Silly Plots

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom!

Morgan frowns. Darn crazy machines. If they're going South though, that's probably an exit or something.
"Stay here. I'll scope it out." says Morgan in a whisper. She rubs her forehooves together, eager to try a little Thestral trick she'd heard about. Carefully placing them on the wall, she uses some more shadow-magic to stick, slowly climbing along the walls as she shrouds her presence in shadow. With any luck she can make it far enough to see where the North door leads without being detected!

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom!

As this happens, Rose mouths 'cool' to herself as she watches Shadow wall-crawl. She'll try to hide a little, decrease the chance of her being seen, and stay where she is.

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

There's nothing coming or going through the north door at the moment and the door in question doesn't have any windows or such, so it's pretty hard to tell what might be through there. Unfortunately this isn't the sort of place that has useful signs everywhere that inform the reader of where everything is. That's very poor foundry making!

Opal, being very large and not particularly stealthy, peeks her head in through the door once she's done sitting there all gobsmacked at the sight. Had her brother built all this stuff? Or did he just take over when he moved in? She begins creeping into the foundry as quietly as she can manage, but her heavy crystal pony hooves really aren't cooperating with her.

Like...

At all.

The terminator skeletons continue to mindlessly work and/or file off through the south doorway. There's a good chance these things aren't sapient given the way they're totally ignoring the shadelings.

[Recaiden]

Swampside

The swamp seems to do a lot of waiting, doesn't it?
But buzzing doesn't seem too weird. It's a swamp, after all. Swamps have flies.
Krayger looks around, to see if there's any water he can follow the way the man instructed.

Well, as a piece of landscape, one would hope it isn't capable of much else.

There's quite a bit of water. It's really all around. But there should be a subtle current to it. It moves slowly through the reeds and rushes, but it does move.

Although Krayger might be more concerned by the bugs. Sure, swamps have flies, but they usually aren't measured in feet. The pair of mosquitoes skimming around that tree, though, certainly are that large.

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom

Morgan frowns and tries to see if she can't open the door and peek through it a bit. This lack of directions is going to get old fast, she can tell.

Swampside

Krayger stares for a while, slowly taking note of the subtle current, although it takes a bit of inspection. And then as he turns to follow that current, spots his insectile assailants. With a sigh, he draws his heavy cold-iron axe from his satchel, hefting the heavy weapon on to his shoulder. So that's how things are going to be, huh?

[Recaiden]

[Swampside]

Yes, that's how it looks like it's gonna be.
The two monstrous insects fly closer, bobbing and weaving through the tree branches, hovering a short distance away from Krayger.
He's paying attention. How curious.
Still smells like food.

[Deathkeeper]

Swampside

Krayger sighs and slowly tries to edge around the hovering insects, still keeping both his hands gripping his axe. He'll let them make the first move.
"Just had to be giant bugs, didn't it? Well, it beats ghosts like last time." he grumbles under his breath.

[Devixer]

Ruined League of Ruins - The Straightforward Approach

Hey, you know those ridiculous laser hallways in the movies? Well, as it turns out, Malice's got something like that as the first challenge in his absurd maze of traps and doom. Except...those aren't lasers. No, to make absolutely certain people would know these wouldn't just set off an alarm or two, and do nobody any actual physical harm, he's had the lasers replaced with buzz-saws. There's no mistaking what a spinning buzz-saw will do to exposed flesh, after all. At the end of an absurdly complicated hall full of these things, dancing in all sorts of crazy, frantic patterns, is a lever. You can just barely see it behind all those pointy death blades, but I'm assuming that turns off the trap, to allow people (or Malbots) who can't get by to progress anyways.

Aiden, who'd totally made his way to the front door before, grins while looking down the buzz-saw hallway. Before anything else, he reaches into his pocket to pull out a music player. He puts on the earbuds and presses play, then he goes for the slower approach into the hallway. He's sure he can take some saws, and that his sword can cut through them, but he might as well make this interesting. The slower approach for Aiden is, of course, to hop and twist his way through the spinning blades, one set at a time.

[Recaiden]

[Swampside]

With the circling, the first of the giant insects strikes, darting forward to try to stab into Krayger and drain his blood.
The other takes the chance to try to circle around behind the minotaur, himself.

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom!

Rosie tries to enter the door sneakily, but isn't very good at it. Only normally not very good at it, though.

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

Unicorns are quite a bit lighter on their hooves than a big ponderous qilin is. If Opal isn't alerting the terminator skeletons to their presence then Rosie sure won't.

Shadow, meanwhile, pulls open the door! Beyond is a twisty looking hallway that seems to have been made twisty for absolutely no good reason. Opening the door also sets off a reaction from two nearby terminator skeletons. "Intruders detected," drones one of the mecha-undead as they turn their attention on the two ground-pound ponies, marching toward them with arms raised at them.

Then?

The bones on the hands reassemble into a construct that suspiciously resembles a rotary gun. "Terminating."

Opal quickly stomps the ground in front of her, causing a hemisphere of shimmering opal to crystallize into being just as a fusillade of metal-coated bones begins crashing into it. The gemstone wall flashes and sparks as rounds are spit into the barrier at a frightening rate. Thankfully said barrier was big enough for Rosie to hide behind, too.

With a grunt, Opal begins pressing forward into the hair of gunfire to close the distance with the attackers. She continues pouring magic into her defensive shell, pulling silicon out of the stone floor and water from the air to sustain it.

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom

Morgan's mouth drops a little. What even are these things? That's ok, just focus. Just do what you do second-best. She closes her eyes again, and reaches for her standard (and nearly only) spell. Except instead of throwing her whip, she tries to make a shadow-tendril reach from the skeleton's shadows and ensnare the monsters, specifically their gun-arms.

Swampside

Krayger sidesteps, taking a chopping swing at the charging insect while also turning to ensure that he's still facing it as it goes past him, as well as still mostly facing the one trying to circle around him.

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom

Rosie jumps as the things aim at them, and then cowers behind the shield. She pulls out what looks like a smoke grenade, and pulls the pin. Thick, but not agitating, smoke pours out, and Rosie tries to throw it between the two ground-bound ponies and the skeletons. "This will cover us. Move!"

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

Ensnared robots! They begin to strain against Shadow's... eerr... shadow. But the sudden addition of smoke bomb! makes that difficult! With the smoke cover in place, Opal moves to flank the terminator skeletons and shatters her shield at them, peppering the skeletons with razor sharp and very energetic gem shards.

For good measure, she spins around and clobbers the pie out of one of them with the thagomizer on her tail.

There's a loud *crunch!* as the first of two skeletons goes down.

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom

Somewhere the back of Morgan's mind wonders if these metal skeletons still count as undead they can save. Regardless, with one of her two targets no longer taking up her attention, she focuses on the remaining foe, increasing the force on the tendril holding it, and trying to drag it to the ground, where Opal can pick it off easily.

[5a Violista]

Spoiler: Straitforwarding

Show

Ruined League of Ruins - The Straightforward Approach

Hey, you know those ridiculous laser hallways in the movies? Well, as it turns out, Malice's got something like that as the first challenge in his absurd maze of traps and doom. Except...those aren't lasers. No, to make absolutely certain people would know these wouldn't just set off an alarm or two, and do nobody any actual physical harm, he's had the lasers replaced with buzz-saws. There's no mistaking what a spinning buzz-saw will do to exposed flesh, after all. At the end of an absurdly complicated hall full of these things, dancing in all sorts of crazy, frantic patterns, is a lever. You can just barely see it behind all those pointy death blades, but I'm assuming that turns off the trap, to allow people (or Malbots) who can't get by to progress anyways.

Aiden, who'd totally made his way to the front door before, grins while looking down the buzz-saw hallway. Before anything else, he reaches into his pocket to pull out a music player. He puts on the earbuds and presses play, then he goes for the slower approach into the hallway. He's sure he can take some saws, and that his sword can cut through them, but he might as well make this interesting. The slower approach for Aiden is, of course, to hop and twist his way through the spinning blades, one set at a time.

[Ruined League of Ruins] - Straitforwarding

Awen is totally slower than Aiden. She gets there just after him. Why doesn't she send her fox through, though, to pull the lever and turn off the things? It's because I can't really imagine a fox pulling a lever like that, or even knowing that the lever is supposed to be pulled.

As soon as she arrives at the blades, she radios in. "-s a bunch of spinning blades. It looks really dangerous. I'll check back in once I get to the ot-." Oops. Looks like she let go of the radio button too soon, so it cut off some of her words. She also pressed it a little too late, as well. Happens to everyone.

The girl starts to make her way slowly through the spinning blades. She definitely knows that she can't take a sawblade to the arm and still make it out okay, so she's being a little cautious.
Meanwhile, her fox gleefully hops along beside her. Being much smaller, it avoids them much more easily.

If Aiden doesn't remember to pull the lever when he gets to the end, Awen does when she finally gets there.

[Darkcomet]

[RLoR - Straightforward]

DC, who is present around the VIGIL group, appears to have been ignored entirely. Instead, he kinda just hovers behind at the front door, narrows his eyes at the lever from behind his helmet's visor, after kinda just staring at the others for a bit.

"Inattentive tunnel-visioning morons." With a wave of a hand and a red aura flare, the psychic instead attempts to just turn the buzzsaws off by pulling the lever telekinetically.

What? You don't expect to DC to play fair with these things, do you? At least he didn't try to shove the VIGIL members into the buzzsaws with his brain or something.

[Recaiden]

[Ruined League of Prisoners]

"I like this one."
Now, some might say Happy had her chance to fight fairly back during the kidnapping.

Ashna eats a few pieces of her popcorn, held nicely popped in a glowing red bowl.
"Keep up the good work, Krystal."

Not that she'd destroy a Malbot herself until this gets far more desperate. This is a test.

[Swampside]

The axe cuts lightly into one of its dangling legs, coming back dripping some awful ichor. That one bobs low, drifting towards the swamp and maybe opening itself up to another attack before regaining its height.

The other continues circling, waiting for a proper opening or delicious wound. How boring of it.

If Krayger continues his turning and watching, after a bit, both will strike again, flitting out to the sides to hopefully come at him from opposite sides. Rather a nice bit of coordination for dumb insects.

[Deathkeeper]

Swampside

Krayger makes a small swing at the thing as it retreats, but it's the reserved kind, the kind that is meant to make sure he doesn't leave himself open. He doesn't expect it to land, but it's worth a try.

As the two charge in, Krayger lets his axe slide down his hand until the head is at his palm, and he steps backwards out of the way of the pincer attack. And then? He sweeps his two hands together, trying to catch the two bugs between his hand and his hard iron axe, and squish them both at once.
Effective, perhaps, but yuck.

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom

Rosie tries to stay away from the skeletons. She pulls a pickaxe out of her pack, gets it spinning, and then tries to embed the pointy end into whatever skeleton notices her first.

[Recaiden]

[Swampside]

Too late the insects realize their mistake.
Squish.
Organs and ichor and still-twitching legs drip from the minotaur's hand and weapon, but the monsters are gone, and that awful buzzing has stopped.

At such a volume, anyways.

[5a Violista]

Spoiler: Quotes

Show

Spoiler: Straitforwarding

Show

[Ruined League of Ruins] - Straitforwarding

Awen is totally slower than Aiden. She gets there just after him. Why doesn't she send her fox through, though, to pull the lever and turn off the things? It's because I can't really imagine a fox pulling a lever like that, or even knowing that the lever is supposed to be pulled.

As soon as she arrives at the blades, she radios in. "-s a bunch of spinning blades. It looks really dangerous. I'll check back in once I get to the ot-." Oops. Looks like she let go of the radio button too soon, so it cut off some of her words. She also pressed it a little too late, as well. Happens to everyone.

The girl starts to make her way slowly through the spinning blades. She definitely knows that she can't take a sawblade to the arm and still make it out okay, so she's being a little cautious.
Meanwhile, her fox gleefully hops along beside her. Being much smaller, it avoids them much more easily.

If Aiden doesn't remember to pull the lever when he gets to the end, Awen does when she finally gets there.

Aiden, who'd totally made his way to the front door before, grins while looking down the buzz-saw hallway. Before anything else, he reaches into his pocket to pull out a music player. He puts on the earbuds and presses play, then he goes for the slower approach into the hallway. He's sure he can take some saws, and that his sword can cut through them, but he might as well make this interesting. The slower approach for Aiden is, of course, to hop and twist his way through the spinning blades, one set at a time.

[RLoR - Straightforward]

DC, who is present around the VIGIL group, appears to have been ignored entirely. Instead, he kinda just hovers behind at the front door, narrows his eyes at the lever from behind his helmet's visor, after kinda just staring at the others for a bit.

"Inattentive tunnel-visioning morons." With a wave of a hand and a red aura flare, the psychic instead attempts to just turn the buzzsaws off by pulling the lever telekinetically.

What? You don't expect to DC to play fair with these things, do you? At least he didn't try to shove the VIGIL members into the buzzsaws with his brain or something.

[Ruined League of Ruins] Straightforwarding
Hallway of Buzzsaws

When DC telekinetically pulls the lever, the buzzsaws grind to a stop, just as planned.

This allows Aiden to make it easily the rest of the way through the hallway, into the following room. As it happens, the next room is full of Malicebots, who are sitting around a table playing cards. Actually, there are only four Malicebots, and they are playing Hearts. It looks like one of them is winning.

Anyway, besides those Malicebots, there's also an awful bunch of snakes crawling along the ground. They're probably poisonous, judging by their coloring. They're slithering all along the ground, and I'll bet it's pretty hard to get past them. Indiana Jones would definitely find it hard to get past.

Back to the Hallway of Buzzsaws, though.

Awen turns back and gives a smile and a wave to DC. It's a way of saying thanks, now that all the buzzsaws are stopped.

She starts to go much more quickly, so she gets halfway through the hallway. Then, suddenly...the grinding sound of metal starts up again. All the blades in the room start to move. Although pulling the lever helped Aiden get through, it seems Malice was crafty. It's almost like he knew heroes would try to run through after the lever was pulled. Even worse - the buzzsaws appear to stick out even further into the hallway. If DC had tried to get through the hallway immediately, this might pose a slight challenge.

Awen stumbles as the saws start up again - one of the now-spinning buzzsaws catches against her dress and cuts part of it. This makes her trip and barely miss a buzzsaw. Ouch, this is a dangerous situation.

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

Opal doesn't have to finish off the last of the terminator skeletons.

Why you ask?

Because it just took a pick-axe to the skull, that's why. Often times utterly obliterating something's skull with a pick-axe makes it so it really isn't quite so feisty anymore.

And then?

Opal pokes at the mostly intact skeleton with a hoof.

"Huh... No black mist or anything. If they're undead we can eat them, right? And I clobbered this one pretty good," she says. "Maybe they're some sort of golem instead of an actual undead monster? Those are slightly less evil, right?"

The idea that her brother isn't totally depraved makes her feel a little better.

For whatever reason the rest of the terminator skeletons are paying no attention at all to the interlopers.

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom!

Morgan shakes her head. "Damned if I know. Scary as hell to deal with though. If they see us we'll need you Opal. I sure don't have any way to deflect bullets.
We should keep going before new guys get assigned to respond to that door opening. But...Rosie, didn't you say you were a med student? Why do you have a pickaxe?"

Swampside

Krayger sighs, having expected this, and wipes his hands down on a rag from his bag. Which is promptly discarded, because gross. The minotaur takes a moment to set up his weapon harness and slides the axe into its place before resuming his walk, following the swamp-water's current.

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom!

"After I got changed from 'soul trapped inside a ghast's body' to a pony, I decided that I never wanted to risk getting eaten by an undead again, and my da had a solid pickaxe he wasn't using." She pulls the pickaxe out of the skeleton. "I was always something of... well, some friends of mine used to joke I was a chipmunk, always carrying around anything I could, just in case it would be useful. And I'm certainly not dropping off on that now!"

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

"My brother and I were both enrolled in a magic school back when the whole Atropus thing happened. He was amazing at everything. All I could ever do was magic shields. But I was pretty great at making them..." Opal pokes at the terminator skeleton a few more times just in case. "I know we're pretty tough, but I don't think we're tough enough to live through sustained gunfire," she mutters as she reaches up with a hoof and pulls a bullet out of her shoulder that had gotten through her shield. After a few moments of examination she comes to a rather weird realization.

"This is a tooth covered in metal... They were shooting teeth at us."

Where did they get all these teeth?

Black Opal sure doesn't know.

"Well! We aren't getting shot at now! The rest of the skeletons are just marching around mindlessly. I guess only those two had orders to attack anything in the room when the alarm went off?"

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom

Morgan nods at both stories. Well, Rosie should be much better at carrying things with the whole supernatural strength thing. She probably has to worry more about volume now.
"Teeth? I don't even want to know how that works. Here, we better get through those doors before the alarm resets and we have more guys to smash."
Says Morgan, heading in that direction.

[Lost_Deep]

Dungeons of Doom

Rosie is only a unicorn! She isn't as strong as some other pony kinds. But yes, she follows.

[Rebonack]

[Dungeons of Doom!]

Through the north door, then?

Our heroes slip through the door and, thankfully, are met with no blaring alarms this time around. Instead they find a rather convoluted hallway that winds and meanders for no discernible reason. Just as indiscernible is the fact that the halls are lined with motivational posters with pictures of cats on them. Variations on 'Hang in there!' abound.

Before long the hallway forks, both paths blocked by featureless metal doors. Beyond the one to the left comes a steady mechanical clanking sound. Beyond the door to the right comes a distinctively clank of chains.

Which path shall be chosen?

[Deathkeeper]

Dungeons of Doom!

Morgan holds up a leg. "Gimme a second."

She goes up to each door and lays a giant fuzzy ear to it. Listening! For what? Well, the steady metal sound of the skeleton-bots' footsteps. Checking for guards is the most obvious way to tell if a door is a good idea. And maybe she'll get a feeling for hidden things. She isn't really sure how her Talent works, but maybe it'll come in handy now...