A Very Dank Side Quest

[garmr]

Who: Guts, Kerrigan, Loken, Need, Saturday, and a handful of NPCs
What: A fissure in spacetime! Our motley group gets yoinked into Berserk for a little adventure
Where: A dark and desolate pit of ancient ruin (to start!)
When: After Memshare/Before the Next Event
Warnings/Notes: Canon is fairly graphic and will include violence and gore in the descriptions.

Note: This is a miniplot with some tabletop elements! There will be skill checks and their results will be marked down in the DM/NPC tags. I have written down the basic rules here.

Comments

[wheyoftheadept]

:Through the hole.: Saturday agrees, and stands. Elder Brother melts back into her metal arm.

She doesn't skulk, but she doesn't leave herself open, either; she hugs broken walls and piles of ruins as much as she can, tries to climb behind cover, and keeps her all her senses focused. When she reaches the pile of debris she pauses for the others to catch up.

:So this is pretty obviously a nest, right?:

[garmr]

Perception
Saturday: 63/60 (fail)

No immediate danger presents itself to Saturday, beyond the threat of being dirtied even further by sludge.

[garmr]

:I’ll save a few bombs in case we find the center.: Guts’ first thought is how he’d very much like to light it all on fire if given a good excuse.

His expression flattens as he makes note of the entrance. It looked claustrophobic as all hell. The most unnerving quirk will be his lack of fighting options when he’s crawling around in there.

:You want to go up front, or behind?: He grips his prosthetic hand. The crossbow is always an option in a pinch, but that’ll be complicated with Saturday in front of him, even if she’s got more maneuvering room. Need would also be far more useful than his own sword in there.

[wheyoftheadept]

:Rear. If we gotta fight our way out, you can do that meat grinder thing while I fight off the rear.: Guts is something of an AoE attacker, and it's always better to be behind his damage cone. She wishes she had a bow, or grenades, or a fucking sling.

:If this is like a bug nest, they could have all kind of weird shit inside.: she cautions. :And they'll probably have tunnels at crazy angles. Watch the corners.:

With that warning, she gestures him to go ahead.

[garmr]

:All right. You should take some of these.:

He transfers some of the burr-shaped explosives to an empty pouch to hand over. Lots of gunpowder and narrow tunnels could make for a bad mix, but those ones were small enough that Saturday could make use of them, he thinks.

:Sorry ‘bout the slime, old lady…: It is an absent thought for Need as he follows up by approaching the tunnel. The black metal of his greaves grind audibly against the lip of the cave. It’d be impossible to completely avoid having the more elegant longsword scrape the walls a bit.

[wheyoftheadept]

:Thanks.: At least these ye olde adventuring outfits had tons of pouches. She had, in fact, been looking for things to fill them with when the roots had nabbed her. If they'd only waited twenty goddamned minutes or so. :When we reach the first turnings, I'll scout ahead a ways.:

The bombs will come in handy if that goes south.

:Forewarned is forearmed.:

[garmr]

:The damn bugs could have at least set up some candles in here. Here I go...:

Ahead of them is dark, cold, and humid. The sludge leaking over the lip of the tunnel runs in a damp line down the center. Guts manages to find just enough room to crawl in, the Dragonslayer smoothed along by the cape covering the metal.

Luckily for him, the passageway is mostly horizontal before inching upwards at a gradual incline. The echoes of skittering feet are far away and sporadic, nowhere near them. Neither flesh nor metal hand can manage to get much of a grip on the bedrock, beyond the natural friction the textured surface naturally gave them. Foul and earthy scents get stronger the deeper they go in, like a mix of dirt and old roadkill.

[wheyoftheadept]

:Smells like shit in here.: Saturday observes bluntly. :Like something died. And then got shoved up an ass:

This doesn't thrill her. The creatures might still be something they can handle diplomatically, but the odds of them being any kind of pleasant are lowering by the second. And it's not that Saturday isn't perfectly willing to deal with monsters or worse if it means avoiding a fight she's not ready for - but she'd really prefer not to have walk by any tortured innocents. Discretion isn't the better part of valor when it involves turning a blind eye to an immediate problem.

Well, chin up and live in hope. Sooner or later she's bound to come across a group of perfectly civil hive-dwelling bug people that just happen to enjoy a Halloween aesthetic. Today might be that day.

[hasapoint]

Slings... Need could construct one out of the materials the living have on hand, but it would take a good few hours to do all that braiding and aligning and then to get Saturday used to it enough that it could be a feasible weapon. She declines to bring it up just yet. If they ever get that chance to rest maybe.

Not commenting on the slime, she does what she can about the darkness, making the back of Guts' eye reflect light like a cat's and increasing its sensitivity, upping the gain on his ears and the sensitivity of the skin of his face. Sometimes it's possible to use sound and the movement of air to get a sense of a space even with poor visibility, especially if liquid is flowing.

And she tries to reach for the minds of these degraded creatures that had passed through here, looking for them around, below, above, ahead. There might be parallel tunnels.

[garmr]

Perception
Need: 21/65 (Success)

The lykeblade's senses extend outward, and confirms Saturday's suspicions in short order. Multiple individuals skitter in the bedrock unseen: Some above them, some below them, arranged in all manner of orientations. All navigating a winding and intricate maze.

A group of the creatures are ahead of them, reaching a fork in the tunnel. One tunnel is above, the other below. The bulk of the chittering number clamber up the top tunnel with ease. Their thoughts chant in unison.

Mistress, Mistress...

One lone insect slithers downwards towards the bottom tunnel, a single fragment of a thought whispering in its warped mind before it goes.

Tower.. - Rebirth.

[hasapoint]

:There's a lot more than this one tunnel in here and it gets pretty chaotic,: the sword reports promptly. She overlays dots representing the creatures onto the living's sight, larger for closer, smaller for more distant. The mass of dots ahead.

:I don't have a good bead on the rest but the up-path ones are basically chanting about their mistress, it's no longer a mix of opinions. The down-path one thought something about a tower and 'rebirth' before splitting off. You wanna follow the crowd, or the most ominous singleton?:

She almost uses a dyheli metaphor but decides against it. Neither of these two have ever met an uplifted psychic deer in their lives and wouldn't get how they link minds to come to consensus or act in unison when they wish, and if she explained it would muddy the waters. Need doesn't think the insect creatures are psychic, or at least, not the way she is.

[garmr]

That’s a lot of weird things happening to his vision all at once, and the reveal of bugs overhead isn’t exactly a comforting one.

:There was a legend about somethin’ like that. Tower of Rebirth, supposed to be built over some kind of ancient capital.:

Years ago, he would have been incredulous about believing an old fairy tale. After living on an island of fairy tales, and being on a journey with far stranger things, he can’t rule it out.

:Or, whatever apostle’s nesting in here got creative with the names. They make their minions from humans. Change ‘em into monsters.:

It could be seen as a form of rebirth, in a twisted way.

[wheyoftheadept]

If Maggie was here, they could do both. Saturday takes a now-traditional second to bemoan the lack of her team and her best friend and feel anew the gaps her expertise.

:Well, there's no telling which is better, at this point. Singleton or the mistress... goin' right to her would be a sign of good faith if she's the kind of creature who cares about that. Or it could be taken as a sign of naivete, weakness. That might be useful. On the other hand, secrets are fun and worth having.:

She runs a hand through her hair.

:Singleton feels like a side quest. Let's focus on the plot. I say, the mistress.:

[garmr]

:Works for me.: Guts provides no resistance to the option. :We go up top. Don't imagine the talking will last long."

Either direction was a guess at best, and leaving one of this particular type of monster unbothered and alive wasn't really his style. Maybe it wasn't a good thing that he found the temptation easy to agree to. Saturday could very well pull off their plan A, but a part of him was undoubtedly itching to fall back to his usual way of dealing with things.

Especially for making him sift through whatever disgusting sludge they'd lined their tunnels with.

Fork in the Tunnel

[garmr]

The travelers reach the junction point, the fetid air of the nest growing more oppressive. A thin gust of cold air blows from the bottom tunnel periodically, from the top tunnel it is a steady and continuous draft. It is impossible to tell where the stench is coming from, permeating everywhere as it was.

The area is wetter than the entrance, the black fluid settling in a sticky puddle beneath them, fed by the small and steady stream lurching out of the high tunnel with more vigor. The increased humidity has led to one other form of life in the tunnels: fungi. The mushrooms stretch out of the walls on long stalks, gathered together in occasional bunches, glowing a faint white. Mold stuck to the rock walls, discoloring them yellow and flaming red. It was beautiful to look at, despite the circumstances.

The air appeared to be thicker when they enter, like dust had been kicked up by all the activity. The slow-floating mists don't have any immediate odd effect beyond tickling their noses.

From their position at the fork in the tunnel, the skittering of feet echo and fade away. From here, it appeared to be clear of obstructions.

[hasapoint]

Need would like to go down after this "side quest". It's not a strong feeling with any conviction behind it, and all in all she prefers to let living people decide things for themselves, so she says nothing. Distantly she wishes for a larger party working in parallel but honestly if she's wishing, she'd like a line to the Star-Eyed and a troupe of hertasi, who would be a lot more mobile in this space.

Rather nice to see something alive, even fungus she can't identify. Distantly, again, Need would like to test it and see if it could be useful somehow. The mist makes her think of spores. If that's what it is, she's probably going to have to go over the living's lungs a few times. Nasty things to breathe in an enclosed space. She decides not to mention it just now.