World Tree MUSH

    Once again it's back to the small town of Cullfield, and from there towards the nearby mountain range and abandoned mine that the graverobbers had marked on a map for the party to go eplore.
    This time... This time everyone is hunting a dracolich.
    A malevolent undead being, dracoliches are known for their misanthropic cruelty and hatred for the living.
    Morrigan's van parks right outside the entrance to the mines, littered with signs declareing the place dangerous and off limits. The car door swings open and the witch steps out, shinki on her shoulder as she shuts the door behind her. This is the meeting place, afterall, so she waits to see who wants to come along and hunt an undead dragon.

    It would seem the graverobbers had just been a symptom of an even greater underlying threat. That probably doesn't surprise anyone. They'd said there'd been a monster of some kind at these abandoned mines. So Tyrael is here to deal with whatever this threat was. He descends out of the sky, landing near Morrigan's van and examining the warning signs as well as looking for any evidence of anything out of the ordinary. Or anything might hint at something else alive here besides himself and whoever else decides to show up and assist.

    From the shadows of a dead tree nearby, the familiar frame of Piera steps out, though she's changed out the white robes for more subdued grey-browns to blend into the dark terrain better. What's worse for an assassin than being spotted? Standing out so being spotted is made easier. She approaches, as her shinki drops down from above, landing on the assassin's shoulder as the vernier jets of her backpack shut off.

    IT figures that there'd be something else behind all this. Monsters in the mines, how typical. Dante climbs out of the van and grabs his sword, following Morrigan and Mary along. "Never fought dragons before. This oughta be fun." He says with a little grin, nodding to Piera and Tyrael as they make it.

Misaki really doesn't look like she's happy to be here, but she's here anyway. "So we're going after a zombie dragon, right miss Contrary?" She asks casually. She's already transformed. "Hello miss Forte, mister Alighieri."

    From the outside the mines appear to be a compltely ordinary crack in the stone wall in the mountain, wooden pillars prop up the path within, supporting the rocks above and the walls as the path leads into the darkness and murk beyond. Aside from all the signs stating to very obviously KEEP OUT, the place is as silent as a tomb.
    As Tyrael, Piera, Dante and Misaki make their arrivals, Morrigan stares into the darkness of the caves, lips pursed into a frown.
    "Ah... Um... Yes and no." Mary Contrary replies to Misaki, fidgeting a little nervously on Morrigan's shoulder. Morrigan elaborates for Dante and Misaki.
    "Not just a dragon or a zombie dragon. Far more dangerous; we're up against a dracolich. Whatever this thing is, it retains all is memories, cruel intelligence, and power that it had in life. On top of that it's a nigh immortal, undead, magic wieler of incredible power, and there's only one way to kill it." The Warlock says grimly.
    "We have to find its phylactery and destroy it." She says already beginning to make her way into the cavern.
    "It probably already knows we're here anyway so, Misaki, lights please if you would, dear?"

    "I'm named after that Dante, but Alighieri ain't my family name." Dante quips with a grin at Misaki. He'll take it as a compliment anyways. He listens to Morrigan, drumming fingers on the hilt of his greatsword as the warlock explains. "So...both? Whatever it is, we gotta go kick its ass, so let's do it!"

    He follows into the cavern, slinging his sword on his back with a big grin.

    "Forta, and please, Signorita, call me Piera." replies the Assassin, doffing her hood as she looks from Dante, to Tyrael and then finally to Morrigan and her shinki. "I will assume my normal methods of taking down a target will not work on this creature... how should we approach this?" After hearing that the target isn't the monster itself, but an item, she nods, "That answers the question, Aquila, lets add a little more light as well." She turns to follow, pulling a dagger from a hidden sheath at her thigh, moving into the middle of the group.

As requested, Misaki summons light. Two lights, in fact, one floating above her head like she usually does. One that's more of a spotlight aimed straight at Morrigan's face. "There you go, miss Lor'osa." She answers Dante, "Well but I don't know your actual surname and we're not close enough for me to use your first name." She glances to Piera, "Second part goes for you, too." She walks on, "So what does this vile actor look like?"

    Tyrael follows Morrigan and the rest of them into the passage. With him, Misaki, and Aquila, there's more than enough light to go around. "And how might you describe the outward appearance of this phylactery?" he asks. "I presume the creature will be guarding it. A diversion may be necessary."

    "Hargh!"
    That is the sound of Morrigan getting blinded.
    "You realize this animosity is entirely one-sided right?" She grouses, rubbing the spots from her vision. "I'd tell you to stop acting like a child but you're how old? 13-14?" The warlock huffs as she stumbles along through the caves trying to get her eyes to work properly again.
    "I don't know." She answers Tyrael honestly. "It could look like anything blatantly and obviously magical in nature, or it could look like a rock or a chunk of bone or something." She says as the group makes their way downwards.
    Up until a volley of arrows suddenly whizz through the cramped corridor! It's followed by the distinct YAP YAP! of kobolds as Morrigan pulls an arrow from her shoulder with a grunt.
    "Kobolds... Little rat bastards love dragons. Right. They aren't going to make this any easier."

    Piera shrugs at Misaki's response. "My sight cannot see magic, but I can perhaps pick out something moved or checked on often... I would assume this creature would wish to ensure its special item is safe and intact, correct?" she asks, before sharply juking to avoid an arrow that goes through where her head would have been a moment before. "Living creatures? Perfect, my skills will be useful after all."

    With that, she ducks through the group, and charges down the hallway. She jukes around any incoming arrows, and leaps on the first kobold she finds, aiming to drive her dagger into its chest with a savagry unlike her normal elegant and efficient methods of stabbing someone.

    "Hmmm..." Tyrael doesn't like the sound of that. It was probably a good guess to assume that the monster would be keeping the thing close, but there was also the possibility that it could just be disguised something innocuous. "It would be wise to locate the phylactery before engaging the creature in battle."

    When the arrows fly, a golden light shimmers into existence around them, the shield easily absorbing the blows from the kobolds' arrows. However, he doesn't make any other moves to attack them. The group should be able to handle these things themselves easily enough, right?

    Dante rolls his eyes. "Quit being a pest, Misaki. We gotta focus on the more important shit." He hears arrows, and Dante catches a few in the shoulder and chest. "Ghk!" It's really nothing more than an annoyance compared to say, being stabbed by a dozen scythes at once. Yanking them out, he begins to rush the Kobolds, dodging and weaving the little buggers before he thrusts his sword. Rebellion doesn't do well for close-quarters, which means Dante changes up his usual hack-and-slash combat style. "C'mon, you little bastards!" He calls out, stabbing and kicking at the creatures.

"I'm a teenager, officially not a child." Misaki answers, reflexively as teenagers being called children are won't to do. The Kobolds get her to focus, though, and she starts throwing flashes of light towards them in between dodging arrows, trying to disorient the kobolds so Dante and Piera can do their things.

    Thankfully due to Tyrael's shield, the majority of the arrows spang off the divine light of the archangel's holy shield. But then Piera and Dante rush the kobolds.
    "-Wait, they probabl trapped the passage!" Morrigan calls out.
    It is by virtue of Piera's nimble and wily nature that she misses the spike-pit trap that falls open. Dante can probably just double jump it or something, but then they're upon kobolds. It's a small squad and... Getting up close, the smell is pretty nasty as Piera's blade caves in the brittle bones and rotten flesh of the undead lizardfolk she lands on, while Dante starts mulching more of them as Misaki blinds the lot.
    Kobolds are light sensitive after all.
    But then there's a rumble in the cave... The sound of something heavy dropping, hitting the ground hard, and rolling.
    From the direction the party came.
    "Oh. Oh boy." Morrigan grouses as she leaps the pit, because a giant boulder comes rolling at the group from behind!

    Boing! Dante practically skips across the gap, bouncing off a red glyph as he strikes a wicked pose and a "Woohoo!" like some Italian plumber who hates turtles and has a mushroom addiction. Choppy choppy! He stows Rebellion before switching to his pistols, opening fire while he and Piera cut the zombie kobolds down.

    He hears a rolling item, and then curses. "Crap." Dante runs like hell as John Williams begins to play, somehow. Probably a good time go get to running!

    It would appear the kobolds are taken care of. There's a crash and a boulder comes rolling. Tyrael flies over the spike pit. Or floats or hovers, depending how cramped it is in here. At any rate, he follows the rest of the group. That pit is big enough to stop that boulder, right?

    Piera apparently didn't even notice the pit trap. She does gag as she caves in the rotting zombie Kobold... "Not living, not living!" she manages, seeing the others running and hearing the grinding sound of a large rock coming her way.

    She scrambles to catch up with the others, tossing the dagger away, since it's caked in god knows what from the zombie. "Since when did we walk into an Isu ruin?" she asks, moving unnaturally fast for just a normal human.

    Aquila, meanwhile, just flies to the top of the cave and to one side, pressing herself into a corner so the boulder rolls past her.

Misaki runs to escape the builder, leaping past the pit trap and hurrying along. "No-one said anything about traps." She complains, though not too much, "What's next, a shady figure offering us a deal on a weapon that'll exploit the boss's weakness?"

    Time to run. There's little to do for it but make a break down the cramped corridor. Unfortunately the pit trap is not big enough to stop the huge rock from rolling right over it. Though Aquila and Mary are able to squeeze atop it as it rolls by, the non-shinki members of the team have to contend with arrows and darts launching at them from cracks in the cave wall on either side, making things much more harrowing as they make it to the exit into the next chamber. Morrigan dives aside and the boulder rolls clean by as she picks herself up...
    And the smell of rot floods the chamber.
    Eyes glow in the darkness, countless pairs of gleaming specks of malignant, malicious, eyes as the party reaches the lair of the dracolich only to find themselves surrounded by zombie kobolds.
    The dracolich itself, Aghazdralanikar, lifts its head, little more than a grinning skull of teeth as it rumbles.
    "Who dares disturb my slumber...?" It growls, staring at the group as...
    Morrigan unleases an eldritch blast right in its face with a flare of green light and a deafening peal of thunder that echoes in the cave.
    This is when everyone will hear Morrigan's voice... In their heads.
    ~Dante, Tyrael, we're the distraction. Piera, Misaki, find the phylactery before we're all killed!~
    The dracolich is only momentarily stunned by the blast, rearing up with an ethereal roar as a point of black light forms in its now gaping maw, the zombie kobolds moving in with crude and rusted weapons as the skeletal dragon shifts juuuust enough to reveal a cave behind it.

    Piera skids, jukes and dives into a side alcove just as the boulder comes past. She looks through the darkness at all the glowing zombie eyes, and the giant skeletal dracolich.

    With Morrigan's instructions, she takes off, her eyes glowing brilliant gold as she focusses her energy into finding something, anything that looks like it's been moved by a large creature, or handled by the skeletal claws... Any zombie kobolds that get too close earn a swipe from her sword as it flashes from its scabbard at her hip.

>> GAME >> Piera Forta spends an Edge for: Empowering True Sight

    Dante is fast enough to dodge most of the arrows and darts, but he feels a few embed themselves into his skin. So much for his style ranking. Smacking an arrow out of the air, Dante dashes toward the nearby chamber. "Boss time already? Huh." He quips, and he opens fire on the dracolich the moment it begins to speak. "Sorry bud, we're on a tight schedule!" He doesn't react much to Morrigan's mind message aside from a curt nod, and he gets to zooming and riddling the dracolich in bullets.

    Tyrael rushes into the next chamber along with the rest of the group, the arrows and darts mostly just clinking off of the armor that covers essentially every inch of his body except for the spot where his face would be if he had one.

    He hears the telepathic message sent by Morrigan. Ideally they'd have been able to find the object before entering battle, but since that's no longer an option, this was a good Plan B. So he focuses on diverting attention away from Piera and Misaki, drawing El'druin and pointing it at the lich. "You will terrorize the people of this realm no further." Then he throws the sword straight at its face.

>> SUMMARY[Tyrael] >> Yeet!

Misaki gets hit by a handful of the projectiles on the way. Nothing too serious. Morrigan's instructions are listened to, and she dives into the cave the moment she notices it, creating enough light to see by. "Worst case, uh... we start smashing stuff?"

    Just like that it's an intense fight. Morrigan, Dante, and Tyrael lay into the undead dragon, the sound of gunshots, arcane blasting, and clashing weapons and armor filling the chamber, setting the zombie kobolds into a frenzy. Bullets spang off bones and pierce rotten tendrils of flesh on the lich's body as El'druin embeds in the dead dragon's skull as it lashes out with a claw and batters the Warlock aside with a grunt.
    That dark light in its mouth flares even darker as it unleashes its breath weapon-- a ray of pure necrotic energy lances at Dante and Tyrael, intending to drain their very life force and feed the dragon as it snarls.
    Piera and Misaki are forgotten by the lich but not by the kobolds, coming at them with those rusted weapons as they proceed ahead. This is where things become a problem.
    In searching for something that looks like it has been moved by a large creature, there are many rocks and boulders that have claw marks on them, but in the chamber beyond, full of even more kobolds, there are three that stand out...
    The three undead kobolds bear medallions around their necks, each identical and gleaming brightly.
    But Piera's True Sight will see beyond this. These are not the phylactery but a decoy. A smaller side-path looks well-travelled by the great wyrm, leading into a third chamber more ferociously guarded by the kobolds as though something important were there.
    The problem is that the kobolds here have breath weapons too, unleashing torrents of vile bilious acid at Piera and Misaki from their throats.

    El'druin flies forth and buries itself in the dragon's skull. The dragon lets loose with some kind of necrotic breath. Tyrael doesn't appear to make any move to dodge, but at the last second he suddenly disappears from the spot and re-appears on top of the monster's head, right where the weapon had embedded itself. He grabs it and twists, then pulls it out at an angle, aiming to cause as much damage as possible in doing so. The angel isn't sure if the thing can even feel pain, but as long as he keeps it focused on himself, Dante, and Morrigan, hopefully it won't realize what Piera and Misaki are up to.

    Piera jukes around the kobolds, hanging back a little to let Misaki shoot a few down before diving back in... "I can see a path, over there... past the acid breathing monsters." she deadpans... The Assassin makes a whistle, piercing and shrill, calling Aquila from where she was hiding to head down the pathway, staying as high as possible. The Shinki doesn't have Piera's eyes, but she can probably pick out something important with her visor-mounted sensors while the assassin and magical girl keep the acid-spawn Kobolds busy.

Misaki has noticed these kobolds don't like light much, so she doesn't summon her guns. Instead, she just goes for the light show, hiding behind cover as much as she can to avoid the acid while sending bright flashes of colored light frequently to dazzle and distract the kobolds.

    Dante makes a leap as he tries to evade the blasts of acid. He begins to run on walls in a nimble display of acrobatic gun fu, blasting away at the monstrosity. "C'mon, ugly! I know you can do better than this!" He calls out with a laugh, his weapons blazing away at the dracolich.

    That's right, keep focusing on the diversion party.

    A roar loud enough to shake the cavern and make rocks drop from the ceiling splits the mines. The dracolich is not happy, as it lashes out, claws raking the walls as it tries to gut Dante, while Tyrael splits the skull in half. Crumbling apart, the dragon doesn't seem to NEED its head to try and blast him with a volley acid rising from the gorge of its neckbone.
    While Misaki blinds the lot of the kobolds and Piera lays into them, Aquila will see it-- the only thing decorating this small side chamber; a mummified kobold standing entombed in a rock in the center of the room, long dead and unmoving. The heart within its chest glows a bilious green color as it pulses and beats as though it were alive.

    Aquila spots the target, summons her laser blasters and begins charging them, the barrels sucking in lines as the charge builds within.. She adjusts the vernier jets on her jetpack to brace herself in the air and, as the charge peaks, and a high pitched warbling emits from her weapons, she fires, two large yellow oblong balls of energy lashing out at the pulsing 'heart'. "I guess this makes me a heartbreaker..." she quips to herself, dismissing her blasters and summoning her bident, just in case the phylactary needs some more persuasion to stop existing.

    Piera, meanwhile, discards her sword as the acid eats into it, warping the metal and making it useless. She turns to throwing daggers, and draws a second short blade from inside her robes.

    As the lich's skull is split down the middle and crumbles away, Tyrael takes El'druin and floats away from it a slight distance. When acid still spews out of its spine somehow, the barrage splashes across the angel's armor, corroding it in several places. 

    But the archangel is focused on those claws as they try to dig into Dante. He dives at the limb closest to the man, slashing at it in an attempt to cut it off before it can touch the demon hunter.

    Dante would've been disappointed if that killed the dracolich. Dante however knows better, can't kill a lich that way! He opens fire on the undead dragon before switching to his sword, rushing the creature and running along the walls. Then, he leaps at the dracolich to slash at its arm, trying to block its claws in the process. Looks like Tyrael had the same idea.

Misaki keeps backing up Piera by using light to keep the kobolds busy. As she takes out more and more, she starts to use them as target practice, creating ever narrower cones of light to hit their eyes with.

    In the main chamber the dracolich is putting up one hell of a fight. Morrigan has picked herself up and is blasting kobolds to keep them off Dante and Tyrael while they hold the majority of the dracolich's attention as it slashes scything claws and belches acid and dark necrotic light at them. Even after it loses an arm, the ARM gets back up and starts trying to attack Tyrael after he hacks it off. It is not making things easy.
    Until Aquila blasts the beating heart.
    There's another earth shaking roar as the dracolich seizes.
    "What...!? My... How did you find...?!" It demands as it begins to fall apart, turning to dust and ash; the kobolds following suit as they drop dead for real...
    Leaving Morrigan panting and battered as she dusts off her robes and leather armor.
    "Well... I think that about wraps that up..."

    "We didn't! We just held your attention while our friends did that!" Dante says with a smug grin as the dracolich falls apart, once things are more or less handled. He stows his pistols, and dusts himself off. "Guess that's one more coat I gotta throw away, man I gotta be better at dodging." He muses, pulling out a dart from his side.

    Tyrael just keeps slashing at the arm and whatever other parts of the lich's body throws themselves at him until Aquila manages to destroy the phylactery and the monster finally dies for real. With that done, the angel comes back down to the ground once more, sheathing El'druin. "Let us return to Cullfield and inform its denizens that this mine is now safe to traverse."

As the kobolds crumble to dust, "I think that means we did it?" She asks Piera, "How'd I do?" She begins to head back towards the others.

    Aquila huffs, as the heart shatters, and the kobolds drop dead as they turn to attack her. She flits out and lands on Piera's shoulder, looking exhausted.

    Piera tosses her useless dagger away, the blunted, melting blade turning it to scrap. She reaches up with one hand to pat her partner on the head, and pulls a Jellycan out of a pouch, offering it up to the smallest assassin.

    "You did well." remarks Piera, walking over to the rest of the group and huffing a sigh. "Remind me to enquire about more sturdy materials for my weapons..."