World Tree MUSH

    So about that Nimblewright detector.
    It goes off, faintly, outside a manor in Trollskull Alley.
    Now it's not like Lether WANTS to snoop on the neighbors but when the detector goes off she quickly runs back to Trollskull Manor to gather up a posse.
    "That's Gralhund Villa. Belongs to Lord Orond and Lady Yallah Gralhund... Thing is the detector says we wanna look in there but..." There's hesitance.
    "We can't really sneak in or get in without a good reason or the Guard'll tear us a new one."
    Lether scratches the back of her neck thoughfully while playing with the detector some more.
    The place has fifteen foot high walls and the gates are locked. But people are passing by too which makes sneaking in much harder.
    It's while Lether is playing with the detector that the sound of a clash and a scream can be heard coming from the villa and no one else on the street seems to hear it.
    "... Let's get around the back."
    Scootching around to the back of the manor there are less people coming and going and after deftly picking the lock on the conspicuously unguarded gate, the group is in.
    "We're just gonna do our duty as good neighbors and check if the Gralhunds are alright, yeah? ... Nothing too overt though, anything loud might have a 'concerned citizen' call the Guard and then it's all over.

It's taken a lot to pull Neviah away from her studies. The Library of Deneir is like catnip to her scholastic mind. It doesn't contain everything there is to know - not yet - but there's enough there to keep her reading. The Nimblewright detector going off, however, is as good a reason to look up as any.

"That... sure was a scream," the professor remarks with a blink from the outside. Anticipating stealth, she went with her airy white sun dress. It's not very sneaky, but less so than her armour - certainly it clinks and creaks and gleams less.

Bringing her rifle would've been out of the question, and neither of her guns involve a silencer. She settled for unhooking the khopesh that normally underslings her rifle barrel. She looks a bit awkward carrying it, but it'll do. Creeping along the back of the manor, she tails Lether through the open gate and nods. "Yes... sneaky," she whispers.

She slowly, deliberately, rotates and looks at Dante from the Devil May Cry series, who is featured.

"Sneaky," she whispers again, slowly. "Sneeeeaaaaky."

    Dante is not a very good snooper, he more or less bumbles his way into things and they hopefully work out. "Well, a sword is TECHNICALLY silent..." He says, brandishing Rebellion for a moment. "Sneeeeeeeeeeeaky." He whispers back at Neviah with a cheeky grin.

    What's the worst that could happen?

    He slings the sword on his back, as it hangs magically without need for a sheath, before he begins to make his way to the back door. "I knew a guy who wound up being told he'd have been shot if he went out to investigate something like this with a gun, he had a bat instead." Dante relates. "Wonder what he's up to now."

Joanna's ears flattened against her head, making a soft *shwuff* sound underneath the fabric of her hoodie. This thing wasn't really doing much good anyways, so, she pulled the hood clearly designed for a human head rather than hers down. She was more or less prepared for this, her pistol with its suppressor attached sitting in the holster at her hip. 

 "Screaming. Ominous. How good a ping did you get off that detector?" 

 She held back from making an Aliens joke, but, just barely, that train of thought derailed by Dante for the moment. "Hopefully that wasn't him."

    Strictly speaking, Kanna Ouji is not trained in stealth. But she's capable of stepping lightly... and, more importantly, capable of walking on walls. That does a lot to help when subterfuge is called for. "I can keep my trap shut. And my iai should be..." The redhead pauses, brow furrowed. "...mostly quiet." She can't silence gurgles, and if she breaks the sound barrier it might be a problem. But otherwise, she should be good. But Joanna's question prompts a followup from the Crimson Wind. "We got any kind of direction? This place is big enough I don't like our chances of getting out undetected if we have to search the entire thing. Or if we run into whatever made that scream."

    Once the party is through, Lether closes the gate behind. She doesn't lock it though, in case the party needs to make a quick escape or walk out like nothing wrong happened at all.
    "Pretty good ping. This was the only place in all the damn city where the thing went off." She says to Joanna, and indeed the signal only grows stronger the closer the party gets to the villa.
    Taking the back entrance was the way to go it seems because as the team arrives at the back door to the manor... Lether pauses. Going silent she gestures with her hands, speaking in Sign.
    'Door's open. That's our way in. Be careful. Don't like this'.
    Creeping to the door she peers in, and sucks on her teeth as she opens it to reveal a kitchen just beyond.
    And the dead bodies of a cook and another servant not too far from the door.
    "This is a problem." The kitchen is a mess, judging from the disarray and spilled food, the chef and servant were caught by surprise and kicked up a clatter before they were killed. But the kitchen doesn't have much else of note, presenting the party with their first option through the next door: Do they take a hallway to the north, or hook around the south to see the condition of the main hall, where the clash of steel can be heard.

Neviah lowers her eyelids at Dante and sighs, her shoulders sagging noticeably.

For now, she does her best to keep her sword in the shadow of her body. It's not an easy task, but she manages to keep the light from glinting too conspicuously from the tempered bronze of the blade, mainly by trying as much as possible to rest it among the folds of her dress.

Lether signals; Neviah halts. She reads the language and murmurs back to the group, "Door. Careful." And there they go, in--

Neviah nearly trips over a dead servant. She steps back, eyes widening with surprise, but she keeps herself from making a noise by clamping a free hand over her mouth.

The initial shock flickers past; she catches her breath through her nose, reorienting her expectations as to what they might find in here. With her lower lip caught between her teeth, she looks towards Kanna and Dante, then tilts her head as if to urge one of them to take point.

Rushing into battle has been harder for Neviah lately. It's been awhile since she's so much as cast a spell. She hasn't had the temerity to try.

    It's not the sort of thing that's obvious by looking at her, but Kanna knows her way around a kitchen. She smoothly crouches down by one of the servants, examining them just for a moment, before looking around the kitchen. Crimson eyes take in details, and a frown crosses her face. "They were in the middle of cooking. Killer came in the same way we did." Eyes track down to the grown, following a trail of flour footprints, objects out of place - and then she looks to the south, where the fighting can be heard. "That way." She glances Neviah's way, nods, then goes straight up and over the counters in a nimble hop-step, heading for the southern path.

"Shit." Joanna muttered under her breath, an automatic response more than a conscious thought and kept barely audible under even the party's light footsteps. She kept her ears on a swivel, scanning, listening, while her hand went to her hip just in case she'd have to draw her weapon at immediate notice. The pilot gave the bodies a closer look, at least, for a moment, trying to figure out at least vaguely a time and cause of death before moving on south with Kanna, stacking up against the wall and peeking around the door.

    Dante is surprisingly ginger with the kitchen as he inspects the place. He keeps his hands to themselves once he notices a lot of blood and bodies. "Oof. Looks like we came to a horror show in progress." He says sourly, stepping over the dead chef's body. This isn't the first murder scene Dante's stumbled into, and he's not going to risk leaving fingerprints of he can help it. WHen Kanna takes off for the southern path, Dante follows suit. "I got your back." He whispers.

    South it is then, and a path under a grand set of stairs hooks around to the manor's main great hall.
    It's...
    It's gaudy. Two iron chandeliers hang from the dark mahogany ceiling over a large dining table carved from red larchwood, chairs surround the table with large chairs dominating the ends. Above a fireplace is a family portrait of the Gralhund Lord and Lady and their three children, two boys and a girl.
    The place is also in disarray and strewn all over the floor are more corpses; eight men clad in the tattered regalia of House Gralhund guards and two dead men in black leather armor. All of them are human.
    Also human are the five guys in black leather armor carrying maces and short swords, all their weapons slick with blood.
    The Zhentarim thugs wheel around as the party enters.
    Faster than a blink and Lether has already hurled a knife...
    At the chandelier above one of the guys standing on the table.
    "The fuck was that? You missed!" The Zhent sneers as the others move into position to attack.
    "No. I didn't." Lether says as the chandelier wobbles... And then crashes down on the man squashing him with a clatter. The others don't seem to give a crap about their man dying, they rush in for a fight.
    In Lether's defense, the crashing chandelier isn't as loud as a gunshot.

    One of the thugs laughs at Lether for 'missing'.

    "...you deserve what's coming, dumbass," Kanna observes simply. Blind idiots have no place on the battlefield.

    But in the next heartbeat, she's moving. A step up onto the side of the staircase, a short burst of running into a directed leap, and as the chandelier comes down, so does a red-and-white blur with a concerningly wide grin. Her quick leap drops her right to the ground in front of one of the leather-armored mooks, and what follows is an impossibly fast quickdraw aimed at the Zhent thug's arm. She's going for dismemberment, and as soon as she takes one down, she means to move on to the next.

Instantly, Neviah's eyes snap to the portrait.

The moment she sees it, Neviah realizes with a sinking feeling that she can forget about any hope of mustering up a spell. Too much of her wants to try and protect the children. The little current of venom everpresent in her soul won't abide such wholesomeness. Shuddering, she fades back a little as the men with the weapons come barreling in.

Neviah is a cleric with no spells on hand, a sword she knows only the rudiments of how to use, and a dress that might stop a sneeze on a good day. This does not look good for her. With a hiss, she fades back behind the door and out of sight, waiting a few heartbeats until her comrades have the chance to engage with things. An instinct inside her times out when it should be alright to jump in.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

...Tick.

Neviah never jumps. She looks down at her khopesh with her lips drawn tightly together. Her knuckles whiten, fingers shaking around the hilt.

    /What it would take to be anything but a burden to them..../
    /...Then there is no way out for me. I can't do anything without power... and I've made sure that the only way to get it is to complete the sale. To give up my soul./

The noise of the battle fades into the backdrop of Neviah's mental turmoil, sharp and clear though it may be. She tastes something bitter and metallic, a surge of potent self-loathing that nearly makes her gag.

    Dante quirks an eyebrow at the thug who laughs and like a bolt of lightning, the son of Sparda is off to rush the goon squad. These guys seem like they're pretty solidly on the thug status of disreputable fellow tier list, and Dante feels it's pretty justifiable to jump these guys. After all, they broke into this house first.

    Dante is suddenly right up in one of the goons's grill with a big smile, "Hi fellas. How's your health plan?" Then he clenches his fist, before delivering a fearsome uppercut to the Zhent cultist in order to knock his lights out.

    That's right, these guys aren't even worth getting sworded, Dante's gonna just throw hands.

Joanna opened fire, the suppressed pistol drawn, readied and rounds sent downrange towards centre mass in one fluid well practiced motion. She barely flinched as the chandelier hit the ground, the loud crash, surely louder than the metallic *POP POP*... *POPPOPPOPPOP* report of her weapon enough to make her reflexively pin her ears back but not managing to inhibit her stance.

    Everything happens so very fast.
    Especially in the case of the one guy who thought he could take Kanna on.
    "She's too fa--"
    In the next moment he's on his knees clutching the bloody mess where his arm used to be, red spraying from the wound like a samurai film as he goes down screaming. As for their health plan...
    It must be GREAT if they think they can take on the son of Sparda.
    They can't. And between Dante and Joanna, the Zhents are cleaned up neatly, KO'd or gunned down.
    Lether frowns though.
    "Zhentarim or not? We shouldn't leave any witnessnes." She points out, gearing up to finish off the disarmed thug.
    Unless someone stops her.
    Whether she's stopped or not there is a poignant stare at Neviah as the Lizardfolk girl blinks sideways.
    "... You okay?" Asked with a surprising gentleness from the usually gruff and crabby Lether.
    There's the path up the stairs and the sound of more fighting from deeper in the house, but no more Zhentarim just yet as the team reaches the top of the stiars.
    The double doors at the top lead to a hallway with two doors on either side and one at the end.
    "Well. Time to play Scooby Doo and pick a door."
    Right.
    Left.
    Or straight.

'You okay?'

Neviah is jerked back to consciousness when Lether intrudes with more compassion than expected. A little part of her awareness is all too cognizant of the fact that she's letting the little lizardgirl down.

She can't do that. Squaring herself, she brushes off her dress and nods, though her cheeks are pale. "I'll be alright," she assures quietly.

Now isn't the time to trauma-dump on Lether. There will never be time for that, Neviah decides as she follows along with the rest of the group. She made her choice - a bad one, in a fit of rage, driven by petty vengeance and bitterness and longing for power. The bed is there, made up in poisoned sheets of her own hubris, waiting to be lain in.

With no small amount of inner bitterness, Neviah peers over the lip of the uppermost stair and takes measure of the trio of doors that await. Mentally she runs through what she remembers of the layout of the house. "...The central door is likely a master bedroom," she whispers. "But if the other two are occupied, going in there would cut us off from escape."

    "You sure?" Kanna replies to Lether, already turning to head for the stairs. "We could spin this. We heard the fighting from the street. Gate was open. We came in to investigate out of concern. Might win us some favors." But if Lether wants to leave no witnesses, she's not going to debate. Instead, she glances to the left and says simply, "We split. I'll take the left." The redheaded ronin is already moving to do exactly that.

    Dante shrugs and lets Lether do the nasty stuff. "So who are these guys anyway? Don't look like any gang to me, unless they suddenly started hassling doorsteps about The Good Word." He asks Lether.

    Dante, being Dante, opts to go straight after heading upstairs, drawing Ivory in hand as he braces for what's waiting for him.

"Agreed." 

 *POP* 

 Joanna squeezed the last round in her magazine into the head of a Zhentarim merc that was still gurgling on the ground midstride towards picking up her spent brass and pocketing it before smoothly reaching for a new magazine and inserting it into her MK23 SOCOM. "Does that motion tracker give us anything more to go on than just proximity?" She asked, racking the slide and chambering a round. "Can we get a direction from it?" 

 She was starting to move left as well, sticking with Kanna. "There's no way they didn't hear all that. We've got to move fast."

    "The guard'll suspect us as part of the problem." Lether notes as Joanna finishes the job. "No matter how we spin it." She says while taking Neviah by the hand. The party should move fast though because there is still fighting through the house.
    "They're the Zhentarim." She explains to Dante. "The gang we've been working against for a while now. You just haven't seen any of them really ALIVE this whole time, Dante." So she can't blame him for not knowing who they are. So the upper floor hallway then...
    Kanna and Jo take the left. Lether crouches by the door on the right and...

    The door on the right is locked. Lether is already working the lock with her thieves tools and it pops. The room beyond is a children's room and there are three beds.
    And two young boys scared out of ther minds.
    "Ah." Lether mutters.
    For the record, she doesn't insist on 'no witnesses' here.

    The door on the left is not locked and the sound of heavy thumping can be heard. On opening it, a large man in black leather armor is trying to kick in a barred door to the north to no avail.
    "Open the door Orond!" He demands. "I just want a word with you! Especially after you and your whore wife locked me in your dungeon!" The Zhentarim grunt bellows. Only to turn and see Kanna and Dante and Joanna.
    "..."
    He makes a break to try and jump out the nearby window.

Neviah blinks as she's taken in hand. A horrible thought crosses her mind: She's wasting Lether's time.

Sticking with the little lizard-girl, Neviah rcrouches by the door on the right. It's sprung open --

And two youths wait within, clearly terrified. Neviah holds her hands up with a sudden intake of breath.

"...It's alright," she says after a moment's startled pause. Giving Lether a little nod as if to silently urge her to go on and help the others, she moves to ease the door closed before turning to the pair of youths. "We're not here to hurt you," she assures, voice quiet. "The men who came in... did they do anything to you? Are you hurt at all?"

She's reaching for the one thing she brought other than her sword: Her pouch full of medical supplies. Neviah may be avoiding drawing on her patron like the plague, but she is still a cleric.

    Kanna Ouji is always fast. But sometimes, she is very fast.

    This is one of those moments where the swordswoman gives a glimpse of just how fast she can be.

    In the space between one blink and the next, the Crimson Wind moves impossibly fast, fast enough to reach out and grab the man by the back of whatever collar his clothes may have. "Whoa whoa whoa now, slow down there, fella. You ain't dying here. In fact, I'm real interested in what you were just saying about a dungeon. Might be as my buddies and I have business there. But we ain't got much time, so talk fast."

    "Evil gang, got it." Dante nods as he carries down the hallway.

    He hears shouts down the path and sees the man trying to bang on the doors. Dante cocks the hammer on Ivory before he moves to intercept the thug, grabbing him by the shoulder and SQUEEZING hard enough to break bone, shoving Ivory in the man's face. "Don't." Dante hisses.

Joanna was plenty quick herself. She already had her weapon trained and pointed on the man the moment she entered the room, but, held off on squeezing the trigger once she saw Kanna make her move just in case of an accidental blue on blue. She instead kept it raised and pointed at the man's head a couple paces back so she could try and make a grab for it. 

 With Kanna and Dante seemingly content on doing the talking, the Jolteon instead kept her weapon readied, figuring that staring down yet another gunbarrel would stop him from having any particularly dumb ideas.

    The boys are young, small, and clearly not understanding what's going on and they shake their heads when Neviah asked if anything happened to them.
    "We were locked in here." The older boy says, "Told not to make any noise. Father said to hide if anyone came in. Our sister is visiting some tiefling cousins out of town but mother and father are still here- are they okay?" He asks holding his younger brother protectively.

    Meanwhile, Kanna is too fast again, and between her and Dante holding the large grunt, he's not getting to the window.
    "I ain't telling you lot shit about the stone." Urstul Floxin growls, gritting his teeth as Dante damn near crushes his shoulder.
    That's when a voice from the door he was trying to bang on calls out through the door.
    "The Stone of Golorr! It's some kind of ancient creature transformed! I knows the location of the vault in the, city but it's not here! Now please leave! I'll even forget you were here!" Cries a man from the other side of the door.
    Urstul sighs. "Orond you dumb fuck, you can't just blurt that out to everyone that comes along! Especially after you've been BANKROLLING us to find that damn stone."
    "Yes, well! It's not my fault my wife's mechanical servant accidentally caught your men in the fireball by mistake!"

    "Please tell me someone recorded that." Lether says gawping.

    Dante gets results, and he pistol whips the thug upside the head to knock him out. "Thanks a bunch, pal. Sorry about the mess, but we figured some hinky business was going on. We'll be on our way now." He says chipperly at the door. "You should really think twice about the defenses, or the next band of mercs are gonna be coming for your heads too."

In no position to help with a fight right now, Neviah settles into a crouched position with her knees together and her hands resting on her thighs, ensuring she's kept decent as she looks up at the pair of youths.

"My name is Neviah," she explains in a soft voice, her smile gentle. "There are some people who came in with me. They'll make sure your mom and dad are alright."

If only Neviah had been around to take note of what was said in the other room. She settles for taking care of the little ones.

    And out goes the thug. He didn't have the info they were after, but as it so happens, the person he was menacing did, so it was a lead that panned out. Not just info on the 'bomber', but something else that sounds interesting besides. Kanna gives Dante a cheery grin, then turns to look over towards Lether. "Well, you heard him. That's some interesting things he just said there. How you wanna play this?"

Joanna took a step forward, mulling over playing the same 'no witnesses' routine as she did downstairs. "Stone of Golorr?" She said, reaching into her pocket to pull out her phone and making sure it was set to record. "Sounds interesting. So does this 'mechanical servant' and the 'fireball'." She racked the slide of her weapon, not serving any practical purpose but instead to add a little auditory 'drama' to reenforce her point. "Talk."

    The boys nod a little numbly, their fear slowly diminishing when it's made apparent that Neviah isn't going to hurt them. Though Lether shoots the cleric a look before gesturing with her hands.
    'Careful with the promises'.
    Lether has no care if the lord and lady of the house are still alive after hearing they've been bankrolling the Zhentarim and caused the explosion that nearly blew up her new house.

    Dante pistol whips Urstul. He crumples. The guard can deal with him.
    "Oh goodness!" Says the man behind the door when Joanna rolls her Intimidation check. "No need for that, no need! The servant is gone, it took the stone with it."

    Lether curses. "It had the stone." And as she holds up the Nimblewright detector she curses again. "It must've bailed in the chaos."
    So how does she wanna play this?
    "We ditch. We got the info we needed."

    This is wheh a woman's voice calls from the main bedroom: "The Guard are on their way!"

    "... Yeah we definitely bail now." Lether says.

    "Had the stone, huh?" Dante grumbles. "Yeah, we gotta go." He shoots Joanna a mildly reproachful glare for trying to escalate things unnecessarily. The guy on the other end of the door was perfectly compliant!

    And with that, it's time to bail! Dante will take off with the others, leaping down the stairs 'cause stairway animations are for RPD officers on their first day.

Neviah glances at LEther and purses her lips, breathing out through her nose. She'd prefer to spare the lord and the lady, but it's not her decision to make.

Neviah gives the boys a last smile. "Stay in here and don't open the door unless it's for your parents," she urges before withdrawing to rejoin Lether and the others. She closes the door once more and joins the group again.

"Then we bail," she tosses in before bolting.

    The guards are on the way.

    Kanna glances at the others.

    "Meet you outside."

    She goes straight out the window.

Joanna cursed under her breath when she saw the detector come up empty. She didn't say anything else to the man behind the door, instead just quickly inserting the .45 round she ejected as part of the intimidation check back into her sidearm and moving to join the others, placing the weapon back into its holster. "Alright let's move."

    That's it. Time to bail before the guard arrive. Kanna is out the window, Dante leaps down the stairs and Lether leads Neviah by the hand as the party books it. Rather than taking the front or back gates and arouse suspicion, a barred door in the pantry leads out to a side street. Lether opts to not try and off the Gralhunds.
    Getting found guilty in even an attempt on a Noble's life is a death sentence.
    "We got what we needed. Split up, take side streets, meet back at home tonight." Lether says as she slides into a shadow and slinks off.
    The party will regroup later at Trollkull Manor.