Riverside 20: Another day, another disaster

[bc56]

Carter's Curious Collection

The grub slams into the desk with great force, cracking it and scattering chunks of ash and charcoal in a cloud through the room. It continues pressing itself against the damaged furniture, which continues to creak and begins to break against its force. It won't hold it much longer.

[Recaiden]

But it should hold long enough for Tao to slip the pistols back in their holsters, take a couple steps back, and get his hands on his plasma gun to resume shooting at the thing.
This bug has definitely gotten too big. Grubs are supposed to be, you know, meal-sized. Not big enough to try to eat you!

[5a Violista]

[Finding Rats] Jaahlyn and Holly

If it was a child - human or not - then this whole situation is disgusting.

"So are you recommending I kill her to put her out of her misery?" Holly says - a little snappier than she should be, because she's disgusted by what happened to them.
She sighs, and with her free hand brushes her hair back out of her face.
She kind-of knows what she needs to do, though. With the looming danger of several swarms of rats, she won't be able to make any fine changes. So...priorities. Induce miscarriage, ovariohysterectomy, and...Holly glances over at the rest of them. Definitely not enough time to minimize harm; if she delays then they'll be knee-deep in rats. And judging by how quickly the rats appear to be developing, she really wouldn't have any choice but to kill some of these people.

Holly moves her hand over the suffering person's womb, and begins planning out her actions. Already, she starts injecting a numbing venom to make it slightly less painful. "I would prefer it if you weren't here," she says. Pierce skin, inject an overdose of hormones and small amounts of poisons into the womb, grab and tear out organs before the toxins can spread, then stimulate clotting and healing to prevent bleeding out. Yeah, she can see what she needs to do in her mind. "But there's not enough time to complain about that. If you're going to stay, I want you to not tell anyone that I was the one who did this."

"Sorry." Her fingers sharpen and harden, and she plunges her hand down. She follows her plan as quickly as possible, only removing her guts-soaked hand once she's confident this person won't die from internal bleeding. After she finishes with all of them and no more danger of rat swarms being born, she'll have to come back to check on this patient.
She wipes her hand on her dress, then moves on to the next to follow the same process.

[bc56]

Carter's Curious Collection

The grub is scorched by burning plasma. It screeches and writhes, its death throes shattering what's left of the desk. It finally lies still. Its stinking blue bodily fluids dripping out of its husk. There's nothing stopping Tao from seeing what's in the strongbox now. Unless somehow that thing is still alive, even after that grievous injury...
"Skwaa..."
Oh, it is. That's horrible. Bleeding heavily, the grub lunges once more at Tao.

[Recaiden]

Okay, there was a giant mutant magic-eating bug, but it's dead now. Twitching and freezing up in that way bugs have.
The coast is clear and-
Well that's a surprise.
Tao lurches away from the grub, all he can manage is to wildly swing the gun at the grub. If he can't knock its last lunge aside, it'll probably take a bite out of his arm.

[bc56]

Carter's Curious Collection

The grub is too massive to be smacked away so easily. It gets its maw on Tao, but it won't take a bite out of his flesh. It really can't; it doesn't have teeth. What it will do is take a bite out of any innate magic or current magical effects he has and begin healing from its wounds. Next time he kills it, he should make sure it's dead.

[Rebonack]

[Buffet Dungeon]

Hey loot filters are amazing. When monsters are vomiting magical swords, shoes, shoulders, and hats everywhere it's nice to be able to just automatically ignore all the stuff you don't care about.

"Probably good idea to take it slow," Magdalene say as she sets off down the hallway. She's keeping a careful eye on those blood seals. "So Chthon cultists like these blood seal traps right? Walking along minding your own business when BOOM! All your (flowering) blood tries exploding out of your eyeballs."

That sounds pretty terrible.

"Usually the traps make this fizzing noise right before they- hang on."

She holds out an arm and backs up a few steps as one of the seals on the wall begins making a sound like a fizzy soda seconds before erupting in a fountain of corrupted blood, roiling chaos, and stinking hellfire.

Thankfully backing off a few feet was enough to avoid getting caught in the blast.

"See? Just like that."

Nasty.

Several more traps later our heroes will enter a larger chamber, large enough to have several crosses covered in hooks standing upright. Considering the stains and the collection bowls it is pretty clear what these things are for. It absolutely STINKS of blood in here. Magdalene scowls at the torture devices, raising one hand and lashing it toward them. Tendrils of pink eldritch magic covered in icy teeth crash through one of the things, smashing it to bits. For whatever weird reason a small heap of coins is left behind in the ruins.

[Zefir]

[Ratty Tunnels] Ruby and Fade

When Fade hears the sound of someone coming he falls back a bit, leaving the light circle to hide in the shadows. He holds his sword ready to swing in case it is an enemy or the target they seeked. Should the woman try to run pass them Fade will try to block her path.

[UncleWolf]

[The Miss J Investigation]

As it so happened it had been decided that not only Jezebel but her servants needed VIGIL communicator. C-Command would usually be the person that handed them over but Anika had volunteered and the commander had been busy elsewhere. Thus, here she was at the 'gardens'? No, Lotus gardens. She had gotten instructions on how to get here but it still had taken a while.

Riverside looked so different after the invasion that the druid barely could recognize it. Still, she eventually found her way there. Now the true investigation could begin as she could find out what Jezebel was really up to!

Anika makes her way through the Lotus Garden's with what she assumes to be Jezebel's lavish manor in mind. She hadn't actually never seen it but she assumed it looked all fancy.
All she was supposed to do was to hand over the communicators, but she wanted to stay and look around...

The Ms. J Investigation

The Manor itself is remarkably easy to find. While it wasn't in the middle of the Garden, it was close enough to it. The big issue is getting to the place without a distraction. While the marble construction and streets still showed signs of being patched and damaged from the war, business seemed quite plentiful. Even bustling since the Gardens provide distraction and comfort to those who've lost too much or to those who simply seek to forget. Under the visage of high class and nobility however, the street food, taverns, and classy tailors can't hide the darker underworkings. Glances into the alleyways are all that's needed to show those giving in to their less glorious vices, and there's an oddly high number of people with mutation. No one seems to mind the presence of either group, and those with mutation seem to be far healthier here and open about it than they might be in other parts of the city or in other cities entirely.

Anika's great height and color definitely seem to draw a lot of attention, mostly from Ladies and Gents catcalling her from balconies offering her a good time. Others with wares or food to sell call out to her as well, but no one seems inclined to get too close at least. Not even cutpurses. It is probable that the presence of those wearing full White Masks and standing guard through the area is what keeps it in check.

If she doesn't get distracted by all that's in display or for sale, she'll find herself standing at the front door of a large three story manor with no obvious guards but with a elderly manservant sweeping the front porch clear. Sure, Charles had staff that could do such things, but the light work helped his aching arms.

[Shadowcaller]

[Buffet Dungeon]

Blood seals? Anika pictured pools underneath the floor filled with bloodthirsty seals just waiting for an adventure to make a misstep and fall through one of the trapdoors, never to be seen again.

It wasn't until Magda mentioned blood being sucked into your eyeballs that she realized that she had meant curses. "Ohhh." She wags her finger. "Seals."

But seeing Magda disarming the trap just made her disappointed that they weren't fighting blood seals instead. Or that at least the inscriptions on the walls didn't look like actual seals. Magda was definitely right when she said that these cultists were lame. They didn't even have cool traps, just a bunch of stupid evil symbols. "Eww." She comments, looking disgusted.

Her disgust wears off after seeing the same trap being repeated over and over again though. "If these guys love blood so much why're they wasting it on this stuff? At least vampires need it to live. These guys are just using it like dutch tape or something. They slap it on everything and call it done. So lazy."

So once they enter the chamber, Anika is hoping for a change of pace but is once again disappointed. Torture equipment? How original.
She then eyes the coins, a trap? Hmm... probably. There were far more important things than money to deal with right now though.
"These cultists need a really good bashing. The poor dudes that were trapped in here." She remarks while looking around. "Any idea where they might be keeping them? Usually you don't have them too far away from the torture stuff, right?"

[The Miss J Investigation]

Anika wouldn't notice any mutations unless they stood out a lot and they were of species of people that she were already familiar with.
The catcalling took her by surprise though. Was she supposed to answer that?
"I'm sure I'd enjoy that, dude!" She called back with some uncertainty to one of the gents and, "You got nice tits too, lady!" to one of the ladies while waving back. Even giving finger guns and smiling to the dude that offered her the best time of her life. "Maybe later!"

Anika could never really figure out why they were doing it though. She would have figured I'd be obvious that she wouldn't have sex with any of them. She was clearly there for an important VIGIL mission, was even wearing that tiny little badge for the occasion.

Then she realized, they were prostitutes.

...

Or they were disguised succubi!

The second possibility was far worse, but there was no way she could confirm it unless... well, she couldn't exactly sleep around right now but she might have to do some investigation later on.
For now she heads straight for the evil manor and marches right past Charles to knock on the door. As she waits, she turns to him and waves. "Hey, dude." She greets. "Don't suppose you what's with all the compliments and offers I got while getting here? Like, what's up with that?"

[Rebonack]

[Buffet Dungeon]

"Yeah these (flowers) are pretty fixated on blood stuff," Magdalene agrees. "Usually they've got captives caged up at the back of the dungeon. If we keep going and fight our way past whatever chthonians they've got summoned up we should be good."

As they cross the room toward the next area, however, they encounter a problem.

"(Flower) that's a pretty powerful looking seal," Magdalene says as she eyes the hideous diagram etched into the floor. It looks a bit different from the ones that kept exploding at our heroes. "What do you bet that one summons a boss or something?"

Then she takes a few steps forward and pauses when the surface begins bubbling and frothing, a swirling gate forming on the floor as an awful creature heaves itself out of the pool. Like the 'snark beast' from before it's a mass of flesh the color of a bruise, mouths and eyes dotting its surface and blood weeping from cracks in its rubbery, blubbery form. Sulfurous flames lick across the blood pooling around it. It's a huge sausage-shaped thing undulating across the floor, dead black eyes glowering at our heroes, its face splitting into a far too wide and far too toothy maw as it utters its challenge.

"Your blood for Chthon! Ourt ourt!"

"Oh (Rose) it's chthonic seal," Magdalene says as she immediate drops into a defense stance and back-peddles away. "They're slow but do not let it get close to you or it'll (flower) you sideways."

[Recaiden]

Oh, that's no good.
Where the grub made contact and ate up some magic, Tao dissolves into a couple dozen little dragons, which flutter away.

So he's rather off balance when he gets back to shooting it with the plasma gun.
Luckily it's right there.

[UncleWolf]

The Ms. J Investigation

"They're prostitutes, Lady Anika. Joygirls and Joyguys if you'd rather call them such." Charles explains without batting an eye. "It is how they advertise, much like a vox or pict ad or a billboard. It is how they differentiate themselves from their peers. And you do tend to stand out in a crowd which makes it easier for them to target themselves to you." He points out, setting aside the broom as he straightens up to bow a bit in front of her. "You are quite fetching after all. Now, how can I help you? I presume you are here to see Mistress Jezebel?"

[Gullara]

New Thread!

[bc56]

Carter's Curious Collection

The grub is flash-fried by burning plasma again. It falls limp, and this time stays dead.

...

Yep, it's dead.

...

Really.

...

It's dead.

[Gullara]

New Thread!

This appears to have been missed.