[X]Attack (Must write in a plan)
-[X] Two pronged attack, you and your bike blasts from one direction while your two companions advance on foot from the other. The lion can't cover all sides easily
The big question is whether Shielder is just here to bail Ruler out (Lion is already decided on the matter in any case) or if she wants to stay and fight a bit.
If she stays then Cal and Co are in trouble because they probably can't meaningfully damage someone as sturdy as Shielder is (A++ Endurance) so she can just tank stall until more White Servants show up even if she can't simply hammer everyone into the ground first. There goes Stephen's Domain advantage.
So far Cal and Co haven't shown their connection to Avenger yet so the White Servants have no real reason to suspect that this fight is more than just Ruler running into some hostile natives. However that rune that Ruler was trying to use to track Avenger before everyone jumped him comes from Shielder and there's no reason she can't do that herself (even faster and simpler even).
I hate Runes did I mention that before? It seems to come down on a gamble on whether Shielder takes Ruler and leave or if she stays to fight/search/or try to heal Ruler.
[X]Attack (Must write in a plan)
-[X] Two pronged attack, you and your bike blasts from one direction while your two companions advance on foot from the other. The lion can't cover all sides easily
Wow, only two votes... pretty sure that's an all-time low. I can understand why, though; this is probably one of my least favorite updates as well. Honestly, I just wanted this encounter to end. I would kind of like a tiebreaker of some sort in the next two hours, though.
For what it's worth, while I did phrase it as "retreat," cutting things short here will count as a win for Stephen, claiming the territory between the bridge and the palace for him.
As for runes, I'd like to note that Cal was quite correct in saying that the sphere White Shielder whipped up wouldn't work so long as Avenger stayed in the room; it's sufficiently basic as a magical tracking method that the bounded field he used was designed with blocking it in mind (Among other methods). The distress beacon is a very simple design as well.
Edit: It seems that someone actually did post a tiebreaker between me being called away and me posting. Voting's still open for two more hours though (This isn't exactly a difficult vote to swing, here).
[X]Attack (Must write in a plan)
-[X] Two pronged attack, you and your bikeblasts from one direction while your twocompanions advance on foot from the other.
In regards to the current write-in, I just noticed that it says "while your two companions advance," and you currently have three companions. Pretty sure that's a typo, but...
And that makes the vote tied, so we're back to needing a tiebreaker. Some time in the next hour, preferably.
Speaking of which... Since I'm not a hundred percent sure if that was a typo or if the person who made the write-in genuinely forgot that someone existed, I think I'm going to need some clarification from @wingstrike96, @Ultramandalore, and @Lykantos here. My current understanding of the write-in is that Cal will wheel around to open fire at Ruler and the Lioness from one direction while everyone else -- Sengo, Stephen, and Noa -- come from the other side to try to get past the Lioness in melee. Is this correct?
And that makes the vote tied, so we're back to needing a tiebreaker. Some time in the next hour, preferably.
Speaking of which... Since I'm not a hundred percent sure if that was a typo or if the person who made the write-in genuinely forgot that someone existed, I think I'm going to need some clarification from @wingstrike96, @Ultramandalore, and @Lykantos here. My current understanding of the write-in is that Cal will wheel around to open fire at Ruler and the Lioness from one direction while everyone else -- Sengo, Stephen, and Noa -- come from the other side to try to get past the Lioness in melee. Is this correct?
[X]Attack (Must write in a plan)
-[X] Two pronged attack, you and your bikeblasts from one direction while your twocompanions advance on foot from the other.
Having Noa join in makes the most sense. Even without a proper weapon she still punch explosions.
Alright, looks likes fist-fighting the indestructible lion wins! I'll get to writing once I'm done with lunch, assuming the vote doesn't tie itself up again in the next twenty minutes.
Alright, looks likes fist-fighting the indestructible lion wins! I'll get to writing once I'm done with lunch, assuming the vote doesn't tie itself up again in the next twenty minutes.
[X]Attack (Must write in a plan)
-[X] Two pronged attack, you and your bike blast from one direction while your two companions advance on foot from the other.
You nod at Noah. You didn't push this far just to let Ruler get out of here alive. "We finish this." You turn over your shoulder toward Stephen and Sengo as they approach. "Attack from this side, try to kill Ruler. I'll move around and attack from the other direction. The lion should have trouble if it has to cover all sides."
Stephen glances down at his sword, then up at the lioness. You can guess what he's thinking: you're the only one here who can attack from range. "You want us to get in close with that thing?"
"Move it or lose it, koos," Noah says in an annoyed tone. "We don't have time to think it over, just move!" And then she charges in.
Sengo nods. "I trust you."
Stephen sighs. "I suppose I have no choice."
You don't stick around for further banter, instead leaping over the lioness on your bike to land between it and the entrance to the bridge. It releases its grip on Ruler in surprise, just in time for you to open fire. The lioness lowers its head though, and the bullets bounce off. One even deflects off of its eye.
It's just a distraction, though. Noah comes in from behind, an explosion propelling her forward. Her punch is aimed high, though; she can't aim for Ruler with that angle of approach. Her fist impacts with the lioness' flank, an explosion bursting out of the metal gauntlet she infused.
The lioness doesn't flinch from the impact... but it does twitch, its head spasming to the side. One of your bullets impacts Ruler's arm in the opening that creates, and the lioness screams.
And when it does, it starts to change.
Strength: A-->A+
Agility: A-->A+
Class Skills:
Monstrous Strength: B+
An ability possessed by monsters and beasts, that normally provides a temporary boost of the Strength parameter by one rank for a duration determined by the skill's rank. However, corruption of Monster's Saint Graph has introduced traits of other creatures to this skill, resulting in an increase in Agility and acquisition of monstrous features and abilities Monster did not possess in life.
Personal Skills:
???: A++
An unknown skill that has corrupted Monster's Saint Graph. The effect is similar to Innocent Monster, but appears to originate from somewhere other than Monster's own legend. In addition to infecting Monster's Monstrous Strength with attributes of unknown creatures, it has also inflicted her with a form of Mental Pollution. Monster appears to be somewhat capable of restraining this madness on her own, but without outside assistance the effects of this skill will inevitably replace all her thoughts with a desire to consume everything around her.
Its eyes turn bright orange and slitted, its fur sprouts outward in ragged tufts of different colors, patches of scales and spines appear in different places, and its teeth... Two near the front lengthen, an unholy mix between the fangs of a snake and a sabertooth tiger, and teeth of different sorts begin to grow in behind them in multiple, shark-like rows. Its spine and body lengthen with a crack, and you think you can see bones shifting under its skin.
Then it whips about, and brings its claws straight across Noah's chest.
The armor doesn't offer any resistance at all, crumpling like cardboard. The entire breastplate is ripped away, and the claw continues past her left arm as well, shredding the armor there in a spray of blood. Only Noah's arm is bleeding though; it seems she pulled away from the blow in time to avoid the worst of it.
"Congelarse encierro!" A spell cast through your bullets entraps the lioness in a pyramid of ice -- or at least, tries to. It may as well not be there as far as she's concerned. Her movements are completely unhindered as she lunges at Noah, jaws wide. Noah dodges, but the Monster's teeth find her right arm anyway, closing around it just above the elbow.
Personal Skills:
Instinct: A
The ability to instantly identify "the best personal course of action" during combat. Monster's ability in this area borders on precognition.
You can hear something cracking as the lioness jerks its head to the side, and Noah screams in a mix of pain and rage. She retaliates, her left hand coming down on the Monster's temple in a clenched, explosive fist. The Lioness rocks to the side from the hit, blood staining the side of its head, but it doesn't release Noah's arm. The next punch fixes that. Noah's fist collides with the Monster's snout, and the explosion goes straight up its nostrils. It releases her arm with a pained yowl. Noah steps forward to press her attack, throwing another punch at the Monster's head.
But the Lioness ducks its head to the side in time to avoid it, and its right paw manages to connect with Noah's left shoulder from behind, slamming her to the ground. The Monster leaps forward onto Noah with a bone-rattling roar. Noah attacks with a right hook, but her attack bounces harmlessly off the lioness' head.
You haven't been doing nothing while Noah fights, of course. But the spells you've flung at the lioness haven't done anything to the beast. They've done plenty to Ruler though, with the lioness no longer focused on protecting him -- quite a few of your bullets tore through his body, and you can see his still form beginning to dissolve into golden sparkles the way the horse's did. If nothing else, at least you'll be walking away from this with two enemies dead.
But now the lioness stands over Noah, not Ruler, and the still-helmed knight is barely staying ahead of the Monster's jaws. She has almost zero room to maneuver but her instincts still guide her, rolling to the left and to the right at just the right moment to keep the beast from getting a grip on her helmet. But even without getting a grip, the near-misses leave deep scratches in the helmet. She retaliates with punches where she can, but half of her attacks do nothing.
Exactly half, you realize. Your eyes widen. "Noah, take off your other gauntlet!" you shout as loudly as you can. "Your armored attacks can't hurt it!"
The gauntlet on Noah's left hand was torn off, and it was only afterward that her attacks started working. The only difference was that Noah was channeling her prana burst through her gauntlet the first time, and through her bare fist the second. Heracles was only able to defeat the Nemean Lion by strangling it... Did that work because it didn't involve damaging the hide, or because he didn't use any tools?
Either way though, this is definitely the Nemean Lion...!
True Name: Nemean Lion
Class: Monster
Key Words: Corrupted Saint Graph, encroaching madness, It Hungers
Strength: A (A+)
Endurance: B
Agility: A (A+)
Mana: B
Luck: E
NP: A+
Class Skills:
Monstrous Strength: A+
An ability possessed by monsters and beasts, that normally provides a temporary boost of the Strength parameter by one rank for a duration determined by the skill's rank. However, corruption of Monster's Saint Graph has introduced traits of other creatures to this skill, resulting in an increase in Agility and acquisition of monstrous features and abilities Monster did not possess in life.
Personal Skills:
???: A++
An unknown skill that has corrupted Monster's Saint Graph. The effect is similar to Innocent Monster, but appears to originate from somewhere other than Monster's own legend. In addition to infecting Monster's Monstrous Strength with attributes of unknown creatures, it has also inflicted her with a form of Mental Pollution. Monster appears to be somewhat capable of restraining this madness on her own, but without outside assistance the effects of this skill will inevitably replace all her thoughts with a desire to consume everything around her.
Further effects, if any, are unknown at this time.
Instinct: A
The ability to instantly identify "the best personal course of action" during combat. Monster's ability in this area borders on precognition.
Divinity: D+
A skill measuring whether one has Divine Spirit aptitude or not. It reduces special defensive values called 'purge defense' in proportion to the Divinity's Rank, and reduces the level of rejection by Gaia.
While not a true divinity, many traditions claim that the Nemean Lion's mother was not Echidna as commonly held, but the moon goddess Selene. As a result, its fur reflects trace echoes of moonlight in a way that it did not while it was alive.
Noble Phantasms:
Protogenís Trópos -- Beast of Primal Law: A+. Support
The tale of the Nemean Lion is quite clear on the fact that nothing could pierce its hide, and that it was only by strangulation that Heracles could end its life. In truth however, its hide was not what made it so difficult to kill.
The Nemean Lion was a species of a Demonic or perhaps Divine Beast, similar to the Ugallu of Babylon. Such creatures can "reject" human civilization to one degree or another, but the Nemean Lion did so more than any before or since. Her body acts like a singularity that rejects human civilization itself, making it so that anything "produced by the human order" cannot harm her flesh. Even magecraft will fail against it, unless it comes from a purely non-human source.
The weakness of this defense is that 'natural weapons' such as fists and claws, or 'innate magecraft' with a non-human source such as a dragon's Prana Burst, are not created by the Human Order even if used by a human.
Noah lifts her prone legs and slams them back down onto the ground, blasting away the armor there with prana burst. The lioness capitalizes on her momentary distraction, her teeth closing around Noah's helmeted head.
"Hraaaagh!"
"Away from him, Monster! Hah, I have always wanted to slay a lion!"
Sengo and Stephen finally make it to the fight, both striking at the lioness... and both to no effect. You curse. "Get away!" They don't have time. "Halar!"
The lioness' tail whips forward, then back. That's all it takes. Spines like an iguana's run down it, and they cut deep. Sengo is lucky; your last-second spell pulls him back just far enough that the tail hits his left arm instead of anything vital. By the time it reaches him, its lost enough momentum that it doesn't quite get through the bone before your spell pulls him fully out of the attack's reach.
Unfortunately, the attack only lost momentum because it went through Stephen's skull first.
The upper half of the man's head flies off, spraying Sengo with gore as your spell runs its course. The lioness doesn't even look.
"Bastard!" Noah roars. And then she kicks. Both her feet come up and connect with the Monster's belly, a pillar of spiraling red surrounding them. The burst hits hard enough to that the lioness actually releases its grip, and is almost enough to force the lioness off her feet entirely. As it stands, the Monster rears itself just short of losing its balance and being knocked on its back.
Noah's kick carries her into a handstand for a brief moment, before she uses the momentum to flip back onto her feet. She doesn't wait though. Her back, still armored, explodes. With the lioness still off-balance the blow connects, sending her flying into a planter.
And the Monster immediately shakes it off.
It doesn't immediately rejoin the battle, but it pulls itself out of the warped metal with an infuriating ease. It shakes itself, and you can't help but notice that the injury from Noah's first blow to its head is no longer there.
???: A++
An unknown skill that has corrupted Monster's Saint Graph. In addition to other noted effects, it appears to provide Monster with a significant degree of regeneration.
You feel one of your teeth crack from how tightly you're gritting them. This is bad.
[ ]Noah's attacks hurt it, you can still win this.
--[ ]If your spells can't harm the Monster directly, you can at least manipulate the environment.
--[ ]Get Noah on your bike for extra mobility.
--[ ]Heal Sengo first; Noah can handle herself for now.
--[ ]Write-in
[ ]You have to get out of here; you can't win.
--[ ]Run for the tunnels.
--[ ]Get everyone on the bike, then run.
--[ ]Have Noah cover your retreat and rejoin you later.
--[ ]Distract it with Stephen's corpse, before it fades.
--[ ]Write-in
[ ]Maybe if you stall until Shielder arrives, it'll attack her instead of you?
[ ]Write-in
A/N: So yeah, just to be clear... The lioness' spasming wasn't a cost for using its NP as Veekie guessed, but rather it trying to restrain the part of itself that was screaming at it to kill and eat everything in a mile radius that happened to have a pulse. So attacking it right after it just barely avoided snapping and killing everyone, when only one person present actually had any way of harming it, may not have been the best idea.
On the plus side, it means you get to find out about the Lioness' corrupted Saint Graph way before I intended for it to come up. Enough so that I'd barely had time to foreshadow it even, so I guess it does come a little out of nowhere as a result. Ah, well. There are a few people who might be able to guess what's going on here anyway though, since I talked about it in a few places during the old RP (Or simply because you're familiar enough with the lore to realize what the unknown skill is).
As a side note, I really need to come up with solid rules for how to confirm a Heroic Spirit's identity for the database. As it stands, the only methods shown so far are basically useless for Monsters.
Wow. That did not go well. Still, at least Ruler is dead, so this wasn't a complete waste. I'm tempted to just leave now since we're not in the best shape and if reinforcements arrive we will definitely be screwed.
The option about stalling until Shielder arrives so the lion attacks her is interesting, but I'm not so sure we can last that long without getting mauled even further...
Growing a Thagomizer is cheating you goddamn cat bastard!
Let's just get out of here. The heat is way too high on Noah right now and she's still outclassed in every way. She won't last here. I doubt Sengo can meaningfully damage it if he gets down to just his fists. Would our spells work on it since we have our augmentations from the suit?
[X]You have to get out of here; you can't win.
--[X]Get everyone on the bike, then run.
Right now Lion's stronger and much faster than Noah. It has a higher Instinct and can regenerate wounds. Noah's already been grabbed twice, her armor is trashed, and she might not be able to keep up her tempo anyways because Prana Burst gets expensive to use.
How can Cal and Sengo support Noah here anyways? Cal's attack spells might not even work anymore since it's augmented by the riding suit. Sengo can't hurt it except with his fists and that's not something I look forward to him trying considering he has the same Agility and Luck as Stephen (RIP).
Wow. That did not go well. Still, at least Ruler is dead, so this wasn't a complete waste. I'm tempted to just leave now since we're not in the best shape and if reinforcements arrive we will definitely be screwed.
Right now Lion's stronger and much faster than Noah. It has a higher Instinct and can regenerate wounds. Noah's already been grabbed twice, her armor is trashed, and she might not be able to keep up her tempo anyways because Prana Burst gets expensive to use.
How can Cal and Sengo support Noah here anyways? Cal's attack spells might not even work anymore since it's augmented by the riding suit. Sengo can't hurt it except with his fists and that's not something I look forward to him trying considering he has the same Agility and Luck as Stephen (RIP).
Cal's thaumaturgy won't work, period. Even if his circuits weren't artificial, regular circuits are a still a creation of the human order, having been made by Solomon.
Right now Lion's stronger and much faster than Noah. It has a higher Instinct and can regenerate wounds. Noah's already been grabbed twice, her armor is trashed, and she might not be able to keep up her tempo anyways because Prana Burst gets expensive to use.
How can Cal and Sengo support Noah here anyways? Cal's attack spells might not even work anymore since it's augmented by the riding suit. Sengo can't hurt it except with his fists and that's not something I look forward to him trying considering he has the same Agility and Luck as Stephen (RIP).
Funnily enough, the first draft arguably ended worse...
Cal's thaumaturgy won't work, period. Even if his circuits weren't artificial, regular circuits are a still a creation of the human order, having been made by Solomon.
I was thinking less attacking, and more support magecraft. Moving Noah around, acting as another pair of eyes, being a very mobile distraction, chucking rocks, there are lots of things we can do.
[X]You have to get out of here; you can't win.
--[X]Get everyone on the bike, then run.
I'm not sure what we can do but we need someone whi can fight barehanded since the lion is gonna be a random encounter now. Also what kind of crazy person thinks it's a good idea to make a stronger Nemean Lion
Hey, it could be worse! There's a decent argument to be made for Mordred herself being a creation of the human order, considering her origins. Luckily, I'm not that dickish.
I was thinking less attacking, and more support magecraft. Moving Noah around, acting as another pair of eyes, being a very mobile distraction, chucking rocks, there are lots of things we can do.
The "[ ]If your spells can't harm the Monster directly, you can at least manipulate the environment" vote option is supposed to represent that sort of approach.
I'm not sure what we can do but we need someone whi can fight barehanded since the lion is gonna be a random encounter now. Also what kind of crazy person thinks it's a good idea to make a stronger Nemean Lion
