Player Progression Story Burning The Light Out

Discussion in 'Progression Events' started by MonMarty, Nov 18, 2018.

  1. MonMarty

    MonMarty Thotdodger Staff Member Server Owner

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    OOC Note: This was the completion of a roll-powered player progression that acted as a side plot for some of the Silven. We'll be getting back to Storywebs and player Quests in the aftermath of this, and used it mostly as a pilot to generate ideas. The information inside this progression is 100% only known to those mentioned in this post and should not be meta-gamed out.

    Obviously, the spectacle viewed by the 4 people who scouted the Sewers would make their way to the relevant people who knew more about it, and obviously they were moved to act. Even if the Imperial Court didn’t care, and if the rest of the city was woefully unaware, to them, the events that transpired in that sewer cistern could change the world. And maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but a gamble was too much to take for them, because they had all inadvertently been at the mercy of an Arken before, and were not prepared to deal with the unknown unprepared. It was through the cooperation of Mae Draylas and Tristan Kade that others would come together as a ragtag group of aberrants, silven carers and even the odd Unionist the try and rid the world of this evil, if official authorities were unwilling to acknowledge it.

    Sure enough, the Demonic Ooze was still present and sure enough, the same thing it was doing before was still going on. It was obvious to Tullion however that time had indeed been pressing. While he has previously only seen seven of the machines batteries filled, now there were twenty. It would appear the group had not arrived a moment too soon, as an extra day would have resulted in the Ooze completing its work and gods know what happen there. The teams were divided into action groups to maximize their efficiency. Firstly, Helena Kind was paired with Kailyu Frisque, Kamirah Naawi, Tsetsilya Illyanovich and Khalid Nazari to act as the scouting team, a means to distract the Ooze from what it was doing and draw it into a chase.

    As the group approached however, the Ooze seemed disinterested in them. Disinterested in the group as a whole that is, until Helena Kind stepped closer to the forefront. The thing which the Ooze was slamming into, the thing that to Tullion before had looked like a person made out of light was merely just a flickering orb left, but it seemed to light up when Helena drew closer, and the Ooze responded immediately, letting out a curling shriek while tentacles of green muck grew on its back and arms, ready to pounce. Kailu didn’t leave a second to chance, shouting for the group to make an escape, and not a moment too soon either. It was his early call that got them out of being caught immediately, running off into one of the opposite corridors. The Ooze followed in its sluggish slimy manner, and for a moment, it seemed as if the plan was going down without a hitch.

    With the rest of the groups now safe to approach, the main move under lead of Tristan Kade along with Hannah Lexen, Tullion Kearney and Cro-Zzhin Yaotl moved forward to the central pedestal in the room while the support crew by Grevaris, Aeslin Sylfina, Saen’aellver, Jocelyn von Duerr and Lau’rella moved to inspect the batteries. On the central piece, it was Tullion who remarked that there was a lot of magic still in the sphere, but that it had been damaged to such a degree that it was unable to retain a physical form. He speculated that the light was actually the Hellion Prime in its natural non-physical state, a source of unimaginable magical energy. The fluctuations of light seemed to somehow acknowledge those present, but it was unable to speak or form any sort of coherent information. Still, the plan was to destroy it, and all the others.

    Speaking of the others, the support team was well on their way investigating the batteries. By cross referencing, the Silven of the groups were able to determine that various different Arken had been captured in these machines, as different Silven with different parentage felt attracted to different Batteries containing these floating lights. Sylfina reasoned that much like a hive of bees, the Ooze was extracting the worker bees from the queen, being the Hellion Prime, and that it intended to kill the queen when all the workers were taken away, to consume them, and become the new queen. This caused some pause in the group, for they were unsure how to even kill the magical energy on the pedestal, let alone the battery. One misstep could result in all the batteries breaking and releasing many Arken on the world.

    They had little time to consider their options however, as before long, the Ooze had seemingly noticed the Hellion Prime’s essence reacting to Tristan’s presence, and come back, abandoning the scout crew who was shouting warnings down the corridor that the Ooze was no longer interested in them, and hadn’t even harmed them. The two other groups, the battle group and the mage group now formed up positions alongside Tristan’s group to try and combat the Demonic Ooze, even though the group knew very well that this Demon was immensely powerful. Team Magic containing Alice Deceres, Mae Draylas, Keltie Ledsarge and Lei and Kaze Takenaka would be the first to engage with the Ooze.

    The engagement itself was a mess. Alice Deceres tried to redirect the Ooze’s own magical tentacles assuming that such constructs would be redirected by the mirrors, only to see the tentacle shatter the mirror it was supposed to be redirected about, before it roughly lashed into her, slamming her against a nearby wall. In the recoil of the lash, it hit numerous batteries which, alongside with the cables they were attached to, caused a domino effect of lashing cables that struck into Saen’eallver and Lau’rella with such force that they both broke an arm upon their fall, Jocelyn von Duerr quickly rushing to their aid and performing emergency aid in the middle of a cistern that was quickly turning into a warzone.

    The other mages activated their abilities, with fire-magic blasting at the tentacles as well as wind and stone flinging as a means to deflect the incoming attacks. A fighter team consisting of Amir Razavi, Aisha Kaisel, Leufred Reginar and Elijah Pelinelion charged at the Ooze’s tentacles, attempting to cut them down one by one, only to find that the tentacles would continue to be hostile on the ground. They were eventually met with clay soldiers made of the hardened ooze, the same ones that attacked Regalians a few days before, formed out of the tentacles that they had removed from the Demonic Ooze. Occupied, it appeared that the fight was mostly between the Mages and Tristan’s team then.

    With Tristan’s team charging forward, with Tristan’s sheer strength combined with Tullion’s shields, they were able to push the Ooze back, as its only true weakness being its slowness, caused it to be overwhelmed by superior numbers. The fight however was not won that easily, and the Demonic Ooze had many solutions up its sleeve. Tullion’s barriers eventually shattered, the shockwave which he had never experienced before from his barrier breaking like glass breaking bones in nearly all of his fingers, incapacitating him from the fight, while Grevaris stepped in attempting to shield her allies with her song Magic. Still, this protection proved insufficient as Kaze Takenaka was hit by a ricocheted rock from the windfunnel created with their twin and knocked out.

    With the casualties mounting quickly, the battle was seemingly a losing fight, until Keltie Ledsarge and Mae Draylas discovered that the Ooze actually responded to Mae’s Chaotic Flame Magic after it was burned by Keltie’s fire Magic. Burning the Ooze, apparently, caused it to become unstable, making it difficult to control by the Demonic Ooze. With the cohesion broken, Mae’s corrupting Flame caused the Ooze to rapidly mutate before blowing up and becoming useless, shriveling into the stone floor. With the duo casting their magics repeatedly at every tentacle the Ooze brought up, they were able to seemingly push it into a corner.


    With it being pushed into a corner however, it turned the tables on its attackers by summoning more clay minions that were immune to Keltie’s flame and thus could also not be harmed by Mae’s fire. It was here that the fighters shone, as while Leufred Reginar was struck in the back, Aisha Kaisel and Elijah Pelinelion were able to push back the advancing clay men by cutting them one by one, as Tristan’s team also joined them. The Ooze was now becoming more desperate, it seemingly being under the impression that Tristan’s charge was meant to revive the Hellion Prime, not kill it. Perhaps if the Ooze was able to speak, they could have conversed that their goals aligned, or perhaps the Ooze had more sinister plans.

    Whatever its plans, the Ooze was seemingly more obsessed with killing the Hellion Prime than actually taking the other Arken souls, so in one big magic spell, it broke the wards on the Ooze cables and attachments to the central piece. The central piece seemed to flicker as if a flame suddenly fanned by mighty bellows, those aligned with the Pride sensing a great deal of agonizing pain going through that light on the central piece. The batteries started cracking, the magestone and seraph conduit in them crumbling, and before long, they all burst crackling grapnel, sending stones flying in all directions.

    Practically the entire support team was wiped out in one blow, Grevaris, Aesling, Saen’, Jocelyn and Lau’rella being hit by a variety of shrapnel flying in all directions, receiving bad bruises and nasty head wounds that incapacitated them. Similarly Lei Takenaka was also struck, losing control over their magic just as dozens of Arken souls were seemingly freed from their battery confines, causing a light show of dancing bolts in the cistern. Some of the bolts immediately made their escape, out the sewer tunnels and up through the roof hatches. Some of them flew back to the one in the center of the pedestal, their light flashing into the Hellion Prime’s, almost as if they were trying to keep it alive while it seemed to flicker dimmer and dimmer.

    It was finally Keltie Ledsarge, perhaps charged by an Arken Soul passing through her, casting one violent spell that tore completely out of control from the amount of nearby conduits, sending a massive raging flame that was not only incinerating hot, but also as bright as the sun, crashing into the Ooze The fire was so out of control that those present could feel their skin dry, as fire was seemingly about to consume. Then, just moments before the fire was about to bounce back and fill the entire cistern with fiery heat, the light orb at the central pedestal lit up brightly and projected a spherical magical barrier of purple essence, shielding all those present from the fire and causing it to funnel back against the Ooze repeatedly.

    The Ooze let out an orchestra of shrieks in pain, eventually retreating as it was nearly burnt to a crisp. The shield then faded when the fire had gone, leaving one round area in the room clean, while the rest was torched as black as ink, with whole segments of stone walls seemingly having molten as if fresh molten rock from a volcano. Choosing not to charge after the Ooze and assess their losses, the group tried to make count of what had just occurred, and examine the situation.

    With many wounded in their group, they were badly in need of medical support, and as such, the scout crew (which had been watching from a very far safe distance) finally came back to try and help the wounded back to the surface. Tristan, Mae, Helena, Hannah and Cro-Zzhin were however still tasked with the destruction of the Hellion Prime, yet it seemed their task was already completed for them. What remained of the light on the central pedestal had dimmed to such a degree it was barely the size of a walnut while two larger spheres danced around it, the others not being able to discern whether this was mockery or concern for their fellow Demon essence.

    There was no speaking in the group, for as much as the Pride children (and Cro-Zzhin and Hannah who accompanied Tristan) were drawn to the dying of the Hellion Prime with a sense of melancholy. The creature that had seemingly caused so much issues, strife, had bent events in their lives, was responsible for many of them even existing, meeting new people, making new friends and making enemies, losing loved ones and living a life out of the ordinary, had spent the last of its energies not to try and get away like the other Arken souls had, but used up the last energies granted by the few Arken souls that tried to revive it to save those who were present in the room from being utterly destroyed by Keltie’s spell that had gone out of control.

    The two remaining Arken Souls stopped their dance around the Hellion Prime’s dimming light, before ascending and disappearing out of the room through one of the cracks in the wall, leaving behind that last light. That last light that within seconds afterwards flickered one more time, and then disappearing. There was no “Fuck you Tristan”. No cackle, no smirk, no laugh. No dread sense of “We’ll meet again” and “See you next time”. Just a silence among those who knew deep in side, in the connection that they felt to the Arken Soul of Pride, that it had died, and there was no room for words to interrupt that same sensation shared by the others.

    Hannah and Cro-Zzhin could not feel what they felt, nor read the expressions on their faces, for each of them might have a different response to the situation, yet they could understand the solemn moment, and opt not to respond. The group stood there for a solid five minutes, all not willing or capable of speaking, before Tristan let out a sigh, and walked away. One by one, the others all walked off in Tristan’s wake, with Mae Draylas being the last one to stay, looking at the pedestal as if expecting it to be a joke, or some sort of trick. But it was empty. The room was empty. And the sense of the Pride Arken’s presence, was empty also.

    Mae Draylas slouched away eventually, leaving behind an empty and broken room of cracked stone and singing pillars where not even Khalid Nazari could have found something to be stolen or hoarded.
     
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