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

You can hear your minion clunking around downstairs while you sit in your sanctum. The scent of mortal food and drink is starting to permeate the house. Small details in a web of existence you are creating. An existence which supports your tasks, the truly important things in your mind.

The thing, the invader, which has made itself a home in the tunnels and catacombs is a hindrance to those tasks. You are certain at this point that it is some powerful magical creature who has traveled from another dimension to this one via the Hellmouth's thinning of boundaries.

You know some things. First its essence is aligned with four things; the rot and mildew of flesh hidden in tunnels, the shadows which extend fingers through tunnels, gossamer wings filling the air, and rats with their writhing bodies. You have seen this in the events its presence has caused and in that moment where you could almost touch it during the flood of rats which accosted you and your minion.

It was riding those vermin like a man rides a horse. But from what you could feel the magic was empty and unformed. It was acting outside its place of strength and thus the true effect could not be used against you. So it simply maddened the vermin and then the overwhelming magic in their bodies killed them, painfully.

The rats and birds dying en masse is likely a combination of disturbed portents and it experimenting with its abilities in this world. The pattern you have discerned, while partial, is substantial enough to give you a simple idea of where the thing is likely located in the under-ways.

With all of these details and the direct contact with its magic, you have an opening, a tenuous connection to cast a work of scrying. Far sight in the present. It is a field that neither you, nor your predecessor the Queen, ever had much use for but you were both familiar with the concepts of sympathy and you will use these principles to find what you can of the thing in your territory.

Now to determine the particulars… you think as you page through your book and read your diagram covered scroll for what you need. There are a few potential spells you find which you might be able to use, but in the end you decide against them for one reason or another. Things like too much energy required, lack of components from what you are trying to find, and distance.

After an hour or so of reading, during which the sounds your minion is making change from clunking to quiet humming and what sounds like the quiet clanging of utensils, you find a workable spell. It is an ancient Northern Lands spell based around the idea of sympathetic knowledge amongst adversaries.

You move to the central circle and activate it, leaving the anchor side arrays dormant. The spell you are using will provide you with vision beneath the ground by casting that sense out of your body and sending it flowing away on a wind of magic. First however, you check the wards you have set, ensuring they will keep you safe for the short time you need to return your sight to your body.

They are functioning as they should, creating a bulwark of magic like high stone walls manned by sturdy and stalwart men. You go to the door of the sanctum, and raising your voice a small amount, call for your minion.

"Bring me a bowl."

"Right away my Lady!" She responds immediately to your call, and you hear her clattering around for a moment. Seeming to find what she wants, you see her emerge carrying a bowl which she immediately brings up the stairs to you. Holding her hands out to you, she passes over the large bowl, white and decorated with delicate blue filigree of leaves and fruit.

She seems nervous however as you take the bowl, before working up her courage. "Can I watch my Lady?" She asks, head bowed.

You consider this development for a moment. It is acceptable, you decide. "Yes." You say impassively. She brightens almost impossibly beyond her normal attitude at that. Backing up into the sanctum she follows you. Turning you head for the active circle. Entering it carefully you then place the empty bowl into the center. Rotating it slightly you align it properly and then retreat out of the circle.

Moving to the northern side of the circle you note that your minion is watching from near the door, almost bouncing on her feet. Putting her out of your mind, you focus on the spellbook in your upper hands and flip to the page you need. Then Fog flows out of your dress to fill the bowl with silvery gray reflections and you begin to chant as your lower hands draw arcane symbols in the air.

"Ardentes oculi cordis.
Ostende mihi tenebris.
Sub caelo.
Ubi monstra timeo, tens morsu exanimat
et exertam carnifex ferrum securis."

Your sight fades away after this first verse, held in limbo near the mountain that is your Soul.

"Animo gravis, cum potentia.
Voca ad te ventis.
Defer mea erue.
Ut autem in me,
in tenebris sub caelo."

This verse coaxes the power sleeping in that Soul to reach out and grab your "eyes". Then it flings them into the abyss like a tossed spear.

"Hostium senserat.
Oculis hominum remotis, vident omnia.
Monstra latebat sub caelo.
Revelata est ad me,
magister relati ignotum."

Your "eyes" open. Before them is a dark and wet tunnel of stone, leading away into the dark. Turning, you see a blank wall of stone and know that above you is nothing but stone. This is a vision of both the real and the metaphorical. You are gazing into the domain of the thing, and its influence will shape some of what you see.

Turning, you walk into the darkness.

The walls are stone brick and crumbling mortar, all of it slick with water, slime and the verdigris of age. The floor is similar, with pools of noxious looking water in the corners. You can see the drips of liquids falling from the partially shadowed ceiling, though you cannot hear it or smell it or taste the rot you know would be in the air.

Soon you come to an intersection, a crossroads. A metaphorical construction meant to obscure the truth. You delicately avoid it, choosing the left most path. Slowly the stone around you changes to the look of the Sunnydale tunnels you are familiar with. Glancing around yourself you would say this particular tunnel is likely near Angel's lair.

The sight of him is nowhere in evidence as you move. But you can see something else. The air is full of flickers, like silvery gossamer wings flapping near the unseen ceiling. The presence of the thing is heavy here. How curious, you wonder. It would appear it is likely interested in the Bronze.

Most things which stalk the dark seem interested in it. This makes sense with the frequent gatherings of inebriated humans which haunt the place like cattle. You slip quickly through the many turns of this place, slipping under the unwanted attention of the thing. Soon you find something else of interest.

You begin to see rats, in various states of life, as the tunnels change again into a ramshackle arrangement of wood. They slowly grow in number as you move through the false tunnels of the magical realm. From a handful, to groups, to patches of rats, until you find a flood of the things all running into the dark over the rotting corpses of their fellows.

You tilt your head left as you realize something from the taste of the magic in the air. This is happening right now… somewhere beneath the city. You move quicker in the direction they are heading toward, the gossamer wings returning and forcing you to slow your pace lest you be discovered.

Little things about the rats begin to catch your eye. Some have distorted limbs, oversized heads, massive size, or gossamer wings sprouting from strange places. You turn a corner then and the flow disappears. You look around your feet and find no evidence of their existence, and the corner is just a black void behind you.

You look at the darkness of the void, interested. Your interest is rewarded when little red eyes begin to open inside it. There are dozens, and then hundreds. They do not stare at you, but instead at some distant thing behind you. You drift left toward the tunnel wall and turn to look. There you see, nothing.

How odd. There are watchers in the shadows then… lesser creatures of a brood. You move on down the ramshackle tunnel, your mystical "eyes" scanning the walls with knowledge beyond human ken.

Then you turn another corner and are faced with something truly interesting. Standing before you with it's back facing you is a mass of furry grotesque rat flesh with a large rat tail emerging from it. Standing on two feet, or more accurately hooves, it is nearly as tall as you, but thinner and packed with muscle. You step around it carefully, examining it intently.

It is, essentially, a giant bipedal rat thing. Covered in mangey and peeling gray fur stretched over distorted ropes of muscles it stands hunched in the shadows. Its face is the biggest difference from mortal rats, compacted and more like a gargoyle's, with four black pits for eyes and a mass of fangs in its mouth with a long and slimy pink tongue. Its head is shoved between its shoulders with nearly no neck and constantly twitches, casting the beast's gaze randomly about.

In its front "paws", which are more like hands, it carries a strange weapon. A large metal club-like weapon, covered in spikes. You can see twisted magic emanating from it, and know all attacks from it would more vicious than they should if they can hit. You watch the thing unseen, in a little pocket of not light for nearly a half hour. It remains still except for the twitching.

This is obviously some kind of minion creature for the greater thing. You can see the taint of the invader all over it. It is a greater creature than the watchers. With it not doing anything informative, you move on. The tunnel changes from ramshackle wood, to smooth stone lit by electric lights placed in the ceiling.

The weight here is oppressive. The thing might be becoming aware of your presence. You will simply hurry then. Drawing your mystical presence inward you move faster through the infrequent pools of light. Here, close to its heart you begin to see something. A pattern, a wave, moving through the air. The same pattern you saw in the material world.

Focusing on it you take a leap, propelling your sight into the wave. The vision opens up to you then as your vision rises into a dark place. There you see below you, waves of magical energy. Flowing past you and into the distance, expanding like stink off of a long putrefied corpse hidden from the sun. For a moment you see the entirety of the pattern. There, there is the center.

You float through this darkness between the planes, tasting the energies. You begin to sense the shape of the invader as you circle around it like a prowling cat. It is kin to the rat warrior you saw, but more so. A fatherly being to them, you can see in the darkness surges of energy which seem to create more of the rat warriors which then tumble off into the nothingness all around you.

The darkness begins to flow toward you then. You tense where you stand in the sanctum. The thing has noticed you and its presence is coming for you. As you have no means of actually attacking in this state you must retreat. What follows is a merry chase between a brute mouse and a clever cat.

You twist and weave through paths the thing cannot follow, the tunnels reforming around you and rapidly shifting between halls of seeping stone, boiling walls of metal, the bright boughs of trees, and many others. You glance back and see darkness roaring after you dogging your heels.

Forming and slipping down a side passage with a burst of magic, composed of jaggedly carved bricks crudely fit together, you see the darkness surge past. Taking that moment of inattention from the invader, you end the spell, returning your sight to you. The process of casting them out runs in reverse, first the vision fades, then you see the limbo of the Soul, and then finally your eyes see the walls of your sanctum.

Sighing, you look at your minion, who is watching you in concern. You deactivate the circle and then turn to her. She relaxes when she can see you have fully returned. You move to the armchair in the corner and gesture for her to follow as the Fog in the bowl returns to you.

"Pick that bowl up and store it near the Gauntlet." You say to her. You hear her comply readily as you take a seat, your mind churning like the eldritch machine it is. The woman, after carefully placing the bowl on the shelf, approaches and then kneels before you with her head bowed.

You look at her. "This enemy is beyond your ability to assist me. You will stay here in the lair to guard it." She seems… slightly unsatisfied at that from how her posture tenses. Does she wish to help… you muse. Interesting. You put that aside then, for you know she will follow your commands.

You can see a question in the set of her shoulders. "Speak." You say gently. The woman relaxes slightly and then speaks, not looking up from your feet.

"What do you face my Lady?" Her voice is steady and confident in your eventual success. You tilt your head to the right and consider the question, clasping your lower hands and resting your upper hands on them as you think.

"A enemy from beyond this plane. A rotten and grotesque Rat King and his brood." Your voice is impassive and unruffled. You can feel a slight smile now pulling at your features. "It is a brute creature, unfitting to be in my domain. It will be slain." Your voice is permeated with the basic truth of that statement. It is unfitting and it will be slain.

Now simply comes the decision on how to begin your offensive. Will you use your nominal allies, or will you strike the first blow with your own hands?

What do you do as night falls?

[] Go yourself into the tunnels, sneaking through them and ambushing the forces of the Rat King. Kill all you find and discover what information you can.
[] Go to the school and search for the Warrior and her companions. Lead them into the tunnels or follow them if they already have, killing what you can while hiding your true self.
[] Go to Angel's lair and enlist his assistance, hiding your true self from him. Push into the influence near the Bronze and repel the invader.

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Weeeeeee Rat Warriors and nasty fun stuff. Have fun! Oh also boop @Yzarc just so you are sure to see this cause alerts are being weird for you.



Vote lock like usual at 6:00 pm UTC Thursday June 7th.