The Idol doesn't want to be exposed, because she's still a monster that has no problem killing humans to eat their souls, and she knows the Warrior responds to that kind of thing lethally. Or do you think Buffy would just nod and smile if she learned about our killing of the witches?
Hell, letting anyone know sacrifices an enormous advantage. Enemies surrently think we're a squishy mage, not a four armed demon with the durable physiology that entails.
Angel thinks the Idol is *just* an attractive witch, I see no reason to make him think otherwise.
The Idol doesn't want to be exposed, because she's still a monster that has no problem killing humans to eat their souls, and she knows the Warrior responds to that kind of thing lethally. Or do you think Buffy would just nod and smile if she learned about our killing of the witches?
Hell, letting anyone know sacrifices an enormous advantage. Enemies surrently think we're a squishy mage, not a four armed demon with the durable physiology that entails.
Angel thinks the Idol is *just* an attractive witch, I see no reason to make him think otherwise.
...okay see Idol's nature as a non-human engaged in shady activity is going to get out. This is not about intentionally revealing anything rather picking who finds out because as you said Buffy is less likely to listen where as Angel is in the same situation except he has the benefit of being Buffy's love interest to stay her hand. Another factor is that Idol's attempts to be covert amongst the Scoobies or Angel actually hinders operations because not every action Idol chose is one that the groups would find to be a bad thing so while keeping the killing of the witches, messing with souls, or the robbery under raps makes sense it does not make sense that Idol has to conceal her experiments on demons.
[X] You hide the corpse in a safe place and find Angel, and enlist his aid in clearing the area near him and possibly near the Bronze whilst concealed in a seeming.
Hmmm… retreat for now, to watch and study. The blow you have struck to the Rat King has been suitable for the current step. With the confirmation of the momentary weakness that occurs when you consume some of the invader's separated essence you now know of an exploitable weakness. When the time of the final assault comes you have a means to render the creature insensate for a time while strengthening yourself.
The interaction with the watchers was also illuminating. Here you have a means to trigger the response you desire from the Rat King, that of a horde of rat things which you can destroy piecemeal. Raising to your eyes the rat warrior corpse you are still holding, you examine it.
The fur is mangled and torn, with the corpse itself shriveled, almost mummified, and somewhat stained by the combat you have performed since attaining it. But, it is intact enough for your uses. You recede into the darkness of the tunnel shadows, pulling them close, and flutter away on soft and quiet steps.
As you retreat you gauge the amount of time it takes for your opponent to recover from the blow you have struck. You watch as the thing comes back to full strength in a few minutes at most. Acceptable. Not long, but long enough. The walls of the sewer tunnels do not echo with the noise of your steps as you rush past them.
In the distance you can sense rat warriors possibly being formed, though the agitation of the magic surrounding the Rat King makes you slightly uncertain. They do not locate you, as you had starting moving quickly enough, with enough speed, to slip past them. They also moved with more caution than previously, which will complicate your future efforts somewhat.
After several more turns and skipping past occasional puddles of fluid, you pull on your seeming, further attempting to conceal yourself. The rat corpse you don't conceal, you can't. At least a half an hour of running later you no longer sense any hint of the Rat King's forces, though you do sense his magic in the air. Having slipped the net you look upwards, through the stone and metal over your head, watching the Souls of the humans as you start planning where to emerge.
Minutes later you find a suitable tube leading upward. You pin the corpse to your side with your mostly useless arm and use the other one to climb. The ladder rungs are slick under your hand and feet with more of the slime. It its slower going than your usual traversals to the surface, but it doesn't matter to you.
.
The night is cool and full of the chirping of small insects when you emerge, the ground comfortable beneath your feet. Rat sufficiently secured, you take a moment to listen and scent the night as you close up the tunnel downwards. All is quiet except for the aforementioned insects, the rustle of trees in the air, and the faraway rumble of cars along the roads. Distant laughter pulls your gaze right and you note in the distance the street which contains the Magic Box as a bright spot of lights amongst the darker streets.
The scents in the air speak of little danger. Humans and their fears, insects, the trees, and the ever present old and faded scents of vampires. None of the blood drinkers have come here recently you think. Occupied below most likely… you muse. You run into the deeper alleys, avoiding any Souls that might see you, cloaked in shadows and silence.
The trip back home with your cargo is easy, though you are far enough away it takes some time. At least an hour and a half passes and you start to see the lightening of the sky as the mansion comes in to view. Your wards and the Soul of your minion are fine when you view them as you race through the dark towards your lair.
You pass through easily as your wards and the gate bow to your will and open before you. You can sense your minion start and begin to move towards the door. You slow to a walk as you reach the base of the steps, striding up them gracefully. You come to the doors as your minion opens them.
The woman is smiling her characteristic slightly off smile. "Welcome back my Lady!" She says happily. You incline your head in response, watching as her gaze becomes confused as it passes briefly over your right arm. You walk past her as her expression becomes concerned. To your back she says, "Is… something wrong, my Lady?"
You stretch in a way and release the seeming, grabbing the rat warrior corpse with your lower right arm. Your minion almost screams in apparent distress then, making you turn with some interest. She begins to speak agitatedly, words tumbling out in a rapid waterfall, bowed deeply at the waist.
"W-what? M-my Lady, what happened…!?" Her entire posture is one enormous knot of tension as she stares fixedly at the ground, having evolved into a kneeling posture by the time she is done speaking.
You consider this particular development and how useful she would be in her current state. Her thoughts are practically written on the wall behind her. Desire to kill the thing which did this, fear, and to help you recover. The last you can potentially use.
"Attend to my injuries." You say without inflection or tone, nodding your head slightly. This will tie her closer to you. You did similar things with the Lying Prisoner who held the Revival spell. As she rises you are struck with a powerful memory from your predecessor, more powerful and vivid than any of the others so far.
You are a girl child and you hurt. You've just… fallen. Fallen from your small horse during training, your entire right arm is agony from where you landed on it. The world around is blurry and indistinct with the pain, your black hair getting in the way as you clutch at your arm, but you haven't screamed or cried. Your mother, the Old Sorceress, would be disappointed.
All around you rushes your retinue, calling your name, which you can't quite hear. You should be able to hear it… you did when this happened, a part of you knows that. But then the jerky memory jumps along until you find that you are being carried in the arms of your man at arms. He takes you down seemingly endless corridors to a brightly lit room where you can sense your mother's powerful Soul.
"...! Oh dear, this is a right mess. Come here child, Mommy's here." You whimper a little at her soothingly cultured and throaty voice as it says the name you can't hear again and then you feel gentle warmth envelop you as the woman plucks you up from the man at arms. Resting you gently on a nearby bed, the memory gets fuzzy as her magic reaches out to relieve your injury.
"Brave girl, my La…" The name fades out again before you can hear it. You think you sleep half awake for a time, your own Soul wandering curiously while the mountain or river of your mother cradles your body. But eventually you come back. Above you is the beautiful face of your mother, so like yours but different in its own ways.
"Ow." You feel yourself say. Your mother's mouth quirks in momentary amusement. "Ow indeed, my baby." She gives you a pat on the head. "It is all okay now though. Rest for mom now, okay?" She asks. You nod and drift towards a more proper sleep. As her presence recedes, though not going far, you finally hear your name properly. "Goodnight, Latria."
The memory recedes. You see your minion standing and about to take a step towards you. Her face seems slightly confused again, though she is not looking at you directly. Insightful, this one. You head up to the sanctum, with your minion rushing off to the room you've determined is called a "kitchen" from that shopping trip you went on and what she explained.
The sanctum wards part easily before you and you almost glide across the floor, steps light. You deposit the rat warrior corpse near the central circle. Then you drift over and settle into your chair, mantle almost artfully tossed to pool over the arm and onto the floor. Your minion enters the room with a bowl and a cloth. She was not stupid enough to waste mortal medicines… promising.
She kneels at your side and begins to care for your arm. The feeling is soothing for the tension it was causing. The water is comfortable and you begin to slowly draw on her connection to the Hellmouth. Not enough to send her into unconsciousness as the initial conversion did and much much slower. The filtered energy is useful to your recovery.
You begin to speak then, and gesture with your other upper hand while the lower pair rest in your lap. "I have the measure of the enemy, and there is some assistance you can provide me." She perks up a bit in interest, though the drain obviously tugs at her. "With the flesh of them I will perform a scrying to properly locate my desire. When the time comes you will instead act as the anchor for the spell and give me information."
Her nod is somewhat lethargic, her responses dulling as the drain continues and tugs at her limbs, though she is still fully aware. This little impromptu ritual you have created goes on till the sun rises fully above the horizon. When you pull your arm away and rise, it is somewhat mobile again. Not full strength but now mostly usable.
You gesture for her to follow you as you return to the rat corpse. Picking it up you place it into the center of the circle and then retreat carefully from the circle's bounds. You command your minion to get the scrying bowl and place it within the circle, which she does readily. Then you open your spell book and page through it until you get to the proper spell, in the same section as your original spell to spot the convergence.
Fog rushes out of you, flowing into the circle, staining the stone it contains. Flowing over the rat corpse, leaving it a whitish lump, it leaves you and then surges into the bowl and fills it to the brim. It becomes almost silvery in color and texture. Your minion watches on with unhidden curiosity.
Circle prepared, you begin to chant.
"Olim in carne, caro est infantis parens remotus.
Voco super studiis comprobavit. Vinculum inter parens et puerum.
Summae potentiae animae.
Indica mihi nexus."
"Hostis exspectat umbrae.
Voco super vinculum revelanda erat. Exiguus gelidaeque iacebitis in aethere accipimus.
Summae potentiae animae..
Indicabo me hostilia ausus."
The bounds of the circle glow a bright backlit white as you repeat this thrice more. A wind begins to swirl within the circle, churning the Fog. The rat warrior corpse is revealed intermittently as an image begins to form within the bowl.
At the end of the third chant you look at that image and it grabs your mind, as the magic is supposed to. You are drawn into the vision, your Soul extending to hover over the bowl in the circle.
Dark tunnels unlike any of the ones in the sewer are revealed to you. Crude stone and gossamer hangings on every surface of the walls. Layered almost like skin or curtains. Magic is intense in this place. Here in this vision you have more than just your sight. Here you have sight, and scent, and hearing.
The rot of the creature is like a solid wall. Not putting you off in the slightest to you but quite intense for a mortal you would think. You look around your "self" in the vision. Examining the walls with your mystic senses you quickly come to a conclusion. They are being pulled in from the creature's home dimension.
Hmmm…
You move deeper, cloaked in the mask of the spell. Within you see many little rats running to and fro, living, eating and mating. Watchers are occasionally present, and you see a pair of them placing a cloak onto another rat and it transforming into another watcher. Deeper in you see rat warriors in many patrols.
Some of them are also caring for the walls in a way, adding pieces of metal to them, and chains and other constructions. What you see around the ways up are the most interesting. They lead up into the rest of the sewer, indicating that this entire catacomb is much deeper than usual. The discussions amongst the demons are few but you hear many references to the Dreadful Sun. Are they weak to the sun like vampires…? You wonder.
You head deeper and deeper, your course almost spiralling. Towards the core of the magic you can sense. You begin to hear terrible and heinous chants of meaningless drivel and the gnashing of great teeth and the squeal of rats, along with the screams of some massive beast.
And then, you come upon a great and terrible hall which seems to have been converted from a partially underground cistern. It is a circular edifice to gluttony and is filled with the enormous, odious, mass of the Rat King. Half stuck in the floor the creature is a misshapen fusion of eleven gigantic rats fused at their bases and backs to make a somewhat humanoid shaped pillar of flesh the size of a large car. The base of the creature from what you can see seems to be furred tentacles and a mass of squishy eyes.
Writhing behind it you see a club of knotted tails which occasionally slam the floor in anger at the minions which are chipping away at the stone.
"You useless-useless fool rats! Dig faster! I must feast on Her blasphemous bones! Feast feast Feeeeeeeeeaaaaast!" Spittle and gnarled teeth fly from its many mouths at this imprecation. The worm rat writhes in unholy frustration and then pounds two of its minions to paste with its two large arms, crushing them in its metal claws before shoving the gobbets into its maws.
Hmm.
Quite a beast. Not more powerful than your brethren however. You ignore its further screams and roars. There are several obvious weak points you can exploit on the creature, most obviously the mass of eyes and its technical immobility, though it seems to have quite the reach. Retreating from its "throne room" you spiral back out and examine the layout of the tunnels again and then proceed further.
You go out, into the sewer proper and begin to search for a landmark. After about a quarter hour you find something familiar, which is somewhere between the school and the Bronze. You've passed through this junction several times in the past. With that reference in mind you now have a proper map of the thing's domain.
You turn your examination to the corpse itself. As you knew, its essence is gone, and you confirm that that is unfortunately the main tool you could use to actually hurt the Rat King. You will need a live one, imprisoned or otherwise contained before you could in theory work a spell to shove some of the Rat King's power into the greater power of the Hellmouth where it will dissipate across at least a dozen dimensions.
Its not too dissimilar to squishing a rat with a foot in all actuality. Or otherwise kick it to splatter against something hard. The flesh is however enough for your current purposes, as is evident. You should be able to use this corpse to scry the thing as you wish, or as you direct your minion. You retreat then from the vision.
Hanging on the edge of it you begin one last chant.
"In servitutem, et vincula etiam studiis comprobavit.
Ut quod summus potentia animae.
Audi me voca.
Donum incedas abeasque parvis servum meum."
"Fideles unum et anima una propriis.
Summae potentiae animae.
Audi me voca.
Aperi modo."
Runes much like the ones on your Paralysis Sigils slide into existence in the air and then sink into floor along the outside of the northern half of the circle. They burn themselves into the stone and then settle. You pull fully away from the magic and then turn to your minion.
"When you are to use the scrying you will kneel here," You indicate the spot at the head of the runes, "and cut your left hand with the blooding knife to drip your blood on this rune. Chant this three times while reaching for my essence." You then speak the chant.
"Ego sum servus religata continent.
Per potentiam Domine Mi.
Te rogamus naturali Daemonis vires animae.
Ostende mihi viam."
You walk her through this twice more, ensuring she has the pronunciation correct and that her Soul is responding correctly. It does, your modifications working as you intended and this is a suitable first step for more magic you can use her for. The woman herself nods at your instruction, eyes alight with an inner fire. You then dismiss her to go about her business after she places the scrying bowl back where it goes. You sense her leave the room, but linger near the entrance.
Entering the circle you retrieve the rat corpse and raise it to eye height. Maneuvering your hands carefully you get a good grip and tear. With a wet pop-pop-c-crackle and then sufficient application of carefully channeled Soul Arrows you are left with a mostly clean skull in one hand and the corpse in another. This will do suitably for the Ritual of the Pit. You place the corpse in a far corner of the sanctum where its decay will not disrupt your magic with its energies and then place the skull near the Gauntlet.
Now, your mind turns to what comes next, after you recover.
Spooky magick done, what do you do the next night, after you have healed over the course of the day?
[] Visit the library to find out what the scholar has discovered and relay what you have found via sketches and description.
[] Go down into the sewer and remove the taint of the creature from near the Bronze as another strike before your main one.
[] Begin constructing a more complex ritual array, you have several ideas regarding the various items you have sensed and the end is coming for the Rat King.
Vote lock as usual at 6:00 pm UTC, Monday 11th June.
*flops into sleep*
"Child's flesh is parent's flesh once removed.
I call on sympathy. The link between parent and child.
Most high powers of the Soul.
Reveal to me the link."
"My enemy waits in the shadow.
I call on the link revealed. Quivering in the aether.
Most high powers of the Soul.
Reveal my enemy to me."
"Bonds of servitude in sympathy.
May the high power of the Soul.
Hear my call.
Gift your blessing on my servant."
"Loyal one and one of proper Soul.
May the high power of the Soul.
Hear my call.
Open the way."
"I am the bonded servant.
By the power of my Lady.
I beseech the Demon Soul.
Show me the way."
I found this on pinterest, would be a good replacement for the character sheet hopefully.
No idea who create it but it looks more clearer than the game image.
[X] Begin constructing a more complex ritual array, you have several ideas regarding the various items you have sensed and the end is coming for the Rat King.
I found this on pinterest, would be a good replacement for the character sheet hopefully.
No idea who create it but it looks more clearer than the game image.
[X] Begin constructing a more complex ritual array, you have several ideas regarding the various items you have sensed and the end is coming for the Rat King.
[X] Begin constructing a more complex ritual array, you have several ideas regarding the various items you have sensed and the end is coming for the Rat King.
[X] Begin constructing a more complex ritual array, you have several ideas regarding the various items you have sensed and the end is coming for the Rat King.
You have been here nearly a week now. You can tell time just by watching how the magic all mixes and flows now. Yourself, your wards, the Hellmouth. There's a pattern to it throughout a day. Gaze sliding away from the shelf of items you were examining to your minion where she stands outside the door, only partly visible, she is also a part of the pattern which you watch as the sun dips below the horizon.
Soon I will need to improve my available tools… You have ideas regarding Annie, using the items you have found and the items which still exist in this town. An improved ritual array is important for starting those ideas. Your mind murmurs to you in the tongue of the Fog, images bubbling in its depths. Never was my task to build. Only deceive… and to provide the masses to my master. As a Fog Demon and thus an idol to gluttony of the Soul, you were created solely for this task.
And like all of your brethren there is the seed of the Old One. Buried within and silent in its blind idiocy, it still exists all the same. You have been different since you were in this world. More active, your mind's components turned to constantly adjusting your self appointed task of recovery and returning home. The rigidity of your mind and previous existence made unnecessary and consumed.
That mind, utterly inhuman below the mask you wear tightly by design of your creator, needs more information on how you shall kill the worm rat. The Rat King. The invader. And that knowledge will be found amongst the halls of the fooled Warrior and scholar. I must find a way to stay in contact, but limit actual interaction for this next part of the deception.
Another task you have is also dealing with the footholds and places of influence the Rat King is leaving around your town. For now it can come after you get the information you desire, but it needs to be driven out of the holds it has created before you move against it. For those footholds are how it truly is moving across the dimensions.
Of course once it is fully through you judge it will need not much of anything to stay in this dimension, from what you sensed during that scrying session. Turning away from those thoughts, you pull on a seeming. Settling into the form easily you walk out of the sanctum, locking it behind you.
Passing your minion, you give her a nod. She gives a properly respectful bow back, happy demeanor seemingly back in place now that you are fully healed. The Lying Prisoner who kept the revival spell was similar, you remember. You leave, running your hand down the railing as you go, tasting how the building feels on the magical plane.
Then you are off, into the night.
The trip, as all of these have been recently, is uneventful. It would likely be more exciting in mortal terms if the vampires were more active on the surface, but they are not and so you are not running into anything of particular note. You take the time to spread your senses and watch carefully. It wouldn't do to have something else make itself at home in this town, which isn't a human.
It still doesn't take you that long to get to the school. Maybe an hour and a half at most. There you see the repelling spell bumping against the power of the Rat King. The invader's energy is rotating slowly around it, much like the Hellmouth energy does. You tilt your head left. It would appear that you are near another foothold like what is present near the Bronze. You are not quite certain where it is this time, it is not under the school, you can tell that much.
Within the school itself things seem silent. Deep within, in the library you can see four Souls. The Warrior, the Scholar, the boy and the potential. Looking around carefully, you see few other human Souls in the building. It is only an hour or so after dark. One of these Souls is familiar, and you can see now that it is an old man. Perhaps a servant then… All of the other Souls are distant, outside the building.
Some pass by quite quickly, following the sound of cars, and others are in the distant buildings. Satisfied that no one is paying any attention to you, you slip around the building till you find a side door which is conveniently unlocked. You find yourself in another set of halls, though this time it is near a grouping of offices for staff.
You pass several nameplates, the most notable one being a Principal Flutie. You don't smell anything of importance from his office, the only notable thing being the rank. The tiles are cool under your feet as you flicker through the building. Soon you come upon the halls that lead to the library and start to hear the distant murmurs.
Shortly those murmurs resolve into actual distinct voices.
"...where'd you leave the coffee Xander?" The Warrior. "Uh… oh over there! Let me get it for you." You hear a lot of thumping followed by an, "Ow."
"Nice going." The Warrior again, snickering. "Meant to do that!" The boy says.
"Oh that's… hmm." The potential,accompanied by the sound of flipping pages.
"What did you find Willow?" The scholar again. It is at this point you come to the doors. Dropping any concealment you have except for the seeming, you walk in. This time someone is actually paying attention.
"Latria?" The potential, Willow says as she leans over slightly to look at you. The rest of the humans in the room all turn to look at you as well, the boy being in the middle of getting up before quickly scrambling to a standing position. The Warrior is standing, heading toward the scholar's office. The scholar himself is looking at some tome Willow found.
"Mmmm." You respond noncommittally as the door swings shut behind you. You walk in. It's Giles who speaks next.
"Ah! We were wondering how to get in contact with you Miss." His tone is a mix of curious and somewhat regretful.
The humans filter back toward the table as you approach, which is absolutely covered in books and loose sheets of paper. The boy seems to be in some strange leaning pose on the table, but you ignore him entirely.
"Yes, my particular occupation can make me hard to find. Useful, sometimes..." You respond to the scholar. You imitate a sigh. "Other times not. For now leave me messages at the Bronze. However, in more positive news I've learned some things of my own." You continue.
"Great! Pow-wow time." You raise an eyebrow at the Warrior's outburst. "Yes." You say with a certain hint of amusement which makes all the younger humans blush, and Giles seemingly attempting to hide a headache.
"Show me what you've found please, Mr. Giles?" You ask. You see the Warrior briefly raise an eyebrow in question at that. The scholarly man adjusts his glasses and pulls out a chair for you. "Here, sit. We've found quite the assortment of things." You sit gracefully as he himself sits and pulls an assortment of books to the fore.
You watch the boy uncomfortably shift and then sit in his chair, out of the corner of your eye as this happens. With a thump and the poof of the scent of paper the scholar brings a large tome towards you both as well as an assortment of loose notes.
"As we've established, we face a Rattenkönig. And we've found out quite a bit about the creature's habits." He enters a sort of lecturing tone as he continues speaking. "Native to the Earth they were driven out or killed some time in the 13th century, with the last one being sighted in Germany near Berlin at that time."
"The unfortunate bit of business that we've discovered is that they lack most weaknesses. Except to poison." You raise an eyebrow at that, imitating an expression of interest. He catches the look. "Yes, which… complicates matters normally, as you might imagine. We might be in luck however. Willow has through… means probably best left unmentioned…" The boy, and Willow exchange a glance while the Warrior smiles. "... has managed to coax something useful out of the computer over there."
The girl in question nodded shyly at this point and responded. "Yeah, I found out that the school had a rat problem recently… and the poison is still there. Just being its little happy poison self…" She goes beet red at this point, while you tilt your head to the right. Everyone else is suppressing smiles.
You look back at Giles with a questioning look and ask. "Anything else of note?" He nods. "Indeed there is. Rattenkönig are described as having a great fear and hate of the surface world. Their magic is weak above the ground, which is likely why we aren't up to our noses in rat warriors by now."
You nod, resting your chin on a hand in a simulacrum of human body language. "Most useful, thank you." You straighten, "Through my magic I've found some things which you will find useful. Do you have some paper?" You rise as you speak, leaning over the table. "Oh, here's some." The Warrior passes some to you, where you pick up a pen and begin to draw. Being a sorceress scripting and sketching skill is one of your more mundane pieces of knowledge.
As such it goes quickly. The first thing you draw is the rat warrior. "I found Buffy and Xander fighting these. Their clubs can fire flaming rat skeletons." The boy coughs at this, and everyone looks rather surprised and intrigued. The scholar has a very curious look on his face, but lets you continue. "They are not born from the Rattenkönig physically. Instead they are transformed rats, invested with a portion of the invader's power."
You can see Willow and the boy look around nervously. "Hmmm... well, that's disturbing." The scholar says, seeming somewhat disturbed. You incline your head. "I saw it happen, though the forming creatures are vulnerable to my magic." You start drawing the next thing. The much smaller picture of the watchers, with the humans leaning close.
"What is that, and why is it so butt ugly?" The boy this time. "It is what I call a watcher. Spies and eyes for the Rattenkönig. They are much much smaller than the warriors," You sketch their relative sizes quickly. "And seem to disappear when fighting breaks out. They also come from normal rats."
You move on to drawing the rat giant, including a rough human drawing for scale. "And this is something I encountered in the tunnels and killed." The table is silent at that. You look around quickly to see the humans all in various states of shock and disgust, particularly the last one for the Warrior. "Oh my…" This from the scholar who reaches for the drawing. "May I?" You nod and he picks it up to examine it.
"Hmm… that is quite the specimen. Wait…" He starts to dig through a book near his right hand referencing images of the book to your sketch. He finally stops on a page with something similar to the rat giant. "A Prince of Raflenging?" His expression is rather interested now. "A Prince of Rat Flinging?" The Warrior says, curiously. The scholar's expression becomes extremely pained as he sighs. "Raflenging, which I guess would be the name of our Rattenkönig." The younger humans look at each other and then the boy asks a question. "Is the name of our monster rat useful?"
"Yes." "Quite." You say at the same time as the scholar. You briefly exchange a glance, and then pass it on to him with a hand gesture. "A demon like this can in theory be weakened through the use of its name in ritual. A useful tool as you might imagine, Xander." He says. "Ah, yeah…" The boy says, before petering off once his eyes land on you again.
"And that brings me to my last two pieces of informations. First the Rattenkönig itself," You sketch out the form of the Rat King you saw. "That is disgusting." "Ewwwwwwwww, I totally agree Will." "That's uh… big." The young humans have essentially the same reaction to your drawing of the thing.
The image itself is almost malevolent. Staring at the beings in the room from the page. "Indeed. The creature will need to be weakened before it can be killed. Fortunately it is still, stuck after a fashion. Trapped between dimensions." You tell them impassively. "I have also… found the lair of the beast." Their gazes all snap towards you. You reach out and grab up a tunnel map where you can see the junction you were using as a landmark. On it you draw a path to the lair of the thing.
Circling the location of the lair, you stand. "That, is where it should be. The bigger problem is the masses of rat warriors in the place." The room falls silent at your statement and you watch the humans become thoughtful.
It is the Warrior who speaks at this point after a few moments of consideration. "Can we lure them out and then pour the poison down into the tunnels here?" She points at a side tunnel which leads into the central chamber by a smaller set of connections. You tilt your head right. "Yes, but I think it will take both of us working from different directions. Or that of your dark and mysterious friend." You send a knowing smile her way. She blushes and Willow speaks up.
"You know Angel?"
"I've met him, once." You respond.
"What do… we do?" Xander asks, tone slightly sullen. The Warrior looks at him and smiles, distracted from her embarrassment. "You'll be helping Giles be an exterminator!"
The girl child Willow almost seems like she wants to speak up to, but stops and hesitates. You step back from the table and speak. "I'll be at the Bronze tomorrow night, I have some things to deal with. Good hunting." Willow looks up at that. "You're going?" She seems mildly uncomfortable at that. You nod. "Yes. Demons don't die on their own after all." You say gently.
"Bye Latria, great pow-wow!" The Warrior says brightly. The scholar looks up from your drawing of the Rattenkönig. "Ah. Yes goodbye Miss. Good hunting." He says, distractedly. A part of you is then strongly reminded of your predecessor's friend Sir Metas, who was often too busy with his knightly duties to pay proper respects or attention as a friend.
The boy gives out a somewhat shellshocked, "Bye."
You turn and leave then. Turning a corner you conceal yourself and sprint faster than humanly possible, almost entirely silent. You leave the building then and rush into the night. The information they provided is useful, and using them as essentially fodder is acceptable to you. There are other ways you in particular could kill the Rat King, but their particular plan is faster.
As to be expected by the Warrior, using whatever comes to hand to kill her enemies. That leaves you to deal with the footholds. You need to find the new one and check how the other one has changed, if at all as it has been here the longest and knowing magic like you do there are certain rather detrimental things the Rat King could do with it.
What do you do?
[] Search around the school until you find the new foothold and whatever may be its source.
[] Go to the Bronze and see if that foothold has changed in any way and destroy it.
I have determined that I need a break tomorrow. My sleep schedule has been borked by the updates and its messed up actually writing them so I'm just gonna chillax. Sorry guys.
