Fayren Unearthed Pt4 [Open]

[genpcs]

Who: Open to all
What: Adventure and ruin exploration!
Where: Erif Ruins
When: July 17th - 31st
Warnings: None at the moment


Stepping into the Erif Ruins feels a little like stepping into hell itself. The heat inside feels almost unbearable, even if you were smart enough to grab a Frost Charm before coming here. The magic permeating inside of the ruins is the very same as some of the others that have been discovered, making it difficult to make a quick exit from the place or move about it using means other than your own feet.

Whereas the other ruins started from a top floor and descended downward, this place starts from the bottom and goes up. There are four floors to the place as far as anyone is aware. The type of monsters increase as one travels through the ruins.

Fire Skeletons, Inferno Spiders, Flame Snakes and Ash Rats can be found on all floors.

Magmin, vicious Firenewts , Firebats and Thoqquas can be found on the second floor and above.

On the third floor and above, you will encounter Effigies using the bodies of fallen adventures, Hellhounds and Salamanders.

And on the fourth floor, you will encounter Nightmares and Redspawns.

On days 2-4, Fire Cultist and Fire Cultist Warriors will be found on all floors as well.


[ooc: This is an open log for everyone to log out their ruin adventures if they want. Note in the subject line of your tag if it is open to all characters or closed to certain ones. He sure to check the Newspaper before posting here.]

Comments

OTA

[justicereigns]

[Smoker is chilling out like a fucking dork, completely topless, sans a belt strap and several bandoliers carrying extra cigars. He also has some pretty heavy duty scars for anyone who'd notice that kind of thing over the fact that there's a 6'8" marine waiting around for something without his identifying jacket on for once. He doesn't want to get it singed, after all.]

[Yeah.]

[WELL ANYWAY.]

[He's also holding two sticks of takoyaki and wondering how dumb he is or not.]

[Probably pretty dumb.]

[If you're going in, he'll give you a small nod, or you can talk to him.]

[He'll be in soon.]

[orangeoutlaw]

[Ace is a little late only because it takes some time to find guns this size but he's all decked out and raring to go]

Looking good, man.

[aesthetically, he means. If you're going to rock a dungeon, you might as well show up and show out]

[justicereigns]

Shut up, idiot.

[It figures. The one time Ace is wearing more clothes than Smoker. Someone note this day in history, for it may never happen again.]

Are those filled with special element bullets or regular ones?

[Blame his conversation with an anonymous account about guns.]

[orangeoutlaw]

Regular ones. I don't have that many though. [they're just for show mainly]

You like 'em?

[justicereigns]

[Shrugs.] They're ostentatious, but I can't imagine you shooting with something other than your fire or throwing daggers usually.

My brother in arms, Dadi used guns. Derringers though. [Holds his fingers up for size demonstration.]

[[ooc: they're not called Derringers in the show/novelization because derringers were named after Dellinger, their creator, but lol translation magic...]]

One shot use.

[orangeoutlaw]

Like this one? [pulls the small pistoly thingy from the holster on his leg and points it at Smoker]

Bang.

[he doesn't actually shoot it though.]

[justicereigns]

Yeah.

You ready?

[Hands him a stick of food :T]

[orangeoutlaw]

[Food! Glom! He sucks off the takoyaki and leaves Smoker with the sticks]

Let's do this. [guns cock]

Heere beastie, beastie, beastie.

[justicereigns]

[Face palms.]

[How did he NOT SEE THIS COMING?]

[This is like trying to herd the entirety of G-5 at once.]

[Ace is like all the disaster of G-5.]

[MAYBE THEIR GOOD POINTS TOO BUT FUCK IF HE WILL ADMIT THAT SCREW YOU.]

[Just grumpily follows along behind the fire idiot.]

[Questioning his sanity and decision-making skills like he has every day, arguably since he got to Genessia, but realistically he did that before so eh, normal-ish.]

Do you have a limit for how long you want to go?

[Smoker's new limit is until Portgas gives him a migraine.]

[orangeoutlaw]

I can go all night.

[eyebrow wiggle]

There's one! [bang!] No that's a rock. Damn.

[justicereigns]

[God damn it.]

[He should be used to this.]

[But he's SO NOT.]

[Also, that was VERY not G-5...]

[And so he's still kind of blushing even as he tries to eyeroll.]

Portgas, you're going to use all your bullets before we even get past the stairs at this rate.

[orangeoutlaw]

[laughs as he looks over his shoulder] We're not there yet? But it looks like it's already getting hot.

[prods Smoker's cheek with the barrel of the gun]

[justicereigns]

I can't tell if that was a sorry attempt at a pun and another pickup line or you were just doing it accidentally this time.

[Smoker BARELY NOTICES TEMPERATURES GIVE HIM A BREAK HERE.]

Two blondes too many! [Bracken and OPEN]

[youfool]

Sure were a lot of ruins in Fayren cropping up like mushrooms. Might as well take the chance to go exploring, monster-slaying, and looting on the side. Win-win-win! These things aren't as much fun alone, though. Who should he take?

Ah! He knew the one. Bracken might be up for this; he lived in the area, in fact. Ted gave him a ring.

"Hello, Bracken? It's me, Ted. Have you settled in all right? Have you heard about the hellish ruins that have sprouted up? How would you like to go adventuring within? I don't mind getting you a frost charm if you like. Maybe you can show me those 'buff' spells I've heard so much about."

[shy_mage]

Monster hunting? It sounded like home. Maybe doing something familiar would make him feel better. Too many hours had passed since he'd seen Thistle, and while other people were around he still felt lonely.

And it had been hopelessly hot. He ended up freezing things in his room to try and keep cool and stayed out of the sun. His robes definitely weren't made for the hot weather.

When he got the call he was soaking in a small pond in the forest. It had been too warm, but he fixed that by freezing a portion of it, which had quickly fixed the problem. Arms folded on the side of the water while the other half of his body was soaking, he peeked open an eye and nudged his device to be in front of him.

"T-Ted...?"

He sounded sleepy, but he had just been lying around, relaxing.

"It's... It's not much. Th-Thistle and Adair had a lot, a lot more buffs th-than me..."

He lifted himself slightly on his arms.

"Wh-What's in the ruins?"

[youfool]

Ted was never sure how to talk about the past; did it move one's heart in the wrong place? Displace their focus, or something? Might be best to talk past it for now.

"Mm, well if it's anything like the others, treasure. Or at the very least, curios that'll be of some interest to collectors, however questionably useful. Of course, there's also fiends around every corner, ascending in ferocity as one delvers deeper. Everything in this looks to reflect summer in some capacity: fire, ash, lava, and the rest. Thankfully, I've a good many tools to deal with their ilk. How about it?"

[shy_mage]

It sounded like a regular dungeon crawl. But sweaty. He rolled his shoulders lazily, he pulled himself up.

"O-Okay. Where should I meet you?"

Thankfully he thought to turn the device away as he crawled out of the pond to get his stuff.

[youfool]

He's glad to be spared unsavory sights. "The, ah, Erif Ruins, at the base of the mountain. It's been all over the news. I'll be waiting." While he waited, he checked inventory. If only he had a suiting up montage.

Life-fiber vest? Check. Frostbrand? Check. Hellfire walkers? Check. Heat-resistant, telekinetic gauntlets? Check. Gengar, the grinning ghost and walking mini-AC? Check. Nundu Cloak, bane to all magic? Check. Bag? Let's not talk about it.

All that was left was the timid magician. Funny, he didn't expect him to agree quite that easily. It reminded him of Luke, in a way. Meek only when it was a luxury, then ready to answer the call as anyone once the time came. Good, then! He'll be handing Bracken a frost charm once he arrives. "Welcome! These things only last an hour, so we won't have time for the scenic route. Ready to go?"

[shy_mage]

He was still new to the area, but he had a tendency to wander about a lot, and somehow managed to find his way a lot of the times. And when he didn't he didn't refrain too long for asking. At least, for now, he had the excuse of being new, so he didn't have to feel too embarrassed about asking for directions.

He carried much less with him than Ted. Since he hadn't bought much of anything yet, he pretty much looked just like he did when they first met. He moseyed on up and readily accepted what Ted handed him, taking a look at it while he listened.

A time limit...? That was rare. Hopefully Ted could keep track of time well.

But that meant they had to be serious. He wrapped both hands around his staff and nodded seriously at Ted. He cast his one buff - nothing special. It just absorbed damage to protect him. It came and went with some blue and green lights twirling around him before disappearing.

"A-Are you a melee fighter?"

[youfool]

Ted couldn't be counted on to keep track of time, nor much else. Not a man for details. Still, he was confident, and these journeys almost always ended well, however perilous the middle. Or so he thought. Gengar, the purple poltergeist pokemon, made a vague greeting in Bracken's direction, but was otherwise irritable. Apparently not even ghosts like the heat. Ted would let anything take his mind off it, including Bracken's pyrotechnics. "What was that?"

As for the question. "Heh, of course. Only way to put the blade in them. But one must be versatile." Swiftly he took out his sidearm, doing a fancy twirl. "Not too shabby with this thing either, if I do say so myself. How about yourself? Planning on bashing their brains out with that cudgel?" Ted was usually content to wing things without discussing tactics, and found that no two mages were alike with their strange abilities. But this got him talking, which he could always make time for.

[shy_mage]

He glanced down at the weird Gengar thing. He'd seen people who used insects to fight before, but not one of those. And usually they came, did what they were summoned to do, and went.

Being so used to it, he didn't know what Ted was asking about at first. Then he remembered that not everyone seemed to know about spells and... well, a lot of things that Bracken had considered basic knowledge. The rules of the world had changed on him.

"I-It was just a defense spell. It... It will a-absorb some damage, so, so I don't get hurt as much." He'd chosen defense over offense for the exploration, his timidity leading him in the direction of protecting himself when facing the unknown. He was used to being able to take anything without too much thought, but he'd been taken away from that and wasn't the type to arrogantly believe that he couldn't run into something stronger than him. He worried far too much about retaining his life for that.

He quirked an eyebrow at his staff and slowly shook his head. "N-No... I'm a mage. I use s-spells."

He would press forward, but being the mage tended to mean he stayed in the back, and he wasn't quite brave enough - or foolish enough - to go running in the front now. Luckily, it seemed Ted was volunteering to be the meat shield. He wasn't sure if Ted was a warrior or something like a rogue, but either way, he was sure to take a hit better than Bracken, an over sized squishy mage.

"W-Will you be okay in front? I can, I can do some healing..." But not to an extent that he could be labeled a healer. Healing others was too roundabout and time-consuming for that in a fight, being that he could only cast one spell at a time. It meant he had to give his health to heal someone else, and then heal himself. Two whole spells of wasted time before he could get back to doing damage. If he was healing, it usually meant something had gone wrong - or they had a break where it was safe to do.

[youfool]

Ted is very interested in mysticism, in spite of his scruples. He is, after all, packing quite a few magic objects in his own right. It was casting spells himself that unnerved him and unsettled his soul. He hoped Bracken's was all right.

"Mm, well I'm no fortune teller, thank goodness, but I'll certainly lead the charge, if you like." That way he could see and do everything first, a particular point of petty pride. He did notice Bracken perennially behind him, never guessing it served a tactical purpose. Well, that pleased Ted just fine, who liked the idea of protecting others on principal. The trick was getting him to notice, having a certain single-mindedness.

"Well, let's be off then. Have your charm at the ready!" And off they go, surrounding themselves with a cooling aura.

The heat was the first thing to disturb. Gengar made it slightly tolerable, but Ted knew he'd regret exerting himself more than necessary. And even though fire was all about them, the ruins were curiously purple and dark, glowing orange at the cracks where tame magma pooled and winded through the cracks in the stonework. He was worried the dungeon might blind them like the sun. Yet it seemed to glow like fireworks; bits of light with darkness behind it.

Fortunate that it made all the monsters easy to see and easy to slay. The first floor was populated largely with vermin. Ash snakes, smoking rats, and their ilk. A good chance to warm up and shake off one's rust. Gengar lended a ghostly hand, summoning large purple fists to defeat the critters. Ted slashes and shot his way through, every so often keeping an eye on Bracken to see how he fared. So far, he was having a blast, enjoying the way the felled monsters sizzled in inglorious defeat.

[shy_mage]

First extinct told him to use water against fire monsters. But, curiously, his water and ice didn't seem to be working in the area. It was disconcerting at first, and when they started it would be obvious he was lagging in doing anything - mainly because he was trying and nothing was working. While he might have been admiring the aesthetic of the area, eyes drawn to the glowing oranges and dark purples, he hadn't just space out.

But he had used those spells before and he knew they worked on this world. Just something about this place was preventing it. A new concept for him, but not one that he couldn't understand. He just had to think of what else would work well against fire. And what came to him was earth. Sand and rock smothered fire, right?

It was fortunate that when he reached to his earth spells they did work. It just so happened they were about to be facing a small rat when he attempted his first earth spell. The beginning rumblings were like the telltale signs of the beginning of an earthquake that centered around him, but that was just getting the spell ready. After many seconds rock was yanked from the ruins and shot through the air to land on the ash rat.

There was a resounding bang and the small boulder continued rolling away for some yards from the force of it. Fragments of rocks and stone flew out from where it initially collided and pelted anything nearby - though the tiny fragments hardly did anything compared to the rock that created them. He didn't even worry about it. "Friendly fire" wasn't a thing that had ever happened in his experience. You either meant to hit something or you didn't, and his spells had never touched someone he was partied with before. But new world, new rules.

He was just glad to have a spell respond to him the way it should, even if he massively over-killed a rat with it.

"W-Water... doesn't seem to be w-working... But, earth is," he commented lightly. He didn't know if Ted had anything water-based or if he even realized there had been something unusual in the temple preventing such attacks. At least Ted had been there to deal with things while he figured it out. He had no qualms about using sand, earth and stone after that, with no worries about structures coming apart and falling down on them - it was just another thing that didn't happen on his world.

And if there was one thing he did very well, it was smashing the hell out of things with spells. His buffs were few, his healing was limited, and even his damage over time spells had limited uses - he doubted 'poisoning' something would work when it was a skeleton that was on fire. For all those years his biggest focus had been on large, powerful spells, and it finally showed as he casually yanked stone from wall, tossed boulders around, and pelted enemies with sandstorms. Occasionally the rumbling earth that seemed to follow him as he used his magic formed into rocky spikes under the enemies and other such things.

Hopefully Ted didn't get too close to anything. By no means was he trying to hit the other man, but he had no idea he could hit him, either...

[youfool]

No kill like overkill! Ted would stop the spree to watch the magic in action. One doesn't get the chance to see such things everyday. Instinctively he shielded his eyes from loose debris and other collateral. The sandstorm got him hacking, and he made a mental note to keep his distance. Wouldn't stop him from praise.

"Goodness, man! That's almost poetic; using their hellish temple to bury the brutes alive. Well done!" Ted did notice his frostbrand wasn't as cold as it usually was, occasionally pressing the flat of the blade against his temple for comfort. He offered to do the same for Bracken. Luckily, Ice magic wasn't quite as penalized as water, so he'd slide out on that technicality.

They picked off a few more boiling spiders and horrible skeletons, Gengar taking much pleasure in killing off small fry, before coming to an odd pedestal that glowed with a purple symbol. A few feet behind it lie pools of tame lava, with an ugly pagan fountain practically bathing in the stuff. "What do you make of all this?" Bracken was, after all, the expert in the arcane. But even while he asked it, Ted couldn't resist poking and prodding at the device. Once he put a hand over it, it glowed brightly, before a cascade of stairs emerged from the lava. It seemed the next floor was open to them.

[shy_mage]

The hacking got him to pause. It certainly appeared that Ted was hacking because of the sand but... That shouldn't be. It confused him and he wondered if it was just a mistaken perception on his part. Still, he drifted back into his learned mentality, believing in the way he knew things had always worked.

But, despite his lapse in judgment, Ted didn't complain, and even gave him praise. His response was to mumble a modest rejection of the praise, but the flush on his cheeks and anxious smile certainly gave away the fact that he liked the compliments.

Bracken, in his clothes and at his size, was susceptible to heat. He wiped his brow, wishing he'd brought some water to drink, but refrained from complaining. Hopefully the charm kept working. It seemed to be having some issues.

Ted asked about the pedestal, but despite being a mage he was far from a master of the arcane past being able to use spells. Surely that would be discovered in time. For now, he inspected the strange pedestal that Ted pointed out to him, and gave him a very straight, but irrelevant, answer, "I-It's ugly."

He jumped back when there were suddenly stairs and peeked up them. Nothing seemed to be on the stairs, and he'd gained more confidence now that he'd seen what was inside of the ruins, so he moved on ahead and jogged up the stairs. He stopped short of the top to let Ted get in front, refreshing his defense and searching for a way to cool off. Then he tried a light wind spell, getting a breeze to move the stagnant air around. It wasn't perfect since the air in the temple was so warm, but it at least did something.

When he curiously peeked around the corner some fire bats were there, and in a small panic he strengthened the wind to smack them into the wall.