Skyside 8: Base Violence and Unnecessary Change

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina does her best to not be a little horrified at the random exploding quill monster that somehow didn't annihilate the two of them. Or at least melt their eyes.
"There was one path back near the front. I heard a lot of fast-moving water. We can try that way but we'll have to be careful not to be swept away."
She pauses.
"Oh right. My name is Mina. Sorry I was distracted before.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Still Penna!" the scavenger replies as she whirls in place and starts off down the hallway again toward the sound of rushing water. It looks like she's trying really hard not to say something. Like the question's just welling up inside her and she can't help it.

She fails to contain it.

"Is your last name Taur? Maybe a sibling? Sorry, sorry. I'm one to talk. My parents were both scriveners and named me quill which ended up being pretty fitting after I stole power from Echidna. I'm sure they probably would have thought it was funny if they hadn't died in the Catastrophe like nearly everyone else."

How cheerful...

"My magic is... pretty goopy and pointy. But! Not dangerous to my friends! And I'm just the sort of girl who likes making friends! Usually literally but not always."

As she's yammering she makes a vague gesture at a nearby wall, causing a acidic green amniotic sac to grow from the surface before bursting in a caustic spray, releasing another one of those awful flying spiky things.

This is about the time they reach the deeper, rushing water. Before them stands a pool that would probably be pretty deep on Penna but not so bad for Mina. On the other side is a very large, very conspicuous lever.

"Why would they put the locking mechanism for the door way over here at a dead end, anyway?" Penna wonders aloud.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Don’t be ridiculous.” Mina snorts with her arms crossed.
”Mina was my name before I got my hooves. It means East or something. Tarr was my previous life’s name. Somehow it means ‘who grapples the sky.’ Don’t ask me how they fit all that in one syllable.”
Maybe their language works like the Wookie language? A lot of meaning in one noise?

Mina gazes over at the deep pool.
”Okay so that’s definitely a trap that’s going to do terrible things if I try to just swim through it. Do we have anything to get over it? Or at least a rope?” She didn’t exactly pack a full kit for this.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Wait, you got turned into a minotaur?" Penna asks, that silly smirk on her face growing. "That makes us ironically named thematically altered buddies! This was definitely a meeting ordained by the stars. Do you scrape your horns on the ceiling all the time? I always catch my crown of quills on things it's a pain."

Didn't Mina want some friends who have gone through similar nonsense?

Penna might not be a minotaur but she DOES suffer from irritating horn addition syndrome.

And then?

Talk of traps.

"Yeah definitely. I've got a rope and grappling hook in my pack, actually," she says as she sticks the end of her staff into the ground and begins digging around in her backpack. Considering the size of the hook and rope she fishes out it probably shouldn't be able to fit in there. She offers it to Mina. "You wanna try snagging it? The angle is awkward and I'll bet you can yank a whole lot harder than my noodly arms."

She doesn't have noodly arms. Penna actually looks like she's in pretty good shape.

While this is going on the quill-covered watcher she conjured up continues to keep an eye on things.

Exactly one eye.

Since that's how many it has.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

"Small rooms and low ceilings are a pain, yeah." Mina admits with a slow nod.
"I don't know if my aim is that good but we can give it a shot."
Mina accepts the grappling hook (with her beefy arms that make Penna's look noodly at least by comparison) and does her best to toss it at the switch. Her aim is decent but not likely to hit the lever on the first try.
But it will at least test to see if a giant monster pops out of the pool when movement flies over it or something.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

A monster absolutely pops out of the pool when the grappling hook goes flying over.

Because of course it does.

It's a pretty horrible thing, really.

Imagine, if you will, a big black angler fish in a general humanoid shape. Then add in a couple horrible squid tentacles ending in sucker-covered clubs and hooks and glowing cubes. Then imagine that it's all covered in barnacles in and salt crystals. And finally add a pair of funny horn/spout things like those old timey sea monsters.

It's pretty terrible.

"Yuck, I hate Pontus beasts," Penna groans, deftly hopping back to avoid a spiky tentacle flailed at her.

For the time being the horrible monster is mostly just flailing its terrible tentacles at our heroes.

[Ironsmith]

[A Tankless Job]

If Accounting has something to say about their budget, Raven'll throw a slightly radioactive gold ingot at their head.

Raven just waves her hand dismissively which probably isn't all that effective when sitting behind Rose. "Sure whatever. So long as they get the job done, I don't care what they have."

Unless they start raving about how nice Raven is. Or they aren't around to do things when Raven decides they need to be. Then there's going to be problems.

[A Tankless Job]

"So long as they get the job done, I don't care what they have."

Well there you go. Rose couldn't have asked for more explicit or liberal permissions than that. At least now she isn't working strictly on inference and can bring this up if she somehow ends up working at cross purposes with Raven again. Much better than what she anticipated.

"Well, all right, then." Rose smiles, her grin reflected in the monitor in front of her. "Glad we got that out of the way. Now, let's get back to blowing [stuff] up." Her expression turns a little manic as she turns toward one of the cars they were using for target practice and starts punching any button that might correlate to a weapon. They've talked enough shop for now, and Rose is going to reward the Empress's patience with some explosions.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Yeah that’s about what she expected. Sadly the monster didn’t swallow the grappling hook. Mina could have reeled it in.
She’ll have to settle for the tentacles. As one swings down at her Mina braces, grabbing the tentacle as it swings at her instead of letting it impact her torso. Then she pulls. Mina aims to find out which will happen first: the limb giving out or the monster being dragged out of its hole.

[Reinholdt]

[A Tankless Job]

Blowing stuff up was far more interesting than the humdrum details of the unsatisfied peons under Raven's command. "Yeah, blowing stuff up is an actual evil skill you're going to need." It's as important as installing self destruct mechanisms into everything you build...

It turns out there are a lot of buttons corresponding to weapons. Rose might consider investing into the decal and sticker department.

That one in particular appears to be maximum collateral cluster rockets. It takes out that car and at least five around it.

"NICE! Just try to imagine there were civilians in there screaming for a hero that never comes before the fiery inferno claims them. Or maybe I should run a Miktok video of those sound effects through the speakers. I wonder if I can find one..." Raven goes to her phone to do some research that might require her to create another account after being banned from her last one.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Considering the upside here, Mina.

At least you've got someone here to help you out instead of facing the weird squidwhaleanglerfish monster all by yourself.

Penna is likewise pretty spry on her feet, dancing out of the way of the hooked tentacles and pointing her staff at a patch of wall nearby. This causes a horrible mound of squamous flesh to grow, covered in jagged quills. It convulses, spraying a shotgun blast of quills and acid at the monster while at the same time vomiting out a putrid abomination that looks like someone put lion into a blender with a serpent, gave it a disquietingly human looking face, and then covered it in jagged quills. Like some sort of extra nightmareish looking wingless manticore with way too many viper's eyes.

The monster struggles briefly, ripping free from the sack it had been born inside of in a spray of acid.

The watcher Penna had already summoned fixes its gaze on the squidfish and launches a quill at it out of its eye.

Mina, meanwhile, yanks the monster out of the watery pit! Turns out she's bigger and stronger than it is and it doesn't appreciate this very much.

The monster expresses its displeasure by getting stuck with several caustic quills followed by spouting icy water from its weird 'horns' aiming to rain it all over our heroes (and Penna's pets). The water is cold enough to cause frostbite and carries the crushing weight of the deep. Maybe don't get hit by too much of the stuff.

[Murkus]

[In Search of Truth]

Fettina smiles as the trapped spirits escape. She gives a little flap of her wings and alights next to the other two ladies. She barely even notices the people from KABAL.

"I'm a little dinged up, but I think the worst I got is a bloody nose," says Tina, wiping her fist over her mouth and looking at it. Indeed, a bit of white-hot blood like liquid sunlight. She blinks a few times at it. "First time I've ever actually gotten hurt like this, actually..." A little reminder that she's not quite invincible. She might have a shallow cut on her ankle, as well.

"So we're escaping now? Alright, let's boogie," she agrees.

[Shadowcaller]

[In Search of Truth]

"'kay, let's go!" Anika wastes no time as she changes back into her bear form and starts to charge- actually, she's just charging straight ahead which if Ilpholin's memory serves isn't the way out.
That would be to the left.

Of course, coming from the left are another two KABAL goons who at the moment they spot the group, and the destroyed golem, turn around and start running in the other direction.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Silly water monsters. They're going to keep trying to hit her with magic water, aren't they?
Mina pulls Sai from her belt and holds him over her head. She isn't going to risk trying to throw all of those tiny droplets back at the monster, but he makes for a perfectly fine umbrella.
And with her other hand?
Well she's going to reach back and punch the monster in its stupid...whatever is facing her at the moment. Its back, she thinks. It's kind of terrifying to look at so she's not 100% sure.

[Ironsmith]

[A Tankless Job]

Blowing stuff up was far more interesting than the humdrum details of the unsatisfied peons under Raven's command. "Yeah, blowing stuff up is an actual evil skill you're going to need." It's as important as installing self destruct mechanisms into everything you build...

It turns out there are a lot of buttons corresponding to weapons. Rose might consider investing into the decal and sticker department.

That one in particular appears to be maximum collateral cluster rockets. It takes out that car and at least five around it.

"NICE! Just try to imagine there were civilians in there screaming for a hero that never comes before the fiery inferno claims them. Or maybe I should run a Miktok video of those sound effects through the speakers. I wonder if I can find one..." Raven goes to her phone to do some research that might require her to create another account after being banned from her last one.

[A Tankless Job]

"It's more fun to imagine them running." Rose smirks. "If they go up in smoke, it's over too quickly. You don't get to enjoy them being absolutely terrified for as long."

And if they're running, there's a good chance they'll actually get away. It'll be easier in her conscience if she only ends up causing property damage while in Raven's employ. Not that she can't handle loss of life, but less is still better.

"Ooh, what's this one do?" Rose asks with exaggerated glee, turning to face a new target and pressing a button on the console. The rest of the session is likely to go on like this, with each new weapon bringing a fresh wave of gleeful laughter. The act she has to put on now is comparatively simple.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Given that these are pretty explicitly horrible water monsters shooting magical water at people is basically their one and only option.

It's not like you ever go into a Water pokemon gym and expect them to be packing a ton of Fire and Ground pokemon just to be cheeky.

Regardless!

Mina successfully avoids the water via magic! Penna avoids the water via being over there since she mostly does summoning and heck no will she be anywhere near the fight if she can avoid it. The echidnian manticore thing she summoned gets spouted on a bit, but it turns out to be a reasonably resilient abomination. It also appears to be a reasonably RAWR sort of abomination because it just chomped down on squiddy angler fish thing's head with its acidic fangs and began shaking it violently. The quill turret on the wall plunges another pointy thing into the monster's side in the mean time. The spiky floating eye monster provides the manticore with some emergency gross goop based healing. And Penna?

She summons even more nonsense of course.

Penna begins conjuring up a great big glistening green orb before lobbing it into the middle of the melee, whereupon it bursts disgustingly, spilling out a trio of grotesque quill-covered rat-snake things. Two of them have thick clusters of spikes at the end of their tails while the third has what looks like a gross organic cannon on its back. The three monsters flounder around uselessly. The fluid from the orb causes the monster's flesh to sizzle and warp, but it appears to be harmless (if smelly) on everything else.

THEN!

Punch.

Mina punches the HECK out of the squid fish!

Just, wow.

What a punch.

There's a grotesque crunch as something inside the monster break, causing it to go deathly still. Mostly... since it's dead.

"Oh! Wow, that was over pretty quick!" Penna says, peeking at the monster corpse from the safety of Over There. "You really clobbered that thing! Sorry about the goop all of my magic is needlessly goopy."

Thankfully there's a nice pool of water right over there to wash off in.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina lets out a deep breath. Both because the danger is over and because all of this is very sigh-inducing.
”It’s fine. We won. Woo.” She doesn’t feel very happy and celebratory. But at least they can get to the lever now. Mina takes the light off her robe and holds it up so it won’t get soaked as she wades through the water over to the lever and pulls it.
At least all the water takes care of some of the goop. She’s still going to need so much shampoo after this.
”Lever pulled. Objective one clear. Yay.”
She probably shouldn’t have brought an electric light to a place with this much water. But she hadn’t been planning on making it a huge excursion.
Do the spooky eyes of Penna’s monster give off light? That would definitely be helpful and not at all terrifying to look at.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"That was a pretty tepid woo," Penna points out, leaning on her staff as she watches the minotaur wade through the water (and nearly trip over a treasure chest that is IN the water for some obscure reason) and pull the lever on the other side. There's a mechanical clank from somewhere further down the hallway. "Do you... do this sort of stuff often? I was kind of assuming that anyone who would dive headlong into murky water and zombies and fish-stink is use to this kind of gross terrifying thing by now. I know I am. I've been up to my everything in zombies before so this is just like a brisk morning jog."

She jogs in place for a moment, the water sloshing around her boots.

The spooky eyes don't give off that much light.

HOWEVER!

The little green floating acidic orb slowly orbiting the end of Penna's staff does. About as much as a torch, as it happens. A good flashlight would probably be superior, if we're being honest here. A similar orb is floating around all of Penna's friends. And Mina, for that matter. The combined light from all the orbs is actually pretty significant.

Penna waits for Mina to cross back through the pool then begins walking with her toward the sealed door. The watcher floats near her shoulder, the manticore takes up the rear, and the trio of hound-sized rat monsters move in front of the party. Once they reach the door they'll find that the red light is off and the green light is now on.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Um. This is kind of my second time? I’ve drop-kicked some bad guys here and there out in the streets but I haven’t really delved into strange places terribly often.” Mina admits as she reaches down and pulls the chest in the water up towards the lever where the water is a little more shallow.
Naturally she opens it before they go back to the door. She’s never actually gotten loot before. None of the bad guys have ever dropped treasure chests or anything like that.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Wait, you just beat up regular person criminals? Like... petty thugs?" Penna asks, her tone for the first time edging away from spunky and up-beat and toward concerned. "Oooooh wow, okay, umm... Right! So. You've probably got not idea what to expect when you're tangling with the Dead Gods then, do you?"

Penna tries to putting her arm around Mina's shoulder, realizes that absolutely isn't going to work, and decides to make do with just patting her on the shoulder instead.

"Well! You're going to be getting a crash course today! Unless you decide it's a better idea to just bail. Depending on how busy the Pontus beasties have been down here we might be dealing with some pretty hard core stuff. But you just stick close to your good pal Penna and I'll make sure nothing eats you. Last thing we need is a fishy minotaur zombie to deal with, right?"

Right.

So!

Chest.

It wasn't actually dropped by anything.

It was just in the water.

For...

Not readily apparent reasons.

Mina drags it out and pops it open, revealing a collection of bronze and silver coins, a purple star sapphire, an unopened package of Fancy Filly Cakes, fourteen bottle caps, three bullets, and a magical fire ring.

Who the heck is stocking these things?

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

"Right. No one wants to deal with a zombie sea cow." Mina says, smiling a little.
"But yeah no I have no idea what's going on."

And then oh, shinies! Mina goes for the ring immediately because why would she not?
"Wow. So do you like...need spending cash?" Mina offers Penna a share.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"No one," Penna adds definitively. "And I'm okay! You go ahead and take when you want. The bigger beasts of the Dead Gods are always loaded for some reason. So I've got plenty of loot. Since you're just starting out you obviously need it more than I do! Unless there's something in there for bolstering summons or... you know. Acid, piercing, and nature damage? That sort of thing is always handy! If there's something in there that helps against desiccation damage you're definitely going to want to hang onto that yourself."

What the heck is nature damage? What would that even BE?

Anyway...

Penna heads over to the door, sets her staff off to the side, grabs the wheel lock, and gives it a turn!

"Oof this thing is heavy," she groans as she hefts the door open.

The room beyond? A long, wide chamber opening mostly to the north. The southern wall is covered in a thick growth of salt crystals while on the north wall there's a door sealed with some sort of arcane design. The sound of sloshing water is pretty loud in here as the waste deep liquid spirals around endlessly due to a spinning device at the center of the room (but why though?). The purpose isn't clear but it makes navigating in here much harder.

Also?

There are four bloated zombies and a huge ogre sized abomination rocking that squiddy whale angler fish look pretty hard.

"Oh you have got to be kid-"

Penna gets blades by a spout of water from the beast with such force that she gets blasted against the far wall.

Ouch.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Well I have some decent savings from inheritance but I won’t say no to some money I’ve earned myself.” Mina actually smiles at that. It looks kind of weird on her muzzle. She also puts on that ring.
Later, at a door!
For Mina’s sake, this narrator hopes that the water is waist deep and not waste deep.
Regardless Mina steps forth towards the door! She brandishes Sai as sparks arc between his prongs. Mina tries to stay in cover best she can, peeking just enough out of the doorway to fire a bolt of lightning at the big monster.
Why didn’t she do this before? Because the monsters were right in front of her and she’s in deep water, silly. She should probably be far enough away from the target to avoid any shock. But she isn’t an engineer or some kind of hydrologist.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Penna is pretty not happy about getting smashed into a wall.

Thankfully she has FRIENDS for covering for her while she shakes off that daze!

The two moderately spiky ratsneks go charging through the door and tackle the smaller zombies while the hunchbacked ratsnek with the massive cluster of quills on its shoulders makes a gross squelching noise as it launches one of the quills straight at the big angler monster! With a terrifying roar the snekticore leaps into the whale thing and begins savaging the heck out of it. The eyencone barfs a cloud of healing goop onto Penna.

And Penna?

"You know what you guys need? To make some more friends!" she declares as she conjures up pulsing amniotic sac full of acid and rats and just lobs the whole thing into the room before skittering around the corner and out of the line of sight.

The sac bursts open in a shower of acid, spilling out FOUR MOAR RATSNEKS! Two more of the moderately quill-covered monsters and two grotesque cannon-backed rats that immediately begin scurrying away from the fight and deeper into the room.

Meanwhile, the foes of our heroes aren't taking this sitting down. The regular zombies promptly exploding, destroying themselves and the rats they were grappling in the process. Those watery explosions just messed up the snekticore pretty badly, too. Badly enough for the angler-beast to chomp down on it and rip it in half after getting gouged up pretty badly. The snekticore violently disintegrates in an explosion of acid and quills because of course it does. The big beasty is about to snack on the rest of the remaining rats but then it gets nailed with a lightning bolt that does a pretty solid job of stunning it.

[Reinholdt]

[In Search of Truth]

"Anika! Not that way, this way!" Ilpholin says, drawing up the recordings in her mind of the halls they traveled, capable of backtracing with unerring accuracy.

This way they could just go out the doors that the construct said is the exit and asked them to go out of before they wrecked and freed the imprisoned divine spirits.

[A Tankless Job]

"Eh... either way." They're both fear in the face of evil. Sometimes things are better when kept brief and fresh. Other things need to be stretched long and given time to percolate.

Regardless, Rose learns the many functions and features of her new tank, which seems almost endless. Everyone is tankful that Raven included a stop self destruct sequence button in addition to the self destruct sequence button, though the adrenaline of finding it was certainly one of the more exciting moments.

Of course, seeing Rose inflict all that needless collateral damage only gets Raven hot and bothered and when the teasing stops and the session ends, they likely have to find somewhere soft and private to vent those feelings.

But the tank is fully Rose's from here on to use when and how she pleases.

[Ironsmith]

[A Tankless Job]

Suffice to say, it's a very exciting afternoon for all.

But, when Rose finally parts ways with Raven again and gets to be alone in her brand-new tank, she once again pulls out her phone and places another call.

"Hey, Greg. Yes, me again. Listen, I need you to find someone in Marketing for me. Yeah. Someone outspoken, looking to please, female. ...Yes, I know that's vague, that's the point. If you find more than one, send them all up to my office. Tell them there's break time in it if they need persuasion. Good. Keep me posted."

Rose lowers her phone and slumps back into the tank's driver seat. She'll have to send a report on this thing's capabilities to MERC, too, but she doesn't dare do that here. Raven might have the vehicle bugged. If she's caught in a harmless white lie, that's one thing, but MERC is a whole other class of trust breached.

...Although now that that's all done...

Rose smiles and takes control of the tank again, going for one last lap around the lot.

Because it's still a badass tank.

Heck yeah.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

One enemy left. Stunned. Dead ahead. Mina does what minotaurs are good at. She charges.
Not even the high water can slow down a charging minotaur of Mina's size much. She might not be able to reach full speed, but she can still move at a decent clip as she leaps towards the stunned beast to ram it with her extended elbow.
Wham!
Just don't look at all the terrifying gross monsters by her side that would normally be sickeningly gross.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Mina charges.

The monster shakes off its daze quickly and yawns it absurdly large jaws wide to meet her.

This would be bad.

But then it gets hit from behind by a pair of acid bombs from the Ratillary as the regular ratsnek chomp down on it, causing the horror to whirl around to savage them instead. This results in Mina smashing her elbow right into the side of the monster's head with a sickening crunch.

It's big.

She's also big.

Some physics happens and the monster is on the losing end of the exchange.

Half of its face is caved in but that doesn't appear to be stopping it which is a real shame. With a roar it tries lashing around Mina with its huge tentacles so it can take a bite out of her with its fangly maw. This doesn't really work out great for it since-

"Nope no biting the cowgirl you get to have Echidna's babies instead," Penna says as she launches a particularly virulent looking quill straight into the Pontus beast's mouth. The monster recoils from the impact at the back of its throat and begins thrashing as a huge acidic green boil begins growing out of its side before bursting open in a spray of acid. The thing that just popped out of the boil uncurls, revealing itself to be a huge quill-covered serpent equipped with a multitude of dog legs as if it were some kind of awful canine centipede.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Yeah that’s too much for Mina.
The minotaur gags, giving the monster a half-hearted kick as she backs up.
And then spends a while gagging and trying not to lose the lunch she specifically didn’t eat knowing she was going to be down in a gross place like this today. Penna’s powers might be a bit much right now.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

The rest of the fight is kind of a blur.

When Penna realizes what's going on she hurries into the room and does her best to lead Mina away from the battle that rages behind them. Thankfully the mob of horrible monsters are doing a pretty great job of keeping the hostile horrible monster busy. Once the big beasty is dead the summoned creature begin melting one by one into acidic green sludge, save for the quill-cone, which seems content to hover around creepily watching everything.

Fight won!

Yaaaaay?

"Oh gosh I'm sorry that was probably really disgusting to watch," she says hurriedly, her tone apologetic. "I'm so use to this gross stuff it hardly even bothers me anymore. Watching the snakedog get squirted out right next to you probably wasn't... fun. At all."

Penna frowns a bit.

"I don't... I can't really tone it down. All of the magic I got from Echidna is revolting. And I can't really fight that well on my own besides just, I dunno, bopping things on the head with my staff. But maybe the prospect of more loot will make you feel better?"

She gestures back at a floating golden orb of light above the corpse of the fish monster just in time for the kill covered snake to begin dissolving.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina gives a tired smile and tries to steady herself.
”Trust me, I get it. We don’t get to choose what we end up working with.”
For some reason she flicks the end of her weapon when she does this. Penna might get the impression of it being grumbly about this.
”But uh. Yeah. Loot. Sure.”
An orb? How is that loot?