Skyside 8: Base Violence and Unnecessary Change

[Murkus]

[In Search of Truth]

Fettina covers a chortle and, ignoring the KABAL goons for now, will follow the other two women. She spreads her wings and glides close to the ground, though no air current exists here that's sufficient to carry her.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Penna offers her best encouraging smile and reaches waaaaay up to pat Mina on the shoulder.

"Right? I guess some scavs like me actually get a choice but usually it's one of those non-choices. You know the sort! 'Hey kid! You want some gross magical powers so you corpse turns into a monster when you die? Or do you want to die horribly right now!' Great options, right? It was acid and quills and exploding monster babies or getting eaten by zombies," Penna sighs. "So you know, just... buck up and make the most of it, right?"

She does her best to be up beat about all this stuff because the alternative is being miserable and nuts to that.

"Right! Loot! You just gotta... whack that orb. And it'll spit loot everywhere. No idea why or how they work. Big Dead Gods monsters just leave 'em behind sometimes."

Penna gestures at the loot orb with her staff.

And doesn't smack it.

She's hoping that Mina clobbering the thing might make her feel a little better.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

"Um. Is what happens to your corpse something you have experience with?"
Because coming back after dying isn't THAT weird in the Nexus. Sai did it! Kinda.
And also because Mina is very tall she should be able to reach up and slap the orb pretty easily. So she does so.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Yeah, actually! I mean, not first hand. I'm typically not around for it since I got killed," Penna replies matter of factually. "But I've seen what happens to other scavs and I know the same thing happens to me. I've only actually gotten back to my zombie corpse once before someone else killed it. Rekilled it? Whatever you do with zombies. It's kind of a pain when someone else gets to it first since that means they usually end up looting all your stuff."

She wrings her staff in her hands, looking a little irritated.

"Except your token of course. That would be my quill staff. Everyone's got a weapon that's sort of... the symbol of their stolen power I guess? It's part of me now. I can't really lose it."

Handy!

"But yeah... monster zombie thing me is extra gross but that's how all the beasts of Echidna are. I can sort of do the transformy thing intentionally. It's a BIG power boost buuuuut you always kinda run the risk of going steadily berserk which basically translates to rampaging around until someone kills you. So not great! Best used sparingly."

Definitely best used sparingly.

"Monster me is... uh... have you ever seen a picture of a surinam toad before?"

Then the orb gets bapped!

It makes a hollow exploding noise before it begins spraying loot into the air like a fountain.

...said loot all falls in the water.

Penna frowns. "...oh right. That's a problem isn't it?" she mutters as she watches a collection of clothing, weapons, jewelry, coins, and random baubles splashing into the brine.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Oh, uh. Okay." That sounds pretty weird. But so is getting made into your previous incarnation who happened to be a ludicrously large cowperson because a talking parrying tool from Fantasy Okinawa thought you weren't buff enough.
"And uh. No I haven't seen that one."
Mina holds out her hands but it's unlikely much of the loot falls into them. She sighs.
"Okay get over here and get ready. I'll move the water and you pick up whatever looks useful."
Mina focuses with Sai in her hands. The water around her flows away from her in a few two foot radius. That's Penna's chance to get looting!
She should hurry Mina can only move that much water for a few seconds. Well, Sai is really doing the work but she's helping him.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Probably for the best. They might not be the worst animal but they're in the top ten, I'm sure," Penna replies as she quickly stoops down and grabs an armful of stuff as soon as the water gets swept aside. It's quite a collection of random junk. She sloshes her way over to a raised platform above the water level and dumps the heap of treasure atop it.

"There! That counts as salvage since it was under water which now makes us official sunken treasure hunters."

That's...

A somewhat dubious interpretation of facts.

"So you do... what? Water things? Punching? Anything else?" Penna asks as she begins digging through the heap of loot. "I've got a nose for what stuff does. I think it's one of the scav perks. Usually I just keep on the lookout for things that would be useful for me but-"

She's not just digging for her own treasure right now.

"Hey have you ever been on a group delve before? I've only been on one once and no the summons definitely don't count."

The watcher does not seem at all sad as a result of being excluded. It just hovers there ominously.

[Shadowcaller]

[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.

[In Search of Truth]

Fettina covers a chortle and, ignoring the KABAL goons for now, will follow the other two women. She spreads her wings and glides close to the ground, though no air current exists here that's sufficient to carry her.

[In Search of Truth]

Anika abruptly stops and then turns left.
Which is also the direction the construct pointed out earlier.

Sure enough, it leads to a corridor that once they go around the corner will reveal an exit.
Outside the can see a pool, or more accurately an artificial lake in the middle of the garden that they first arrived in.

They can also see a whole bunch of mercenaries gathered outside. The two they saw fleeing earlier joining their numbers. They all have their various weapons up, appearing ready for a fight.

[Reinholdt]

[In Search of Truth]

Ilpholin pauses just outside the manor, eyes scanning the mercenaries, looking for whom might actually be capable in a fight. Not that she was interested in one, despite their sins. "We just destroyed your mistress's giant fire sword golem."

She pulls out a small black cube and tosses it forward onto the dirt where it begins to unfold into a hovercycle with purple streaks of energy humming along the sides. "But if you seek an early grave, by all means-"

"Get in our way." The exotic dancer swings a toned leg over the cycle and climbs aboard, waiting a bit to see if they're going to part ranks.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina looks kind of embarrassed.
”Oh. I’m mostly just being good at being a really big girl who does stuff a little bit better than she Should realistically be able. Sai handles all the special effects.” she gestures at Sai for emphasis. Though he does need her to focus things. Kinda. He can definitely activate on his own so she’s not sure how much her intent matters.

”Uh. Me and a friend delved a two room tomb once? It turned out to be mine. Oh and I went into a weird hellscape with some magical girls once? I didn’t do much it was really confusing.”

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Penna stares at Mina for a few seconds in silence.

"Wow you got jipped. See, I was expecting the water powers came with the transformation. That's how it works when you scavenge one of the Dead Gods, anyway," she says, tapping at her crown of quills with one finger. "So... is the minotaur thing unrelated to the water control thing? Did you find a magic weapon and just unrelatedly get turned into a cow?"

This is probably prying.

But Penna doesn't mind prying.

Prying is fun!

"But yeah it sounds like this is your first real delve. The servants of the Dead Gods are the real deal. But THANKFULLY I'm really good at playing support! Echidna's blood is a great pick-me up if you ignore the smell and the gross drippy part. Oh hey! Amulet of protection from desiccation damage! And plus pressure and cold damage, too!"

She holds up the amulet, a swirling orb of water on the end of a string, and waggles it in front of Mina.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina takes the little amulet without any fuss. She thinks she deserves a few baubles for dealing with all of this.
”No, I found a magic weapon who was the sidekick of my past life and he immediately filed a complaint with the celestial bureaucracy that they reincarnated me as a wimp and demanded they put me back to demon wrestling size immediately. Which they did and subsequently stopped taking my ‘calls’ when they found out he made that request against my will.”
Mina flicks the sai’s prongs again.
The fact that she doesn’t bring up Tarr died as a child under Sai’s watch is a testament to how well they’re getting along.
She’s never going to let him live this one down though.
”And he had to teach me how to channel ki and all that and I had to work for it. I didn’t get any of this for free. Though it probably came to me faster than did for most people. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do the water stuff without him but for now that’s Sai’s job.”

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

In Penna's opinion everyone deserves cool baubles for dealing with this.

She just has a pretty expansive collection of baubles already and as a result she's really picky about the baubles she selects.

And this particular loot heap?

No baubles of interest.

"Wait. So, he got you killed again so you would reborn as a minotaur?" Penna asks, a bit confused on this one.

Is she understanding this right?

Because in her experience being reborn as something else typically involves lots of getting killed.

Thankfully lots of getting killed is something that she has mostly managed to avoid.

"He got you messed up and then after he got you messed up the people who did the messing stopped listening to you because... what? None of that makes any sense."

Sounds like a convoluted scheme to turn someone into a minotaur with no recourse for undoing it.

"Geeze you really got jipped. At least I got to pick Echidna. Technically the choice was Chthon or Echidna (or dead) and they're both pretty gross but at least Echidna isn't crazy and gross."

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”No, it was more of a divine pillar of Ka-Cow-ing. Painless, at least. But I don’t know the logistics. Sai just made it sound like he said ‘must be big cow, not big cow, please fix’ and it worked out his way. They haven’t been interested in listening to my many complaints.

But you know. Worse things to be, right? I promise I look better when I’m not sopping wet.”
Mina takes a lot of care of herself.
It involves a lot of shampoo. So much shampoo.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Pff. So. If I'm getting this right. You got blasted by a heavenly sky laser and then you were a cow? Haha, wow, that's gotta be something. I know there are some gods that are more active and less dead around the Nexus but it still just sounds so weird that you can send written complaints to them about their miracles that went sideways."

This whole thing seems absolutely silly to Penna.

"But yeah you're right definitely worse things to be. Hopefully this little delve doesn't get hairy enough that I've gotta beasty up. Monster me is a sight and not in a good way."

She offers no further elaboration on that, aside from the toad comment she made earlier.

"And speaking of hair! It looks we've got a vault over here," Penna says, sloshing through the waist deep water to smack her staff against the thick layer of salt crystals on the southern wall. "For those not in the know, vaults are sealed sections of a dungeon. You crack one of these bad boys open and you've suddenly up to your hips in really strong monsters and traps. BUT! The best loot is always in places like these."

The scav gestures back at the arcane sealed door to the north.

"So we can take a easy weenie baby path. OR! We can take the hard route and find way cooler stuff and probably not die."

Probably.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Pretty much. It was just missing the mooing of the heavenly choir.”
Mina shakes her head.
”They’re more really angry prayers than written complaints.”
She eyes the crystal wall thing.
”I mean. I’m mostly just here to look for the people that have gotten taken. I’m not really here for the loot as long as the people-eating stops.”
Mina is kind of rich and already has a kind of OP magical weapon. What does she need extra loot for?

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Extra loot helps you not die.

And Penna has the uncanny feeling that Mina doesn't bounce back from death nearly as easily as she does.

Death for Penna is an inconvenience.

It means she has to crawl her way out of Echidna until she reaches the apex of the celestial vault so she can riftgate back to the terrestrial realm. It's a real pain to do and takes a while but it just slows her down.

But if Mina dies?

Well...

Apparently she can only come back via regular reincarnation. And zombies. Probably squiddy fish zombies, given the environment.

"Fiiiine. I can clear out the vault once we've got the riftgate down here secure. Alone. I'm sure I'll be okay without any backup, fragile and helpless thing that I am," Penna says, leaning heavily on her staff and draping one arm across her face dramatically. Theatrics done, she sloshes her way over to the door on the northern wall.

And frowns.

Frowns!

"WHAT!? A lightning seal? Seriously? In a Pontus dungeon? Who set this stupid thing up? Ugh..." Penna grumbles, glancing back at Mina. "Hey I don't suppose you can lob lightning bolts? Because if no I'm going to have to take a quick jaunt back to my stash and dig around in my heaps of useless garbage for something to shock a door with."

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina nods to the question.
”Yeah, you missed it after that thing blasted you. Just stand clearly.”
Mina repeats the process from before, letting electricity arc over Sai before letting a bolt loose at the door.
Hopefully Sai doesn’t run out of power she’s been relying on him a lot.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

This is why all the COOL PEOPLE just rapidly regenerate their energy, Sai.

What fun is it to just run outta juice and then be useless?

Zero fun, that's what.

Anyway!

The door gets ZOT!ed, causing the arcane seal to fade. Penna tromps up the stairs out of the water, still dripping wet, and shoves it open. In the room beyond they find!

A smallish room with another sealed door to the east, this one with salt crystals boiling across its surface like bubbles. In the center of the room is a tasteful classical statue of a shapely human woman made of white stone.

Also?

There are some pipes on the wall. And a dead potted plant in one corner. And a water stained poster of a kitten hanging off a tree branch with HANG IN THERE! written on it in large block letters.

Penna glowers at the door. "Seriously."

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Well. Um.
”Well at least there’s no water in here. We could dry off a little?”
It’s probably not tall enough for Mina to stand up straight. She desperately wants a high ceiling so she can stretch a little.
”Does this mean we have to pick a vault either way?”

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Sitting around waiting to dry off isn't in the cards," Penna points out as she eyes the sealed door. "We still don't know what these Pontus goons are up to. But we DO know they've got people who are probably getting zombified if they aren't already. We want to put a stop to that, and quickly if we can. Which means no waiting around."

She waggles her staff at the door.

"We just need something that can do some desiccation damage to break the seal. Or... rub some salt on it, probably? Just not with your hand. Or it'll suck all the water out of your hand. You don't want it to do that."

Does Mina want beef jerky for a hand?

Probably not.

"There's usually something nearby that you can trigger the seals with. Hmm... It'll probably take something a little more intense than just rubbing. We've got to really whollop it. "

But whollop it with what?

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Well we both have weapons that are probably immune to desiccation since they’re not alive.”
Sai and Penna’s staff probably don’t have moisture in them.
”I could use my foot but I don’t think I want to find out if I can get desiccated through it.”
Her hoof is like, a brick of toenail material? There’s blood vessels in there somewhere so it probably wouldn’t be safe.
Given that she’s been in waist deep water this whole time it’s entirely possible Penna wasn’t aware Mina had hooves.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Definitely don't hoof it," Penna cautions. "Never touch these seals with something you mind losing."

Sounds serious!

Okay.

What have they got to work with in here?

Some...

Pipes?

And the cat poster.

And that white statue.

Those don't seem like terribly extensive options.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

”Um. Okay. What about the statue? Maybe it’s got a secret compartment or it’s made of something useful?”
Mina tries to see if she can lift the statue and check for seams.
Unless the statue is nailed down Mina could probably lift it. And maybe even then…

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Mina is absolutely able to lift the statue.

And while she's cowhandling it Penna approaches, a skeptical look on her face.

She leans in close to the statue.

Closer.

Closer!

Then she licks it.

And makes a face.

"It's carved fro rock salt!"

That would explain the color, wouldn't it?

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Mina nods.
"Okay! So we just...rub it on the wall? Or whack it?"
If the statue is made of salt crystal it will probably crack after being struck so they will only get one good hit in with it.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

"Heck if I know smack it and see what happens," Penna replies.

Should Mina do so (smacking the door, not rubbing it) the seal will shatter, leaving the door to be opened!

And inside?

Is more trouble.

A large, square room with a... balcony overlooking it? And several tables covered in tin urns (why? What are they doing down here?) There are a pair of doors leading out of the chamber, one to the north (and sealed) and another to the north-east with a pair of red and green lights indicating that it's locked. There's some sort of fish priest looking guy standing on the balcony with a good dozen or so fishy looking cultists bowing before him as be proclaims watery gurgling noises. As soon as our heroes come into the room the priest points at them with his scepter and-!

"AUGHBBLBLBLB!"

Apparently that means attack.

The fishy cultists spring to their feet and charge toward our heroes! Unlike the zombies these people look... still alive. Just with awful fishy features.

[Deathkeeper]

Waterlogged

Oh gosh. A second level balcony. You know what that means.
That means the first level has an open ceiling up to the second level. Which means Mina can stand up straight. Which she does, with a sigh of relief.
Honestly the charging horde of fish people is barely a concern to her. She's twice their height, three times their weight, and she shoots lightning bolts.
Mina focuses her attention at the boss. So she raises Sai and fires off a bolt at it.
Just in case they're being mind controlled and zapping the fish priest will stop them.

[Rebonack]

[Waterlogged]

Oh boy swarms of foes!

Well, no one is going to be out-swarming Penna, no sir!

She lobs an orb of acid right into the middle of the swarm which promptly bursts, spilling out a trio of giant spiky dog-sized rats! Two with heavy clusters of quills around their shoulders and one with a really pointy thogomizer on its tail. The rats seem momentarily disoriented thanks to their arrival but that acid explosion is probably going to do some work. Her projectile projected, Penna scoots around behind Mina to use the huge minotaur woman as cover.

Bravely!

Penna's watcher makes a PHWIP! noise as it spits a quill directly into the center of one of the cultist's chest, who just keeps running.

The fish priest conjures a wall of water, meanwhile, which does a pretty good job of grounding the lightning bolt and preventing it from hitting him. What a jerk.

The rest of the fish cultists that aren't melting thanks to the acid pull out a bunch of wiggle bladed stabby daggers and will begin trying to sacrifice the HECK out of our heroes.

[Murkus]

[In Search of Truth]

Fettina frowns at the massed group of thugs-for-hire, scanning them to see if there's anything that looks like it would hurt her. Between the numbing of her more mild emotions and her general resistance to harm, she just can't bring herself to be nervous facing down a big group of hostile people any more. The robots and things had her a little worried, but this bunch look like chumps.

"Yeah, come on boys," says Tina, rolling her shoulders and flexing her wings with a sound like plated armor rattling in high harmonic tones. "Don't make us clobber you." She leans over to whisper to Ilphy, "Anika and I can totally just fly you out of here if you want."

[Earl of Purple]

Tempest Row- Headed to the Spaceport

The roads here are amongst the widest in space-hungry Skyside, and also usually very busy with shipments arriving and departing from the shuttles and airships docking on the edge of the city, which is why today's occurrence is proving so very disruptive.

Barrelling down one of the larger roads is a ship. Not an airship suspended under a balloon of lighter-than-air gas; nor is it a spaceship with large engines and a space-proof hull. This is an actual boat; a fiberglass-hulled dayboat with three large holes sawn into the lower hull with metal plates protruding from them. The boat has been neglected; there's algae growing on the white hull, and the windows are cracked. It's currently going very fast, hovering in the air as blue lightning dances constantly between the metal plates fixed to the hull and the ground below. The boat is being piloted- for want of a better word- by a man with mismatched eyes; one dark brown, the other a shocking icy blue. He's wearing a dark blue Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with lime green pine trees and coconuts, though the buttons haven't been done up properly, yellow surf-shorts, mismatched sandals and a slightly squashed red tricorn hat. He's standing at the back of the boat, hand resting on what should be the outrigger engine's handle, though the engine has been replaced by a complex network of wires, pipes and cogs. There's still a little propeller under the boat, whizzing along very fast and occasionally throwing sparks up from the pavement.

He's paying very little care or attention to where he's going, just going far too fast at a rather scary height along busy roads. The arcs of lightning keeping the vessel aloft scar and burn the paintwork of the other vehicles, especially when he presses a button and lurches upwards to get over taller obstacles, and the spinning blades of the propeller cause a fair bit of damage, too. Mounted to the front of the boat is why nobody is really stepping up to stop him- most of a large vacuum cleaner combined with several metres of Thanksmas lights, the internal parts of three seperate microwaves and the screen from a solar-powered calculator. The lights are glowing bright and the hum the device is giving off is surprisingly menacing.