[x]Go uphill, along a side path
Sounds better then go for swim or down a path that gets colder.
[x]Go uphill, along a side path
Sounds better then go for swim or down a path that gets colder.
[X] Go uphill, along a side path
[x] Go uphill, along a side path
[x]Go uphill, along a side path
"It's really quiet," Draco observed, as he looked around uneasily, a lantern in one hand, and his wand in the other, trying to glean everything he could with his eyes. "Too--"
"Don't say it."
"--quiet."
"Damnit, Malfoy," Zabini cursed, as he held up another lantern, using the light it provided to peer into the darkness. "I told you not to say it."
"They're just words, Zabini. What can words do?"
"Trigger a trap, or cast a spell?" Lily interjected quietly, with Draco looking a bit sheepish at this. "Any thoughts? Down or up?"
"How about through the water?" Pansy asked, turning to Selina. "It's...glowing, so it can't be natural."
"...it's too obvious," the adventurer responded, shaking her head. "There has to be a reason it's glowing, a reason that it stands out in this gloom. It's the only thing that does."
"...true. Down deeper then?"
"Uh...that," Zabini staggered backwards, his free hand going to his head as his mouth fell open in agony. "No...not down there. No," he whispered, as Lily moved to steady him.
"...why? What's down there?" she asked.
The boy looked her in the eye, his face pale with fear.
"Death."
"Wait, do you mean Death as in the being from the tales of--"
"No. Yes. I...I don't know. Just...don't go down there. Please."
"I don't know about you, Selina, but I don't plan on ignoring our resident doom detector," Lily commented, offering the poor boy a calming draught, as something had obviously frightened him out of his wits. "Let's head up."
"Up it is."
The group proceeded to do so, walking along slowly, cautiously, as--
"Hey, what's that rumbling?" Lily asked.
"Rumbling?" Draco echoed.
"Jump!" Zabini cried, which was all the warning they had before the ground gave way beneath them.
"Wahh!"
Even with that, most of them managed to jump free, but Malfoy had not, with the blond boy swallowed up by the darkness, the last look on his face being a plea for someone to save him.
"That was close, but we...we lost Malfoy!" Pansy exclaimed.
"Not...not yet," Zabini grunted, obviously straining as he reached out his hand, as if he was grabbing something at a distance. "I have him but...I can't pull him up alone."
"Ah, got it," Selina noted, ripping another patch from her garment, with the scrap of cloth becoming a very long coil hempen rope once free. "We'll all grab on one end of this and we'll lower the other to Draco."
They did so, and working together, if straining and grunting the entire time, they managed to save the poor boy up from what had seemed certain doom, though not the lantern he carried.
"T-thanks," Draco muttered. "I wasn't expecting the floor to collapse like that."
"How we get back over that to get out?"
"I don't know. But for now, we go forward."
So they did, until they emerged into a chamber filled with what looked like oversized spider webs, and...eggs around the wall. There is one exit on the other side, a very fancy door, but to get to it, one has to go through a thoroughly webbed area.
And to one side of the chamber...there is a slumbering Acromantula, larger than a carthorse.
"Any bright ideas?"
[ ] Try to sneak past
[ ] Attack the Acromantula while its sleeping
[ ] Start by crushing the eggs telekinetically
[ ] Burn the webs
[ ] (write-in)
Last edited by alfheimwanderer; June 18th, 2019 at 10:04 PM.
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
[X] Zabini lift the spider so that its not touching the ground/expose its underbelly.
Draco: Attack the Spider with his spells
Lily: Attack the Spider with her Spells
Selina: Attack the Spider with her Spells/soul magic.
Pansy: Burn the webs.
Last edited by shanagan; June 24th, 2019 at 02:31 AM.
Zabini lift the spider so that is not touching the ground/expose its underbelly.
Draco: Attack the spider with his spells
Selina: Attack the spider with her spells
Pansy: Burn the webs
Last edited by Dracueri; June 24th, 2019 at 02:40 AM.
Burn the webs while a good idea is pointless when there is a spider right infront of you that will wake up when you cast fire. Plus door could be locked, still Burning webs for mobility purposes is good idea.
[X] Zabini lift the spider so that its not touching the ground/expose its underbelly.
Draco: Attack the Spider with his spells
Lily: Attack the Spider with her Spells
Selina: Attack the Spider with her Spells/soul magic.
Pansy: Burn the webs.
Basically Alpha strike it. Zabina makes it so that it not going to be able to move around and bite. Sure it will still be dangerous but far more mangable. Combine fire should deal with it, especially given the above normal spell weight this team has. Pansy does not have the spells like the others but she can do the important job of burining webs so they can dodge attacks if need be.
[x] Zabini lift the spider so that its not touching the ground/expose its underbelly.
Draco: Attack the Spider with his spells
Lily: Attack the Spider with her Spells
Selina: Attack the Spider with her Spells/soul magic.
Pansy: Burn the webs.
It captures the core idea of having each member doing their own action separately (they need to see what works on the spider). Nitpicking, I would have went with cutting the webs rather than burning, in case the fire spreads around and trap the team but that might just be my inside paranoia speaking.
[X] Zabini lift the spider so that its not touching the ground/expose its underbelly.
Draco: Attack the Spider with his spells
Lily: Attack the Spider with her Spells
Selina: Attack the Spider with her Spells/soul magic.
Pansy: Burn the webs.
Of all the things in the chamber, the giant spider was the greatest and most immediate threat, Selina thought, given that giant spiders tended to be nasty to deal with if a party was not prepared for their various abilities. Blindsight, darkvision, poison, and of course, webs. Webs like the ones that filled the room, making it nearly impossible to traverse without accidentally becoming entangled in the sticky threads, or stumbling through them.
'But getting stuck is only a small part of what makes webs dangerous...'
Indeed, the worst part about webs such as these were that if one touched them, destroyed them, or such, the spider that had spun them would know, and no doubt surge to attack - and while the spider was only a bit bigger than Matou in his mule form, that was still more than dangerous enough for twelve year olds.
...even if they were better geared than most would be at this age.
"We have to burn the webs - we don't really have a choice," Selina stated. "But the moment we do, that spider is going to wake up and attack us."
"That...could be a problem," Pansy stated, frowning as she glanced at Lily. "Can we take out an acromantula, do you think?"
"What are you looking at me for?" the girl questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"You're the patronus user among us. That means you and Selina are our best suited for something like this."
"I suppose, though the Patronus isn't exactly an offensive spell."
"I'm sure you know some?"
"...well, yes," Lily admitted. "Even if, unlike Selina, I never went looking for trouble." She smiled slightly. "I was just ready in case it came looking for me."
"Can I be useful somehow?" Zabini interjected.
"Depends," Selina replied. "How good are you at Mopsus? I know you're not as experienced with it as some...others I know, who can do several things at once, like control knives, add force to their blows, and run on top of water."
"I can only concentrate on one thing at a time," Zabini admitted, frowning. "Still, I have a decent bit of power when I do."
"You had to strain yourself to catch Draco just a bit ago."
"He was falling to his doom," the boy explained. "Stopping him took a lot out of me, enough so I couldn't just lift him."
"...hmm, if that's the case, do you think you could lift the spider, or...?"
"...maybe, but I won't be good for doing anything else if I did," Zabini grunted. "And since I lost my mail..."
If something came at him while he was otherwise preoccupied, and no one was around to help, he would die - and from what he'd seen, Quirrell was not one to cast a stunner when a Killing Curse would get the point across far more...sharply.
"I'll loan you my shield gauntlets," Selina offered. "They're not as good as goblin mail, but they'll help."
"What about you?"
"I still have some mail on under this robe, and a Dragonhide cloak above it," the girl responded.
"Well, if you say so," Zabini said, nodding to the adventurer. "Thanks."
"I'll burn the webs so we have some room to move," Pansy offered. "Can the rest of you focus on the spider?"
"Sounds fair," Selina responded. "Zabini - try to lift the spider. We'll want to be hitting its underside - or at least its jaws. Draco, Lily, we'll be attacking the spider. Wait for Zabini to give us an opening."
"Right."
They proceed according to the plan. Pansy releases gouts of flame from her wand at the webs riddling the room. The webs quickly catch fire, with the flames spreading along the length of the sticky silk, until the entire room seems to be burning - and yet the webbing itself is taking its time to burn up.
Amidst all of this, the spider awakens, rearing up on its hind legs and shrieking at them...which was there Zabini comes in, using every newton of force he could eke from Mopsus to keep it rearing, so it couldn't gain the leverage to charge - and so that its underbelly would be exposed.
Taking the chance to attack, Selina hurled eerie beams of silver light at the spider with her wand, aiming for the thorax, where its most vital organs were. Draco, not being quite so powerful, cast Flipendos Trias to knock away the webbing it tried to launch at them in its defense.
And Lily, seeing that the spider was levitated, used the Orbis Jinx, intoning the words as an azure whirlwind whipped up around the spider, causing it to shriek as its entire body was wreathed in blue fire, and it was roughly, violently, pulled into the ground, with its abdomen trapped in the stone, so that only its cephalothorax remained, with its legs flailing about wildly.
There was a short scream of pain behind them, but the three ignored it for the moment, since the monster being unable to respond for the moment meant that they could rain spells upon it with impunity, ripping open its hide, blasting its jaws to uselessness, rupturing its mind, bombarding it over and over, until the charred, blackened husk was no longer moving.
"We...we beat it..." Draco murmured. Until this moment, he hadn't quite believed something like that was possible. It was said that Acromantulae were extremely dangerous, difficult to handle even for experienced wizards, and yet the three...well, four...of them, had managed it.
"A...as I expected," Selina noted. "Good job, Z--" But her voice died as she turned, finding Zabini lying on the ground, his body trembling and twitching, with blood pouring from a great gash on the side of his throat, and one of his eyes reduced to ruin by the needle-sharp hair - almost a knife - that had lodged itself there.
She thought to wonder what Pansy was doing that she hadn't gone to help Zabini, but saw her surrounded by flames and desperately trying to fend off a horde of palm-sized spiders which must have hatched from the eggs while they were fighting the big one.
"Huh, what's going on?" Draco asked, now hearing the sounds of battle behind him now that the heady rush of battle was no longer surging through him, only to collapse, retching as he saw Zabini's mangled throat.
"Lily, with me!" Selina called out, as the other blonde nodded, with both moving to help Parkinson, before she succumbed to the tide of arachnids.
What is the strategy for saving Pansy, who is surrounded by a ring of flames and being rushed by dozens of spiders (at least)?
[ ] (write-in)
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
[X] Selina: Take a cloak and cover the spiders in it to act as a barrier to buy time. Lily: Cast Extingust spell on the fire to create a path out of the fire for Pansy.
Could have Selina cast a spell against the spiders, but I think a non magic solution is more in line with her. Granted it is a delay tactic and might ruin her cloak (at least in this scenario).
[x]Selina: Take a cloak and cover the spiders in it to act as a barrier to buy time. Lily: Cast Extingust spell on the fire to create a path out of the fire for Pansy.
[X] Selina: Take a cloak and cover the spiders in it to act as a barrier to buy time. Lily: Cast Extingust spell on the fire to create a path out of the fire for Pansy.
What is the strategy for saving Pansy, who is surrounded by a ring of flames and being rushed by dozens of spiders (at least)?
[x]Selina: Take a cloak and cover the spiders in it to act as a barrier to buy time. Lily: Cast Extingust spell on the fire to create a path out of the fire for Pansy.
The plan is simple enough in theory: have Selina draw off the spiders and try to smother them with her dragonhide cloak (which, given the material, was very resistant to burning), while Lily extinguished the flames to create a path for Pansy. In practice...there were more of them than would easily fit under the cloak, and they were scurrying about, dodging the spell-beams that an increasingly frantic Pansy was sending at them, given that she could feel the heat of the flames on her skin.
"Be ready to extinguish!" Selina ordered, ripping another patch from her robe, which transfigured itself into a filled and lit bullseye lantern, which she tossed into the mob of palm-sized spiders around Pansy with a clatter, as the door swung open and burning oil began to cover the ground, making the spiders scream, drawing away as the flames came towards them.
Pansy shrieked at the sight of this, only for Selina to draw a knife and slice through some of the burning threads around her, moving with the seeming surety of one who had done something like this many a time before, doff her weighted dragonhide robe and toss it in such a way it would now trap the spiders.
Surprisingly, there were no complications.
Pansy was rescued, the webs were destroyed, and in the aftermath, all that remained was ash. That and a quietly retching Draco, who seems like he's had enough.
Pansy is shaken after this, and is unsure whether they can realistically go on. What does Selina say?
[ ] We've come this far, we need to push onwards
[ ] Let's retreat while we have the chance
Does Selina suggest someone else take Mopsus?
[ ] Yes[ ] Draco[ ] No, it is more a hindrance than help
[ ] Pansy
[ ] Herself
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
[x] We've come this far, we need to push onwards.
[x] Yes
[x] Herself.
Selina probably has some experience with it - remember that she witnessed the usefulness of Mopsus back when Shinji, Ernie and Nats were testing it out by the lake. I doubt she wouldn't have thought about how to use such an asset herself. Also, she has tools stored in her robe segments which can cover the rest of her needs.
Just change the team formation to take in account that she can't use her wand now, but keep going.
[x]We've come this far, we need to push onwards.
[x]Yes
[x]Herself
[x] We've come this far, we need to push onwards.
[x] Yes
[x] Herself.
What does Selina say? [X] We've come this far, we need to push onwards
Does Selina suggest someone else take Mopsus? [x] Yes; [X] Herself
"Draco, are you alright?" Selina asked, almost gently, as she walked over to the retching - or was it sobbing - boy, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"No. No I'm not alright. How can I be alright when Zabini just...just..."
"You know what happens here isn't real, right?" Lily chimed in, with Draco's gaze snapping over to her as he blinked.
"Huh? Y-yes, I-I knew that," Draco stated, shaking his head. "I...I was just, just...."
"You were just traumatized seeing someone die in front of you, even if it wasn't real."
"Right. That exactly," the boy agreed. "It...it just happened so fast..."
"It does sometimes," Lily responded, not unsympathetically. "But fast is better than slow and painful, wouldn't you say?"
"I guess..." the boy said, swallowing. "Right. I guess if we don't go on, Zabini's death would be in vain, huh?"
"That's about the long and the short of it," Selina agreed, glancing at Pansy. "We need to go onwards."
"I...alright," Pansy agreed. "If everyone is set on this."
"We are," Lily affirmed.
"Someone taking Mopsus then?" Pansy asked.
"I'll do it," Selina volunteered. "I'm fairly familiar with the stuff. Not as familiar as some of those Hufflepuffs, but close enough. Bottoms up!"
The door opens with a deep groan, and a wave of musty air spills out. In the next room, there are sarcophagi lining the walls, an altar at the far wall, and a pool of water in the very center.
At the bottom of the pool is something like a dagger, gleaming with inner light, but it is firmly planted in the bottom and seems...slippery to Mopsus. Around the rim of the pool, there is something carved: "What clings to you? Bear it—you cannot. Accept it—you cannot. But hidden—it is from you. Recite its name."
Between each little phrase are imprints in the shape of footprints, wrought from lighter colored stone.
To Mopsus enhanced senses, there is no immediate danger.
What does the party do?
[ ] Explore the room
[ ] Examine the Altar
[ ] Have someone jump in and try to remove the knife
[ ] Stand on the footprints and try to figure out the riddle
[ ] (write-in)
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
[X] Stand on the footprints and try to figure out the riddle
[x] Stand on the footprints and try to figure out the riddle
[x]Stand on the footprints and try to figure out the riddle
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