Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

Your graceful steps turn toward the school as you contemplate the lack of information you have on your current greatest opponents. The vampires have special weaknesses which you are unaware of and it is useful to you to know what they are. How the creatures come into being is another important piece of information. And where is their Master?

Given the time and what you have noted of the movements of the Warrior's companions to the Bronze you also think they will not be present. That simplifies matters for you. You may also be able to locate where that area of repelling magic you can still sense was coming from in that building.

Walking through the night, the hard ground caressing your feet comfortable in its own way, you reach out with your senses. Tasting the air and magic around you, you find it quiet. It moves, and almost breathes, with a noted languor. It had been calming ever since the Harvest and your ritual passed. This must be its rest state.

The Souls of those you pass, asleep in their homes, are also calm. No flickers of bad dreams or ominous signs to be found there. The quiet sounds of a sleepy town surround you as you walk besides the roads, the occasional thundering carriage passing by you.

Looking up you see the waxing moon, drifting through its celestial course, quiescent. As with the ambient magic, there will be some time before another convergence will occur. The creatures of this world must be drawn to the convergences which can be harnessed here, you think as your mind goes over the Harvest again.

Such a ritual is currently not useful to you, though the concepts are interesting, and a potential future way to grow stronger. However, you have no subordinate Fog Demons to use the ritual on, and the secrets of their creation are not known to you. Only the Arch-Demons. Your thoughts briefly flow to the Old Monk, a flicker of something unidentifiable passing through your mind.

Flicking away from that currently uncompletable task your thoughts return to the Harvest. The ritual is also obviously very convergence specific and so there are only very specific times where it can be used. This limitation and the need for a proper Vessel will persist in any rituals you derive from it. There are some similarities to what you are doing in your theories of forming a sympathetic channel with a Soul in order to consume the ambient magic. Though that one is more akin to using a cup to scoop water from a spring instead of trying to drown in it.

That piece of power you absorbed from the ambient magic has made you stronger though, giving a bit more than that one vampire you killed in your garden did. You should be able to set up weak Paralysis Sigils in your home now, though you cannot cast them quickly. Your seeming is also far more sturdy, much more solid. Fighting with it should not dispel it, as there was a risk of during the Harvest, unless you are severely injured or hit by a very large object moving very fast.

You would still need to dispel it to use your full abilities of course. Some abilities like the Soul Ray will always require it due to how that magic interacts with the magic of your seemings. Your mirror images cannot use it at all, being advanced illusions which you use as the caster for smaller spells via Soul sympathy.

A brush of flowers and the ambient magic rippling at the edges of your senses in the wake of Darla makes you briefly pause. Her wake briefly increases in intensity enormously, and then it fades, leaving her just a tad stronger than she was. At this another memory of Queen Latria bubbles up from your Soul.

She, you, are hunting through a dark wood for a monster who was once a man. The blood of his creations and horrors of the Soul Arts still stains your robes from where you broke them with spell and blade. A cry of triumph from Sir Metas, your friend and Knight of the Lance, makes you turn...

The memory fades quietly as you watch Darla's wake fade with distance. I wonder where she stands in the hierarchy of the Master's minions. You contemplate that as you start moving again. Shortly after she leaves your senses entirely.

By this point you are now approaching your destination, the school campus rising ahead of you through the trees. Stopping in the shadow of a tall oak at the edge of a sporadically lit wide and flat area with a few of those carriages on it, you inspect the building with your senses. There are only three Souls on the campus right now. Your other point of interest, the area of repelling magic, is still spread out around the buildings. You cannot quite tell where it is coming from.

Finished with the inspection you separate from the tree's shade and walk across the plaza of stone, slipping through shadows and pulling them around yourself. You pass by a small greyish car which has a familiar scent on it, that of books and old knowledge. Your passing interest notes the plate on its front with a series of numbers and letters, "2GPU947". You had seen these plates on other carriages, but never needed to note them down.

A carriage of the Warrior's scholar companion then. You swish by in a flutter of your ankle length dress, black hair blending in with the shadows around you. Nearing the wall of the building you pause again to study the Souls which lie within. Two of the three are close to you, young and bubbly, likely a couple. The other more distant one is definitely the scholar, his Soul quiet and sleepy.

Seeking along the wall you find a loose window which looks in on a classroom. You slip in, carefully making no sound as you rise to stand to the side of the window. Leaving it loose as you found it you slide to the door out, and verifying that no one is out there, gently pry it open and look into the hall.

You can hear very quiet giggles coming from a cracked door near a corner, to your left down the tiled hall you are peeking into. Looking right is more doors into other classrooms. The halls are dark, but that is no impediment to your vision. The scholar's Soul is further into the building, somewhere to the right. A scholar is never far from his books, so heading in his direction will likely lead you to a library or other repository. Plus his presence provides a possible opportunity for the web you weave.

Slipping out you quietly shut the door and walk down the hall on soundless footsteps, little more than a patch of quick moving oily shadows. Walking through the halls of this building you can feel the repelling magic tickling at your skin. Feeling out around you, you can also now sense the direction of the repelling magic. It is in the same direction as the scholar, though deeper.

The halls are all similar looking, almost a maze as you sneak through them. A handful of minutes and several turns later you come to a set of double doors with circles of clear glass in them. Within you can sense the scholar, and as you expected, you can see a small library through the glass.

You can also almost reach out and touch with your own hand the intense circling storm of repelling energies. Moving closer you feel a slight pressure on your skin, but you are otherwise unaffected. The energies are all focused on sealing something else, below the library. The obvious conclusion is that whatever is the source of the ambient taint in this town, is below this room somewhere.

Intriguing… Gently pushing open one of the doors you glide through and between two very quietly humming short white columns. Walking inwards you look around. To your right is a desk and back area with a closed door into an office, where you can sense the scholar. To your left is a book cage with several storage cabinets inside it, though nothing else of interest.

The room widens into a much larger space straight ahead, with a book covered table on which stands a very quietly humming device of unknown use. To either side are short steps which lead into the small number of stacks further into the room. Moving up to the corner you look to your right, where the scholar's Soul is.

There is a cracked door, and through it you can see the scholar asleep at his desk, chin tucked onto his chest, glasses slightly askew, and snoring softly. There are several open books laid out on his desk, occult tomes if the illuminated and illustrated contents are anything to go by. On the door is a name, "Rupert Giles, Librarian".

Very quietly you glide past and into the center of the room, toward the center desk where more books lay open. They show various images of monsters inflicting curses, casting dark spells, and attacking humans. The text you very briefly glance over contains references to the Primordium Age, demons, Beozar, souls and many other topics.

Passing up the right hand stairs into the small number of stacks, you are surrounded by books of multiple subjects. History, poetry, the arts, mathematics, chemistry and a variety of other strange sciences as you are surrounded by the scent of old paper and knowledge. Before taking anything you take a moment to examine the globe set onto the railing above the table. Spinning it slowly you immediately verify that this world is very different from the world you know. That essentially confirms your revival spell sent you to a different place, similar to an Archstone. How odd, you think quietly.

Moving away from the globe, you return to examining the stacks again. Finding your first target you gently remove a book titled "Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol I-III". Your lack of knowledge of the mortals here will hurt you eventually in the deceptions you are weaving, or at least make them more complicated than required.

You then find a section dedicated to "Myths and the Occult, non-Fiction". Here you grab several tomes, to do with monsters and demons and in particular any that have to do with vampires. Having the needed selections you glide down the left hand stair, hand brushing the banister, and carefully move to the table.

Searching for the books which referenced demons and the "Primordium Age" you find a very old tome titled Hell's Offspring and another dark and weighty tome, The Darkest Age and the Rise of Humans. Both have a hint of magic clinging to their covers as well, setting them apart from the large majority of books in this room, though not like your own spell book or a grimoire.

Gently and quietly pulling them out of the pile you settle all of your books on a corner of the table and settle into one of the available chairs on the right side of the table. Pulling out a book titled Blood-drinkers and Other Transylvanian Legends, you begin to read, keeping a mystic eye on the librarian.


From there the book begins to describe a variety of potential weaknesses. The most notable being their need for blood, destruction if exposed to sunlight, their fear of holy icons, baptismal waters or other holy water, and the stake. There are multiple variations and possible contradictions in what exactly their weaknesses are, some saying that you must stake them in their graves and others saying that a staking at any time is suitable. The location references have you referencing the encyclopedia you had chosen and the globe on the railing above the table at times.

From your previous battles with the creatures you can confirm every weakness except for holy icons. You would not be surprised if they did work, however, given the nature you can feel from them. Such hollow destruction definitely would fall into the category of unholy amongst humans. The other references you see to them being demons inhabiting corpses is an interesting one, and again considering what you can sense, is quite likely.

It takes you several other books to find the common threads on how they spread. The most common tales are from curses, a vampire feeding on a human, and a vampire and human exchanging blood. The oldest stories however, talk of "originally descending from ancient demons", and notations in a steady hand reference blood exchange extensively. All stories reference them rising from their graves some time after their deaths.

The fresh grave dirt on the vampire you found before meeting Angel and which lingered in your captive's scent lends credence to that fact. As you read further you very very rarely find references to a supposed "King of Vampires" or "The Master" as well as "Aurelius". Hmmm, perhaps the old creature was seeking the font I can sense and became trapped, forced to use servants to affect the world, you muse to yourself. You then briefly hear the librarian move slightly in his sleep.

Moving on when he stills, you pull The Darkest Age and the Rise of Humans closer to you and begin to read:


Your thoughts shiver and break at those two words. Your breath shudders as faint images of an utterly massive and terrible being of Souls uncounted flit through your mind. Sliding past those two words your eyes pull your mind back to the words on the page.


You continue reading the tome, consuming the information readily. As you are perusing through Hell's Offspring, occasionally catching references to "Primordials", which you take to be another name for what The Darkest Age discussed, you feel the librarian stir. You look up from your tome as you hear him stretch and groan. "*yawn* Where did I leave that thing…?"

Your mind easily adapting to this circumstance, since you had already in part planned for it when you sensed him in the school, you still. Book in your lap you watch as Rupert Giles leaves his office carrying several books of his own, humming under his breath and looking distracted. Walking over to the table he goes to set the books down on it and then he looks up to see you lounging in your chair.

"Aaaagah…!" Nearly dropping the books onto the table the extremely startled man lurches back from the table. Chest heaving he stares at you through his glasses. You stare back. Recovering surprisingly quickly he speaks into the surprised and tense silence. "W-What the… what are you doing here? Are you a student here, I don't think I've seen you before, Miss...?" Obviously trying to regain some footing by asking for your name, his gaze travels rapidly over you and then lands on your feet, quickly becoming completely befuddled.

"Where are your shoes?"


Welp, you guys surprised the shit out of Giles. Now he wants your name. What say?

[] Latria. You pick the name of the Queen whose Soul was used to create you.
[] Lisa. You heard it briefly, and it is as good as any other to you.
[] Write in

For the Write In please keep it to the approximate length and style of my given options. You don't need to include a description like I did.

Also, don't worry about the other questions, the Idol has that handled. The conversation and her deception just can't progress without a name.

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Spoopy spoopy sneaky shoeless demon lady! *Mission Impossible theme* *celebrations about not double posting to post an update*

Gotcha @Breadnaugt! Unless you count Giles as "90% of the Scoobies" of course.

Also! To fix the goof I did with the Magic Box's name I have decided that it originally was called "The Magic Box" but some time before "Lovers Walk" changed owners and names to "The Magic Shop". Then at some later point the shop changed owners again and became "Uncle Bob's Magic Cabinet". After that it changed names again and returned to being the Magic Box.

Vote lock is at the normal time 6:00 pm UTC, May 25th. I will be taking a break from updates on Saturday, and like last Saturday, I'll be in thread to answer questions or just talk.