Inside 61

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"There's a store at the mall that should be able to do it," Kate says, "But I doubt it will be cheap. For now, I'm getting used to it. It's the sort where you keep your mind, so it's workable."

"I'm worried that something else is going to come along and make it worse," Sophie says, "But there's no point really worrying about it. And it's not like life is just transformations and worry; I just got a new job!"

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"Does... this sort of thing happen often?" Sophie asks, slowly, before turning to... the other Sophie. "What sort of job?"

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"Last time I was a cyborg pixie half-dragon and then I died," Kate reminds Sophie. To be fair, it has been a while, and there was a time when all that stuff was on a second body.

"I used to work at a silk outfit making place, but that got wrecked because it turned out to be run by a James Bond-style super villain. Now I managed to get a job at a mine as demolitions and occasional exterminator," Sophie explains, "And truthfully, I like it a lot more. More independent thought, less nosy superiors, and the pay is better. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all the money, I don't want to go Kate's route and squirrel it all away for the bi-monthly emergency."

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"You can always donate to charity," Sophie says. "There are plenty of such ventures that can use the help." She nods to Kate, a little embarrassed. "You're right, I forgot. I'm sorry. And I was the first person to... reintroduce you to the Nexus. So to speak."

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"Honestly, I sometimes forget I died, too. It's really weird," Kate admits, "and more than a little creepy."

"Yeah, I'll poke around at some charities," Sophie says, "But I'm not sure how much good they do. If anything, the only charity where a good use is planned is GLoG, and I haven't heard anything about it needing money."

"Ooh, I should get more involved with GLoG again," Kate says, mainly to herself.

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"You never know when another disaster might strike and we'll need money to help refugees," Sophie says. "Things have been very quiet lately, but it can change unexpectedly. Any and all help is welcome."

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"What's the story behind GLoG, anyway?" Sophie asks, "I know that sorting out Nexus history is nigh-impossible, but I've heard enough to be... very confused."

Kate nods a little, she's curious, too.

[Deathkeeper]

Spoiler

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Huntside Imports Delicatessen

Hiram nodded but didn't speak as he seemed more interested in finishing his meal for the time being. It was probably for the best as any more talking would probably lead to food just getting cold. He made a mental note of having Isaac show him more places if this was anything like a standard, though.

Finally putting the penultimate bone down, the dwarvenly-inclined fellow wiped his hands clean once again before reaching into his jacket and pulling out a gold watch. It's large face would make it hard to hide although Isaac might wonder just what kind of time it was measuring, exactly, as, beyond the sun and moon on one dial, it didn't appear to be so much of a clock as some kind of wayward compass in some ways. Then again, it was probably more useful than just a normal watch given how odd the Nexus could be. "Hmm... A bit off topic from before, here, but what do you think of temporal magic?" he inquired all of a sudden; his tone gaining an air of gravitas that hadn't been present before. It was a fairly serious topic considering the mess that could be made with it but there had to be a good reason why he was asking, right?

Huntside Imports Delicatessen

By that point, Isaac will have finished his sandwich. He eats quickly, not really savoring his food much, so he tends to finish before anyone else.
He looks up at the dwarf as he swallows the last bite, an inquisitive look on his face. That's certainly an abrupt subject change.
"Uh, I know next to nothing about it, sir. I think it sounds pretty powerful, so it's interesting, but beyond that I couldn't tell you much." he says with a polite shrug.

[Terumitsu]

[Huntside Imports Delicatessen]

"It sounds powerful, yeah, but it's a bit of a real hassle to get to work just right." he said, closing the watch with a snap and motioning for a cheque and a bag to carry the bones out with. He'd seen a few canine familiars around the school that would probably want something to gnaw on during his rather brief time there. Or maybe they had been wolves of some kind? At least one student looked like some kind of part-time werewolf..

"Funny part of it is that the hassle isn't even the problems that most people think of the first time around. Heck, most of those problems don't even come up in normal usage of the stuff. Sure, you can technically travel through time but it's usually a lot more efficient to use it as a lens of sort into the past. Or a future." he said, rubbing the surface of the watch's cover with his thumb in thought for a bit. "The hard part is... Well, it's not a pretty thing to study for it's own sake, I should say." he said with a rueful chortle. He wasn't about to go on about existential dread in front of a young student now, was he?

"Best part, though? Grandfather paradox is something that you don't ever need to worry about. Has something to do with the fact that cause and event doesn't necessarily hold sway over the persistence of matter... Er.. Though, that might be a talk better held for a later time. Or, technically, some other point on that 'W' Axis that we all find ourselves walking on besides the other three dimensions, as you could think of it." he said. No need filling the boy's brain up with things that would make his concentration on the rest of the day wane.

[Deathkeeper]

Huntside Imports Delicatessen

Yorick quickly brings the dwarf his bill and a styrofoam box.

Isaac mulls over the words, but he can't really make sense of the point. Why had he brought it up?
"Uh, so you're talking about using time magic for divination purposes?" he says, since that was the only thing the dwarf didn't tell him was out of his league to understand.

[Cyber Punk]

[Midnight Park]

Nightlight waves to the pair of adventurers as they depart! Equestrians are weirdly flexible like that. There's no way a normal horse would be able to bend their legs enough to wave.

Anywho!

Down the gully toward the grotto!

As our heroes walk the incoherent, hungry whispers of the shadows grow increasingly forceful. Thankfully none of the awful creatures act on that hunger for fear of Nightlight's lanterns. Along the way one side of the gully has collapsed where a large bed of faintly luminescent purple moss is growing. It looks exceptionally soft and plush. And what's this? There's a fancy looking spear sitting in the moss! Who could have left it there?

Sharpe laughs, running beside the skipping Axanot on the way to slay some Eldritch Abominations Nightgaunts. "You know, Axxie, bladepires have two other forms. One that is based on the properties of cold metal, and one based on superheated-- What in the world?" Sharpe discovered 'fancy-looking spear'!

"Something seems..." Sharpe activated Vampire Sight, focusing on the fancy spear. He's looking especially for traps, and trying to identify it.

Hey, it's a bladed weapon, after all!

Spoiler: SHADOWS IN MIDNIGHT PARK - Quest

Show

*Pick up a sun lantern
*(Optional) Pick up more sun lanterns
-Locate the Nightgaunts

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"Oh, I haven't been there for all of it," Sophie says. "I know it was founded as a place of redemption for wrong-doers long ago. It had a fairly sophisticated base, but it was destroyed in some war. Then they moved to a campsite and extended their operations to charity and welfare. I went there after being stranded in the Nexus."

[goto124]

[Midnight Park]

Sadly, Axanot isn't nearly as cautious. She immediately does what any kid would do- jump into the purple moss and roll around in the carpet, trying to make snow moss angels. It's comfortable isn't it? Whee!

Then, Axanot rolls over the spear. 'Ow!', she exclaims as she sits up, revealing a small cut just to the side of the dagger in her back. Axanot looks at the moss again, spots the spear, and quickly picks it up to examine.

Spoiler: tasks here

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Task 1: Get a sun lantern, otherwise the shadows will harm you. (Complete)

Spoiler: Quotes

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Nightlight says,"If you wanted to try adventuring off the trail, you should probably take one of the extra lanterns with you. They'll protect you from the feral shadows that would try to devour you otherwise."

Task 2: Destroy the Nightgaunts in the grotto.
Hold a sun lantern when killing the Nightgaunts, or else they'll be immune.
The grotto can be reached by following the stream in the canyon with ghostly ferns.

Spoiler: Quotes

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Nightlight says,"We've been having trouble with a grotto full of nightgaunts for a while now. Since they're nightshades like us getting rid of them isn't very easy."

"See the stream there?" Nightlight asks, pointing at a dark stream of water flowing down a little canyon flanked with ghostly ferns. "That leads to the grotto. Just follow the stream and you'll be there in no time at all."

"Any sort of weapon will do just so long as the nightgaunts are being exposed to sunlight," Nightlight explains. "All nightshades lose their ability to resist harm in direct sunlight. Even us! I've just designed my lanterns not to react to us like they will to undead that are harmed by the sun."

Task 4: Spear!
A fancy spear sleeping on plush purple moss. What could be up?

Task 3: Report to Mistress Sweet Spring when you succeed.

Spoiler: Quotes

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Nightlight says," If you could destroy them all, I'm sure Mistress Sweet Spring would be quite pleased."

Quest Reward(s):
- Enchantment services may be provided at Shadowood Hold in the center of Midnight Park. Ask Mistress Sweet Spring.

Spoiler: Quotes

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Nightlight says,"If you visit Shadowood Hold in the middle of the park I'm sure you would be able to find somepony who can help you out. Mistress Sweet Spring will probably want to reward you for getting rid of those nightgaunts, so remember to ask her about it."

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"How'd that happen? Lost in the woods? Walking down the street? Or did something reasonable happen, like a hole in spacetime?" Sophie asks.

Kate opens her mouth to argue that definition of 'reasonable', but then closes it.

[Terumitsu]

Huntside Imports Delicatessen

Yorick quickly brings the dwarf his bill and a styrofoam box.

Isaac mulls over the words, but he can't really make sense of the point. Why had he brought it up?
"Uh, so you're talking about using time magic for divination purposes?" he says, since that was the only thing the dwarf didn't tell him was out of his league to understand.

Huntside Imports Delicatessen

"Well, maybe a little bit. It lends itself to that quite well." Hiram said, leaving a bit extra on the bill in tip after the remains had been shuffled into the spongy container. "I suppose, though, in my own meandering way I was asking if you knew if you ever felt ill or got sick from it's use, though. Particularly low degrees of temporal compression or 'Hasting' as you might know it as." he said, pocketing the watch once again and tucking the pale box into... Somewhere or another under his coat. He was a mage, after all, so he very likely had pockets that could store things that most pockets wouldn't have any right to carry in them.

"It's the worst part about being a scholar, you know? You end up giving a small lecture on time magic when all you're really wanting to say is that you're about to be late if you don't hurry back to the grounds." he said with that crinkling smile. Which might well be true if the traffic around here got a bit worse than usual.

[Deathkeeper]

Huntside Imports Delicatessen

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that does make sense. In this case, I've never used it, so I couldn't tell you for sure." he says simply.
And that's the truth! It's not like you could comment on experience with a kind of magic that you've never actually used before. Isaac is a first year student, so when he says he's only worked with two schools of spellcasting and alchemy, then those really are the only schools of magic that he has any expertise of.

[Rebonack]

[Weather Factory]

There comes a rather loud crunching noise when Gilded kicks the transparent canopy protecting the solider inside the suit from the outside world, the highly durable material spider-webbing with cracks. The space marine stumbles several steps backwards! Looks like he wasn't expecting that!

"This is your last warning!" he bellows, moving to try leveling his weapon at Gilded. "You've obviously sided with the aliens! Stand down!"

Silly crazy people.

[Midnight Park]

The spear isn't trapped. It does appear to be enchanted, though.

Then moss flopping!

A thick cloud of purple spores poofs out of the moss. If inhaled, it will very likely put anyone who breaths it into a deep, catatonic slumber. That would probably be bad!

[Ionbound]

Spoiler

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[Hive beneath the Grey Zone]

A good deal of time has passed. The old rusted installation they dragged Phoebe through has been broken down into pieces. The drone that returned her has been 'rewarded' with a new existence as the heart of a spawning pool, slowly filling with a mix of rainwater, muk, and their own mutagenic toxins. The dead one has been recycled.
All this time Phoebe has been changing. Her shape has been absorbed by demonic essence; the humans he was now exists only in the memory of the dreaming god. The infestation larvae and poisons that flow in her veins (no blood left there now) have been hard at work. The mutation larvae have been equally busy trying to grow a new human-pattern creature. All failures, so far, but one day they'll get it.

Phoebe wasn't supposed to still be intelligent; she can thank her magic for that. Every time a bit of the flesh in and around her died, it was twisted in instinctive self defense. Eventually they would just establish an overlord-class psi-link and call it good enough, all they could do. What can the demons do but accept it, and paraphrase an old line.
Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am Aaiesi, your mother; the queen of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me.
Images of the swarm at its greatest should fill her head: teeming throngs of 'lings racing across deserts, flocks of bat-wing monstrosities soaring through the skies, the towering hive-structures, massive tusking creatures clambering across glaciers, gates across reality being torn open by sheer force of will.
They fade away as the chrysalis splits open.

She should be able to see in flickering half-light, but more than that, besides all her enhanced senses, she should be able to feel the other demons scurrying hither and yon about their work. Friendly, welcoming. She is one of them.

As the cocoon opens, there's a suggestion of something slick and slithery within, and in short order Phoebe emerges, though the monster she's become would be almost entirely unrecognizable to anyone who knew the necromancer when she was human. A purpley-brownish carapace covers her body, and her face has elongated and pointed into a more insectoid shape, long purple tongue that is equipped with a paralytic stinger within. Four arms sprout from her torso, and while her hands still have their human shape, her fingers are tipped with sharp talons. Her legs are gone completely, replaces with a slug or snake-like lower body, not quite one nor the other, but something between, allowing slow ground locomotion. She also, however, has two huge bat wings sprouting from her back, quite capable of flight.

As she emerges from the cocoon, she exults in the power of the Swarm, and smiles as she feels the demons around her, looking around for her queen.

[Cyber Punk]

[Midnight Park]

No traps, but spear is enchanted. He's about to 'whew' when Axanot does her thing, causing him to shake his head. He should have known Axanot would flop onto the enticing purple moss.

Then she 'ow's! And then he remembers the dagger in her back.
((Yeah I know it's just RP, but I wince anytime I imagine Axanot lying down on her back with that knife in her. So, to remedy that (without diminishing its original purpose )...))

*Let's fix that, shall we?*, thinks Sharpe as he makes some finger gestures, causing the part of the knife sticking out to flatten into a circle and meld with her skin, forming a glowy metallic looking rune tattoo on her skin. She shouldn't be able to be hurt in that area, but anyone who looks closely at it would see a glimpse of the knife in her back. Also links her to Sharpe and vice-versa. Contingencies.

((Kinda like this. Kinda.))

All this is done in just a few seconds, and Axanot should feel a tingly feeling at that spot.

Sharpe takes a step towards her, only for a thick cloud of purple spores to poof out of the moss. Sharpe reflexively draws back. "Axxie, get out of there! We don't know what that would do!" It might be a tad too late, however.

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"I was fighting a sorcerer," Sophie says. "Me and some other monster-hunters. He used magic on us and I was sent here. I'm not sure if he intended to do that, and I suppose I'll never know. I found myself near Trog's Tavern. Someone there pointed me to GLoG."

[goto124]

Mindnight Park

Axanot would've ordinarily said something about Sharpe's actions, but the purple spores got in the way, and her WIS is too low for a good Will save. So, she goes woozy, and

'WhaaaazzzzzZZZZZ'

The spear falls out of her hands, rolling out of the moss onto Sharpe's feet.

When Sharpe tries to move or lift her, he'll find it surprisingly easy, even lighter than a feather. Axanot can explain this to him... after she wakes up. Until then...

[Lost_Deep]

Weather Factory

Caravan will roll away a bit, and then look at the weapon. "You're a dense one." She'll take another jump, this time planning to grab onto the weapon, wrap her legs around the mech's arm, and then twist the weapon to pry it from the mech's grasp (preferably after making sure the safety is on).

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"Really?" Kate asks. "I found myself at Trog's, too. I left pretty quickly, but still."

"So did I," Sophie says, "What's up with that place?"

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"It seems to draw new arrivals," Sophie says. "Which is convenient, I suppose, since there's usually someone there who can help them. I had nothing but a gun, some money and the clothes on my back when I arrived, but I got busy in GLoG soon enough. I helped a girl who'd become a vampire against her will."

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

Kate smiles a little. "Heh. I can understand that, even if the specifics are a bit different."

"I hope that sorcerer guy got what was coming to him," Sophie says, "Hey, what was his name? Maybe Kate could work some of her internet mastery and figure out what happened to him."

"Sophie!" Kate says, "That's almost impossible for a long list of reasons. Even if I could get onto the right world's internet I might never find it even if it was national news."

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"He was using an alias, anyway," Sophie says with a shrug. "Sorcerers back home tend to, for some reason. Something about their real names having power. It's not like it matters, anyway. Honestly, ending up here worked out well for me. I'd despaired of ever making a difference back home, but here I'm really helping."

[Lost_Deep]

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

Kate hmms and nods a little. Sophie is quiet for a moment, and then says, "I've never really thought about making a difference..."

[Rebonack]

[Weather Factory]

The robo-hands are really strong, yes.

But when you're dealing with earth pony magically enhanced strength, it can be difficult to compare. Especially when one isn't expecting it.

"Hey!" the space marine yells as his huge gun is stolen, reaching to grab Gilded with the other limb. He really isn't the brightest bulb in the box, is he?

[Midnight Park]

Welp.

Looks like it is nap time!

Nothing else happens for the time being. The hunting method of the slumber moss is quite passive. Put people to sleep, let the feral shadows come devour their life-energy, and then digest the body as it decays. For the time being, though? The lanterns are keeping the shadows away, so there's no immediate danger.

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"I always have," the bigger Sophie says. "It's my nature, I suppose. When I discovered what my home world is really like, it became apparent making a difference there is difficult at best. It's easier here. Not to mention less potentially lethal."

[Lost_Deep]

Weather Factory

Caravan hurls herself backward, landing with a thud on her back. That likely hurt. Unphased, she turns the gun so that she can try to use it, props it up on one knee to act as an ad hoc bipod, points it at the mech, switches off the safety, and tries to pump the center mass of the 'bot full of lead.

Many Sandwich Yes Cafe

"Really like?" Sophie asks.

"I'm guessing it was a 'masquerade'-style situation, with the monsters hiding under the mortal world?" Kate asks.

[Morty]

[Many Sandwich Yes Cafe]

"That's exactly what it was, yes," Sophie says. "All sorts of supernatural beings hiding from regular people. Some by necessity, others out of convenience, some even unwillingly. Most people are ignorant of them, but they have an insidious, corroding influence on human society. I was one of the few who knew about them. I was made aware rather abruptly."