Mountain(s) of Madness

[Viking-Sensei]

Earlier that afternoon, a visitor had arrived, similarly garbed to Lucas - good boots, sturdy coat, nice hat - another traveller that Lucas had kept time and company with upon more than one occasion, and who he trusted. It wasn't normally like him to abandon people mid-journey, but with the complications arising from Jamie (now his primary customer, given Toivo's opt out in the last town) he didn't have a lot of choice, and wasn't comfortable dragging the others along on what was most likely going to be very dangerous. With a slightly heavy heart, Lucas handed the travel dossiers for Johnathan and Roger (along with a decent chunk of money) over to his friend Zoan, who would be tasked with getting them whereever they needed to go - most likely back to Port Laurel, and the nearest Warp Gate home.

That left only a handful of things unattended that were still nagging at him... and speaking of...

Lucas had cleaned up nicely, he felt, and was now freshly armed and re-magical-gizmoed for the next leg of his adventure. Something still didn't add up, however - he knew Saiko, and elf or no that necromancer shouldn't have been a match for her - and this hospitality was far more than he expected, even for a successful rescue, which probably meant that she was covering up something.

Dignataries from all sides were slowly filtering into Saiko's meeting, taking full advantage of the luxury convention hall as well as the heavily armed neutral Super Happy Fun Police that Saiko employed to act, for once, like real people and not hyper-stoic facades that their lines of work demanded. Old enemies shared somewhat tense drinks at the open bar, weapons experts from all paths poured over design schematics and samples being provided by some of the area's more adventurous smiths, and an overall aura of comfortable (if slightyl cautious) ease started to descend.

Lucas was introduced to (and gladhanded his way through) big important person after big important person as Saiko retold her story of how the splinter faction had unified and tried to take over her territory, each time pointing out to whoever she was speaking to the various horrors that their own people had committed in their trying to form a new rebel faction. She hit upon the dangers of unsanctioned operations, and how there really were (in most cases) plenty of room for everyone, provided that there was some sort of safe place (like hers) where they could all meet from time to time, discuss and draw up borders, and settle disputes in manners that didn't cost all parties involved valuable staff and resources.

Annika was also introduced as, oddly enough, Saiko's successor - apparently Kureji had disappeared (again, and most likely Saiko's doing) and that she felt that Annika had performed more admirably than blood in this time of crisis, from covering the absence of Saiko to recruiting a dashing hero to help with the situation. Then... conversations started turning ugly, with talks about Annika's future and "oh, she had a certain someone in mind" and discussing proxy grandchildren for Saiko to fuss over... at which time Lucas politely excused himself, went to the restroom, slipped out the window, and went running for the hills, not even bothering to go back for his luggage.

[AdamZero]

I laughed. "I know the feeling, not everyone's willing to fess to their town council what was lurking in their basement, or who the asked to clear it out." I rolled my shoulders. "The only thing that makes this worth it is all, well there's a few things. But number one?" Boris tossed me a solid gold coin. "Dead people tend to know alot. Especially old people involved in ill deeds they never told anyone about." I flipped the coin, it was near an inch in diameter and held a Veracian crest. "Hidden stores, lost vaults, caches of ... questionable... merchandise. It was a lot more difficult moving it around before Broody got his pocket circle."

The skeleton laughed as he tapped his mandible. "Now there was a nice story..."

"No." I cut him off, my face red.

"Aw it's not like anything HAPPENED." Boris shrugged his bone shoulder blades.

"They way you tell stories, there might as well have been an orgy."

"Well actually in the ground floor parlor-"

I smacked him with my foot, setting his head spinning, though reducing my modesty by a fair amount.

[Sareth]

I snickered at Boris' banter. The skeleton was one of the most dirty minded things I'd ever met, and he didn't even have a mind to dirty. The rain began to slacken as I continued to clean my weapons.

[OOC]AdamZero, what say we do a small fast forward, just us, to shortly after lunch, when the water might be low enough to try a crossing?[/OOC]

[AdamZero]

[ooc; roger that]

It was half an hour before the rain suddenly stopped, and another twenty minutes of Jamie, Boris, and myself untangling the tarp from the branches. Boris vanished it easily enough, and after cleaning up camp we made for the river.

The water was still moving quickly, but it was low, and several wet rocks were visible in a pattern that hinted people had used the narrow stretch of river to cross regularly enough. The rocks however, seemed far to slippery for me to feel comfortable hopping between them. I didn't exhaust magick casting fires as much as necromancy, so a few steamy blasts, my aim needed a little work, turn the wet rocks into dry rocks, at least on their tops above the water.

"Skeletons first." I said, and Boris grumbled.

"Who'd be crazy enough to trap a bunch of rocks?" He said, leaping to the first stone.

"Me, for one." I laughed. "Remember those plans?"

Boris let out a cackle as he leapt to the second rock. "You mean for that 'Sanctum of the Dark?"

I sighed and scratched my chin. "I'm so gonna ditch that name, way cliche, and too obvious."

"How about..." Boris jumped to the third rock"The Happy Fun time crypt!"

I laughed. "No... that sounds familiar though..." Boris turned when he landed on the fourth rock.

"It's cause Saiko's 'police' are called the 'happy fun time force', remember." I nodded, and caught the doubt in his voice.

"What do you figure, Captain?" Boris crossed his arms and tapped his mandible as he thought.

"Better than civi cops. Not full on military. Merc level, but home grown and loyal. Respected, which makes them the most dangerous."

"Right..." I nod and keep my mouth shut as he jumps the last two rocks, and finally ends up on shore, safely.

Jamie and I cross without much fuss, and as the high sun shines over our heads, I contemplate Saiko's situation. If someone was going so far as to hire someone like Neverinal, just to kidnap her, they had to have some serious firepower of their own to keep him in check. Or lots of gold, or victims.

I sighed as I put the woman and the town out of my mind. Odds were I'd catch an airship to wherever I was going next and just skip over the place. That'd suit Jamie. I looked to her and smiled.

"Feeling up for a hike?" I asked, pointing ahead to the steep, but quickly drying path ahead of us.

[Sareth]

"After you," I replied.

[OOC]And the shortest RP post in the history of the game is now posted! Woo! Er... Sorry. For some reason I am drawing a complete and total blank. I have no idea what to do next. It's actually a rather strange place for me to be... Normally I'm overflowing with ideas...[/OOC]

[Graybeard]

So this is Mountain of Madness, Layla thought as she and Faye waved goodbye to Ace and the airship.

It was about as tacky and overblown as she'd been led to believe it would be, but she had to admit one thing: the Mesuinu family might have abominable taste, but they had a commendable sense of perspective. Layla had been expecting security to be ultra-tight on arrival because of the recent "attack" (or was it?) on Saiko Mesuinu. In fact, things appeared perfectly normal. She and Zachary and Faye were met at the field by two members of the "Happy Fun Security" squad dressed as miners -- miners wearing outrageous outfits and with preposterous stick-on moustaches, to be sure, but still. Layla knew weapons with a professional's keen eye, and she instantly recognized that the miner's pickaxes the men were carrying were actually Yuuki staffs in disguise. But that was pretty well the extent of it, and after a fairly superficial inspection (that didn't catch the "special" items that she'd distributed among the party) and briefing, the women and Zachary were conducted to a meeting room.

Not bad at all, Layla thought as she waited. Most security outfits would have gone bonkers under the circumstances, responding to yesterday's dangers rather than anticipating tomorrow's. Certainly she and her people had been put into place as "security" for enough Farrel warlords who were looking over their shoulders rather than forward at new hazards ... such as the possibility that the security forces had been corrupted. (As, in fact, they had, and she had a metaphorical notch on her gun to show for it.) Crazy as the Mesuinus were, they could offer the more "civilized" people some lessons.

She was musing on this thought, and its incongruity in the tasteless decor of the meeting room, when a short, athletic-looking woman in an incongruously flamboyant business suit came into the room. "Welcome to Mountain of Madness," she said. "I'm Galina, and I'll be escorting you through the park while we wait for Annika to come from the preliminary session in Volkanenborg." Layla scooped up Zachary in his carrier, and the women set off.

[AdamZero]

An hour or so of hiking, and surprisingly we found ourselves on a heavily traveled road, one that steadily and easily wound up toward what I could only guess was the "Mountain of Madness" and it's equally, if not superiorly, mad amusement park. I rolled my shoulders as I dug around in Boris's head pack for some extra clothes, nicer less 'troublemaker' sorts of clothing, and stashed many of my knives into the pocket space.

"What are you gonna when they do a security check? Or are we not going to the park?" I asked, hefting Boris, now reshaped to look more like an eccentric backpack than an animated skeleton. "Or are we gonna try these "Saiko Special Passes"? I waved my small piece of parchment in the air. Saiko had given one to each of the 'rescue' crew on their way out, but failed to mention how far their pull reached.

It was worth a shot, though he wondered what sorta of stuff was under that mountain. There had been old tales sung of demons and beasts lurking in the deep dark places of the world. But those same stories also involved large battles of epic scale which got a lot more attention in the image-sphere tales.

I yawned and kept moving forward, now dressed as a traveller with a rather fond taste of the color blue, and with an odd taste in backpacks.

[Sareth]

I nodded my approval of the new outfit Marcus was wearing. It, and particularly the part of it Boris was now playing, was certainly inocuous enough. Me, I was a little less inocuous. Even if my pistols were hidden in my clothing, the shotgun and rifle over my right shoulder were far, far from innocent looking. Which gave Marcus' question a good deal of weight.

"We'll try the passes," I replied, hitching the weapons on my shoulder a little more firmly into place. "And a refuge in audacity. We're the heroes who rescued her from the bad guys, right? Who are the losers who failed in their duties to demand the weapons of the ones who rescued her, AND who have her carte blanche, huh?" I smiled. "If all else fails, you seduce them, and Boris and I will sneak in while they're distracted."

[AdamZero]

I laughed at her first idea, though only shrugged at the second. "Just cause I'm magey jailbait doesn't mean it doesn't take a pint or two to get people interested. Besides if you make someone angry they'll want nothing to do with you. Get em horny and they'll be on you for hours." I yawned. "Besides we can always just say we're acting as additional, unscheduled security.... But..." Here I looked at the rifle and shotgun. "I could always stash them in Boris... keep em fresh." I waved my hand around in the post-storm mist. It wasn't bad, but it was starting to get a little thicker.

"At least with this it'll be harder for a sniper to pick us off... if there are any out here..." I yawned.

"More like it'll make it harder to spot a sniper." Boris corrected with a clatter. I shrugged in acknowledgement of this and keep going. The sounds of the park, and an airship or two I figure, are becoming more and more obvious. I looked to Jamie with a smile. "Wanna see how many shooting game vendors you can set to weeping?" I held up my coin pouch "My treat" It wouldn't nearly be enough to cover the 'steak dinners' still owed, but it'd cover the interest and the change well enough.

[Sareth]

"You're on." I laughed. The guns they used were deliberately bad. Smoothbore, with rounds far smaller than the barrel's internal diameter, variable weight on the slugs, loose working parts... All meant to make you as bad a shot as possible.

Sounded like a challenge.

I began unslinging the long arms. "Oi! Boris! Open up. We're probably getting close to the gates."