World Tree MUSH

    It has been, perhaps, an hour since the band of intrepid adventurers was unceremoniously ushered out of the town limits of Farvarphar - a quaint and quiet village of little import. The trip has been largely uneventful - which, perhaps, is not such a good thing. A number of villagers have come along with the group as an escort, carrying torches - "They keep the swamp flies away." - and pitchforks - "In case we need to pin down some muck snakes. Nasty things."

    Tavnast - a heavyset, middle-aged man with black hair and a matching beard which leaves his upper lip bare - has explained the situation along the way. "Normally, we would prefer not to involve travellers from the sky, of course. You've certainly more important things to do, yes yes. However, our troubles grow ever more dire! A fortnight ago, this fell sorcerer, he arrived in our village, yes. And he refused to stay, and instead set up camp in a sacred resting point in the western swamps!"
    "He refused our hospitality!"
    "Camping on land nobody should tread upon!"
    "He consorts with monsters!"
    "Took two coppers out of the take-a-copper jar! HE'S NOT HUMAN!"

    "Harrumph! Yes yes. As you can see, he has stirred the village into quite a frenzy! And now, our children, they have gone missing, yes! It is undoubtedly the work of this vile fiend!"

    Now, plains have given way to the muck and shallow waters of a swamp. Small, gnarled shrubs dot the dark and oppressive space. Every so often, a small stone pillar rises from the waters - these are avoided by the villagers as they walk. There is a pervasive feeling that the group is not alone, though oddly the only life that shows itself is a number of frogs which hop about and occasionally croak at the travellers.

    In the distance, a campfire is faintly visible; the villagers seem reluctant to approach, despite their angry mob accoutrements.

In Holly's case she likely literally feel from the sky. At least she didn't crash into any one in the process. Hopefully someone dressed as a witch followed by two ghosts won't cause any problems. She doesn't eat children unless if they're made out of gingerbread. The torches do make her a bit uneasy though. An evil sorcerer though means there's likely magical artifacts present. She examines the frogs closely to make sure they're not the children and just ordinary frogs.

    Yeah, no, those... at least one of the frogs actually does seem to be polymorphed. Whether it's one of the missing children or simply some poor unfortunate is difficult to discern, as it quickly hops away and disappears into the swamp with a hearty splash.

Emily has taken on the appearance of a woman in her late thirties or early forties with dark red hair and glowing purple eyes; she's wearing a red and green sort of milkmaid-y dress with a tan petticoat, like one worn by one of the villagers they passed by on their way out, except made out of fine silks and cloths which look as though they'd cost more than the combined wealth of the entire village. Oh, and she's been hovering a few inches above the ground pretty much the entire time.

She just smiles and nods along with Tavnast's summary and the other villagers' rejoinders. She looks slightly amused by all the proceedings, but other than that, her expression is fairly unreadable. "Hmmm ..." She glances over the others present for a moment, then says, "Releasing capacitor seal 3."

She's promptly surrounded by three distinct auras, one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent; the silver aura seems to shatter, the other two fade away, and in a glittery light, her dress becomes markedly frillier, and a large black sword materializes on her back.

Her attention is caught by the polymorphed frog. "Well, that's interesting!" she says dryly, but she makes no move to follow.

 
Having heard of a town in need of resc--mercenary assistance, Temulin came to investigate. Riding her bird even as she talks to the villagers, She's not inclined to play nice with the complaining, "If this is your idea of hospitality, I can see why they wouldn't have it." She answers, as she eyes the mention of the money jar. "How much do you have in that jar, again?" She asks, the dark knight's tone calculating.

    "Why, it's about six coppers now, innit? See, us respectable folks, we LEAVES the coppers, an' don't go takin' 'em by the handful!"

    An hour of walking is easy when you have a big yellow bird to ride.
    "No, Temulin. That's a bad Temulin. Bad. Bad Dark Knight." Rydia of Mist chides from atop her own chocobo as the bird plods along, keeping up with the mob-- gaggle of concerned citizens as she grips the reins in a lazy hold that mostly lets her chocobo to maneuver as he pleases.
    Looks like she heard of this too.
    "You know. Maybe you should all hand back and put away the torches and pitchforks and maybe we can find some kind of peaceful answer to what's going on." She does suggest.

    Treading through the village, a white haired, tall man with a massive sword stands out rather obviously. He's ditched the red coat in favor of a similarly bloody colored vest that really shows off his muscular chest, eschewing sleeves entirely. "Yo," He calls out to the mob. "Maybe chill out a little? Where's this dude hiding anyway?" Dante asks, cocking an eyebrow at Rydia's choice in mount when he sees her.

    "Aww, li'l miss, but ar'nchu worried 'bout the swamp flies? If we left wi' our torches, they'd be swarmin' they would! 'sides, we need to see this thing to th' end. We know this sorcerer's sort."

    "Erm, yes, yes. His campsite is up ahead. You see the fire? He set up a tent atop a portion of an old ruin. Perhaps the only solid ground to be seen here, yes, but sacred nonetheless. If only he'd stayed in town, yes, perhaps this would have... well. No matter. He would still have performed whatever twisted experiments of magic brought him here, yes."

    All the prattling back and forth amongst the locals and even the rest of the group gets little to no reaction from the dour armadillo following the group. Dillon didn't find much use for such blather, his only consern was these missing children and the danger they could be in, not whatever other minor theft arson and jaywalking the culprit has done to annoy people. Really, who cares about a few missing copper in comparison. A grumpy snort is the only real thing close to a comment he has.

    Ughk. This mucky swampness is going to make it harder to get up proper momentum though. Might have to stick to fighting mainly with his claws and such for this mission.

    As the convoy of villagers and hirelings presses on and the campfire draws near, the villagers grow visibly less enthusiastic about their approach. Torches and pitchforks or not, they clearly don't want to confront their sorcerer, even with the magic and muscle of the assorted heroes and mercenaries.

    Having come closer, the campfire can be seen to be built atop a roughly ten square foot patch of stone bricks, in a loosely circular pattern. An orange-yellow triangular tent is pitched nearby, and a rack of some sort rests above the fire. The stone pillars dotting the area seem to have adopted a glowering face motif in this area. A warning? A decoration? Or perhaps just the only ones that haven't eroded enough to lose those markings?

    "Y-yes... there it is. The sorcerer's campsite. Well, I must say... we don't know just what he did with our children, but it MUST be his doing, yes? Why else would they suddenly vanish! So, I'm afraid this is how it must be, yes." Tavnast is no less troubled than the rest, but his expression is resolute. He intends to see this through. "So, then... we should have some plan to approach this, yes?"

"Come back, I promise I won't use you for ingredients." Holly watches as the frog hops wondering if she scared it away. She would to try and track it down later. "Okay, but don't be surprised if he turns you into frogs too." She warns the villagers, she's certainly not going to kiss all of them. 

 She notices the knight, a girl riding a giant bird and the guy from the ship. "Hello again!" She waves to Dante recognizing from the Titanic. There's also an armadillo too? She wonders if there's a hex or something on him. Then again an armadillo is an odd choice of creature to turn someone into. "Well, there's not any bones so it's likely he didn't eat them."

Temulin glares at Rydia, grabs her blade with hands and clads it in darkness. "Don't talk to me like that if you want to live." He answers her and then clarifies, "And regardless, I was wondering whether they could even afford to pay me enough to make this worth my while. I don't steal, especially not from the pathetically destitute." She looks on towards the so-called sorcerer.

    "Uh, sure." Dante nods hesitantly, looking towards the fire in the distance. He begins to make his way towards that campsite. "Get lost, dudes." He draws Coyote-A, and the shotgun shoots twice in the air with a loud BANG each time to try and scare the crowd off. "We'll handle this stuff, go home to your families."

    Holly draws a bright grin from the devil hunter however, as he offers a wave. "Yo, Holly right? How's things?" He asks, ambling to the camp where this 'sorcerer' is.

    Dillon just stops, folding his arms. "Someone ask him?" It's the first thing past greetings and the occasional grunt he's said the entire trip, and may or may not be entirely serious of a suggestion. Talking is other people's thing. He's here for when the need for punching things starts.

    The sudden shotgun fire does startle a few of the villagers - including one unfortunate torch-bearer who drops his mobbing implement in confusion, and winds up becoming a torch himself. He runs off screaming, back in the direction of the village. Don't worry, it's a wet swamp and he'll fall over eventually, whether on purpose or not.

    "A-ask him!? Why, he'd as soon... as soon turn us to scarecrows as talk!" "Or worse!" "Why, I approached his camp the other day, and he turned me into a newt!"

Emily grins at Temulin. "I notice you're still here, though."

And then she bursts out laughing at the reaction to the gunfire. She looks over at the burning villager. "Hmm ..." She then reaches into a staticky portal; a hand grabs at his ankle with the intention of tripping him up and hurrying along the 'falling into the swamp' bit.

    "I'm fine. Really." Rydia replies on the topic of swamp flies. She's been eyeing those torches warily since the outset of this journey, and keeping her distance from anyone actually holding one.
    Temulin's threat is met with a glower of her own, but before she can even reply, the crack-boom of Dante's shotgun makes her jerk in her saddle.
    And then a man catches fire.
    The green-haired girl's voice rises in a sharp yelp as she yanks on her chocobo's reins and the bird takes a few jerky steps forward away from the conflagration. She grips her reins with white-knuckled hands, grip trembling.
    "You don't look like a newt--... Oh forget this." The girl huffs. "Hyah!" And urges her chocobo forward. Yes. Yes she dares approach. Anything to get away from the fires.

    Flomp! Splash! Fsssss! The clumsy, jumpy torch-wielder lives to appreciate the valuable lesson on fire safety he has learned here today.

    "... well, I got bett-- wait! Li'l miss! The sorcerer! If you just rush in, he'll...!"

    Dillon can only put one clawed hand over his face as the villiager sets himself on fire and then runs off into the swamp until he finally falls into someplace damp enough to extinguish it. "... Better if y'all just go home and let us handle this," he echoes Dante's previous sentiment. Just without the shotgun fire.

"Yes, that's correct!" Holly smiles a bit as Dante remembers her name, "Well, there was a parade and I was there with some other people. A monster took a giant squirrel float so I brought a giant pumpkin float to life to fight it!" "Someone set the squirrel float on fire though and it spread to the giant pumpkin float as well. They both exploded!" She sounds kind of sad as she says that.

 The shotgun startles her a bit and then the girl on the giant bird rushes forwards "Wait up...!" She starts running as well but there's no way the witch can keep pace with a chocobo.

    The crack of the shotgun, the screaming of a burning man, and now the approaching splashing of a child on a chocobo has not gone unnoticed in the campsite. A figure draped head to to in a dark blue robe emerges from the tent at last; its face is hidden in the depths of a hood, flashing eyes the only indication of what might lurk inside.

    It turns to face the approaching group, and a booming, reverberating voice emerges. "WHY HAVE YOU COME TO INTERRUPT MY STUDIES!? LEAVE THIS PLACE NOW, OR YOU WILL BE IN GREAT PERIL!"

    As though to follow through on its words, the figure sharply points a finger at the approaching chocobo rider. Something splashes into the water just ahead of the bird. Something certain to stop the creature dead in its tracks...

    Away from the flames is well and good. But now Rydia and her bird are heading right for an ominous figure claiming great peril will befall her if she does not turn about.
    The chocobo slows to a halt at the flung mass of...
    Greens.
    Though Rydia allows the chocobo to come to a halt- the bird cranes his head down to sniff the greens before snatching them up- and she hops off the saddle and into the muck carelessly.
    "Did you just throw gysahl leaves at my bird?"
    She already knows the answer. Her chocobo is munching down.
    "... If that's your definition of peril, you're not exactly the scariest hooded figure I've seen."

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> SASS

Emily blinks in surprise at Rydia's sudden surge of movement. "Hmm ..."

She starts floating forward after her, seemingly showing an equal disregard for her own safety. Although she does grasp the hilt of her sword. "How perilous are we talking, here?" she says conversationally, giving the chocobo and the greens a significant look. "I mean, yeah, that definitely sets the lower bound at, ahhh, very low here."

    "Ohh... this is troublesome, yes. I fear perhaps we have... guided you as far as we can. Yes, yes..."

    Tavnast's resolve has, it seems, broken at the sound of that voice. His men, on the other hand... already seem to be taking the repeated advice to back off and let the toughs handle things. Typical angry mob, all talk but too frightened to actually handle the monster when it turns on them.

    You know what sucks? The swampy ground ruins any potential for appropriate clinking of spurs to punctuate the Ranger's approach. At least not until Dillon actually gets to the edge of the stone platform, and by that point the spurs are already too gunked up. "No. Release the villiage children or -you- will be the one in peril." Enough back and forth theatrics, lets just cut to the point of the matter.

Holly points her lollipop shaped staff at the sorcerer. It's hard to tell who was less threatening here. "The children better not be hurt or I'll give you something to be afraid of! Also hand over any magical artifacts your carrying too..." If he's a sorcerer he's bound to have some with him right. That's part of the reason she came here after all.

"I already agreed to do the job, it was just a question of how I'm going to get them to pay up." Temulin answers Holly, and then she approaches the man and ignores the other bits, putting her blade on her back and approaching, her bird does not eat Gysahl greens, and so there's no chance it'll be distracted by the throwing of greens. "So here's the deal." She tells Oberyn, "Either you can give me a good explanation of what you're up to, or I'm going to kill you."

    "I... NO, I JUST... STAY BACK." Somehow, the booming voice is not so menacing as it stammers and tries to hold the oncoming crowd back. However, it persists anyway. "... THE CHILDREN ARE NOT HERE. THEY INTERFERED WITH MY WORK TOO MANY TIMES; I WAS FORCED TO RID MYSELF OF THEM. THEY KNEW THE RISKS, BUT PERSISTED EVEN WHEN I WARNED THEM THAT THEIR FRIENDS AND FAMILIES WOULD NEVER FIND THEM."

    A scratching sound from the far side of the campsite momentarily distracts the sorcerer. When he turns back, his words seem to come just a little more quickly. "NOW GO! YOU WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR HERE - ONLY DANGER AND TROUBLE!"

    "Temulin, he's all yours." Rydia says, tone somewhere between irritated, annoyed, and just wanting this to be over with.

    There's an audible scrunch from the leather gloves as Dillon clenches both fists and takes another step forward. Stomping his foot a little extra hard on the stone to make up for the lack of spur jangling. A glare of pure disgust is shot the sorcerer from beneath the brim of the cowboy's hat. "Yer either lyin', or about to be in for a world of hurt mister. Unless ya bring those kids back from whatever hole ya sent them to..." It's the most he's said all day, and it's pretty clear Dillon is fed up with this guy already and only not bumrushing the fellow due to lack of space on the platform to spin up a proper charge.

Emily raises her eyebrows at Temulin's nigh-murderous trash talk and Rydia siccing Temulin on him, but she still has her faintly-amused smile. "Y'know, my creators would've been horrified to see me in this exact situation," she says dryly. She draws her sword, holds it at the ready, and starts sauntering forward after Dillon. "Especially if they saw me doing this."

 
Between the prospects of not getting paid a decent wage, the fact children may have gotten hurt and having to deal with this fool. Temulin is pissed. Fortunately, there's a way to deal with all those frustrations at once, and so she lets the darkness surround her, the energy palpable as it wraps around her flesh and blade, and she leaps from the back of her bird towards the sorcerer, drawing her blade and bringing it swinging down towards him in one swift move. She's already halfway through that when Rydia gives her blessing.

>> SUMMARY[Temulin Dotharl] >> Dark Knight activates Darkside, uses Dark Arts-augmented Plunge.

Holly meanwhile is trying to see if she can detect what magic he used to get rid of the children. She figures the others already threatening him enough as it is. She likely won't be able to bring them back herself if she can figure out the correct spell but maybe the others would be able to. If he had warped them away from here there would be no way to conceal that much magic.

    Dante draws his longsword. "Kids, huh?" He pops his neck, before suddenly speeding off towards Oberyn swiftly. Seems like a sore spot was struck, as he's visibly dropped any kind of mirth at all in his tone and body language.

    "SHOULDA LET 'EM GO!" He roars, driving Rebellion towards Oberyn's chest to impale him, practically racing the others to get first dibs on sticking this guy.

    They're not stopping. They were warned. They were warned to stop and they're not stopping oh this is not good. The sorcerer takes a step backward. Then another. Like Emily, he doesn't actually seem to be touching the ground, floating perhaps a half inch above instead. Helpful in avoiding muddy water, perhaps... but it doesn't help so much with avoiding a sudden sword slash.

    This, however, is someone clearly well versed in the art of keeping to the back row and not getting face-stabbed. He manages to draw something from inside his cloak - something sparking with pent-up electricity - and half raise it as the blade comes down. It barely deflects the sword strike - it's immediately obvious he doesn't have a martial fighter's strength to parry with - but it's enough to turn what might have been a lethal blow into a slash along his arm.

    This parry ALSO does... something... to the parrying stick - a rod, to the trained eye. A thunder rod, with odd markings scratched onto it. A vandalized thunder rod with odd markings which begins to fritz with tiny lightning bolts as soon as the sword strikes it. Its discharges build up quickly, and a moment later, lightning is arcing from the rod to strike both Temulin and the sorcerer - who had clearly been hoping something like this would not be what happened.

    "NNGH... LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE! I NEEDED THAT FOR... YOU'VE SEALED YOUR FATES!"

    The second swordsman, following up behind... might not be such a concern though. Watch out for friendly fire, guys...

    ... And it looks like having to hold back pays off as sparks fly in a very literal sense from a damaged weapon. It's a weapon, right? Sure it looks like a stick, but it's shooting sparks and Dillon is pretty sure normal sticks don't conjure up lightning. Let's see, the crazy sword people are all jumping right in front of the sorceror slashing and swinging away.

    So Dillon opts to take a less forward approach, running to the side and angling back again to blindside the magic man with a shoulder check to the midsection. He's dealt with rock monsters that spew lava, a little lightning magic isn't going to deter him for too long.

    Okay so Temulin actually went in for the strike. Rydia can't quite say she's surprised. The Dark Knight seems like the type to get things dealt with and that certainly is a way of dealing with things. But then she sees just what the sorceror used to barely deflect the oncoming blow.
    "Hey that's... Whyt, go!" She orders... Nothing that can be seen.
    Then the mists swirling around the girl detaches from her and starts wafting towards the melee.
    Coalescing into a more solid form, the mists take on the form of a hatchling dragon--
    Which tries to wrest the thunder rod away in a surprise snatch.
    Because Whyt doesn't need to worry about getting lightning struck.

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> Sending baby mist dragon out to deal with the thunder rod.

 
Temulin notices the lightning as well, and immediately some of the darkness she's surrounded by seeps into her skin and toughens it for protection from the lightning. She'll get hit by it, it's fine, she can take a lot of beatings, she doesn't stop her assault though, that massive blade of hers swinging in again, full of energy. "You sealed your fate when you refused to answer."

At the increasing chaos, Emily actually starts floating backwards, and she puts her sword away. Her smile is gone now, too. "... This isn't a fair fight," she says to no one in particular, although she makes no move to interfere with it.

She floats off over to Holly. "Found anything?" she says. "I mean, I'd presume at this point that the children are the higher priority, inasmuch as their disappearance is what moved the villagers to take action in the first place." (She's totally not using an irreverent tone to mask the fact that she genuinely isn't sure if that's the case, nuh-uh, why would you even think that?)

    Whyt should have no trouble fetching the thunder rod, which now lies abandoned on the ground. At this point, however, it's nothing more than a fancy stick - the single explosion of lightning spent its entire magical charge. Still... good mist dragon!

    Meanwhile, the scratching sound from earlier has resumed and intensified. Holly, looking for magical traces, won't find anything that would suggest the fate of the missing children, but she might just notice that there seems to be a sanctified aura around the campsite... and it's showing signs of cracking, in time with those scratches.

    None of this, however, is directly relevant to the sorcerer at the moment. He's busy getting tackled by a giant armadillo... which might actually be helpful at the moment, if it gets him away from the swordsfolk. "... ARGH. I DON'T WANT TO... *bworg!*" Uh-oh. Looks like that hit knocked something loose... the sorcerer falls into a coughing fit. "NOT YET! *auch, auch!* I HAVE to... no no no *bluuuuagh!*"

    And then the mighty, dreaded sorcerer of the swamp spewed some sort of viscous green slime from his mouth. Terrifying. And also pretty inconvenient with people rushing in to stabify him - going to be pretty hard to dodge or parry like that.

Holly doesn't seem to be having too much luck locating the magic, maybe there was too magic present from the others to locate it at the moment? Her attention turns towards Emily as she approaches, "He's hiding them awfully well. I almost wonder if he's keeping them somewhere else...there's some kind of field around the area though. Could that be keeping us from finding them?"

    That is not as bad as lava, but it is definately grosser to be spat on with. And being the one that just slammed into him Dillon is a little too far into personal space to avoid getting slimed. Which gets an annoyed grunting out of the armadillo as he staggers back, trying to shake the filth off. Looks like the sword swingers will have to take care of things for a moment. How disgusting!

    Whyt dutifully fetches the rod and places it in Rydia's hands. The girl carefully turns the expended wand over in her hands, examining just what had been done to alter it. Before she draws her own ice rod.
    "Okay have you had enou--gh... Ew..."
    Yeah. Yeah that's pretty disgusting.
    Good thing she stuck to the back row.

    Dante stops short of colliding with Temulin. Changing to his pistols, the Devil Hunter opens fire to Oberyn, dodging nimbly to evade the goopy green slime. "Augh, nasty! That just isn't right, dude!" He calls out, Ebony and Ivory blasting away with demonic .45 caliber shots.

Emily nods thoughtfully to Holly for a moment, then looks back over to the campsite. "Yeah, I can see it," she says. "Some kind of ... holy aura of some sort, which seems to be cracking." She regards it for a moment in her Eudaemon senses. "Is he causing it, though? Or was it here already?" she says softly.

Then she opens another staticky portal and slips through, coming out behind the sorcerer. She slaps his back, as if trying to help him dislodge something in his throat. "Hey, there, careful!" she says in a tone of mock concern. "You don't want to choke on your aspirations!"

And then she starts backing away as Dante opens fire, and her dress gains a bullet hole. ... She's totally not stealthily watching everyone to see if they got the stealth etymological-double-pun.

    "... blech... hate that part..." The sorcerer's voice is no longer booming and reverberating; it seems that that left with the goop. The tone that remains is higher, more nasal; one might suspect that the cloak was in fact intended to make it more difficult to locate his undergarments and attempt to lift them over his head.

    Seemingly spared the dark knight's blade - ha! The old 'too pathetic to kill' gambit, works every time! - the sorcerer stands up straight again. The slap on his back earns a stumble - and a reflexive probing of the space between his shoulders, as if seeking for something affixed there - and then... then come the bullets.

    The sorcerer is jerked about by the impacts of the bullets, but oddly, not promptly ventilated. He might be just a bit tougher than expected. He's certainly not pleased with it though.

    "... urk! Okay, look, this is... ow. Could we just... ack! This is... I feel like maybe... LOOK WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE SOON CAN WE FOCUS ON THAT FOR A MINUTE!?" No, no it's not the return of the booming voice... instead, he's screaming, clearly about as loudly as he can, with words rushing out and tumbling against each other.

    Meanwhile, the scratching has become a thumping. In time with each thump, a sphere of white light becomes faintly visible around the campsite - and cracks are spreading through it with each flash.

    Dillon pulls his hat off his head and shakes it a few times to dislodge the slime. He goes to put it back on afterwards, but pauses in tugging the brim into place as the scratch scratching turns into a thump thumping. He turns his head a bit, scarred eye squinting at the cracks 'in the air' due to the magic dome thingy. "Guys. I don't reckon he's bluffing..." Why couldn't the guy have just told them were the kids were and none of this would of had to happen, sheesh.

    Scratching, thumping, spheres of light, and... Look at that, he hasn't been killed yet. Though when the mysterious hooded figure says there's something more important to focus on, Rydia HUFFS.
    "Then why didn't you explain yourself clearly in the first place instead of trying to be more dark and mysterious than a damn Dark Knight!"
    Rydia pauses.
    "No offense, Temulin."
    It's really not Rydia's fault most Dark Knights do the broody mysterious darkness darky dark dark thing.

Emily raises her eyebrows, and draws back away from the sorcerer. "All right," she says, still holding her sword at the ready, but she's facing the light now rather than aiming it at the sorcerer himself. "Were you ... 'possessed' or 'influenced' until just now? Are we now talking to the 'real' sorcerer?" She speaks in a calm voice; at the moment, her faintly smug amusement-at-everything seems to have vanished.

 
Temulin steps back at the goop and glares at the man, but briefly glares at Rydia. "You know, I don't do the 'dark and mysterious' thing. I do the really bloody angry and I'm going to bathe in your blood thing." She answers in a tone that's more amused than angry.

"It would take a lot of magical energy like this in place, but why would it be a holy aura unless it was keeping something bad out?" Emily had pointed out that to Holly. "Wait, is he trying to protect the children from something?" She's not the most alert person but why would he capture the children and have a holy barrier in place at the same time.

    "Another Dark Knight I know DOES do it." Rydia clarifies simply to Temulin.

    "What the hell are you talking about?" Dante says, lowering his pistols as things suddenly deescalate. "You got some answers for us, dude."

    Emily and Rydia both receive the same answer to their seemingly unrelated questions: "I was testing a potion. If you talk too much, it..." The sorcerer gestures toward the puddle of goop. "But you get that neat booming voice and it makes magic... umm..." From somewhere in the cloak he produces a notebook. "... seven point six three percent more efficient on average. And I suspect it will also prevent and cure silence, which would make it a really handy thing to have."

    THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

    "... which is why those things are here. They look like they can cause silence, so I started provoking them to try to get them to so it. Apparently, that was... not a great idea."

    'Those things' are apparently a horde of large plant monsters - the classic walking flytrap model - which stand taller than a man. Their massive tendrils are the source of the thumping sound, and the cracks in the phantasmal sphere seem to be their doing.

    "... bloody swamp... never heard of a monster that could break into one of these before..."

Dillon ... just clasps a palm to his face for a moment. Why would anyone set up doing research in middle of a swamp full of potentially dangerous monsters? Of all the stupid -- And whatever those things are, it sounds like other people here are familiar enough with them to know to not want to deal with them. "Someone get that old kook out of here so we can get those kids back." If other offworlders don't want to mess with these things, it's a good sign they shouldn't be taken lightly. Though if he has to he'll deal with it long enough for others to get out of the way.

Emily's smile returns, and she lets out an irritated grumble from her throat. "'Silence', huh?" she says. "They seem pretty loud to me ... still, I suppose they're used to dealing with humans." There isn't any contempt or smugness, she's just ... putting a bit more emphasis on that word.

She holds her sword at the ready. "What about the children who disappeared? Did these things transform them?" she asks. "Oh, and by the way: releasing capacitor seal number 2."

The gold and pearlescent auras reappear. The golden one shatters, the pearlescent one fades, and in a glittery light like before, Emily's dress transforms into an elegant ballgown, the kind you'd expect actual nobility to wear, and the sword nearly doubles in mass and extends in length until it's nearly longer than she's tall -- it looks almost like a proper buster sword now.

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> This isn't even Emily's final form!

    "... children? What? How'm I supposed to know anything about that? I just told them to try survey site B-six instead of my camp when they played hide and seek. They were messing up my notes." As he absently non-answers, the alleged sorcerer digs through his cloak, pulling out a small black book.

"Wait, it makes magic more effective?" Holly could certainly use that. "So what's it made of?" They might have to exchange recipes later. "Wait, did it transform the frog earlier too?" The flytrap monsters make her curious, "I wonder what I can make from those, it might be a bit difficult to cut it apart though. Giant plant monster it should be weak against fire right?" She begins to cast a spell the question is will she get any kind of fire from it.

"..." Dillon just turns his head enough to -glare- at the sorceror in a very 'why didn't you say that in the first place?!' sort of manner.

    "Whoa, whoa, no! Not fire, not these. They absorb it, learned that the hard way, they're weak to lightning for some reason. That's what the zap rod was for, take them out if the potion didn't work. But... I don't think it'd handle this many. I don't even know where they all came from, I only brought one."

    "As for the potion... there's this neat plant. I'd been surveying the ruins around here, copying down some glyphs from the pillars and walls and stuff - apparently there's some kind of 'horrible ancient evil' legend here - and I got curious about edible and medicinal plants. So I tried a few, and this one, it turned out to be really poisonous - it tastes good until your tongue starts bleeding - but it also makes your voice louder, so I wondered what would happen if I distilled it. I got an early version of the potion, and I've been working on fixing the barfing goo thing since. If I can get it right - and if I'm right about the anti-silence thing - this could be a major breakthrough!"

    For a moment. For a moment, when she sees the plant-like creatures... A thrill of horror slithers down Rydia's belly like a wet eel. But once her eyes adjust and she sees that they are not what she thinks them to be.
    The girl's relief is visibly massive.
    Until she worries on her lower lip with a thoughtful nibble.
    "They probably don't like..." She starts to utter the obvious before the cloak'd figure corrects her assumption. "... Huh they absorb fire?"
    That's actually relieving for her but it doesn't changethe fact that they still have to deal with the creatures.
    "Yeah great you did a potion thing with some plants that make you loud, can we focus on the monsters?" Rydia snaps before she closes her eyes and draws a breath. The small girl starts uttering a complex series of words, hands rising into the somatic motions of a spell. Electricity arcs between her fingers, before she opens her eyes again and...
    "Lightning!"
    Calls down a lightning bolt on the nearest creature that is thankfully not a Malboro.

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!

Dillon doesn't have any sort of fancy lighting, or fire, or... Oh. He reachs for one of the pouchs of his belt and pulls out a glowing sphere, rolling it between his claws a few times. It starts to glow more brightly, and he flings it towards one of the plant creature's mouth-thing to try and get in itself. Where it will explode. Fortunately Bomb Crystals don't actually produce flames, just the equivilent concussive force to an explosive.

    Dante sees the plant creature, and he narrows his eyes. "Ugh, what I'd give for a weed wacker right now." he says, before raising his pistols and opening up on the abomination's stalk. He blazes away, before suddenly he stows them and draws a pair of swords from...nowhere?

    "YES! AT LAST, WE ARE SUMMONED!" "YES, IT IS TIME TO HONOR MASTER MY BROTHER!" "Y-"

    "Will you two FRICKIN' CAN IT?!" Dante barks at the talking blades, Agni and Rudra. The former is on fire, the latter has wind blasting at gale force. The dual scimitars are nice choppy things, that he uses in each hand with deft elegance as he slashes at the plants.

Emily gives the mage a gentle shove. "I think we need to worry about fighting the damn things first," she says, her smile never wavering. "Well, let's see how they like other types of directed energy!"

She reclines in midair, holds the oversized sword over one shoulder like a baseball bat, and waves her hand, firing off a series of golden bolts of light at one of the other nearest monsters -- they're more raw energy than fire or anything specifically elemental in the sense of 'absorbing fire'.

    "Right, right... priorities." The sorcerer cracks open his book to somewhere near the middle; it immediately expands to twice its size and obediently floats in front of him. As he reads off the page, his hands flit about in arcane gestures and he intones a chant not entirely dissimilar to Rydia's, culminating in a cry of "Thundara!" and even more lightning crashing among the plant monsters.

    'Weak to lightning' may have been understating it. Those struck by the mages' lightning bolts simply disintegrate. Emily's bolt of energy and Dillon's crystals cause several more to explode, a bit messily; sprays of sickly gray-green sap splash about the campsite.

    Bullets leave holes in leaves, while sword slashes mow down the plant monsters... but one struck by Agni's burning blade seems to melt down into the swamp water instead, and the ground shudders. Fortunately, this seems to frighten the remaining plant monsters away. ... wait, is that fortunate?

    They're running away! Usually a good thing... though being someone use to fighting monsters in waves Dillon isn't so sure that's the end of them all. "We oughta get while the gettin's still good," he grumps.

    "Yeah, no kidding. I gotta put the brothers to bed before they drive my ears to drink bleach." Dante concurs, smacking the pommels of Agni and Rudra together. "You hear that? I said NO TALKING!"

    "Forgi-" "SHHH!"

    "See? Not that hard."

Well, thankfully Holly doesn't conjurer up a flaming jack o' lantern. Instead she makes a fruitcake hit the ground right as the monsters start to flee. "Oops...they really must not like fruitcake." Well, she drove them off or so she thinks. "Wait, if the kids have been hiding for two weeks...doesn't that mean they're likely in some kind of trouble?" She just realizes they might have a different problem on their hands.

Emily simply nods in approval as her energy beam makes short work of the monster. Her smirk deepens as the ground shudders and the monsters flee. "Yeah, I think things just got really ominous," she says, readying her sword once again.

    Did that... No that couldn't have solved the problem. While the plants dissolve when struck by lightning and the others tend to more of them... The shaking ground is reason enough to keep defense up when the plant monsters retreat.
    "... Usually when a monster runs away it's because a bigger monster is coming along..." Rydia notes, in a guarded tone.

    "Two weeks? No, I know I've had to chase them off later than that. It was... oh! Right! Like on that one inscription, the one about the second moon reaching its apex! So, about two days ago, the day of that full moon when all the pillars did their glowy thing! Still not sure what that was all about, I found those plants before I could get everything from B-six transcribed so hey does anyone else feel that rumbling?"

    The rumbling might, maybe, just perhaps, have something to do with the thick bundles of vines starting to force their way up from the water around the campsite. Obviously from the same sort of plant as those flytrap monsters, they rapidly envelop the protective sphere of the stone brick platform, pressing in on it. A sound rather like cracking glass fills the air.

Dillon tilts his head back a bit to watch the vines weaving up over the dome to try and crush it. "Told ya." Is all he's got to say. Before he runs up to the edge of the platform and starts hacking at the vines with his claws. Not like he can cut them all down, but hey, it's still something. They're going to need to get through the things to eventually leave anyways, so may as well do some proactive gardening. Though someone seriously needs to have some serious words with this sorceror about his 'research' practices after this is all said and done.

Emily groans, and looks around at all the others present. She pauses as if she's trying to decide something, but then simply shakes her head. "Well, it might be a little tough, but let's see what happens if I do this."

Grimacing with the exertion, glowing purple eyes half-lidded, she swings her sword in a wide sweeping gesture, each time firing golden bolts from the tip of the blade at the encroaching vines. These bolts seem to pack a bit more of a punch than the ones she fired before.

    "Oh COME ON!" Dante protests, drawing Rebellion again as he begins to chop at the vines widely. He zips and zooms with a red blur trailing him, as he slashes deeply with his massive sword.

    "Right so you had nothing to do with the children going missing, that's established." Rydia grunts as the sorceror rambles about moons and glowing pillars. "Yes, we ALL feel the rumbling, it's--"
    Probably because of the vines trying to crush down on the sacred space.
    Rydia's dragon is clawing at the vines frantically while the little Summoner resumes her chanting.
    "Thunder!" Called out as she calls down another lightning strike, sweat beading on her brow from the exertion.

"Well, it would still be a good idea to locate them. Children shouldn't be left unwatched for two days." Servis finally speaks up. The two ghosts had been awfully quiet.

 "Yeah, let's go find those kids before they become monster chow!" Lavaux adds.

 Before Holly can take off there's sudden rumbling sound as the flytraps are replaced by a much giant monster. The witch stops to think what she can summon to stop the plants. "I know1" She raises her staff in the air and suddenly pygmy goat descends and starts slowly eating one of the vines. "That's not what I had in mind..."

    "Well. That's new. ... come to think of it, lots of weird stuff's been happening since that night. Those plant things got more aggressive, started chasing me. Lot more frogs all of a sudden. Hm... I wonder if it still looks like a big flytrap outside, or if it's just the vines now...?"

    Claws, energy bolts, slashing sword, lightning bolts, even a hungry goat, none of it seems to be making much headway. The vines regrow nearly as quickly as they're destroyed.

    The sorcerer trades his black book for a white one, and opens it to a page near the end. "... we can't take it out by attacking the vines, we need to attack the body. THE DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS PLANT BODY!" The last bit is shouted, perhaps a bit too hopefully, up at the goat barely visible atop the vines. "And just to make sure you're up to the task... Mini!"

    Hopefully, the no-longer-such-a-pygmy goat will be up to the task...

>> GAME >> Oberyn spends an Edge for: Mini: Magic spell, make my goat GROOOOOW!

"First we" Claw swipe. "Need to" Another swipe. "GET to the body." And both claws slashing in an X pattern to finish it off. They're growing back just as quickly, Dillon is just trying to piss the owner off enough to show itself so they can deal with the matter at the source.

    Dante makes his way through the vines, slashing away He seems to concur with Dillon as he swaps to Ebony and Ivory, blazing away with the pistols to try and whittle down a stalk of vine down to nothing. "Anybody got ideas?"

Emily does not currently have any ideas. However, as she fires slightly lower-powered bolts at the vines, she starts looking around. Her observation skills are better than most, and if she can find something that looks more body-like than vine-like, or indeed any sort of clue, she could figure out where to direct everyone ...

    "I can... Only keep this up for so long." Rydia points out while making the somatic gestures for another Thunder spell. But the sweat on her brow is telling. She's taxing herself. A young girl like her doesn't have a huge well of magic to call upon, no matter how much talent she displays.
    "/Thunder!/"
    Another shout. Another lightning bolt-- which she aims into the marshy swampy waters in hopes of electrifying the area enough to make that hidden plant body come out of hiding.

"I think you're going to need brute force this one, Holly." Lavaux suggests to the witch.

 "That's your solution for everything." Servis can't help but to comment.

 "Well, all magic got us was a hungry goat. How about a divebomb? Flying's magic right?" The wrestler tries to compromise with the pair.

 "I'm not sure if I can get enough height but it's worth a shot!" Holly takes to the sky on her broom, of course she needs to avoid getting grabbed by the plant in order for this to work.

    The vines continue to grow back into place, still trying to press inward, but their regeneration seems to have slowed. Holes begin to show momentarily before being sealed up again. Outside the plant dome, munching can be heard as the goat does its job (if not quite so well as hoped.)

    "I think... okay. I think I have it. Everyone just... fall back. Stop fighting it." The sorcerer puts away his book, and fishes out a few of his doctored thunder rods. "*sigh* it's going to take me weeks to replace all these... there's a circle in the middle of the sanctuary. Everyone move there. Hold one of these out as far as you can. Don't worry, they're already primed."

    Eventually the fighting dies down, and Dante swiftly wipes goo from his greatsword. Stowing Rebellion, the Devil Hunter just takes one of the rods. "'Right."

    Can't take much longer, right? He goes toward the circle, and holds the rod out for it to do its thing.

Dillon steps back and takes one of the rods between his clawed digits. Hff, magic. Well there's no other options really so he does as suggested with the thing. As long as someone else knows how to set them off, because he sure as heck doesn't.

Emily takes a rod, and considers it thoughtfully as she moves into the circle.

Then she says, "Why don't I make a bit more room for everyone else?" A glittery light surrounds her, and she transforms into what appears to be a twelve-foot-long and two inch thick black scepter with a purple gem in the tip, holding the rod in a long robotic arm. It hovers in place in the middle of the circle.

"Okay," says Emily's voice, and the gem flickers with her words. "I can interface with the magic just fine, soooo ..." The robotic arm holds out the rod, extending to a full six feet in length, in defiance of all known laws of how gravity and weight should work.

    Rydia is looking a little pale and breathless by the time the vines begin to slow.
    "What did you even do to these?" She asks, taking one of the rods and inspecting the mage's work.
    "And hell, while we're at it do you have a name? I'd hate to die getting eaten by plant monsters without knowing the name of the person that got me caught in this mess." She says, heading for the circle in the center of the sanctuary and doing as instructed.

Oberyn surely saw Holly's failed magic attempt earlier so giving her a rod might not be the best idea for the plan to be succesful. Plus she's already in the air at this point. She might work better as a decoy since someone has to keep the plant monster from attacking the others. OF course her staying in the air long enough to pull the plan off might be a problem in itself.

    "Oh, um. Desynchronized trigger and activation keys, rerouted their discharge into a loop so they fire everything at once, changed the trigger so anything that jostles them too hard after they're activated sets them off. Took a lot of practice to get it... mmmostly right." Seeing Holly going cowboy, the sorcerer takes the rod meant for her and gently wedges it into the crack between two bricks.

    "And they call me Oberyn; sage in training. Hoping not to add 'the late' to that today. Okay, brace yourselves!"

    With that, Oberyn scuffs the circle marked on the ground. The sphere of light flickers... and then shatters beneath the pressure of the plant monster's vines.

    They press inward, intent on crushing the entire party, grinding them to dust.

    Exactly as planned.

    One constricting plant, vulnerable to lightning times seven impact-triggered lightning rods, equals one heck of a light show...

"I'm Emily Nyx," says the hovering scepter in a languid tone of voice, right before the rods start to go off. KRACKOW. She just goes silent as the lightning starts to come down, letting the thunder do the talking for the moment.

"I'm Holly Winn! And these are Servis and Lavaux!" The witch points to each respective ghost as she comes back down to the ground. She's not sure if the others can see them. "That was impressive! I need to try it sometime!" She begins to gather what's left of the plant for ingridents, hopefully there was something salvagable from it.

What a weird time for introductions. But it still gets a brief nod out of the armadillo ranger. "Dillon." Then grabs the rod with both hands just to make sure he keeps it steady as the field goes down and just now realizing that this is possibly going to be a very good or a very bad idea hold on tight folks.

    Zzzzort zort zap!
    Rydia does the best she can to control the raging thunder rod in her hands once they all start to go off. But when the smoke and dust settle...
    "You know... If you want to be anything like the great Tellah... Sages aren't all about intelligence and know-it-all." she points out.
    "They show wisdom too." The little Summoner huffs.

    While the lightning manages to outstrip the plant beast's power to regrow - the body, left exposed, quickly falls prey to the conjured goat, whose exploits would go on to become legend in the village of Farvarphar - the tactic doesn't quite play out flawlessly.

    As Oberyn coughs, the ashes of his cloak crumble around him. Somehow, he managed to catch a share of the lightning too, again. "... always manage... *kaf*... to mess up that rune."

    (Un?)fortunately, the cloak was for mystery and pockets, not modesty; its loss reveals the youth behind the sorcerer's facade; his shimmering, flickering eyes prove to have been an over-large pair of glasses, and everything about his appearance and attire simply screams 'magic student'.

    "... wisdom. A lot of people keep telling me about that, but... really, sages should have knowledge too, so I need to work on that first. So, about those inscriptions, they were... hey, hang on." Hold on, is that... is that something relevant!?

    "... oh man. Wow. I just remembered, that was something about a curse. The moon apex thing. Glad I skipped that site that... day... ... oh."

"Moon Apex?! That's when magic is at it's most powerful. The kids could be in serious trouble!" Holly might know how to break it, but someone else might want to do the actual spellcasting. She looks at the inscriptions for more information. Of course Holly isn't exactly the wisest person either and tends to get into situations without fully understanding what's going on.

The robotic arm reaches over, and drops the spent rod directly onto Oberyn's head. Emily then transforms back into the same humanoid form she had before. "And does it say anything about removing the curse?" she says, completely casually.

    "Of course not! 'On the night of Second Moon's Apex, the Ancient Ones' blah blah 'disturb their slumber and their wrath be upon you' something something 'thousand years' seal, freed from the ancient prison', and so on. But, I mean, if we knew what the curse was, it wouldn't be hard to undo it conventionally, right?" Oberyn peers at his tent - now a scrunched up pile near the center of the campsite, not spared the plant beast's fury.

    "... *sigh*... and it looks like it'll be a while before I can get back to my research here, so... I guess I'm stuck helping with that now, aren't I."

Emily smiles. "Yep, looks like it!" she says cheerfully, and takes a step back. "... I'll keep my capacitor seals released, just in case something else decides to show up and have some fun."

Dillon just hffs, folding his arms in a mild bit of annoyance. Though it's more at how this little sidequest has slowly turned into one big mess, rather than the young mage specifically. "Never as easy as it starts out..."

"How did you transfer from a metal arm into a woman? Alchemy?" Emily's suddenly transformation got Holly's attention. "Second moon? So this planet is like Mars? And these ancient ones grabbed the kids? This is all so confusing! Is there a library where we could find more information?" Standing around wasn't going to solve anything after all.

Emily turns her smile at Holly. "No, I'm just a techno-magical shapeshifter from a world that's an effectively dead halcyon remnant," she says cheerfully.

    "... and that was the story, yes, of how Miracle Goat came to our village. He would go on to do many wondrous things, yes yes, but those are a story that we must save for another day."

    "But... but what about the children?"

    "You were among those children, yes?"

    "Oh, right. I remember that now. But... wait, how do you know about all the stuff that--"

    "Narrator powers. Yes. Comes with the mayoral office, yes yes. Now off to bed with you, child. Tomorrow will be another bright, important day for our village. You wouldn't want to miss it, no..."