World Tree MUSH

    Millia Rage is not one to usually get caught up in family feuds that... Have nothing to do with her. The woman is generally a loner, with no real family to call her own. But at the same time it's so, so, easy to tug at her heartstrings.
    Now when it comes to the battle between the houses of Montague and Capulet, the history is long and bloody; the human Montagues long at odds with the elven house of Capulet for multiple generations, with a history of battle, strife, and all around plainly being aggressive towards one another. Now. What could bring these two houses together but their latest heirs, a young Ryan Montague and Julianna Capulet going missing.
    What compounds the matter is that both of said heirs left notes to their families stating they would be running off with EACH OTHER to elope.
    It is almost hilarious how quickly both families put aside their blood feud to start calling in for the aid of offworlders and anyone that will come to their aid.
    See, while the families search high and low, there is one place they haven't looked yet, and the report of a young man and woman running into the old ruins between the properties of the family that no one has dared tread upon for ages.
    The ruins are said to be elven in origin, though their true origin and nature and purpose have been long lost to time, rumors have been whispered of strange lights and activity coming from the stone cairns and barrows and crumbling wals that surround the old site.
    Millia is here, waiting because she was told others would be coming, for the most part looking bored while playing with a few locks of her short, shoulder-length, blonde hair in her fingers.

"It's interesting, isn't it? How things cross over."

Where'd Neviah Younger come from? A moment ago she wasn't there. Yet here she is, perched neatly on a broken piece of marble, a notebook in one hand.

Her style's changed in the months since the encounter at Cambridge. Neviah's abandoned her stiff Victorian attire in favour of strappy heels and a little white sun dress. She looks better dressed for a day at the beach than ruin-diving - aside from the rifle resting in her lap, a deeply curved blade arcing along the bottom of the barrel. She looks up and folds the notebook closed, brushing back dark curls she's wearing down and loose now.

"Everyone knows the Montagues and Capulets from Shakespeare," she muses as she comes to her feet. "Yet here they intersect the Elves. I wonder if this world is naturally just... like that? Or if we're dealing with another case of branches weaving together in curious ways. One twig growing into the other, so to speak...." Trailing off, Neviah gives Millia a considering look.

"...I like your hat."

    It's frequently the case that Lian Kamoya is in the right place at the right time purely by chance. A close second behind that is being called somewhere by an acquaintance, or following up on an issue she's already involved with. But once in a while, the elder Jedi hears rumors that draw her attention, and seeks a place out entirely of her own accord. This would be one of those latter times; the tale of a starcrossed duo reaching across lines of family honor is one that she'd like to see to a happy conclusion.

    Not terribly long after Millia arrives, a woman in sensible adventuring clothes comes tap-tapping her way up to the entrance, leaning slightly on her walking staff when she arrives. "This would be the place, then," she observes, before looking up at the ruins and... frowning. "...We should be wary. A darkness hangs about this place. Something deathly."

    Then, a side-glance at Neviah, and a cordial, "Hello, there."

    Stelle. Nameless, Trailblazer.

    The grey-haired spaceball batter walks up. She remembers Millia at least, but doesn't say much apart from a clearing of her throat to announce her arrival. The amnisiatic young woman's taking a few moments to step out of the ongoing situation on Jarillo-VI to take an equally complex, but vastly smaller scale issue with two waring families.

    As she notices others arriving also, she gives them a nod in greeting. Lian she remembers from the train attack a while ago, but Neviah is a new face.

    Family drama? Lovers sneaking off somewhere together? Marceline's all about that kind of drama. She'd be here with popcorn if she could still eat. Anyway!

    Marceline approaches quickly, like a breeze rustling by. Then, she just appears. Right there. Invisibility may not be one hundred percent foolproof but dang if it isn't cool to just let it drop while she's perched under some handy shade.

    "Yo. Wait, aren't those the ones that offed each other to be together or something? I met some fools like that once. I think some of my peeps put their souls to rest or something; been a while."

    Quick glance to Neviah. "Same. Hat's rad." Her hat today looks like she could of swiped it from a wedding entourage. Except a cool wedding where people wear black and decorate their hats with a small animal skull or two. Or maybe she escaped the ceremony. Her dress looks out of place for adventuresome activity, though the skirt is irregular and a bit ragged. Opera gloves and tights keep her limbs safe from the touch of the sun, at least.

    "So, in there somewhere? Is one of them an evil necromancer? S'what I heard."

    "Romeo and Juliet is an old, old, story." Millia comments mildly, probably lost to time from the world I'm on, but I've read it. But this is Ryan and Julianna. Hopefully it'll end in less death." She says dipping her head in a nod. "Your guess is as good as mine, though." Is the ex-assassin's remark in regards to the myriad twisting branches of the Tree and it's nature.
    "Thank you."
    It is a nice hat, though.
    "This would be the place." The blonde answers to Lian's arrival, before dipping her head in a slow nod.
    "Something about these ruins makes my hair stand on on end." She says glancing over her shoulder at the various cairns and mausoleums amidst the crumbling walls.
    "Stelle. Marceline." The two are greeted on arrival as Millia stops playing with her hair. "I'm pretty sure the youths aren't necromancers, but people have been saying these ruins have been 'coming to life' for the past year. Roughly around the time the boy and girl started seeing each other in secret. They were probably coming hear and might have disturbed something they shouldn't have." The woman says before shrugging. "Maybe."
    That said she starts making her way into the ruins proper, no sign of any weapons or equipment on her other than that fancy ushanka of hers.
    Pausing every now and then to kneel and follow a clear trail left behind by someone rushing into the ruins, she pauses at the entrance to a masoleum that's been left open.
    "Looks like someone went this way." She comments, running her fingers over an inscription in elvish that's been carved into the entryway.

"A darkness? I hadn't noticed," Neviah says with a blink, hand coming up to her collar, before she pushes away the expression to flash Lian a mellow smile. "Hello."

Tucking her notepad back into the pouch she's carrying with her, Neviah shifts her rifle to one hand. "Well, we'll find out more once we get in there, I suppose. In any case. I'm Neviah. It's good to get out and about again."

Neviah cannot take credit for making Millia's hair stand on end. Moving along into the ruins, she takes a moment to look here and there, checking out occasional pieces of broken ceramic or faded carving.

It's Millia who finds one. With eyebrows curved, Neviah leans forward to inspect the carvings. "'Disturb not those who rest here,'" she reads off, "'or face consequences worse than death.'"

Eyebrows go up. "Spooky...."

    Stellee follows quietly. She leans up to look at the elvish script, looking for all the world like she's actually reading it and understanding...

    Until she shrugs and steps back.

    The trailblazer appears unarmed herself, though those who know her would know that appearances can be deceiving. Neviah's reading of the inscription earns a sage nod from Stelle, but whether she's being honest in agreeing, or being a silent troll is impossible to tell.

    Stelle is a familiar face as well, and Lian gives the Trailblazer a brief nod, and a warm smile. Marceline gets much the same; another familiar face that she's quite content to work alongside. "It sounds as if the names involved tend to reoccur in other worlds," she observes, a curious tone in her voice. "And in similar context. Fascinating. Let's hope we can spare them a similarly difficult fate."

    When the group begins to move, the seer steps up near the front, quite content to take the vanguard as they go. She's not capable of reading elvish, of course, but she can follow her intuition, and watch for signs of passage. "'Worse than death'..." she echoes, with another glance at Neviah. "...perhaps we'd best find them quickly." Already, she's sinking into her intuition, trying to search for hints of more human, living emotions anywhere nearby.

    No sense in messing up her shoes wandering a bunch of old ruins. So, Marceline hovers and flits about, keeping out of the way of everyone for the most part but mostly keeping out of the way of any stray beams of sunlight. Upon discovery of the mausoleum she slouches and lets out a grateful sigh.

    Lian gets a smile back, though Marceline's is noteworthy for being considerably other-than-human. So many pointy teeth. No ill intent behind the display or anything. She's just an old weirdo that likes meddling.

    "Still think one of them's a necromancer. Or they- Wait, what if they're down there writing gloomy poetry or going through that phase where you wear too much dark makeup and do crazy stuff because you resent your parents? Whuff." She eyeballs the script, squints. "Hamboned to death."

    Obviously she's lying. Also trying not to smirk.

    "Millia. Millia Rage." That's her introduction to Neviah and Lian, who don't quite know the ex-assassin yet. The others know her though, and that's all well and good.
    In the depts of the crypt, Lian will feel an inkling of... Terror. And despair.
    And something much more malevolent.
    This is definitely the place, and it makes Millia pause to frown.
    "... Definitely setting my hair on end." She mutters but that doesn't stop her as she takes lead into the mausoleum and into the underground crypts and catacombs that likely spiderweb under the old ruins as a whole.
    It's dark. Up until the blonde pulls out a flashlight and clicks it on.
    Immediately Millia finds a bloodstain on the ground and it looks fresh.
    "Well that's not good." She murmurs.
    It leaves a trail.
    Several corridors and rooms later, the blonde pauses. And then frowns.
    This is where Lian will sense that malevolence in full. And it looks like to progress there's some kind of puzzle mechanism on a raised dais of sliding tiles and sigils in elvish script.
    Then there's movement in the darkness. The creak of something old and rustling and rusted.
    There's a soft creak. It's followed by a javelin or some kind of lance launching at the group from the shadows.
    In an instant, Millia's shoulder-length hair is suddenly MUCH longer as it shifts into a long, whip-like form with a blade at the end to slap the javelin out of the air and forcibly embed it in the ground.
    As an ancient elvish soldier, all bones and cobwebs emerges, rusted blade in hand. And not alone, as the crypt comes to life with many more like him.
    "Ah. I get the feeling they're not going to make this any easier for us." Millia comments as the skeletal warriors lunge at the party.

    "Lian Kamoya," the cloaked woman introduces herself. "Seer and adventurer."

    She stays near the vanguard, though her expression grows more and more wary as they continue. Even before the blonde puts a flashlight on the blood, the Jedi is reaching for the metal cylinder at her left hip, shifting her grips so that the staff is in her left hand, and the metal cylincer in her right. A split second before the javelin hurtles out of the dark, Lian's grip on her staff is relinquished entirely, and the sky-blue light of her lightsaber fills the room.

    "I suppose we'll have to insist," she replies to Millia; then, the woman lifts her left hand up and points it to the elven skeletons, unleashing a wide-area burst of Force - and, as it happens, of force. A simple push, to slam as many skeletons as she can into as many solid objects as possible. The more she can shatter, the less of a danger they'll be.

Neviah taps a finger against her cheek. "Truthfully, I couldn't hate them for it. I'd read the poems. I like poetry."

Into the darkness they plunge. Neviah hangs back a little, one hand floating out at her side, but Millia strikes up her flashlight before she can act. The former professor moues her lips before looking towards the woman in the big hat.

She keeps as quiet as she can. Her heels click a little, but there's no helping that. Soon enough, the dais ahead looms, and she advances to kneel near it, flicking her hand to call up a small spark of light as she tries to get a look at the script.

She gets a look at a javelin that passes in front of her face by inches and embeds itself in the floor near her. Her eyes go wide. "Oh!" she gasps, stumbling back and managing to catch herself awkwardly.

Skeletons come pouring out of the dark corners of the crypt. Neviah supports herself with a knee on the floor, rifle held against her thigh in one hand. Clicking her teeth together, she snaps a hand to her collar and comes out with a necklace, the charm of it previously half-concealed by the neckline of her dress.

It's more than a charm. It's the emblem of a skull with a snake coiling out of the eyehole. She holds it up as a few skeletons zero in on her, and she barks a few short words.

The sigil /flickers./ There's a pulse of energy around her - and the skeletons nearest her stagger, halt, then turn tail and start to run.

"Give me a minute!" she calls to the group. "I'll try and decipher this."

>> SUMMARY[Neviah Younger] >> Guess who can Turn Undead now?

    Creaking ancient leather. Rattling bones, grinding rusted metal. "At least it's not Fragmentum." she muses, taking some cold comfort, while stepping up and drawing her bat from whatever aetheric pocket she stores it in.

    Stelle's eyes pierce the darkness, almost glowing golden as she steps up and starts swinging like that one guy in that movie about the hydrophobic aliens... aiming at the ones not currently Turned.

>> SUMMARY[Stelle] >> Swing away!

    Traps in the darkness?! Or- Nope, skeletons. "Aw dudes, what the dump? We're here to get rid of your trespassers!" She winds up to take a swing with a suddenly very clawed hand buuuuut Neviah does that turn undead thing. It doesn't really work on her but it gives her enough of a shudder that she turns away from her targets to look.

    "What the jeffrey'd up beeswax was that?!" Why does everyone have holy jazz! Completely disregarding the sword she gets in the gut. "Aw, my dress? Really?" She bats the single skeleton away and just sort of continues on with the sword sticking through her. "Yeah, you read that floor! See if there's an address we can send all these whooped bony asses!"

    Much insisting happens. Skeletons are shoved by the Force, hitting the nearby wall with bone shattering force that reduces several to splinters and dust.
    Others flee as Neviah calls upon her deity for succor and chastises the undead.
    Stelle swings away, her spaceball bat shattering musty old bones, because skeletons are weak to bludgeoning damage while Marceline... Doesn't seem to mind being sworded all that much as her claw bats away the undead.
    The puzzle, once Neviah has the words translated from Elvish is... Likely child's play for an experience and intelligent ruin delver such as herself. It just involves sliding the tiles to make a coherent sentence.
    Millia wades through more skeletons as they come, hair batting aside ancient blades and cutting them down with ease.
    More emerge from the crypt halls as a new door slides open thanks to the puzzle being completed to reveal...
    Hiding in the next chamber are a young man and a young woman, both appearing to be in their late teens, huddled close. The empty potion bottle nearby probably explains why the boy isn't bleeding out, but they are kind of trapped until the rest of the skeletons can be dealt with.

"I didn't know, sorry!" Neviah calls to Marceline with a little blush. She takes a quick look around to ensure none of the bone bros are menacing her presently. The others seem to have affairs well in hand. Secure in the confidence of traveling with a bunch of murder machines, the once and former professor squints at the writings.

Neviah's eyelids lower a bit. "They're taking the piss, right? Fuckin' hell."

Turns out being outside the confines of Victorian England has given Neviah leave to have a potty mouth.

Even so, she slides the tiles around. A coherent sentence is formed. The door grinds open - and more skeletons come staggering out of the crypts. Neviah looks up with a blink and calls "There!" as she spots the pair of youngsters, but she's not quite close enough to be the first to them. There are simply too many undead to deal with.

Drawing herself up and flinging her hair back with a perhaps-too-dramatic toss of her head, Neviah holds her free hand out, palm up.

The walls of the crypt suddenly shudder with the sudden slamming blast of a thunderclap. The shock of the sound bursts out from Neviah's palm and rings out for several metres in front of her and around. Skeletons caught up in the blast radius are simply blown into component bones; those on the edge are thrown back into walls, staggered or pushed away.

    After the first wave of skeletons is shattered by a wave of kinetic energy, Lian Kamoya settles to dealing with them in an entirely old-fashioned sort of way. Fast, sweeping slices with her lightsaber, each step a strike and each strike a step, moving her this way and that. Her intuition is guiding her, both through the flow of battle and for something else - and when the crypt door opens, she's in exactly the right place to step, lunge and turn, putting her right between the star-crossed duo and their skeletal assailants. As it so happens, it's also just the right time to get her out of the way of Neviah's thunderclap.

    "Do stay there, both of you," Lian calls over her shoulder, giving a flourish of her lightsaber. "I shan't let a single one reach you."

    So yeah, not really bothering so much with the sword Marcy instead rips the big javelin out of the floor with that big fuzzy and clawed mitt and lobs it through the door when it pops open.

    "Keep your rust and cobweb shmutz to yourselves, bozos! Oh hey, found the baby necromancers!" Yeah, she's just joking but wouldn't it be funny if...! "Nah it's cool, I-" Drowned out by thunderous booming magic, Marceline just shuts her yap. Yeah, she's not even going to try to interpose herself; Lian's got that handled. She'd be too tempted to scare the poor brats and besides, the further away from the smell of blood the better.

    Aside, to Neviah, "So, wha'd it say? Was it a dumb joke? Or some proverb about fishing? Or is it the dark dark secret that these two are actually related?"

    The Montagues and Capulets aren't related, Marcy. That would just be weird.
    Nevertheless, the puzzle is complete and Lian places herself between the youths and the undead, showing the prowess of a true Jedi battlemaster, while Neviah makes a LOT of the undead just go away with a very loud thunderclap.
    Millia's hair gives *itself* a dramatic flick to get a lot of the bone dust out as the skeletons stop coming.
    This leaves the issue of the kids.
    They are also not baby necromancers. Just scared out of their wits.
    "Please." The girl eventually speaks. "We don't want to go back to our families, we're tired of the fighting. We just want to be together."
    "As soon as we get back they'll just get right back at it." The boy sighs.
    Millia purses her lips.
    "Really?" She asks, considering for a moment before she shrugs.
    "It's too bad then that you both died in these crypts and all we could find of your remains were your family signet rings." The ex-assassin says with a shrug.
    Immediately the two's eyes light up as they start fumbling their rings off. So the party can have 'proof'.

Neviah blinks at Millia a couple of times. "/My/ hair can't do that," she murmurs, tapping a finger against her cheek. "I like it."

Turning back, she sighs and brings her attention around to Marceline. "It was a silly riddle. Something about Little Bo Peepiel losing her sheepiel."

She glances towards the pair of frightened youngsters. With a little huff, she moves to lean on a piece of scenery, her bottom settling to the stump of a broken column. As Millia resolves the issue, the scholar raises her eyebrows - then smiles neatly and clasps a hand over her heart. "A fine solution. Ah-- one more thing--" That's to Millia, the last bit.

"If it's quite alright with you, I'm going to remain here awhile. I'm still curious about this place and I'd like to run some tests. I'm an independent World Tree researcher, you see - I have been studying a long-subsumed branch, and I'd like to verify if this area is integral to this arm of the Tree, or an intrusion from the world I'm studying."

    Marcy in a mood to speculate weirdness. It can't be helped. Still, she isn't really going to contribute much to the stirred up dust in here. She's already going to be brushing some of the leavings off of herself once she gets topside as it is.

    Neviah gets a look, then an eyeroll. "So make it something a kid can solve but, what, is it meant to keep out people that were raised by wolves? Or. Whatever?" She spreads her hands, passing through the door toward the couple. Her sword scrapes on the doorframe as she flits along.

    "Ah yeah. Family biz. It's true, what a horrible scene. This place should be sealed forever and- One sec."

    She remembers the sword sticking through her and gives it a jerk. She hisses, then her healing factor just kind of pushes it the rest of the way where it clatters loudly to the floor. She spends the rest of the conversation frowning at the damage to her dress. "Really. Just. Hey, which one of your families has a better tailor?"

    Were Lian to choose the outcome, she would likely have gone for a more... negotiated conclusion. But what Millia proposes has its own merits, after a fashion. But even so, Lian does feel the need to offer an elder's advice. "I'll condone this course of action, if you're willing to see it through," the old Master begins, switching her lightsaber off as she does. "But I must at least point out the two pitfalls of this path. The first being, that this path to peace depends on the both of you being dead. If your parents should find you alive, there is every chance it may crumble."

    And as she steps out of the side room to collect her staff, Lian adds, "And the second is that you are condemning your parents to the heartbreak of burying their children." Straightening up, she turns to face the pair. "Your parents will know the grief of believing their children dead. I have no doubt, that hurt will be enough for them to bury their grudge. But make no mistake, it will hurt them, deeply. If you are willing, I shall make every effort to uphold the ruse."

    That... Certainly was some riddle that needed solving. To open the door, that is. Millia arches a brow at Neviah. But she does not comment. Dungeon delving and its intricacies are not her forte, she's just a former assassin out of her element here.
    "I don't mind what you do as long as the undead don't get out." She relents to the former Cambridge professor.
    The teens both wince at Marcy's... display. The one with the sword. But when it comes to tailoring, both of them are in some pretty fine clothes.
    "I think you could go to either..." The girl replies, grimacing.
    But then what Lian has to say is quite sobering.
    "We'll never return." They vow in unison. "We'll be happy together. And if our families stop fighting because they think we're dead... Then that's all for the better." The boy says, prompting the both of them to nod as they pass over their signet rings.