    It's not easy to criticize either, once Letty makes the mistake of bringing her torch near one of the alcoves. Logically, something is contained within, but what slams itself up against the bars is beyond easy description. Despite appearing to be the size of a small horse, the creature looks like a human stunted somewhere in its infancy, or even gestation, in a way that is as repulsive as it is pitiable. The huge, unbalanced cranium, undeveloped features and bug eyes are bad enough, especially with its tiny teeth and fragile neck, but the rest of its body seems to have morphed into some hideous, emaciated quadruped, with an arched back and a stubby, vestigial tail, withered to the point of showing ribs and vertebrae through its pallid, blue-white, scaleless flesh; or else that might just be how it always looks.

    It shrieks directly into her face as it grasps for her torch, awkwardly flailing and batting at the flaming stick, before grabbing it with gecko-like fingers that include the sticky pads, making its grip extremely hard to break. What it actually wants with the thing is difficult to tell, but it doesn't directly threaten Letty, despite how easily it could attack her instead.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Letty doesn't notice Sanary's discomfort with Tomoe, too busy trying to scout out! What she does notice is Reiji lighting up another torch helpfully. Between the two of them they might not fall into a trap or other hazards in the dark!

"Sounds like monsters. M...maybe it's a slime?" Comes Letty quietly in her expert adventuring opinion. It sounds moany and squealchy enought after all!

There's a sudden scream. Only after a few moments does Letty realize it's hers! That monstrosity has her very nearly falling on her backside, only held on by the deformed creature's tough grip! She vaguely tries to yank it back, the elf sweating, but she doesn't draw her bow immediately. No, she finally gets the picture, and lets go!

"O...okay, you can have it mister...crazy thing!" She might be an adventurer, but she's not about to kill something that's not trying to kill her back! She turns to the others.

"...That poor thing! Whoever made them...that's just cruel!" She gushes, finding sympathy despite her revulsion.

Staren has posed:
    Staren waits for the door to open. And then it's dark... No problem for lights and sensors. And then... It's like a reverse Aincrad in m iniature. Several floors... carpeted in loose pages. "Ugh... Those poor books... Good thing Twilight's not here to see this... And what is that NOISE?"

    "...Giant babything. That's messed up. Um... Should we put it out of its misery, or...?"

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe now keeps alert and is thankful for the light spell she had the sense to cast. But thats when she hears the thing that Letty found and she' goes running for her.

"Letty what is it? What have you found here?"

She catches sight of the baby thing. She looks at Staren for a moment with a very unhappy look on her face.

"We don't know what it is and it's not looking for a fight."

She doesn't look too pleased but she's also not moving to get hostile as she nears Letty, the Mourning Wall is summoned but Dawnbreaker remains in it's sheath.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
Sanary flinches at the sudden appearance of the hideous... Sticky-fingered baby thing, and at first, her reaction is to get her axe ready. It's not until it appears that thing isn't quite so hostile that she sighs in lowers her hand, although the healer does keep her eye on the creature as Letty relinquishes the torch to it.

     "Sure that's a good idea? Eh... Well, whatever. As long as nobody dies, I could probably heal you up if it does anything... Weird."

     Don't say baby thing. Don't say baby thing.

     She doesn't say anything weird! In fact, Sanary just approaches the thing with an inquisitive eye and a hand held out to it just to see how it reacts. "Don't be shy. We're friendly. Uh... Can you understand us?"

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    There is a horrible, malformed and quite possibly horribly in-pain baby monster screaming at them. To the elf and the cyclops, this might be the weirdest thing they've seen all month. For Reiji, this is monday. "Careful," he cautions at the sudden wail. "If there's anything else in here with us, they probably know to expect us now."

He frowns at the horrible baby-thing. It is a baby-thing, Sanary, no matter how much you try to deny it.

"It might bite," he warns. "It looks like it might be teething."

Priscilla has posed:
    At successfully retrieving the torch, the lamentable excuse for what /must/ be an experiment skitters back into its darkened cage, now bearing enough light to actually see inside of it, casting a ruddy glow along the grooved floor, low vaulted ceiling, and claustrophobic walls, all of which are made of the same kind of dense, granite bricks that seem to have worn or melted together with age.

    Predictably, the thing burns itself on the torch almost immediately, dropping it with a terrified shriek and plastering itself up against the opposite wall like some horrible lizard, only the gleam of its eyes really all that visible as it cocks its head back and forth like, to jump animal kingdoms, some freakish owl. Eventually, it crawls back down, slinks over to the blazing stick, and goggles over it like it's the most interesting thing in the world, much like one could hypothetically imagine the first man to ever discover fire had.

    Somewhere else in the cell, something glints with an unmistakable sort of glittery, snow-blue light. Risking putting their face to the bars, pretty much exactly like Sanary is, reveals a polyhedral cut of some kind of crystal that may be familiar to a few in the room, though much deeper and purer in hue, without all those weird, face-like impurities. Despite its simplicity, it is weirdly mesmerizing to look at, until someone stares too long and the malformed creature rushes to pick it back up again, cradling it against anyone's attention but its own.

    It makes not even the least credible attempt at responding to words. In all likelihood it doesn't even recognize language. It instead fusses entirely over its gem, before being distracted by the torch. The noises in the background rise in volume, with hollow, metallic rattling sounding upwards like rusted metal banging at the bottom of a well. Actually, it definitely sounds like something is banging on the bars, as if people were rapping on them with fire pokers.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
So much for communication. Shrugging lightly, Sanary continues observing the babything for a little while longer before losing interest in it and turning to the rest of the group. "Think it's a good idea to let it keep that?"

     Not that she plans on going in there to get the torch back, but... Well. There's other things to focus on! Like that other thing in the cell that's glowing and distinctly not a babything. Before she can point it out, though said babything snatches the shiny as well.

     "... 'kay. Eh. You hear that racket gettin' louder?" She murmurs, glancing around slowly and keeping a tighter hold on her shield as she steps away from the bars to see just what else is banging on the bars closer to their position (but not the babything's).The healer starts channeling a bit more energy into her eye, but stops once she catches sight of Reiji's flaming sword.

     Not that it's hard to miss, but it does make her reconsider switching to the nightvision matrix in her eye. "Well... Anyway. We goin' up or down? Just point me whichever way and..." She taps on her shield, ready to continue onwards and hopefully not die! And if nobody points her whatever way? She'll start searching for more stairs to go down instead.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe sees that the room isn't quite what she expected? She doesn't make any hostile acts but she still keeps the Mourning Wall ready as she takes a step forward she makes note of the odd thing glinting in the light. She watches the creature pick it up and she doesn't make an attempt to go after them no it want the gem? She's not sure what it quite is at this range but she looks to the thing for a moment.

"Easy, we don't want to hurt you."

She knows the words might not mean much but maybe the tone and infection of her voice might account for something. Then comes the sounds which gets Tomoe's attention her ears twitch a little bit as she turns from the creature.

"I don't know Sanary but if it's trouble? Get behind me when it shows up."

She looks to the rest of the party for a moment.

"Same for the rest of you it's my job to get in between hostiles and the rest of the people I'm working with."

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    Reiji continues to pointedly not stare at the bizarre mutated baby. He has his own kids to take care of and does not need to occupy his thoughts with why this child has been trapped underground for all this time- or how it's even eaten enough to not shrivel away- thank you very much. Instead, he begins making his way downwards- ever further downwards.

    "We're going this way," he says to Sanary, Karin's flames billowing soothingly into the lower-case darkness. Reiji pauses on one of the many stairway terminuses though, fishing what appears to be an odd plastic rectangle.

    He lobs it gently over toward Sanary, because someone is suddenly in need of some illumination. "It's an LED array. Flip out the inside compartment, should last for long enough to get what we need down here." Hopefully. Also hopefully: there's nothing down this way that hates, wants to devour and-or snuff out all sources of light, because they might just have trouble if that's the case.

    Ideally, the source of that terrible noise is a bunch of prisoners with metal cups and a set of cell bars, but this is Lordran, after all. Chances are that the cups are filled with blightpus and each prisoner is hiding a filth-soaked, infectious crystal shiv or something terrible like that.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Slowly, Letty stands back up after her fall, watching as the poor thing burns itself. Also there's a weird crystal creature. None of them seem overly hostile, though, and so the elf doesn't try anything foolish. She lets out a sigh of relief.

"I'd love to introduce whoever did that to this poor thing to an entire quiver!" She finally huffs out her frustration, openly disgusted at whatever mind would produce such a tortured thing.

"Come on. Let's finish exploring this place, and maybe come back later to help the poor thing." They can't exactly /do/ much for it right now. So, pulling out another torch and lighting it, she starts to head down towards the sound of cups-on-bars being made. Also in general, the not-up direction. Keen elven ears perk up in case of any ambushes. She pats her bottle of salamander oil.

Priscilla has posed:
    Unless people want to climb up bookshelves to that indeterminate ceiling, down seems to be the way to go. There is a lot of down, actually. For the most part, there aren't even convenient stairs to take, but annoying, overwrought ladders in probably dangerous holes in the floor, with space seemingly at a premium.

    The barred alcoves definitely continue further down, ringing each floor at a steady rate, as if each time they were filled, another floor was built beneath, though it seems the builder ran out of book space first, or else gave up on the cages before his research. Each one is occupied by something similar to the first, though in various states of misshapen perversion from the human form. Some have fully developed tails, others have lost their legs in squirming growths, still have clawed fingers and toes, have lost their eyes, exhibit bizarre mashes of teeth for mouths, or bristle with tiny, luminous cilia across their backs. One of them even appears to have the vestigial nubs of quadruple wings. The only uniform trait between them is the consistently wet, pallid, and almost translucent blue-white skin, as if it were the only thing the creator got right, or the only thing he couldn't seem to alter.

    They turn out to be the source of the rattling and banging, though mostly through trying to reach through the bars for the sight of moving lights, caused in large part by a number of odd sticks and poles that several of them won't relinquish, which upon further inspection turn out to be comprised of petrified bone. They are largely harmless if one endeavours to stay out of the way, save for one hiccups a little puff on blue dust as Tomoe passes, dinging her HP bar slightly. The little crystals are omnipresent, though cut into different shapes, and sometimes two or three to a cell.

    Reaching midway to the bottom is where the aggressive crystallization that had occurred all over the library above starts to kick in, though it seems to lack its carnivorous characterization, merely growing on surfaces like thick ice, rather than devouring and spreading outwards. Eventually, it grows thick enough that various shapes are caught in it, pieces of furniture for the most part, save one.

    That one appears to be human but which has lain like a corpse here for some considerable amount of time, armed and armoured, but with most of both having been consumed in that icy, uneven, almost jagged sheen. Being an actual corpse is ruled out however, when as the last member of the group passes, it suddenly stumbles upright, and swings at the back of Reiji's head, uttering a shrill, distorted scream that bounces unpleasantly off the walls. Its sword looks little more than a frozen club, cracking on whatever it hits, and yet as someone may find out, it is extremely capable of damaging their gear the same way.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
"Hey, hey, I got this. I've taken a lotta hits over the past couple o' years." Sanary flashes Tomoe a brief grin before reaching over to catch Reiji's offered... Thingamajig. She quite nearly drops it, too, but does catch it at the last moment! Opening it up as directed, she lets out an impressed half-whistle before using it to light her path. "Heh... Thanks. Just hopin' we don't need to be here too much longer."

     Wishful thinking, but still. Letty gets a nod from Sanary at th emention of returning later, and the healer makes a mental note to try and actually remember to do that... Eventually. She's not heartless, but she's got priorities!

     Time to descend. The freaky wing-nubbed things draw more confused looks from Sanary, but the corpse goes ignored.. Until the screaming. Oh hell, the SCREAMING. That's when the healer finally pays it any attention, channeling her magic outwards towards Reiji as it swings. "Heads up!" She's already directing some healing and buffing magic his way pre-emptively, not quite in any position to actually lash out at the thing from her position near the front.

Staren has posed:
    Not much room on the ladders? No problem, Staren can manifest wings (best magic item!)

    Aaaand the lower floors are additional horror shows. "Ugh... what was he trying to make? Hey, do any of you creatures understand language?"

    "Huh, they all have crystal things. Do you think maybe those crystals mutated them into those shapes?" He rubs his chin. "Come to think of it, why keep so many? Wouldn't it make more sense to kill the failed ones and move on? I mean, if you were cruel enough to do this in the first place... Unless... Maybe they were running as many simultaneous trials as possible? Maybe the mutations are entirely random..."

    Lower down, crystallization! "Woah, /that/ looks ominous." he comments.

    At last, a human figure. Staren shakes his head and moves on... and then it attacks Reiji with a screech! Staren turns, levelling his beam cannons. "If you understand, STOP! This is your last warning!" If it swings for another attack, he will shoot... and if beams don't do it, well, he'll try more and more weapons until something finishes it.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    There are a few things you learn when you've travelled Lordran long enough. One of the most critical lessons that this unforgiving world has to teach is to never take safety for granted. Also to double check every corpse with a decent stabbing. To the hollow's credit, its ADVANCED HIDING SKILLS make it very difficult to distinguish from the crystalline growth surrounding it, but...

Well. Paranoia.

    Paranoia and cries of warning. Karin pivots at the first 'swoosh' of air rushing away from the Hollow's swing. Crystal club meets open air as Reiji backsteps away from the strike. He whispers a quiet curse as his back foot catches nothing but empty darkness. The exorcist leans in, kicking forward with the one leg that's actually on decent footing. As Sanary's magic seeps into his body and bolsters his flesh, Reiji shoots forward. Karin's flame billows as he swings, looking to try and follow up on the elf's arrow with a cleaving, rising blow!

    "Stay alert!" Reiji warns, "There's damn next to nothing to stand on here. Falling from this height is a good way to get yourself killed!" Says the guy who nearly dodged off a ledge.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Letty is rather silent on the trip down. Mostly due to every new abomination making her shake with fury. Twintails wiggle and elf-ears are all but splayed out in silent indignation! She might be a greedy adventurer, but this is just beyond the pale.

After a quick glance to one of the abominations, she sighs. "If the rest of this world is like this place, then whoever's been running it is messed up in the head." She laments.

She's still a greedy adventurer though, and tries in vain to whack at the tip of one of those jutting crystals with the butt of an unlit torch. She should've brought a hammer, it seems. She pouts at the lack of improvised payout.

Letty does pause for a moment amidst her crystal-attempts as one of the creatures reaches out with that stick of bone. She remembers the reaction of the other deformed thing, how very drawn to the light it seems. "I wonder..."

She'll reach out with her torch, briefly trying to light the bone-prod for the thing experimentally.

Thanks to that, elves are distracted and Sanary is much more on the ball, and already there's a club aimed for Reiji's person and Sanary's healing going out. The scout-elf leaps up in the air on a sudden jet of wind produced by her feet, and she's drawn her bow. Wind magic gathers into the slightly long-held shot as she squints. Then, with a twang and a thoomp of arrow and magic, she lets the bursting wind-arrow go aimed right between the hollow's eyes!

"C...careful!" She finally shouts!

Tomoe has posed:
So they push onwards and onwards is heading on down deeper into the book stacks. She keeps alert though who knows what could be down here and Tomoe pauses and make as sign of a bit of pain as her HP has dropped a bit. She'll need to watch that in the future as she heads deeper down. Soon they are hitting the level where things have turned to crystal and she keeps back eying the body.

"It's unwise to trust a body to be dead here."

She notes given her history in helping even in a small way restore this world? She darn well knows the dead don't like to stay /dead/ here. She looks at the weapon and then moves to intercept it off Reiji summoning the Dawnbreaker.

"I don't think so."

She did tell the others to get behind her and she's going to damn well do her damnest to pull the thing off Reiji and she'll reply to Sanary later when she's not up to her eyeballs in monster which she's already. Letty's shots are noticed and she'll track them as best she can. She also prays Staren doesn't think to use high explosives today she really hopes he doesn't

Priscilla has posed:
    Sadly, after all this time has passed, it's pretty difficult to tell what the design of the whole experiment was, though less difficult to place its rough time period. It's very unlikely, after all, that Seath sealed up the basement like that as soon as people came knocking at his doors for the first time in centuries, and what would he need any of this down here for after having already tapped into the Primordial Crystal? Everything here looks dated. Far older than the Archives above. Even the crystallization looks prototype, compared to the more fearsome and deadly stuff used elsewhere.

    Though that doesn't stop the shitty crystal-caked sword from being dangerous. When Reiji steps back, the figure immediately pursues, swinging wildly with its glittering cudgel until Tomoe gets in the way to split them up. For being what looks like a bunch of melted glass on a metal stick, it manages to do frightening chip damage through her epic level shield, not about to kill her while blocking by any means, but way more than a garbage weapon like that should.

    The overall quality of the enemy doesn't seem to be any better though. The crystallization hasn't worked out as well for its armour, as Letty's arrow punctures straight through its mask with a glassy crack, and Staren's beam cannons blow open its chest with twin bursts of hot shrapnel; a minor nuisance to Reiji cutting the thing's weapon arm off at the shoulder.

    Having been the first human-ish anything anyone has fought for a while, one would be forgiven for their surprise when it just falls to the ground and . . . stays there. A regular old corpse, bleeding very, very little. Of course, all the Undead should be back to normal, and if this guy was one of them, he'd have starved to death down here already. He seems like he's been around much longer than the Darksign. Checking the wounds confirms a kind of mildly nauseating, internal crystallization somewhat like the Channelers, though far sloppier.

    So it takes The Elf a few strikes to break one of those crystal spurs off, but it comes away just fine once she hits it at the right angle. It's extremely hard, and feels rather heavy, but it must have a number of internal faults if it breaks easily at certain incidences. Sadly, it's all over the last ladder to the bottom floor, being a complete mess of books and pages strewn all about, pushed up in piles against the walls as if by a bulldozer in the process of meandering around, looking for a specific tome.

    Looking down, a number of other objects can be seen clustered on the wide, circular level a steep climb down. The disassembled pieces of huge machinery, seemingly mixed up from several projects, so that pieces for a telescope can be seen here and some kind of sound system there. Intact tables holding piles of alchemical equipment that hasn't been used in an age, vials, crucibles and decanters rendered obsolete long ago. Empty vats and traces of what look like might have been dissection related before it all turned to dust an eternity ago. Even the slumped over body of a channeler, like a puppet cut from its strings, no doubt trapped in a teleportation-proof chamber after Seath's psychic link had disappeared.

    Bringing the light to the edge of the walkway though, it gleams very brightly off of one thing in particular, catching the illumination like a safety glass. A very sharply cut, smoothly polished cube of roughly the size Priscilla had indicated, far more precise and regular than the rough stone Andre had been working with, and treated in such a way that its surface shimmers like silver marble. The lid has been left off, and the open top reveals that the inside houses not so much of a flame as a pure, searing, blue-white light that suffuses the whole container, answering where that mysterious blue ambient light came from, many, many floors above.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
Sanary doesn't relax even as the corpse becomes... More of a conventional corpse. She even draws her axe to go along with the shield, keeping them at the ready while keeping that flow of magic energy going aroud Reiji and even directing some of the healing energy to Tomoe. "That was... That was somethin'. Everyone alright?"

     As she speaks, however, her attention starts shifting to the odd pile of SCIENCE TOOLS. She might not exactly know how to use them, but at least Sanary recognizes them for what they'd be used for: Alchemy! Or chemistry. Something involving fluids and tiny samples of things. It's enough to even get the healer to conjure up a squishy gray substance around her arms and legs, keeping them there as insurance before heading further down.

     "Looks like that's what we came for... Uh. What about all the other stuff, though?" She gestures at the alchemical equipment before looking over the cube carefully, even using the gray stuff wrapped around her limbs to hover around it and peek in that opening. "What do we got here...? Hmn. Anyone see traps or whatever on this thing? Or... Handles?"

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
The enemy falls, and Letty sighs in relief. "Are you okay, Reiji?" She asks quickly, peering over at the young man. But not too long. The group has done well so far! She can't help but feel confident.

That bit of crystal gets tucked into her bag. She'll no doubt find a magic user to sell it too eventually! For now, her torch is offered down below as the circular climb ends with long-crumbled dissections, astronomy, and other insanity. Truly, that body makes it clear: whoever did all of this was obsessed with crystals, magic, and knowledge that not even the wizards and sorceresses of her lands would tap into. Letty shudders in revulsion.

But it's Sanary that truly gets her attention as the group finds the coal. She frowns, and nods. "Yeah. I have a bad feeling. Uhhh, I'll start looking." Her thiefly partner had imparted some small skill in trap detection, and so her bow gets placed on her back. She's nearly nose-to-ground as she starts to crawl around, looking for mundane traps near the coal, or other threats.

"Ah...keep an eye out for me everyone!" She can't keep herself safe /and/ trap-hunt at the same time. She puts her faith in her allies like a proper adventurer!

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    Thank God for people with actual shields, or Reiji might have had to use his Skyscraper Jumping skills to manage a proper landing. Through the combine efforts of the elites, however, the crystallized figure is quite summarily eliminated. "I'm fine," he answers the elf, shaking a bit of charred, crystallized flesh off his burning sword. "It'll take far more than the walking dead to take me out... Though that was a bit closer than I would have liked." Letting your guard down in Lordran is a good way to die, after all.

    With the threat dispatched, the group is free to move on to the very heart of the great archive's most inner sanctum. Or rather, the most inner sanctum that is neither on the top of a tower nor deep within a crystalline cave festooned with nearly invisible walkways. There is much to see here; studies on so many things that Reiji can scarcely keep track of it all. He's just a little sad that it'll almost certainly end up in Lezard's hands, but what can you do?

(Move what he can into Anor Londo proper, that's what)

    More importantly, though, it seems that they've found their objective. The ember is unmistakable this close. Reiji shrugs as they draw near. "Now that we've located it, there's no problem. Let's just take it slow and steady, and we'll be fine," Reiji's unholstered his handgun now, too. Just in case anything lurking in the shadows decides to make some poor life choices.

Staren has posed:
    Staren continues to float down as the others go. "...I wonder what he was trying to do?" He comments at the corpse, then he looks at the ember and nods with others' assesment. "What about the creatures, though? Do we just leave them here to go mad?" Curiously, he searches the lab tables and the floor for any pages or notes that might explain what was going on here.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe now finds the odd weapon is very much dangerous, the crystal-caked sword is able to score some good hits on her hp is going down and she's feeling it too. She will atrempt to end up trying to shield bash the thing in the face. It's covered in crystal right which might make it a good idea then again her understanding of science is limited given she was stuck in a death game for two years of her life give or take. The Enemy doen't seem to be a huge threat but if the thing is this dangerous? What about larger threats down here. It's not needed as her allies drop the thing. She pauses looking concerned.

"All the undead should have been restored? Did that crystal prevent it from happening to them?"

She moves on ahead wary and watching out for more trouble as she goes. Hopefully there shouldn't be much more as they reach strange flames.

"So this is the lighting system?"

She looks to Sanary and nod a little.

"I'm fine don't worry about me."

Priscilla has posed:
    As it would seem, there appear to be no greater threats lurking around the corner. No armed guards or boss monster. Even the Channeler is stone cold, and has been long enough to develop a thick layer of dust over his whole body, ruining the six eyes of his mask. Poking about, the place is well and truly abandoned, and starting to get freezing cold this far underground, in a way that the many other caverns of Lordran hadn't. One can see their breath starting to fog here, only missing the plaintive groan of creaky floorboards, as opposed to the museum-like tap of shoes on tiles.

    Staring into the gleaming Ember feels like it was a bad idea. Sanary will find that she has been looking inside for far too long before something upcoming jolts her out of it, and probably not sure why, though for the life of her, she will not be able to remember what was so fascinating about it -- or anything she saw inside at all, actually. It has the effect of leaving one light-headed and with little ability to feel concerned about anything or second guess oneself, for a short while.

    Poking around the tables yields more notes than Staren might even optimistically hope for, many of them sized for actual people to hold and read. There must be a hundred years of carefully taken notes here; far more for someone without augmentations to read. Unfortunately, and aggravatingly, the language used is currently not in his database, or else may actually be a purposeful cipher.

    Even worse, disturbing one book in particular, or even just getting close to it, causes its covers to burst open and a long, gangly, triple-jointed limb that could /roughly/ be called an arm to thrust out of the pages; ghostly pale, semitranslucent, and possessing too many fingers, and too many /elbows/ to be human. It reaches for him instantly, swatting, clawing and grasping at his limbs, as a hundred others do simultaneously by exploding out of the books scattered all over the floor, some of the larger ones even sprouting entire clusters.

    Physically, their attacks aren't much deadlier than a mid-sized wild animal, potentially dangerous to people with exposed flesh, but kind of a laugh for Staren in his power armour and others like him. However, mere contact with their fingers causes one's body to go cold, numb, and unresponsible in a small area around where it makes contact, with successive touching making the area spread. It's as if all the nerves shut off and the blood freezes in its veins.

    Thankfully, the books aren't /moving/, but the pattern of the minefield seems to be based in what is written on the pages, and the traps are meant to be denoted by a certain subject, being ill-fitting, or total nonsense, probably hence why they're all left open and readable. Problem is, nobody here can read them anyways.

Letty the Elf (1052) has posed:
Reiji is okay! Letty slumps for just a moment. "Good. Be careful, everyone! Places like this are dangerous!" Not like she really needs to say it, but putting it out there feels good.

Suddenly limbs. Limbs everywhere grasping for Staren! Letty pauses in her trap-searching towards the coal, and rolls onto her back! That bow of hers is nocked back with an arrow, three more in her knuckles as she starts a wild, reflexive set of shots towards those limbs seeking to chill the power-armored man's body. She's seen big men in armor get taken down by smaller things, and so she's extra-willing to give up her trap-sensing towards the coal for Staren's (hopeful!) safety! Arrow after arrow is let loose! The elf is starting to run out on her supplies of them for the sake of her allies!

Sanary Rondel has posed:
Sanary hums quietly to herself as she slowly starts to regret looking directly into the Ember, what with it being a freaking FIRE and all the light and such. Thankfully, she doesn't look so closely as to risk losing her eyebrows, but... But...

     ... What was she doing again? Jerking back from the Ember and settling back onto the ground, the healer goes quiet for a several moments while trying to figure out if she was forgetting something.

     Ah, probably nothing too important. Shaking her head a bit, Sanary turns back to the rest of the group slowly. "Well, I.. Think this is what we came for. Could probably just lift the whole thing if we're c-" And... Hands!

     Hurling herself into the fray, the healer gets to work chopping at the mass of book-hands, lashing out at them with big overhead chops. "Watch your heads!" Although they might look like haphazard swings, though, they're actually quite well controlled, especially considering how little wiggle room there is while avoiding hitting her allies here.

Staren has posed:
    Staren's may not even notice the cold, thanks to his armor. Sure, there's a temperature sensor somewhere, but unless exploring an expected hazardous environment that stuff's not on his HUD.

    Notes! Nice. He only has to glance at them to record pictures -- he can attempt to crack the code later, or compare it to other writings in Lordran, at his leisure. The ARMED BOOK, though, makes him flinch away, "AUGH WHY" and when it becomes clear it's not just ONE book he tries to fly up out of reach immediately!

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is more of the one fighting than the one figuring out puzzels she wasn't terrible at it, but she also didn't think in such terms right off the bat. She tends to be a bit of a blunt hammer a lot of the time. Then again SAO left her with a hate of puzzels too. She is poking about and doesn't stare into the ember there's smething that desn't seem right to her doing that. So she's also distracted as she looks through the books and she gets near one of the books as a 'arm' rhusts out. She yelos and leaps backwards from it and star to understand there is a minefield here.

Still a set up like this she can start to see somewhat of a pattern.

"It's almost like the books are explosive traps or landmine!"

Though Tomoe is holding back trying to figure out a pattern, she's not going to face tank this.

Priscilla has posed:
    It's perhaps typical that a crafty, sorcerous type wouldn't leave mechanical traps lying around, but certain senses and knacks still apply. Only shortly after loosing her arrows, finding alongside Sanary, that the arms are completely insubstantial for all intents and purposes save being grabbed by them, does she get to intuitively recognize the faint differences in the writing displayed on the pages. The way that someone didn't feel like writing fresh and original content for a bunch of trap books. Words and phrases that, though still nonsensical, appear over and over again like regular, non-encrypted language.

    That, and with a few stray axe swings and the continuation of those whiffed arrows confirming that the books themselves can be batted away, implies the coverage was once much more dense and deliberate before it was roughly shovelled up against the walls like this. Furthermore, Staren flies away with absolutely no issue. It's pretty unusual for people to be able to fly under their own power here, after all. All in all, the scary, potentially lethal, but now relatively harmless -- if people are methodical about it -- remnants of a once much more dangerous system.

    Flying up, by the way, does confirm that a very large number of the books scattered about on the walkways are rigged the same way, but now that the group knows there are no further enemies, there is essentially nothing preventing them from strapping up the Ember and hauling it out as they please.

Sanary Rondel has posed:
As the group gets more of those books and bookhands cleared out, even Sanary's able to notice that there's quite a few gaps in the covered areas. She eventually resorts to using the shield like a makeshift shovel, practically flinging some of the books over at the wall just to get them out of the way. "How the hell do you even come up with somethin' like this...?"

     It's probably better if she doesn't think too hard on that. Once she's comfortable enough with the amount of space there is to maneuver and think (or let other people think), the healer gets in position by the Ember, looks it over once more, and turns to the rest of the group.

     "Anyone got rope? We could probably just... Uh. Drag the thing outta here, huh?" It's a brute force method, sure, but it's... A method. She looks willing to do most of the heavy lifting, though, and at least it's better than trying to get a construction crane in place.

     As for picking up books for the Fangs or checking on the babything... Sanary can do that later. FOr now, though, might as well get the hard part done that won't raise any eyebrows first.

Tomoe has posed:
The way isn't entirely cleared but now it can be passed if one is careful. Tomoe would start to get an idea of how to get past it. She'll look ot Sanary for a moment and pauses to check her inventory.

"I have a coil of it, what adventuring sort wouldn't?"

Seriously coil of rope is a thing she thought was a good idea for traveling out in the wildeness even before she unified, the fact the idea came from a comment her dad made about things from his time playing tabletop is a whole other thing.

"Good thinking n that, thoguh the question is do I have enough?"

Staren has posed:
    The armbooks are weird... Staren wonders if drones would still trigger them if he tried to collect the notes that way later.

    For now, though, their objective is secure. He's free, and the others seem able to get free...

    Rope is needed, though. Staren flies a little lower. "I have like fifty feet of paracord to add to your rope. I dunno if I can fly with that big thing, though..."