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Rurufon     Those brave, suicidal, or sufficiently motivated by the ultimate prize here, return to find the Tower of Shadows exactly as dark, isolated, and inscrutable as before. It may very much be even moreso, in fact. The 'special exception Warpgate' that had taken the last crew well past the crumbling trans-dimensional shrine above it and into the pulsing blue heart of the nexus floating in the Abyss has changed locations from last time. Instead of dumping them into the hub, new arrivals instead step straight into the Chasm Nexus itself, on the beginning, 'Emerald' level.

    It couldn't be called much of a Warpgate however. Though it's accessed through the network as usual, arrivals find themselves plunged into the gloomy, faded, off-coloured darkness that permeates the massive chambers of the Tower's spine as if they had walked straight out of the door behind them. In fact, they arrive just in time to hear it grinding shut behind them with a rather emphatic crunch, as if they'd opened it from the other side and lost all memory up until this point. It might even be that any of the doors around here can be connected as such. It'd explain why 'doors' seem to be a universal fixture amidst all the wildly varying areas.

    And speaking of doors, while three of them surround them, set into the implacably organic and veiny wood-stone-bone of the walls at the end of winding catwalks suspended over utter blackness, only two of them are valid entries anymore. The white doors all bear the identical sigil of the Tower itself, differentiated only by the characteristics of the etching, but the one which had formerly been coated in strands of petrified webbing now refuses to open at any approach, barring re-entry into the Realm informally called the 'Deformed Insect Territory'. The other two are comprised of a door whose sigil is badly pitted and which glistens with slick, purple residue, and a door with a sigil coated in a chalky white powder with a dull, quartz-like gleam.

    To make matters simple, a couple of people here already know the former leads to a Realm where the air itself is vicious flesh-melting poison, so it is by far the least sensible choice of the two.
Rurufon     The only sane door at the moment opens into a very plain tunnel, far from the malformed and twisted geometry of the ancient hive. Of fairly human dimensions and unmarked surface, the only unique thing about the quarter hour's walk to start off with is that the walls (and floor and ceiling) are made of solid white crystal covered in even more white dust, that gives it a chalk-like appearance. Nearer to the end, a marble pedestal with a fist-sized green sun appears incongruously out of the natural stone floor, and approaching it results in it projecting thousands of random glyphs that rapidly narrow themselves down to familiar written languages, and then the native tongue, of the one approaching it, to say only "Wealth Ephemeral".

    Beyond that, they're left to step into the mouth of a much larger, much taller, much more open cave, barely punctuated with salt-like pillars of that white substance, with many winding passages branching off from it. The 'stone' itself seems to have some kind of imperceptible luminosity, meaning that even without a light, the area for perhaps thirty feet is fairly visible as if they carried an invisible, colourless torch. Past that however, the darkness is bizarrely thick, and stoically resists the beams of flashlights and radii of magical wisps once they leave this band of visibility. Light outside of that sphere only appears as a hovering blot, without casting anything on the white walls, and this is obvious either way, because there are both red and blue flame lights, a set of red to the left and downwards, and a set of mixed red and blue due ahead. There are the faint sounds of scraping and chinking stone, partway between the toiling of pickaxes and the scraping of rodent claws, echoing from the far blackness.

    Nobody has the luxury of getting more than halfway to any destination before the cavern is abruptly ripped through by the deafening, roaring bellow of some colossal beast, so loud and clear that it could be mere feet away for all the ear can tell. It briefly rattles tiny pieces of gravel and raises dust from the floor, faintly shaking internal organs with its intensity, before fading. No sudden attack follows it, and there is no sign as to what might have triggered it at all. It just kind of . . . happened.
Note     Note has come BETTER PREPARED for adventure this time! Which mostly means that she's hauling a small backpack around. One stuffed with various travel supplies. No doubt some of it's even stored in Capsules!

    And that's why... all the doom and gloom is SPEARED with the *CLICK* and directed illumination of a flashlight aimed down into the black pit. Note's apparently curious about what might be down there?

    She won't leave it on long though. No reason to waste battery power!

    "Uhhhhhh...." Neither of the two doors that are viable options look appealing. Note frowns poutily and slams a hand to her hip in a sign of pure GROUCH.

    "Great place THIS is! I don't like the looks of the smeared purple door. Gross... so it looks like we get to choose which path through the tower after each challenge?" Thinking better of her earlier statement, the Saiyan-blooded youth exclaims uncertainly, "That's KINDA cool... huh!"

    And with the group quickly moving in (during which, Note stashes her flashlight), she's curious enough to examine everything odd in the corridors. Which definitely means the pedestal! Note can't help herself here! She mouths some confoundedness at the weird message... but pokes the podium and the green sun and gives it a good investigation! "What do you suppose THIS is about? Wealth... Eph... em...eral? what's this word mean?"

    Well. She IS a kid.

    And on and on into the darkness of the cave. Note's not stupid! She can tell that the weird lighting is NOT NORMAL, and it causes her to slow her step in growing fear. BECAUSE BIG DARK CORRIDORS are CREEPY!

    AND THEN A ROAR!

    The girl outright SHRIEKS at this, backflipping impressively back the way she came and ending up floating a few feet in the air with a hand drawn back as if ready to hurl a ki blast into the darkness!

    But... nothing comes. She stops trembling and inhales a calming breath...

    "W-way too loud! Whatever that was..."
Nova Terra     Nova turns to watch as the doors grind closed behind their arrival, remarking with some trepidation, "Here we go again..." The doors shut with a crunch with finality and Nova glances around. She tries to shake off the disturbing feeling. The last expedition was troubling enough, which once again makes Nova question why she's here. But for all the trouble they encountered last time, it was certainly exciting. Plus there's the supposed prize at the end of all this. So Nova's going to try and see this through to the end.

    After checking over her gear to make sure everything is ready, Nova sets off on the trek through the next door. Shortly into the walk, Nova approaches the wall of the corridor and drags a finger across it. She briefly rubs the resulting dust between her fingers, eying it suspiciously. She might have asked for a scientific evaluation had she not been cut off from the outside. So here's hoping the stuff isn't dangerous. A bit of an optomistic feeling considering the Tower's nature.

    As they reach the largely open cave, Nova pauses for a moment as she glances at the piles of that substance. She hmms quietly, hearing the sounds in the distance. She proposes to her allies, "A mine of some sort?"

    Concerned by the darkness, Nova reaches up and pulls her visor down over her eyes. However, repeated attempts to calibrate its nightvision functions fail to penetrate the darkness. With a 'tch' Nova puts her visor back up, "This is unnatural..." She glances between the set of red lights and the set of red and blue. She looks at the others, "What do you guys think?"

    And then the roar sounds throughout the cavern, causing Nova to raise her rifle on instinct. She sweeps it around, trying to peer through the darkness. There's no way to determine what that was just from the roar, though the sheer strength of it reminds Nova of an Ultralisk. She takes an instinctual step back, still on alert as she finishes Note's remark, "It doesn't sound good."
Hemlock Unable to make it to the rest of the expeditions into Deformed Insect Territory for whatever reason, Hemlock is present here. The adventuring journalist is dressed in his jacket and newsie cap, an extremely average looking human male with dark hair and dark eyes, had a large bag attached to his belt, a longknife next to it, and a fiddle on his back. There's a journal in his hand, and he's currently taking notes on the terrain, presumably so he can tell more people about the Tower of Shadows.

As the group travels through the Not-Poisonous door, Hemlock's near the rear, whistling a somber tune as he writes. "If you need support, please let me know." The bard says plainly, looking up at the writing and glyphs down the hall. "'Wealth Ephemeral'. Interesting. I will make sure to remember that phrase in case it's a secret password." A glance to Note, in the process. "Short-lived. Transitory."

Once they're through the cave, though, he moves towards one of those pillars to try and take a feel of the salt-like substance, and then continue travelling with the others. Though, eventually, there's that roar. Hemlock pauses in his tracks, trying to figure out where it's coming from, but there's no way to do so. Hemlock tenses up, and starts whistling an upbeat tune...which serves to hopefully make everyone move faster through the cave, boosting their speed and the likelihood of not getting ambushed by something fast.

"Keep moving. Don't break formation under any circumstances. Splitting up means death." Hopefully, the group would continue moving after that, and Hemlock would talk about the red and blue lights on the way. "Red is bad, blue is good. Classic colors. We should follow the blue lights, as red traditionally means demons, and therefore, there's demons in here." He sounds entirely confident about himself, too.
Orchid      One quick arrival later, Orchid has taken her place among the other adventurers. She hasn't been here before, and given her normal operating methods, she stays in the middle of the group. She's got a feeling that this place has rules. Rules that may not like what she's going to do next: she sends several of her spider drones down the hall towards where the noise came from. The drones will use radio to relay what they see to Orchid... if it is possible in this environment. Note is here, which brings the reploid some comfort. "Don't split the party, keep your eyes open," she agrees with Hemlock. "Due ahead, I think," she adds.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur is BACK! Back to have another try at the big roguelike tower expansion pack for his experience. Same broom guy, same broom swagger. He wanders out of the gate with pep in his step, ready to dive on into the other room. But, despite the fact that Arthur actually once went into one of the rooms, he's refused to do anything as /offensive/ as bring protective gear. After all, he wouldn't want to defeat the whole /point/ of this exercise. Instead, let's get a totally fresh perspective on a place without acid air! Arthur heads in among the first, with a wide step and a wider grin, shoving it with the palm of his hand. "HELL YEAH, you gotta SPEND MONEY to MAKE MONEY. Get that EPHEMERALITY, homie." He says, nodding sagely, before swaggering right on in.

    As he wanders through salty caverns, and wonders at mysterious darkness, he does in fact try to exert his starlight, and does fail just as much as one might expect. After the failure of a miniature sun to pierce the black, he says, "Yep, looks like we got some MAD VISION SHIT up in this biz. I kinda hear MINECRAFTING going on, those METAL BITS were money right? Keep an eye out for MAD PAPER, yo."

    Then comes the roar. "Oh. Oh, and keep an eye out for that. Hell yes. Hell yes. The mix of red and blue seems the one that goes more forward, right? Is forward the way to go to get to the source of THAT? Arthur hopes so, because he joins whoever might be going towards that mixed blue and red path, eyes wide and eager, and a pep in his step like he just wishes the group would move forward. His broom's already in his hands and his combat UI is already showing off his gratuitous Aspect bar.
Touta Konoe      It's been some time since the last time Touta had arrived to the Tower. Unlike before it seemed arriving was brought straight to the point as they arrived into the room with the three rooms prior. He's heard on the radio chatter about the tower so he figures that might be the reason that one of the doors was no longer accessible. Which clearly left two left. The one that he was definitely familiar with the one covered in that purple residue...So the chalk like door was definitely the preferred choice!

     In regards to Note's remark about the purple stuff he feels the definite neeed to give the heads up. "Yeah, Artie and me went through the purple one last time we were here and that was sorta messy. But has anyone been this way yet at least?"

     It's at this point the group probably already advancing through the 'white room' or wherever it was they were exactly. Touta probably stuck out like a sore thumb. He was wearing all black attire like he usually was, and even his sword was just completely black. Apparently that wasn't going to be a problem though as once they continued on to see the green sun appear. After a certain incident from a while back, or almost incident Touta's made it a point to try avoiding touching things that might be important if they look magical...Especially if they look magical. Though when the words appear from the glyphs he can only look sorta baffled, "Anyone know what 'Wealth Ephemeral' is suppose to mean?"

     It's definitely something that'll probably be important right? Probaby. For now though the group seemed continued into the dark cave. It was definitely having a flip on the situation, what was a clearly visible room only moments ago was now completely consumed by darkness. The only light being provided by pillars similar in appearence to the chalk like substance in the other room. There also seemed to be lights of red and blue throughout the darkness as well. And while the sounds of mining could be heard in the distance it's only the sound of some sort of beast that literally shakes everyone to their core that Touta halts. It felt so close...But it wouldn't go farther than that. In that regard this beast...It sorta reminds him of the beasts from the purple room.

     "Hey Artie, you remember those creatures from the purple room? The ones that stayed in the purple gas the entire time but never messed with us when we cleared it out...Think that this might be the same?"

     In regards to where to go, Touta definitely figures he should be in the front of the group so the moment it's brought to the groups attention that they should head towards the red and blue lights, he makes an effort to be with those who have decided to stand at the forefront of the group. It's not the best job but it is probably the job that fitted him best.
Rurufon     With the exit having long faded behind them, the adventurous gathering is left in a strange sort of oppressive semi-silence, where they can barely hear each other's words next to each other, but their faded echoes bouncing back from the identical white walls are crystal clear. It lends the feeling that their feet are gliding soundlessly over the hard, smooth floors, but that many other groups are walking alongside them out of sight. Stopping to examine the substance that seems to form this place as limestone does a cave finds that the chalky outer layer scrubs away easily enough, exposing some matte and opaque white mineral beneath it, faintly grainy like brushed steel, and which smells of cobalt and iodine.

    Poking at the green beacon reveals it to be identical to the other one discovered by a different explorer: it conjures up textual catalogues of items and ghostly, transparent images when they are touched, along with a denomination of some sort of currency of an uncertain symbol. This one displays no magical rings and amulets (and no broom-like objects) to Note, instead selecting for catalogues of protective wear, martial arts weapons, and lists of unknowable serums, pills, and herbs.

    Sending out spider drones causes nothing flagrantly bad to happen. Even the drones themselves get their own little circles of visibility, through some strange trick of the walls themselves, and skittering down different passages, they find marks all over the walls that look to have been deliberately scratched out to unknown purpose, at first seemingly random piles of gashes, but quickly starting to repeat. Past a certain distance, the signal grows exponentially weak and grainy, as the signal has an incredibly difficult time penetrating more than a few winding walls, indicating they must be extremely dense. They find no sign of what made that roar however, nor even so much as a trail. Attempting to sense it doesn't help either. The most likely and mundane conclusion is that it must be very far away. This is also an undesirable conclusion, because it means that whatever made that sound is even bigger and louder than it had initially seemed.
Rurufon     Pushing ahead, the group draws close enough for this island of 'light' to encapsulate the origin of the red and blue glow, each one finally starting to cast its hue on the tall, organically sloped, and yet nearly identical pillars of white 'rock' around them. There's no mistaking them for anything but the inhabitants of this Realm -and nothing else. Whereas the last Realm had borne some resemblance to Terran insects, the pack of creatures the group stumbles on resemble nothing earthly at all. They have two legs and two arms, but stand in some hunched and contorted posture that makes it hard to tell if they're walking on their small, clawed feet, or their disproportionately massive hands on the end of their triple jointed arms. They stand at about human height, but the last quarter of their height is just one big fleshy mound that terminates in a thick, semi-prehensile eye stump, with only one seeing organ in it. The entire torso appears to be nothing more than a gigantic, gaping mouth, perfectly circular and ringed with massive teeth, like a leech. With stubby tails and horn-like protrusions on their backs, it's hard to place them as /anything/, and their skin -either rust red or granite blue- looks just like some kind of soot-smudged laminate.

    The best that can be said about the freakish creatures is that they are colour coordinated, as the blue-skinned ones carry balls of blue flame with them, while the red ones have red flames, seemingly coming from some part of their hands. This solely seems to translate to the fact that the red ones are slavishly digging at parts of the white rock all around them in small groups, scratching it away with their bony, segmented fingers, and slowly uncovering growths of glowing amethyst crystals, while the blue ones patrol around them, leer at them with their bulging eyes, and make weird, guttural throat-pulsing sounds. The biggest sign of intelligent effort here is a few pieces of wood and rope tied together to form a sort of brazier rack, which a much larger, brighter stone sits in, expanding the visibility here by an additional fifty feet, like a work light.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur is already seeing some huge as hell mouthes, and yet nothing large neough to have emitted that vast roar. He also gets a good view of the monsters that make their home on this level, or at least, he assumes that's what they are. Honestly, what else? It's a murder dungeon. They're not going to populate it with peace-loving pacifist mutants. Are the blue ones oppressing the red ones? Are they two castes of one race that just work like this? Is this a weird reversal? Arthur doesn't /not care/ about that, it would be horribly wrong to say that he's apathetic to the plight of the downtrodden. But after extensive examination of all possible scenarios, he does at least decide that one course of action is the only one that makes sense:

    He blasts forward on his broom, intent on launching straight into one of the blue things and sort of drop-kicking it on his broom. "HoooooOOOOOOOH YEEEEAAAAAH!" He shouts. "EVERYBODY OUT OF MY GODDAMN WAY! I've got a BROOM FULL OF ROCKETS, a TOWER full of SHADOWS, and a BIG-ASS ROARING SON OF A BITCH full of ABOUT TO BE BEATEN!" He shouts, striking whatever the coolest pose he can calculate winds up being after the attempted kick, and trying to assess the situation. "WHO'S GOT THE BIGGEST MOUTH HERE?! I'm 'bout to serve some DOUBLE-DECKER KNUCKLE SANDWICHES! I wanna see whatever DRAGONY FUCKER or SHIT-EATING SUPER-MONSTER you guys got down here! Hit me with that LOOOOOOORD, mother fucker, I wanna see that POWER!"

    If it (inevitably) does turn out that one or most of these things are hostile, he's about to open fire with blast after blast of laser light fire from his broom, shouting, laughing, and overall looking keenly for any sign of what he sensibly assumed was the Lord making that sound -- and for any areas that look more dense with blue light, because that seems like it's further up the local hierarchy.
Nova Terra     Approaching the first set of lights, of the red and blue variety, the sources are the most obvious things to notice first. Nova quickly examines the creatures with her eyes, determining that yes, they are indeed quite ugly. The stone emitting light doesn't go unnoticed, something that could be of use. But for now, they have an encounter to deal with.

    Like Arthur, Nova is not the type to believe these creatures to be friendly. From what she's seen so far in this tower, shoot first ask questions never seems like a good policy. So as the loud one goes flying in to distract the monsters, Nova falls back on her usual approach.

    Nova kneels, raising her rifle up to look through the scope. She sights in on what appears to be a vulnerable point: The eye. She's going for one of the blue ones, recognizing a patrol when she sees one. It likely means the red ones are the workers, the blue ones the soldiers. So deal with the latter first.

    Nova pulls the trigger, beginning to fire single shots from her position behind the group. She re-aims after each shot, continuing to focus on the eye, moving to a new target when she's sure the first one is down.

    And yes, she's doing what she can to not shoot Touta. She's nice like that.
Touta Konoe      It's a strange sensation to be unable to hear your own voice, but still your own echo. It's like hearing your voice over the phone as you tried talking to yourself...Weird. While he's probably not the one who scrubs away at the chalky layer, he's definitely seeing a familiar green beacon and like before...No touching. Well...There's alot of cool stuff it looks like it has though. So he's just going to poke the screen with his sword and see if that gets him the desired results. He can't really use magical items or anything like that so he doesn't opt for those. In fact, he's sorta opting for maybe some of the potions, pills, or herbs. Who knows when someone's going to need one of them or something right? Besides he's not exactly a healer but if he can pick up something that can that's good right?

     Though once they come upon the dwellers of this dungeon it was definitely a sight for sore eyes...Eye. You get the point. It seems like Art's the first one to go in brooms ablazing.

     Following his broomed friend's example Touta starts charging at the blue light bearers as well. Though instead of slicing and dicing, he feels like their eyes are so big, it's just an easy target. Unlike Art, he isn't blasting full speed ahead to deal with the blue menace. He's dealing with a few here and there and seeing what the situation with the red ones are.

     "Hey, can you guys understand me?"

     He's willing enough to give these red light bearers a bit of a chance, trying to get just close enough to see if they'll try to getting up close and personal with him or not. Whether the others will be as daring to leave them unharmed, that's another story.

     As he notices the light being emitted from the stones he does point towards the bright stones so the red-light bearers could see where he's pointing at. "Where'd you find that stuff? Anymore of it?"

     He figures even if they don't understand him, at the best they'll realize that they want the shining stone, and at worst they'll try to mess with him. Well...At least Nova hadn't shot him yet!
Hemlock Not demons and not angels. Hemlock considers returning his copy of the book he bought that explained Planar Color Theory, but there's still a problem. Hemlock considers what to do...and Arthur and Nova move in to begin hostilities. Alright, then it's combat support.

Drawing his fiddle from his back, Hemlock moves forward, and starts playing a swinging melody. The sound echoes out, focused on the blue creatures, and if it affects them, would hopefully render them temporarily blinded. He's assuming they function primarily off sight based on the big eyestalks. As he plays, he keeps moving, hoping that he won't get hit if he doesn't stand still.
Note     Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Note doesn't seem happy about the selectino of things that's apparently some kind of shop? She does peer curiously at some of the items on selection, but mostly it leaves her headscratching. So she leaves it behind. Not like she has any money to pay the thing with anyways!

    Onwards... to the strangest creatures Note has ever seen. Her tailtip twitches and curls as she takes a few steps closer and closer to the things, eyes wide and full of wonder.

    These things are WEIRD, but they're not BUGS, so she's not nearly as put off by them!

    At a point though, she stops approaching, just observing them for any sign of hostility. Or at least trying to figure out what they ARE DOING...

    "O....kay.... now what?" She's just... STARING at the things.
Orchid      For the moment, Orchid is hanging back from this fight. She's not a fighter in any case, mostly serving as a support. What she is doing is keeping her eyes open for any new threats approaching through the mists... and also inspecting that big glowing gem, to see if maybe she can move it after the fight is over.
Rurufon     A point to notice is that when Touta goes to fiddle with the green beacon, the language garbles and reconfigures to modern Japanese, and several of the menus change, replacing piles of ninja pills, mysterious beans, and martial arts gear, for more modern tactical wear, and odd, occult-looking trinkets. Apparently these are contextual to whoever uses them, offering things they are likely to be able to immediately use. Despite the huge gulf in apparent value between some of the items though, none of the values seem to exceed double digits, meaning the currency must be pretty rare.

    Without giving this strange new Realm any further time to jump them, several members of the group join battle. Getting the drop on them in a way probably nothing in this Tower is made to deal with for at least a few more floors, Arthur rocket kicks a blue creature from straight out of the darkness, launching it flying through the cavern and splattering onto the opposite wall with a patch of grass green blood, breaking its bones instantly. The others quite obviously notice him right away, and turn on him in an instant, making grotesque, warbling bellowing sounds from their mouth-torsos. Most of them begin launching blasts of that cobalt fire at him, having a seemingly endlessly supply from their mysteriously flaming left hands, while others begin making sounds at the smaller, red creatures and gesturing, if not outright shoving them, at the group, whereupon many of them rush into the line of fire and charge Arthur like cannon fodder, hurling their own red flames into the mix and screening the blue caste with their bodies. As a fine connoisseur of pain, he can tell that the red fire is entirely mundane, but the blue fire is substantially stronger, and also magical in nature.
Rurufon     It's a relatively short lived charge. As expected of creatures that invest so much biomass in a giant eyeball, Hemlock's blinding effect renders the masses of red ones entirely helpless, allowing Nova to start blowing their 'heads' off with ruthless efficiency. A few shots in however, she swiftly finds out that this doesn't actually /kill/ them. There's no brain or vital organ of any kind in that ocular hump, and so they just begin wildly shooting fire in every direction, threatening even the Elites who haven't joined the fight or who haven't revealed themselves yet, making it possible even to hit her by dumb luck. Along with Arthur, Touta soaks up the majority of the aimed fire (the blue ones seem to handle the blinding effect much better, apparently having an alternate sense or another), but the creatures are certainly more offensively aspected than defensive, and it only takes one or two solid blows, blasts, or slashes to kill them on the spot.

    At precisely the moment all of the blue ones are dead, the remaining hostile reds cease attacking completely, and scatter in all directions. The reds that hadn't attacked at all instead hole up in their partially excavated corners, apparently paralyzed in indecision, if not simply timidly cowering away from the party. After some time, one of them seems to figure out what Touta wants, and picks up the big glowing rock Orchid is taking a peek at, bringing it over to the two of them. Arthur would instantly recognize it as nearly identical the one he retrieved from the poisonous room before. Apparently they're mined from this Realm.

    Bogglingly, the gross leech noises the creature makes are intelligible, in the same way the Raldo Queen's horrific chittering was. "The holy stones are gifts of the Walls. Tribute paid to God. Without them, God will never return to us. We need as many as possible. Go no further." The understanding of the creature's weird noises is actually sophisticated enough to translate the capital G. The thing is basically shoving the rock into Touta's arms as an attempt to placate him and get him to go away before things get worse. As far as Orchid can tell, the rock does indeed give off its light through no chemical process, or mundane energy. For all intents and purposes, it is probably intensely magical.

    
Arthur Lowell     Arthur takes his lumps as he crushes bones and breaks faces, shouting and laughing. He'd expected the blues were the core of the matter. And he was right! This must insinuate the presence of, say, greens of an even higher order. If they're about to bring back a god, he'd better go see whatever theocrat's responsible. "YO!" He says, approaching any of the nearest red ones now that they're slightly less fearful. "YEAH BOY YEAH GIMMIE THAT SKIN." He immediately disregards gross leech noises and assaults its big, triple-jointed horror-hands with bro-pounds, sweet daps, low and high fives, and all other manner of surreal handshake. "You heard that BIG ROAR? What's the deal with THAT? Hit me with the SWEET LOWDOWN, homie."

    He seems eager to take some stones of his own, something he attempts to extract with prodigous amounts of gravitational pull. A mining minigame goes underway, and he tries to get it directly into his inventory. Whether or not that works, and whether or not the creatures here are able to provide him any insight into where that final boss is, he'll try one thing that they ought to know: "HEY! Where you COOL DUDES do that TRIBUTE? I got some BIG UPS I gotta give to your GOD myself!" His eyes are wide and manic as they tend to be deep in an adventure like this. Hopefully he can get the right direction and move on, and now with more light!

    Oh, right, and if Touta needs it, Arthur snaps and slings out a gleaming green spirographic Gate, which ought to be able to fast-travel Touta to and from the area he already visited, making this navigation a lot easier.
Nova Terra     Nova rolls to the side as a spout of flame heads her way. She comes back up onto one knee only for another blast sent randomly in her direction washes over her. Nova raises her arm to shield her face for a moment as the flames lick at her. Once they've passed, parts of the surface of Nova's suit are looking a little scorched. But for the most part she avoids injury.

    The blue ones have been dealt with. But before Nova can switch aim to the red ones, they seem to scutttle away in fear. She holds fire for the moment, watching them cautiously before finally deciding that they are no longer hostile. As suggested over the radio, Nova comes to the same conclusion that there's some kind of hierachy going on and that the red ones aren't exactly willing combatants. They pose no immediate threat for the moment, so Nova is willing to leave them be.

    Walking over to rejoin the group, Nova watches as one of the reds offers up the stone and explains their purpose. She hmms, "Their 'God' is probably the source of that incredible roar we heard earlier."

    Nova nods in agreement with Arthur's question, "Where do we go from here?" She pulls the clip from her rifle, retrieving another from a compartment of the back of her suit. Sliding the new one in she continues, "We'd like to have some words with your God."
Hemlock As the blue ones go down and the hostility ceases, Hemlock, who nearly takes a fireball to the face and barely manages to dodge out of the way, now a little bit scorched and burnt on his side and holding tight onto the injured spot, Hemlock moves up with the others towards the red creatures. He considers what to ask.

Finally, Hemlock decides to point to one of the blue corpses as he puts his fiddle away, talking to a red one. "What were your relationship to them? Were they in charge of you?" He's drawing his journal in the process to write down whatever they respond, if they indeed respond. If they instead look like they want him to go away...well, he dawdles there for a bit awkwardly and /then/ goes away after several long moments.
Touta Konoe     Touta is blown away, in a very literal sense. While the blue-bearers had all perished they did apparently get a few good shots in. While Touta thankfully is able to recover, his clothes weren't as lucky. His shirt is torn to bits and more or less a rag in his hand at this point. Thankfully, it still makes for some reasonable use as the moment the red-bearer hands him the magical crystal that illuminates the area it doesn't immediately shatter. It could be considered a mixed blessing. That is until the illumination provides Touta with an insight into how much damage he had actually taken... He's holding the crystal up above his head now for a reason.

     While Touta didn't have much of an opportunity to use the beacon as they had run out the first time, the moment Arthur offers a gate for him to use he takes the stone and heads back to that beacon. Unlike the first time he really gets to see that the options are actually in Japanese. Talk about convenience. Either way, he starts pressing at the beacon with the stone this time picking up a few bits of martial arts gear. Honestly, anything looking like pants was going to be taken immediately. But he'd also see if he could pick up a few other items as well. He chooses one of the occult trinkets as well, he figure even if he can't use it maybe one of the others could.

     Once he finishes putting on his new attire he quickly leaps back to the others through Arthur's fast travel gate. Man, he really needs to get one of those! Teleportation is awesome!

     "Actually, I think they might be talking about the 'Lord' of this place." That remark was referred to Nova. "It's been a while so maybe I'm misremembering but I remember the first time we came here that there were thing called Lords for this place, and supposedly they're like the head honcho of their place. Plus they said their God is missing so I don't think it's...Whatever that thing we heard was. Art, that sound familiar to you as well?"
Orchid      Unless Touta objects, Orchid is going to take the big glowing rock, hefting it up to one shoulder. Who knows, maybe it counts as money here, or at least it will let her see further. She will check what the Beacon might provide for robots, but unless it'll be something that lets her move more easily, or maybe some stylish armor, she might wind up passing. She's got the equivalent of healing potions already on her.