Serious Plots 7: Why so srs?

[billtodamax]

Frozen Farmhouse

Marshall frowns as he hears the news. Sounds like there's at least some resistance then. Here, hang this over the door. He adds, pulling out a horseshoe and passing it over to the farmer. It's not really magic, right? Tierny can't be mad at him for that. And I'm Marshall Girard. He adds to Tyndael's introduction.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

Beyond the door is another bedroom, this one with six rotting beds and walls covered in glowing lichen. There's six wardrobes and six footlockers, the wood warped and damp, the metal slightly rusty. Sat on the furthest bed is a child. They look to be a human girl, eight or nine years old, with pale skin and dark hair. She's wearing an old, slightly tattered yellow dress and is sat, cross-legged, as she reads an old book. Jason can't see her face because she's looking down at the book.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Blue City Dragon Bomb]

"Hmm. Seems simple enough." Too simple, perhaps? With someone like Feia, Affidavit simply can't allow himself to take anything at face value. However safe it may seem, he can't help but think there's something more to this than meets the eye.

The password sitting there seems like an obvious bit of bait, doesn't it? The fact that someone (probably not Feia, otherwise why would she have him doing this at all?) scrubbed away everything of value suggests there was at one point at least something significant here.

The disk lets out a cable, flicking it round to connect directly with the terminal and bypass all this silly keyboard nonsense. He browses through the list of available commands, curious as to whether there is something as simple as a "detonate" command or if it has some sort of more complicated trigger mechanism - not going to actually do anything just yet though.

This still feels wrong.

This still feels like a trap.

"There's a section of this interface that's password protected. How curious. Something you don't want me to see, Feia? And you never did mention who I'm standing in for."

There's a fairly simplistic array of commands here, as to be expected from a simplistic interface. Reboot, Shutdown, Help (which just shows all these commands), Read (presumably for accessing messages, but they seem to have been part of the purge), OI (Ordinance Interface) which is a parent command to such things as Arm, Disarm, DT (Detonation Timer), and a OMI (Ordinance Mechanism Interface) which appears to do nothing.

Feia hasn't been looking over his shoulder, so to speak, during this. She seems far more interested in lapping around the prison inspecting her prize.
Something she did a bit with Libby too.

"I would be rather surprised if something interfaced to a 'weapon of mass destruction' wasn't password protected. Seems rather foolish, hm? Similarly, seems foolish to conceal important information on a device I'm asking someone to infiltrate. Although I suppose it's possible Sayhid did."
Again, this possible revelation really doesn't seem to be bothering her very much.
There is a very faint slow down in her pacing as she considers it, but it doesn't last.
"He was the prior...technical expert. Very dedicated young man. Opened the wrong door."

[Recaiden]

"White shows the blade itself. That's probably what we want. But it's also most likely to end with us surrounded by corrupted angels. The green door has an intact holy symbol on it...I think we should check there first." Alice lays out her thoughts while eying the ledges warily. Maybe Cass has a stronger opinion or can tell what's up with the red door.

[bc56]

Vault Z

Jason would bet 10 to 1 that this is another one of those horrifying child monsters with mouths for eyes. Regards, he sets his laser on "stun," just in case he's wrong. He's not going to say anything or startle the girl, but he's quite worried about the possibility of her being a monster.

[Ashen Lilies]

[Tomb of Hope Removed]

Cass will send out a weak magical sensor pulse to each of the doors, seeing if there's any magic that might be bleeding past them that would cause them to need to alter their plans. She'll also throw one at the pool, for good measure.

If not, though, the green door is good enough in her opinion, though before they proceed she'll pull out a pair of parchments and hold each one up in front of the decorated doors. The parchments will glow faintly, before a faint image of each door burns itself into the parchment, like a photograph.

Research!

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

The child doesn't seem to have noticed Jason, and keeps her head down, reading her book. She just sits on the rotting bed, flicking through the pages of the tome, apparently ignorant of Jason's presence and any possibility of danger in the dank, slimy and generally unpleasant underground bunker.

Tomb of Hope Removed

Bleeding past the white door is demonic energy, and lots of it. It's got a slight hint of celestial energy mixed in, battling against the demonic energy, but it's weak and easily missed. The red door emanates a mix of celestial, demonic and holy energy, though it's odd; the celestial and demonic energy seem to be working together against the holy energy. The green door bleeds demonic energy, too, save the Sunburst of Luminarch Prost which is emanating holy energy that keeps the demonic energy at bay, though not in check. When a copy is made of the door, the sketch only shows the symbols carved into the stone and not the corrupting veins working their way through the stone. The holy energy of the Luminarch Prost is joined by trickles of holy energy from the other symbols. By creating copies of the symbols as they were before the corruption, Cass has inadvertently strengthened the deities' hold of the Tomb.

The pool was intended to serve as a sink for the demonic energy the angels knew the Blade would emanate, but unfortunately the demon within the blade was able to corrupt and re-purpose the pool. Now, it serves as a sink for the celestial energy produced by the angelic guardians, subtly weakening them and leaving them more open to demonic corruption. The water, therefore, is a massive sink of celestial energy, and entering it would probably be beneficial.

Cass' discoveries might change the party's mind, and nobody actually said they went to open the green door. So I won't reveal what's beyond it.

[bc56]

Vault Z
Jason moves toward the girl, as quietly as he can. He's trying to get a good look at her face, if he can.

Tomb of Hope Removed.
Seeing the holy power flowing back into the door again, Erasmus is even more sure that it's the right door to visit first. He doesn't move towards it, however, since he wants to see what the others think.

[Deathkeeper]

[The Vault]

"I've... never met this... Sticks," Mirdath's head tilts innocently to one side. "I-I can assure you, though, Vargain means you no harm. Please, if you're from up above, you must tell me what it's like! Tell me... how you opened that door!"

Eschelle glances at Mirdath, and then toward Jim. "Vargain mentioned there was more keeping him here than just the door itself. Maybe the door only appears closed. Maybe we need another soul to get back out again." She narrows her eyes and twitches them at the elf 'maid'. "Not her. Necessarily. One of those other things you mentioned seeing, maybe."

[The Vault]

Jim shakes his head.
"Even if it was, we're not using a person's soul to get out of here. We're better than him." He turns to Mirdath.
"If you want to know the surface, you can come help us get out of here and see it. But I assure you that he does mean us harm. Because he's a raving megalomaniac who shoves people's souls into instruments on a whim and regularly deals with demons. Are you coming or not?" he says. When did he become so callous? Perhaps it's just a lot of pent up anger, dealing with watching Sticks struggle to bury his past for so long, only to confront that past directly and find out it has a smug smile and an ego.

Tomb of Hope Removed

Huh. No reaction. Maybe she should let the real mages take a look at it. Just remember the runes for later.
Alice goes to pick up the angel's silver skull and put it in her pack.
And then she'd be ready to go. One guard passed, on to the pyramid itself.

The Realm Of It that Takes

Tep, maybe you just get bad humans.

The nominal lord of this place approaches, swooping up from behind the temple and spreading His burning wings over the congregation, focused only on the egg. A tongue of flame flickers down from the firebird to the egg, soaking into it to align its energies.

They wait.
Wait some more.

And a crack appears in the soul-egg, widening and branching to eventually allow the new-forged phoenix to poke its head out and see the cheering cultists.

The Realm of It that Takes

Tep is a Lord of Hell. Of course he gets bad humans. No one would ever think Taim was made from any prize. Though that would make everyone wrong.
Tep gives what could best be described as a golf clap, and resumes writing in his book. This time he's entirely silent, not daring to interrupt anything in the presence of the realm's lord.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

The girl looks up at Jason when he's about a metre away, the first sign she's head him or even known of his presence, and she darts back off the bed and hides underneath it. The glimpse Jason gets of the child's face reveals a nose, two eyes, eyebrows and lips. Well, eyes in theory- they were closed when she looked up and darted away, though she must have seen Jason so maybe it just looked like they were closed. She's dropped her book, and it lies upon the bed, and if Jason's keen-eyed enough, he might realise the girl was holding the book upside down; mimicking the act of reading without actually reading it.

[bc56]

Vault Z
Jason knows better than to look under the bed. If she is a monster, she's just waiting for him to lower his face to within grabbing range. Instead, he picks up the book and looks at it, seeing what it is. He doesn't notice that it had been upside down in the girl's hands.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Void]

Astrana's gentler pleas fall on deaf ears. Belfidius hurls himself towards Valente, arms spread about him. He moves to seize up one of the larger cages, a couple hundred pounds at least, and will try to smash Val right into the floor with it. It seems he is either unwilling or unable to disobey Croupelt at all.

[Delivery]

"Boys?" Annie screws up her face in a frown. Boy names sound way harder. "Finn and um." Not Jake. Jake is a dog! "Um." She thinks about other characters and then bursts out in a fit of giggles. "Mister Pig!" She keeps on laughing.

"I don't think either of your brothers would like that name." Kitsuki says, her worried features lightening as she watches the two.

[Delivery]

"Mister pig?" Obriane looks away for a moment, seemingly considering it. "You know Annie, in my fathers language, that would mean Nanuk. That's a pretty good name I think!" Kitty might have heard this word before when they briefly visited Obriane's fathers tribe, but never in this context.
She then gestures at Kitty. "Do you think mommy also can pick a name, Annie? I know that she's good at names. After all, she picked yours, the very best name in the world."

[The Void]

Welp, Astrana will attempt to get out of the way, but not too far. She was going to keep relatively near Belfidius, looking for a good opportunity to strike. While she had never fought in hand to hand combat, she knew a thing or two about throwing off someone's balance. As far as she was concerned, she was always armed though if there is anything that could be used as an actual weapon nearby she'd go for it.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

Jason didn't think this through. He's not looking under the bed, but he's approaching close enough to have a look at the book? It's a French/English translation guide, incidentally.

When he's close enough, the girl reaches out from under the bed and grabs at Jason's ankles and pulls, intending to knock him over onto his back. The girl's far stronger than she should be, which is evidence in Jason's monster theory.

[Gullara]

[Delivery]

Yes, Kitsuki definitely had the idea for Annie's name...

Annie giggles and grins broadly, but then she looks expectantly at her mom. "Yeah! You pick a name!"

"Well..." Kitsuki puts her hand on her chin and makes a show of thinking about it. "What about Umeko? It's a very cute name, isn't it? Perfect for a baby girl."

Annie thinks about that for a second and nods, but she looks to Obriane to see what she thinks.

[The Void]

Val throws himself to the side to avoid the cage. He hits the ground awkwardly and is clumsy in getting back up. As soon as he has his footing, he launches himself at Belfidius in a rough tackle. What he lacks in weight he makes up in force.

((I mentioned to SC the inconsistency of Astrana's captivity, so just focus on my post this round. ))

[bc56]

Vault Z

Just as Jason starts thinking about the fact that no kid would want to read an English to French dictionary, he feels a tug on his legs. He starts to fall, but fires up his rocket boots and tries to turn the fall into a backflip out of the little creature's hands.

[Murkus]

[The Void]

Val hits Belfidius in the chest like a cannonball, smashing him backwards and into the bars of another huge cage. The huge creature writhes, brings up another fist, and tries to drive it into Val's skull like a hammer.

[The Vault]

Michalson gives the scrolls a once-over. For now, the Vault around them is eerily silent, so he doesn't seem to be in any danger. At the very least Eschelle is watching his back.

There are three scrolls of any import in all. The first seems to produce a small but extremely complex illusion around the caster, rendering them and a bubble-area around them invisible. The second is certainly some kind of teleportation incantation - it refers to a 'Sanctum' as the destination, and seems to be a one way trip. Perhaps if they could alter the script of this spell somehow, it might be more useful toward their current objective. The final scroll is written in flowing, bright-orange letters that seem to pulse with heat and run helter-skelter down the page. It is described quite clearly as a spell for 'the duelling gentleman', and touts a 'high mortality rate, even among extrahuman subjects'. Alas, this final spell is only mostly finished - it lacks fine control. Michalson will also be able to tell that, once these spells are read from the confines of their scroll-cases, they're gone for good.

Mirdath, meanwhile, doesn't really know about all of what Jim's saying. All she knows is that she does want to see the surface world very badly. She looks around at her paintings and then towards Jim again. "I-I want to go there! But how can I help you?"

[Recaiden]

Tep is a Lord of Hell. Of course he gets bad humans. No one would ever think Taim was made from any prize. Though that would make everyone wrong.
Tep gives what could best be described as a golf clap, and resumes writing in his book. This time he's entirely silent, not daring to interrupt anything in the presence of the realm's lord.

Well, no wonder he's so keen on getting new imps from people. He doesn't have much to work with, huh?

It That Takes beats its wings and flies off then for another perch.

Anima bounds forwards and sweeps up the newly-forged spirit. "It's done." she announces to the cultists. "Rejoice as a new fire is kindled."

Having borne witness, they head back to their places throughout the realm. Anima paces over to Tep, patting the wide-eyed phoenix on its head.
"And that's that. Starting with multiple souls makes it more powerful -of course- but it also lets them cover gaps. Given that we pick them very carefully, granted." He should have seen the first time they tried this.

[Gnrlshrimp]

There's a fairly simplistic array of commands here, as to be expected from a simplistic interface. Reboot, Shutdown, Help (which just shows all these commands), Read (presumably for accessing messages, but they seem to have been part of the purge), OI (Ordinance Interface) which is a parent command to such things as Arm, Disarm, DT (Detonation Timer), and a OMI (Ordinance Mechanism Interface) which appears to do nothing.

Feia hasn't been looking over his shoulder, so to speak, during this. She seems far more interested in lapping around the prison inspecting her prize.
Something she did a bit with Libby too.

"I would be rather surprised if something interfaced to a 'weapon of mass destruction' wasn't password protected. Seems rather foolish, hm? Similarly, seems foolish to conceal important information on a device I'm asking someone to infiltrate. Although I suppose it's possible Sayhid did."
Again, this possible revelation really doesn't seem to be bothering her very much.
There is a very faint slow down in her pacing as she considers it, but it doesn't last.
"He was the prior...technical expert. Very dedicated young man. Opened the wrong door."

[Blue City Dragon Bomb]

"Opened the wrong door, hmm? I wonder what that means." Did he stumble into some ungodly horror that consumed him on sight? Did he simply walk into a place he couldn't get back from? Or did he perhaps see something he shouldn't have and suffer a death at the hands of Feia herself? Not like she'd show any sign of sadness or regret over it anyway.

...this still seems far too simple. If those OI commands work as intended, it would be child's play to prime the bomb to detonate as soon as the circle is broken and the dragon released from its prison. So what's the angle here?

"Yes, well perhaps Sayhid is a fool then. You could set this up to detonate in a matter of minutes. And since I have no stake in this myself, I don't see any reason for me to bloody my hands with this, hmm?" Of course that raises the question of what is behind the password. But maybe that's the trick here too? A very well-baited trap in that case, the sort of bait that even someone as paranoid as Affy can't quite ignore.

Not that he bites immediately, mind you! But he does take a moment to poke around a bit and see if he can engineer a way around the password while he waits to hear how Feia intends to force him into going along with this.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

The creature squeals in pain as Jason's rocket-boots go off in its face, and it lets go and recoils; the squeal isn't particularly human. Jason may backflip away, but there's scorch marks on the floor, the bed's smouldering slightly and the girl under the bed starts to sob- or that's what it sounds like, at least. Whether she really is crying or not is debatable, given the likelihood of her being a monstrous aberration that desires to eat Jason's eyes.

[Morty]

[The Vault]

"One of those makes the user and people 'round 'em invisible, which can be very useful to us," Michalson says. "The other teleports ye to somewhere called... the Sanctum. Which could be here for all we know. We could mess about with it to make it lead someplace else, but I'd be peery of that. An' the last looks ready to scrag someone, but it's not quite finished so it might just blow up everyhin' in the vicinity." He looks up from the scrolls. "I'd say our best option is to scrag one of this berk's creations, which would be doin' 'em a favor in any event, and use their soul to give this place the laugh. The escape scroll is a last resort. Messin' about with teleportation is no joke."

[Shadowcaller]

[Delivery]

Yes, Kitsuki definitely had the idea for Annie's name...

Annie giggles and grins broadly, but then she looks expectantly at her mom. "Yeah! You pick a name!"

"Well..." Kitsuki puts her hand on her chin and makes a show of thinking about it. "What about Umeko? It's a very cute name, isn't it? Perfect for a baby girl."

Annie thinks about that for a second and nods, but she looks to Obriane to see what she thinks.

[Delivery]

"Yeah! That's a great name!" Obriane declares, nodding at Kitty. "But what about the last name? Who should pick that, Annie?" She inquires. "I think we're all pretty good at names in this family."

[bc56]

Vault Z

Jason's fairly sure that this is a monster, not a child. He switches his laser's setting to "blast," a concussive burst of force, and fires at the bed, hoping to blow it apart and remove the creature's cover.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

The bed can't resist the blast, and is totally destroyed, fragments of rusty spring and shards of metal mixing with fungus-ridden material, soggy old feathers and shredded paper from the book.

Underneath the bed is revealed the girl, crouched down with her head tilted back so she can look at Jason's face. She's opened her mouth and her eyes, revealing she is a monster; a small mouth extends on a flexible tentacle from her left eye socket, and between her lips sits a large eye with a lavender-coloured iris and a round pupil. The right side of her face is burnt, her eyebrow missing and the eye fused shut; or rather, the mouth.

The child-shaped monster springs for Jason, clearing the distance with surprising speed, intending to pounce upon Jason and start to bite and claw at him.

[bc56]

Vault Z

"Gaaah!" Jason punches at the leaping monster, hoping to knock it back away from him. He fires up his energy shield as well, just in case he misses, so he can still block her attack.

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

Jason's punch connects, and the monster flies back, before hissing aggressively and jumping for the ceiling. Once on the ceiling, it reorients itself so the ceiling is its 'down' and tries to run past Jason and out the door. Jason probably shouldn't let it escape; it could be going for friends.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Blue City - Dragon Bomb]

Feia doesn't elaborate on Sayhid's "wrong door" choice. Doesn't even really elaborate on what, precisely, kept him from doing this himself even though he clearly tinkered with this at some point.
Instead, she stands quietly for a moment, a few feet away from the computer console.

She stares up at the great dragon with a pensive sort of joy, while Affidavit nudges a little further into the computer.

That password is serving as a very literal door into some sort of boxed off virtual machine inside the computer, that much is easy enough to see. It's very strictly segregated from everything else, but it seems tied to all those bomb-specific commands.

"Of course you see a reason to do it. I am holding your exodus as collateral for it."
She speaks rather plainly, finally taking her eyes from the dragon to look towards the computer.
That joy has manifested somewhat predatorily here, in a sharper grin and narrowed gaze.

[bc56]

Vault Z

"You aren't getting away so easily." Jason sets his laser to stun and fires on the creature. He's very curious; what lets it run across the ceiling like that?

[Earl of Purple]

Vault Z

The girl is hit in the back and stunned, falling forward and collapsing in a limp heap... On the ceiling. Even her hair and clothes stick to the ceiling instead of hanging down loose, like Jason probably expects.

Killdren can pick which direction is their 'down', enabling them to walk or run on walls and ceilings, even on glass or teflon. Though they may slip a little if it's smooth, they won't fall off.

[bc56]

Vault Z

She's out of the way now, whatever she is, so Jason takes the time to search around the room for anything of interest.

[Recaiden]

((Well, it seems I wasn't actually skipped at all, and I've time for a post here, so - ))

Alice walks carefully around the edge of the room towards the green door, avoiding the water she hasn't been told anything about, and tugs the door open.