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Priscilla     There used to be a city here.

    Not a normal one, either. That which once stood here was not a concrete jungle. Not a bustling castle metropoli. Not something as tiresome as a towering hive of habitation. The thing that used to be here was one of a kind, on the very reason of its existence.

    There is a chasm here, and it was always there. A divide between two cliffs old as time, so outrageously steep and so impossibly deep that, though it is perhaps the width of only a small lake, one can see straight from the top down to where it simply disappears from view, shrouded by atmospheric mist. A terrible drop all the way back down to earth from a place so high that there are no points of reference. There is only a sense of complete exposure. The closeness of the clouds. The constant, dull roar of the air passing through. The jagged, angular flatness of the natural landscape and its titanic rocks.

    There is no other way back down. It is a rare crack through the entire Lordran continental table, to the terrestrial world below. Back then, people just built across it.

    The scope of what used to be here, though man made, fits the land perfectly. If one were remotely sane in their architectural knowledge, they'd say this were a site that'd be impossible to build on, yet by even the most cursory of reckonings, hundreds of miles of gargantuan construction grew from one side of the cliffs, rising miles still into the air. Though it entirely looks to be from a bleakly austere Renaissance world, many Gothic flourishes here and there, somehow the makers egregiously out-built the modern concrete jungles for sheer verticality and massive foundations.

     It's as if a castle were planted as a seed and slowly grew out of control over centuries, carpeting the landscape like a forest, with each city block and tower competing to reach the sun, until the lowest levels are shrouded in the permanent dim shade of dawn. One would say that it could only be built by giants, if each flagstone weren't of perfectly human proportions. There was clearly no use for roads early on; nothing even resembling traditional planning. The foundation for every shop a house and well and smith and silo and tower is built on the tremendous expanses of mile-wide walls built from below, repeating and growing further apart until they must be connected with bridges and stone catwalks, and until so many of them cross over that their nexus becomes the base for yet more castle.

    There is, lastly, as the place's most defining feature, a bridge that spans the entire chasm, erected at the highest point of the city so that it can fly level over the drop and reach the sunny far edge. The sheer thickness of its supporting struts and slopes to accomplish the feet makes it something one could roll a brigade of tanks over. On the opposite side is a more reasonably sized fortress; a singular keep with high walls and mighty gates and a tall tower -- until one realizes it is a church. The bridge is so grand that it's very, very easy to miss a small, humble cousin, little more than an enclosed rectangle, crossing a fork of the chasm from the opposite side.
Priscilla     It's all gone now, though. The last anyone remembers what anyone called it, it went by 'the Undead Burg', for being the largest concentration of humans in all of the country, and thus a bottomless, teeming death trap of Hollows when the Undead Curse had run rampant. A place that nobody had lived for many generations, after everyone from its guards to its shoemakers to its petty cutthroats living in alleyways had gradually gone mad and become unkillable, soul-thirsty undead, where no one went through, save to pilfer valuables, or to try and cross the one bridge, at extreme exhaustion,and incredible risk; enough that the surface shows a tapestry of signs of hundreds, if not thousands, of petty battles, fought by single men countless times. One can feel the old on the stones. Everything from the way the wind has worn the cliff-facing side smooth as marble, and the way forests of mosses and tiny plants rise through every damp gap between bricks, making the bleak construction surprisingly green.

    But even most of that, faded by eons of time, is also gone. This is the ruin beyond ruin that must be looked upon and dealt with. Where the ravages of the ages have been outdone in one night by a cataclysm of fire.

    Huge portions of what used to be the Undead Burg, perhaps two thirds of its entire boggling expanse, have become nearly or abjectly unnavigable. There is an obvious ground zero, where some tremendous force ate its way through centuries of construction, deep into the earth below, and then miles further down into some unknown catacombs, where the surrounding city slid into, creating an equally wide sinkhole of jumbled, semi-vertical castle-parts. Out from there, it's as if everything just melted away. The character is completely different from that of a huge bomb. Instead of shattered masonry and scattered debris and carpets of burnt residue, the city stone has liquefied, spilled and run, and eventually solidified again. The middle has filled in as a solid lake of rock, out of which stand the intact towers that floated from somewhere else. The near periphery has thousands of small buildings turned into misshapen lumps on the edge of sagging mountains of walls. The far periphery shows where the inward-facing sides of buildings had boiled away and sprayed backwards, leaving ribbons and sprues of solid stone around opened rooms, filled with ash.

    And whatever hint is supposed to be here is all the way at the very bottom. Not at the bottom of the crater. The very, very bottom. The Beneath. It is going to be the kind of feat that gives diggers and architects cold, sweaty nightmares. The actual geographic point that needs to be reached is only vaguely known, and searching blindly could result in arriving somewhere unfathomably off-course. The erratic mix of damage and still-standing construction makes any kind of excavating anywhere like pulling pieces out of a million ton jenga tower, impossible without a great deal of reinforcement; the more straight-like-a-tunnel the route, the more risk of shifts and collapses below, to say nothing of above.
Priscilla     Furthermore, you have been assured, quite grimly and solemnly by the second Knight of Gwyn, that those two things are not the only worries of yours. There is a Taint about this place that even you can feel. An uncanny feeling of dread, icy nostalgia. Places where fingers of black flame lick out of cracks and from under rubble just out of the corner of the eye, never when looked at. Seemingly random pits where the dark at the bottom is difficult to look away from; eerily intoxicating and familiar. Stones that burn to touch, cold as they are.

    Worse are the Shapes. Unidentified shapes in fearful settings are known to skitter around as shadows in peripheral vision, always moving or hiding away from being looked at. Those would be reassuring here, because the shapes that occasionally tease the corners of your eyes perform only the verb of 'staring'. They Watch. They Gaze. They Stare so much that they're somehow always gone. They're humanoid, but the worst part is that there's absolutely no basis for that knowledge. Nobody can ever get even a blurry photograph view, but they stare and they are humanoid.

    The second knight, Abysswalker Artorias, a giant of a man so very near to scraping the height of Ornstein, clad in grim armour of silver shrouded in layers of tattered blue finery, his own helmet occluding his face in complete shadow, claims familiarity with this place. He has used his slightly echoing voice, somehow slightly 'younger' than Ornstein's, at length to regretfully inform you that the taint that is in this place -- the Dark -- will, with the unfailing certainty of gravity, find a way to join itself back together wherever possible. Like reserves of groundwater that drain together when they are breached, flooding tunnels and pooling at the bottom of mines.

    Taking the time to make the way forward as accurate and as safely built as possible, for you do, mostly, have the luxury of time, makes it even easier for those unknown creatures to find their way back down as well, drawn in their 'natural habitat', as well as waking and letting in other, more tangible things. Taking great pains to prevent anything from oozing or crawling out of the earth to exactly the place you need to be is still not a guarantee either, for the layered taints of both this Dark, and the ones that existed in the long-abandoned and least pleasant deep reaches, are then left to colonize the way.

    Though it would be perfect to have all four, the final leg of the journey -- the part that matters the most -- will ultimately be the shape chosen by the four simultaneous needs to improve the ROUTE, its INTEGRITY, the proliferation of TAINT, and the congregation of ABOMINATIONS.
Starbound Flotilla     Someone said clearing and reconstruction. Clearing is just another kind of mining, and reconstruction? WELL. If you want something cleared and rebuilt, it's the Starbound Flotilla who will do it for you. Even over a massive chasm into the void. ESPECIALLY over a massive chasm into the void, considering their voidborne engineering skills. And these diggers and architects face such cold, sweaty nightmares with vigor and force. Not that they don't have them, of course: ain't nobody gonna look at this shit and not feel stomach-dropping fear.

    This is a real fucking fixer-upper though, that's for goddamn sure.

    The Flotilla, normally content to attend to these efforts with personal gear, have instead brought in the big shit. We're talking a heavy transport and construction ship, the SFS Mendacity III, plus at least one construction-specialized and one digging-specialized Starstrider humanoid labor platform, and huge high-tech mechanically-unfolding carts of mining lasers, hand drills, and hull-foam support sprayers for supports to allow a big team to work in tandem on things. Plus, shipping containers full of stone mined from quarries nearby, all ready for construction. And safety gear! Can't forget those grappling harnesses meant to prevent falls and help one navigate to important areas.

    Here and now is where the Flotilla intend to /shine/. Time to find a good spot to set things down and get everything deployed. Where are they meeting Artorias? Here's hoping there's space for something like a landing pad... Which they may need to craft if there isn't suitable space already there, since it's rather unlikely to have the open space.

    The Flotilla's efforts, and their gear, are certainly best suited to improving the ROUTE and the route's INTEGRITY. Moonfin takes the advice in stride and the Flotilla promises to recreate the original aesthetics and design as best they can understand it. And the speed at which they and their tools can work is absolutely mindblowing.
Raziel 'Somewhere in this tangled mass of giant stones, abandoned metropolis, and melted sea of stone was the object we sought in search of something important for the leader of the organization I served currently.  This land was both very familiar to me, yet completely alien.  It shared many similarities to the corpse of my own world, slowly dying and falling into decay.  The dark figures hung here too, though not the same as the taint that sept into the heart of Nosgoth, but I recognized it for what it was...a taint.'

Raziel himself climbed up towards the main bridge, using his tattered wings to glide to it and land.  From here he hoped to get a better lay of the land and.  Hopefully, he could help get some insight on what was here, and so they could better construct their tunnel to where they needed to be.  Though a part of himself wished he could spend more time digging through this city, wanting to break into its secrets.  

Though he could spend ENOUGH time here.  Right now, Raziel would indulge that side of him, attempting to focus on the ROUTE and ABOMINATIONS.  After all, he was probably better armed than most to deal with them and exploring the depths of the Burg would aid them all in time.  

He aims to try and explore what he can, trying to help find what could help them find better routes, as well as hunt down abominations during these times.  The Soul Reaver would be of great aid here, both capable of making sure things STAY dead, but also harmful to the undead.  Using his skills of intangibility and stealth he could also pick his battles, and call in for aid from his Club Dorado package.  
Mordred      Mordred's skills aren't quite geared towards construction. She's an engine of destruction, a powerhouse of questionable stature, and more likely than the average person to do something particularly stupid for any given reason. And yet, the Knight of Treachery is here, ready to assist in the reconstruction efforts of this once... Still? Probably still cursed land.

     She knows her strengths and weaknesses, though, and she opts to assist in the areas her abilities would be best equipped to handle: improving the INTEGRITY of the route, and takcling the ABOMINATIONS directly. The latter is straightforward enough: Seek out large concentrations of the creatures, order them to join her or stand down, and beat the crap out of them if they don't.

     The INTEGRITY, though? That's going to require a bit more lateral thinking from Mordred, but it's the type of thinking she's willing to entertain for once! She may not have the Flotilla's... Anything, but she does follow instructions well enough, and she has the physical might and speed to get things moved where they need to, hammered in to really pack materials in deeper, and even blast them with a bit of lightning to make sure...

    She's pretty sure she's seen fire used to melt things into place before. Lightning should do the same work, right? Right.
Eryl Fairfax     It's weird that Eryl keeps showing up, but here he is. "Are you sure you don't want to get that repaired?" he asks Artorias as an opener, eyeing his finery. "You do make the tattered look work, but something a little sharper would also befit you." He tugs on his own suit as an example.

    But, to business, to business. There's a big pit, and they need to build a route down to the bottom. There are pockets of darkness, and vague humanoid shapes that dance at the corner of even his vision. This TAINT and these ABOMINATIONS will be the biggest obstruction to their descent.

    So Eryl just looks on. Boring his eyes into the depths of the mist. Whistling down the cavern and tossing stones into the depths and listening for the sound of their echoing impacts. Walking around and noting where the figures at the corner of his eyes are at their thickest. Watching out for those cold flames and flickering darkness that emits from cracks.

    All of this data is complied and collated in his mind, and fed back to the construction crews. He recommended routes that circumvent the worst of the hazards by pointing out where those hazards are thickest.
Yuuki Kuran "I don't remember this place!" Yuuki announces cheerily, tugging at the tassels of her scarf and twirling them about and between her fingers as she crouches by a shadowy crack that she can fit her entire hand in between the pavingstones.

She has, by the way, fit her entire hand into there quite fearlessly.

"Oh. Oh my. This isn't up to code at all." She announces. Her awareness of the strange 'gas leak' of dark premonition draws her to shaded cracks and mystery holes, to overhangs above the abyss and the periphery of her vision.

Like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Yuuki isn't one to shy from icy nostalgia. Snow and cold, for her, is more homey than uncomfortable.

"If the problem is Undead, perhaps we could simply..." Yuuki begins, before trailing off. "No, no. Killing our way through things wouldn't be good. Still."

"Do you ever get the feeling, when you stare out over a cliff, of a tug? That strange desire, the vivid imagination of leaping off?"

The Kuran girl laughs awkwardly. "That'd be really foolish to follow, though. Terribly foolish."

While Yuuki inspects the bridge, aseasonal (and anachronistic) butterflies flutter around inspecting cracks, the hovels of Undead, and the general patterns and flows of ABOMINATIONS in the area.

MEANWHILE:
A surrepticious Yuuki with a ribbon in her hair and not a scarf quietly hops off into the (a?) abyss just to see where it goes. Surely, this is useful for understanding the TAINT.

Haha but doing that would be really foolish, right? Ha... ha...
Tomoe It had been a very long time since Tomoe was last here helping to clear it out and doing other quests to aid Lady Priscilla, at the very least. It has been a long time she hadn't had a real chance to behold it for long after the world had been repaired. She took a moment to take it all in.

"It's been so long..."

In some ways she as very much a different person now than she was back then.

She wonders what still lurks in this place and is ready for trouble. She will also use her extensive parkour experience to help scout out and find other ways. Bouncin through the ruins of this place doing the best to relay her finding so the other people working on this project.
Guzma Guzma has the greatest solution to being unable to maneuver easily.

Spiders.

At the beginning, he only has Ariados, the large red spider, but later he shows up with a pale white horse-sized spider he calls 'Walker', that is clearly not a Pokemon. He rides atop Walker whenever he gets a chance, but otherwise just sort of hangs back near Artorias, letting the spiders do their thing. "Taint, huh? I'll have them plug up any leaks we see."

He has other Pokemon for 'moving strong stuff' and 'burrowing' and anything else they need to do, but for now, Guzma focuses on INTEGRITY and TAINT.

Integrity is solved via the usage of webbing, building strong stability by throwing terrain around with webs, lifting things out of the way and sticking them somewhere else, and generally assisting the Flotilla with quick-patch webs.

Taint is done similarly - anywhere that seems like something will ooze out is solved with the mixture of a spider and a big beetle, Heracross. Old walls and blockades are placed elsewhere, webbed up tightly, and secured until Permanent Patches can be made by others later, allowing them to push the taint back, if it indeed works that way. Eryl's pointing out of where they're thickest is used to make this as clean as possible.

The spiders, luckily, can do this by maneuvering around, crawling on walls and stuff as they patch things up, which is pretty useful!
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu isn't exactly a specialist in construction. He has abilities that lend a natural ability towards supporting such things, and creating temporary structures. His ability to bore into the earth is also more than passingly useful, though in this particular case the complexities of doing so are sufficiently high that he doesn't feel especially qualified to lean into it. So instead, he's going to focus on the creeping TAINT of things that linger on the peripheries.

He roams the overall area -- and excavation points, where applicable -- in search of regions of taint, trying to ascertain exactly how the taint spreads and how he might coax it towards specific areas. The first time he realizes that the Things lingering there simply stop being when they're observed directly, he ceases to observe them directly entirely.

It's while he's seriously contemplating attempting to create a channel of the creeping taint that he observes one of two identical blips on his radar doing something incredibly questionable. Zero turns away from what he was focusing on to return to Yuuki, stopping in front of her self that is on solid ground and just looking down at her.
Haseo      The World doesn't have a crafting system to speak of, and Haseo's own personal talents outside of combat lean towards computers. At least he's familiar with dilepatated castle ruins. From Video Games. Completely a one for one translatable experience.

     At first, he's just sort of using his strength to help move stuff out of the way in an extremely unorganized way. He doesn't have a plan, but moving stuff OUT of the way is probably an improvement compared to stuff IN the way.

     Up until he sees (a) Yuuki up and throw herself off a cliff. Wait. Is that safe? Shit, she's like second to none in the Concord, she can probably handle herself. But then again... It's kind of an excuse to get out of menial stuff. Not that he needs to make an excuse to anyone but himself, they're all grown people here. But still.

     He's not as brash to throw himself into the abyss like Yuuki, but he's still pretty reckless, attempting to climb and slide down the chasm. If all else fails, he can fly as Skeith. But he'd rather avoid pulling that out right away.
Priscilla     If the Flotilla want a landing pad somewhere near the broad zone of destruction, and to meet Artorias ASAP, he obliges by cutting through a cluster of towers with several swipes of a monstrously oversized and surpassingly baroque greatsword, leveling them down to the foundational stretch of wall, wide enough to drag a ship aground for drydock. He will, in fact, linger more or less 'on site' to consult with them for as long as they need. His response to Eryl is a little gloomy, even in good humour, saying "Though I've tried, it all seems to turn out this way sooner or later." Contrasting Ornstein however, he very quickly, very seriously, warns Yuuki about sticking her hands into anything here. "If you don't know where it goes -- if you can't see where it goes -- then put fire ahead of you and follow after. Otherwise, if you return at all, you may bring back something you didn't intend to."

    Yuuki jamming her whole hand through a random break in cobblestones finds an enclosed, dirty area a bit bigger than a shoebox, which she can feel around. Probably up until the point that she feels lukewarm fingers slipping over her hand. Pulling aside the stones reveals a shoebox-sized dent in the ground covered in dirt.

    The Flotilla go to work with their insane array of heavy industrial tools designed pretty much exactly for purposes like these; they may as well be colonizing a hostile planet for all it matters. One of those with a penumbra biozone. The rate of their construction, and the solidity and design of it, is phenomenal, piecing together a path of 'city' as it was before, creating a broadly useful starting zone to work from, like the mouth of a deep mining complex, granting +3 INTEGRITY. However, with no clear idea of where to aim downwards, the best that can be done for now to work out a route is to make it as broad as possible, if they want to aim via sheer width.

    Mordreds physical efforts and ability to chuck around tons of solid bricks help excavate and reinforce key points, for another +1 INTEGRITY, as does Haseo's extra strength for another +1 INTEGRITY, however trying to pick a fight with the 'locals' seems to be impossible. They're never there when she turns, never mind when she brandishes her sword. Calling out only gives her back the echoes of her own voice, pitched strangely. Guzma further contributing to the excavating effort, and by creating webbing paths all over that increase +2 INTEGRITY. The taint is still, as yet, undefined and vague, however. Patching up the places that make him feel ill at ease and sealing them under cairns of stone and plastered webs is a band-aid that alleviates the feeling for now, but is a one time improvement of +1 TAINT control.

    That particular exploration is being done by Yuuki and Haseo. A Yuuki throwing herself off a cliff into a pit of deep dark is, briefly, a transcendentally uncomfortable experience. A sensation of plummeting that lasts far longer than it should. A weightless freefall into a lukewarm abyss. Hard, repeatedly fatal landings on dangerous bits and pieces. Eventually, the gradual, then rapid, corrosion of clothes, then skin, then flesh, and even metal, worn away by a hundred years of blowing sand every minute. Ultimately, at some point, if she wants to push it even further, her awareness of her ephemeral self just terminates rather abruptly. This contributes not at all to controlling the TAINT, but the gradient of sensory impressions will help identify it in future.
Priscilla     Haseo wanting to climb down the side can push his luck as he pleases. It's some small help for him to be able to report back from it, but braving as far down as he can go becomes physically perilous. Lethal just to breathe the air-he-can't-feel in. The point he'd be feeling fingers tugging at his feet and legs in the dark would be the point to go no further. The amount of help gained is proportional to whether he wishes to take NO injury, MILD injury, or MODERATE injury.

    Zero and Eryl feeling out the places where they can feel the surreal darkness lingering have a sort of crude but relatively effective means of helping the construction avoid the worst of it, adding a cumulative +3 TAINT control to the effort so far, albeit it shall only apply to the uppermost levels until it's too deeply buried for them to spot. Where the sun still touches the land though, the ABOMINATIONS are impossible to make much of. Scouting them out is, at best, a minor help to knowing where they might appear later.

    Tomoe doing her flight and parkour, without much direction, but with a broad aerial view, helps to fill out a more useful map of the area, against the rough boundaries of landmarks that supposedly sit at the edges of the deep space they need to reach, being a one time gain of +1 ROUTE.

    Raziel abusing his incorporeal form to slide through the ruins has a different experience. Amongst buildings now filled with nothing but black smudges from where their contents vapourized, he finds some jumbled with intact furnishings or work tools, collected at wherever the new floor is, having slid from somewhere further away. Taking time to examine them, rifling through the small belongings of long gone people, a pattern roughly emerges of where everything from useful tools to old lockets, warm clothes and silver mirrors, cloth drawbags and preserved herbs, have been partially and completely looted. He then, with a great find, finds a long set of iron stairs, partially melted, embedded completely in the stone lake, zigzagging down in a way that implies intended access to a lower level, somewhere in a smaller general vicinity, contributing +3 ROUTE. The ABOMINATIONS yet remain elusive to being chased.
Priscilla     Altogether boring further down, some of the middle levels of the city begin to take shape. You can see walls that are a mile high for no purpose other than supporting the millions of tons above them, yet shot through with just enough tunnels and rooms to be useful as indoor city blocks. Rivulets of ancient construction have run down the sides like used candles, joining together into a hazardous, yet potentially useful, webwork of unnatural frozen stone, joining many breaches into the mazelike interior areas. These can either be exploited for their existing INTEGRITY, without much risk of deviating from the ROUTE, or destroyed and sealed to limit access by ABOMINATIONS and the spread of TAINT.

    Another find is an enormous plaza within which stands a still miraculously intact statue of a mysterious woman, across from a surprisingly well-protected cathedral almost completely buried in rubble. Given the roads that all lead into it, this must have been a major nexus of travel. Looking into it and doing some research on the area might provide extremely valuable insights into a viable ROUTE, but is also a gamble on releasing all kinds of TAINT bottled up somewhere. It seems to, however, be a place oddly devoid of ABOMINATIONS, for some reason or another.

    The last notable event that comes up is uncovering the mouth of an old waterway, something like an enclosed aqueduct with the feeling of shadowy horizontal vertigo of a subway station. You can tell just by looking at it -- by the subtle, imaginary ringing in your ears, and the illusion of white pinpricks within the dark -- that is must be EITHER a very dense pool of TAINT or a gathering point of whatever as of yet ill-understood ABOMINATIONS. Sealing it up to prevent the spread of the former would probably spur the latter into action, but attempting to chase out the latter might just spread the former; there's no easy way of knowing which it is. It could simply be left alone with fingers crossed if you're willing to sacrifice ROUTE to do so.
Raziel 'My dives into the darkness of this city reveals nothing but chasing literal ghosts.  Try as I might, the abominations stay but a step ahead of me.  Perhaps that they, too, travel among the spirit world as I do.  Or perhaps they are simply far more familiar with the terrain than I am?  As things are, I set upon asking our guide to this place about the Abominations, and rather or not if it is more important to seek where they might congregate, rather than trying to hunt them down.'

The iron stairs are a great boon to the group, and Raziel makes sure to make the Flotilla particularly aware of them.  Their expertise in matters of restoration would be great to make their path even better.  He also attempts to talk to Artorius about the ABOMINATIONS themselves, attempting to understand the situation better and lead to better tactics to try and aid int his method later.  

When the Cathedral is found, Raziel spends most of his time here.  Taking time to examine the statue and attempt to understand the significance of it.  However, with the threat of taint in the cathedral being a problem, he seeks to use his ability to phase in and out of the physical world to force entry.  

From there he'll coordinate with anyone else willing to work in, trying to find ways in, or collaborate investigations.  Fortunately for himself, he does not need to eat, breathe, or sleep, so he can do this almost constantly, with little risk of being caught inside and needing to handle biological needs.
Haseo      Hold back on Skeith, and hit a physical limit that he wouldn't be as much of a problem if he had used it right away. So much for that whole Job Extension thing increasing his usefulness. It's not really fair to say that considering that it very much was one, but at the moment, it doesn't feel like it.

     Haseo, despite the painful and lethal air and generally very unwelcoming atmosphere that feels like it's tugging at him, just runs a clawed hand through his hair in frustration and inhales deeply. As deeply as he can, anyway. The whole breathing too much thing is kind of dangerous at the moment. Screw it. He got this far already, if he turns back now and tells everyone that the obviously bad chasm is bad he's just going to look like a dumbass. More of a dumbass.

     There's a red glow around Haseo, followed by a flash of light as his character model is replaced by a massive, ornate looking creature.

     Careful scaling becomes more aggressive as Skeith uses its large hands to continue climbing their way down faster. Even with his 'safety cushion', this seems like an extremely terrible idea already. But he's already committed to going all in, even if he hasn't told anyone and thus it doesn't really matter if he keeps that commitment.
Starbound Flotilla     The Flotilla, despite the hard work being done, seem to enjoy a return to their most essential work. The whole gang seem to always love these chances to build and dig, the one thing they can all agree on. Their work has so far worked out quite well! Albert's Starstrider finishes putting down the last of the repaired stonework, while George wraps up digging through some rubble in his own, and the two move on elsewhere. Let's see, let's see, what's next...

    Biteblade seems excited at the prospect of caving in and sealing in the horrifying rivulets, and will get to work on that if there's no current objections. The Flotilla can seal things off quite well with their supplies of stone, in huge shipping containers lugged down over the shoulder of Starstriders.

    George uses a combination of small explosives and Biteblade works under his direction with large stone-laying to manage an effort to destroy and seal the weird wall webwork that isn't the result of their oh so courteous spider friends, but rather the strange melting. With the risks others are taking in regards to taint and the total lack of abomination coverage, this is what the Flotilla thinks is probably for the best here. A trade of some integrity, which they already have plenty of, for some abomination-management they don't have much of, seems prudent to them.
Eryl Fairfax     The ABOMINATIONS are an issue. Eryl can't quite pinpoint them, even with his advanced suite of internal sensors. It's something he continually fusses over, even as he makes his descent. No one can seem to make any headway about them. What even are they?

    He helps with construction a little, but he's always on alert. Some might say he's getting tunnel-vision about it, and they might be right. But the TAINT is easily understood. The figures are complete unknowns.

    When they reach the aqueduct, Eryl rushes off immediately. The strange feeling in the air, the drifting white motes... he wants to think it's them. Maybe a nest of some kind? But he needs to tread carefully. Looking before leaping becomes especially important when you're descending a sheer cliff.

    He takes a seat, closes his eyes, and feels it out. The alien sensation... what causes it? Has he felt anything like it up to that point? Was it when the ABOMINATIONS were around, or the TAINT? If he can arrive at a conclusive, p<.05 answer, he acts according to that. If it's TAINT, he'll order the place sealed. If it's ABOMINATIONS, he'll gather a team and lead them in to drive them out.

    If he can't get an answer, he'll assume ABOMINATIONS. He is, in fact, tunnel-visioning a little.
Guzma Success! Ish. Guzma doesn't do super well on the taint, but he can help out the Flotilla fairly well. Now it's onto the other objectives.

The Flotilla has the rivulets of stone. Raziel has the plaza handled. Eryl...he doesn't know this guy well enough, so he needs to keep an eye on him. Especially after the embarassment with lizardmen.

As Eryl scans things, Guzma's the one to make sure it's done. If the solution is SEAL IT UP, the webs come out of the two strong spiders, as well as barricades of rock and stone. If the solution is to clear them out, he takes out Golisopod and goes in with Eryl, 'backing him up' and making sure the deed is done.

The thugsnidely remarks to Eryl as they go in. "So, why are you even here? How do you know the First, yo?"
Mordred      Mordred's inability to actually find the shadowy things leaves her feeling somewhat irritated at first, but she quickly turns it into a source of morale upon boasting about how fearsome she must seem in comparison to the everything-else that would normally inhabit this region. After stoking her own ego for a fair bit, she gets right back to work in ensuring that, if nothing else, nobody can say that she made things more unstable.

     Soon, however, she reaches the mazelike interiors, and another decision must be made! The knight taps a knuckle against the supports first, grunting lightly in approval at how stable-feeling and sounding they are from the taps. Not that she knows anything about architecture or engineering, but... Well.

    Nobody else needs to know that. "Not bad, not bad... Yeah, it's built pretty damn well for something so old-looking." She observes, but after some discussion, comes to the conclusion that sealing it or not is a choice better left to the more architecturally minded. Instead, she turns her attention to the waterway and the potential for TAINT or ABOMINATIONS within once some of the crew comes that way.

    "I got an idea." After speaking those foreboding words, the Servant starts channeling mana around her arm as it crackles with red lightning. It's not quite the same thing as actual lightning being sent down the waterways, but she starts blasting it around just the same. With any luck, Mordred's goal is to flush out the ABOMINATIONS if there are any in there, then wade in with sword and fists swinging. If it turns out to be TAINT, meanwhile, then she handles yet more physical grunt work in getting it sealed off.
Zero Kiryu Zero has his attention soundly captured by what Yuuki did, which is why he doesn't /really/ catch what's going on with the subway-like tunnel and ABOMINATIONS. By the time he's offered enough attention to the matter to do anything about it, Eryl has already taken charge and started pushing on the matter with Guzma close in tow. Rather than disengaging Yuuki like would be reasonable, he begins to disperse jungle in Eryl's direction to support him.
Yuuki Kuran Zero turns and looks at Scarf!Yuuki. She smiles innocently, but in that very particular way when someone knows how incredibly busted they are. "Want to look at that old church? It seems nice! We can sit down and listen to the wind, maybe."

Turning to the massive Knight, Artorias, Yuuki considers. "Flame does that? That's a good idea, then. Maybe we can set up torches and light our path with persistent fires to ward away the unknown!"

Scarf!Yuuki begins down the path towards the church.

MEANWHILE:
Ribbon!Yuuki bounces off a rock with a quiet series of 'ow' 'ouchie' 'agh' as she bounces off things. There really isn't much 'being otherworldly perfect' in only mildly controlled freefall. She fingerwaves to Haseo on her way down, her descent slowing just a bit as she peachhovers near him. "Having fun?" She asks, before plummetting down, down, down.

Still, no matter how immortal you are, as flowing as water around harm and hopelessness, being spread out among an ocean means there's no way to gather yourself back up into a single vessel again.

Short of that flavor of dissolution, at the layer where her shoes fray away and the bottoms of her feet skeletonize, Yuuki walks along the event horizon of the abyss and considers.

"This really does put to rest if it's a good idea to jump off a cliff even if you want to, doesn't it, Zero?" Scarf!Yuuki sighs, looking up 'towards' the top of the cliff, so far up as to be invisible. A suggestive smudge.

Pacing an event horizon can't possibly be sustainable, as even her shared awareness gets a bit fuzzy around her 'numb' feet, but she cups her hands around her mouth.

"Can we get along? Can we be friends? I'd like to be. I want to be friends with everyone. I don't want to believe that whatever this is..."

Yuuki lifts a foot to indicate the subject of her 'this is' statement. "... Is just some lingering hazard. Nothing in Lordran is like that. Priscilla once said that a place we all thought was strange and dangerous was peaceful, and full of kind people. I want to believe her."

"Hello?"

BACK AT THE CHURCH:

Scarf!Yuuki drags Zero (and Artorias, if he's idle) towards the church, leaning her ear at the large door. "What was this? It's so beautiful!"
Tomoe Tomoe has got a fair bit of mapping done, it was on the large scale but it will help have an idea of the general lay of the land. She feels her skills after this point should be better applied elsewhere. She will look for the efforts she can help with. The waterway looks like a good bet where she could be of use given all her experience dungeon crawling. She should be able to help.

She will contact Eryl and move to assist him in his efforts with the waterway. There's only a little small talk she does ask how he's been doing, but other than that she'll focus on aiding. If it's TAINT she will use her strength to help move material and aid in the sealing process. If it's ABOMINATIONS she will use her sword and shield to help clean them out.
Priscilla     Investigating the cathedral by means of phasing in and out of the material plane minimizes the impact of letting anything out, but does leave Raziel with plenty of spaces that can't be accessed, due to the roof and walls having caved in and filled rooms completely with either rubble or solid once-molten stone. He does get access to a useful room that contains, oddly, lecterns, books, and an old, yellowed map, spread out across a table and ready to crumble to dust.

    The content of the map itself is only horizontal, not usefully vertical, and badly faded and fragile, but the illustrations in books that don't seem to relate anything relate to major formations. More specifically, form what he can make out, all the books seem to be about particular tales of supposed divine events or sagas, and have associated iconography built into this probably religious sector that can predict the shape of things a little ways down, providing +1 ROUTE at no cost.

    Demolishing access to the straight mile of labyrinthine wall-cities somewhat reduces the structural viability of the road down, sacrificing the precarious balance of accidental structure here. Even the most skilled demolitions by the Flotilla cause some rubble to fall down below and some pieces to slip and crush, sacrificing -1 INTEGRITY, but the general skill with which it is done is a big sealant on vectors of TAINT for +2 control, increased by +2 TAINT for Yuuki's exploration of its properties before, and especially what could potentially be an enormous prowling ground of all manner of abominations that may have risen up from the depths, blocking of +2 ABOMINATIONS.

    The best of Eryl's ability to collate data is still very iffy. He doesn't get a clear answer, no matter what, as if the very substance of the stuff is an elemental obfuscation and forgetfulness in of itself. Gambling on it being a spawning ground of bad things seems to pay off, however. When he takes the spearpoint in with Guzma, Tomoe, and even Mordred, they are quickly surrounded with those creepy white pinpricks on all sides, difficult to append 'of light', but, as they'll find, constantly arranged in equidistant pairs.

    The act of driving them off is seemingly useless as first, as they find nothing of material purchase to even attack, but bringing light and fire as Artorias had suggested, and generally thrashing around and breaking the place up, means that the collective work of many efforts eventually seems to disperse them, removing +5 ABOMINATIONS by the commotion driving things from the crack in all of the surrounding area, but the damage of so many Elites doing as they please is significant, and as it seems with almost liquid dark seeping through the cracks, those things trail some of their essence with them, spreading -4 TAINT. Though the place has little relevant structural bearing on the path down, Zero weaving his vines into the area blocks off much of its spread, restoring +2 TAINT control.
Priscilla     Scarf!Yuuki stopping short of rubbing her face into a new level of nastiness, instead electing to engage in the most hopelessly naive of pursuits -- talking with the abyss even figuratively -- makes no new tangible headway, but hovering around on the periphery of the kill floor eventually starts to fill her ears with a deep, nearly sub-audible, constant sort of humming, and the shuffling and sliding of what sounds like hundreds of people all pushing past each other in a crowded space, without a single footstep to be heard.

    One by one, unblinking pricks of ghastly whiteness open up in the void below her, spreading while she talks to become a broad multitude of contrasting points against the dark, barely so much as single pixels in her vision. They seem to swim and bob faintly, like an optical illusion, clustering beneath her. There are no words, and there probably never will be, but Yuuki opening her heart up to communication feels strong, sharp pangs of inexplicable longing for something she doesn't know anything about, a gnawing sense of having lost something, and a sort of dim, nostalgic, but slightly hurtful to remember, love. After a minute, the white spots start disappearing, and the sensation fades, moving along somewhere else.

    Once again, she hasn't *gotten* anywhere, but it's a great deal of intuitive insight for the real Yuuki to be able to feel things out with, increasing gains from dealing with ABOMINATIONS in future.

    Haseo, instead, shoves himself down as far as he will go, and starts sucking in the pure entropy that eats away at even the thickest of armour. It is not nearly as painful as one would expect, which makes it more dangerous, in the way of frostbite eventually making one feel warm after it becomes very serious. At the lowest point that is tolerable -- rather, roughly 'out of reach' of the pit -- he can make out vast, complex conduits of where tremendous heat had diffused through the deeper earth and split hundreds of cracks into other areas of the city, through which a soup of curses can spread. Collaborating with this information controls +3 TAINT.
Priscilla     Hassling for Artorias' direct accompaniment and intervention rather than simple guidance in best practices as people work down, results in an ultimatum. The knight, somewhat uneasily, agrees that he will forge straight ahead as is his namesake and Deal With the problem himself, scouting the ROUTE in the impenetrable dark and driving back the nastier ABOMINATIONS, but he warns that if he takes the vanguard himself, there will be considerable damage to the INTEGRITY of the passage. An alternative is lending blessings to the groups going on ahead, with no particular drawbacks, but having only a mild influence on repelling TAINT.

    Using the church plaza as reference, seeking answers to its significance, it is furthered estimated that this was some kind of old parish or main church for the distinct a long time ago when the Burg was smaller, as it has grown like rings in a tree. You're informed that the cathedral across the bridge on the other side of the divide ended up supplanting all other sites of worship outside of minor chapels, but the goddess depicted in the middle is still fairly well-blessed, and it seems Undead never roamed strongly around here.

    Taking the path straight through the plaza would help greatly build a direct ROUTE and maintain a bit of extra INTEGRITY, but it'd lose the natural protection against TAINT and ABOMINATIONS. Swerving around it completely would make the ROUTE go longer, but keep things otherwise intact. Connecting it to the plaza and then following the existing infrastructure would be a middle ground, providing modest benefits to finding the ROUTE and minimal impact on protection against TAINT and ABOMINATIONS.

    Further, going deeper eventually starts to find reaches where the sun barely touched before, host to all manner of growing things that seemingly do fine without the sun's rays, even now, as well as a great number of skeletons, primarily those of humans and wild dogs, with some dead scavenger birds amongst them. Much of this area is locked off by only modestly warped iron gates and doors, easily removed, but speaking to the fact that these lower reaches were, at one point, reasonably restricted, and not for being rich and prosperous.

    There are entire paved streets preserved at this moderate distance from ground zero, down winding, asphyxiating narrow passages, with locked buildings to either side remaining largely preserved by the collapse of stony floes above them. Going straight through these streets and down its many overgrown staircases, back alleys, vine-choked bridges and dingy underpasses and waterways, would be an immensely helpful, pre-built, direct ROUTE to the lower reaches you're trying to get to, and preserve a tremendous amount of INTEGRITY, without much care for TAINT, but you can tell just from looking and feeling the haunting, bloodthirsty air from it, that it is a den of all kinds of ABOMINATIONS, some of which must be more tangible and nasty than the dark spectres that venture above. Breaking into it would be extremely daring. Caving it in would be a big gain in INTEGRITY and completely quash the ABOMINATIONS, but would require a huge amount of bypassing and a much longer ROUTE. Ignoring it completely is but a tiny sacrifice of ROUTE for a tiny benefit of INTEGRITY.
Raziel 'While most of the place laid beyond even my reach, due to being filled with debris, there was something to be learned and recovered.  Ancient tomes laid about, and a map that would rather soon turn to dust, than be picked up laid flat out for recovery.  While it was little to gain, little was spent to recover it.'

Raziel would spend time to recover what he could from the chapel, before bringing it outside and under great care to aid in ROUTE.  As this was a rather simple affair, he spent little for.  With that, it was time to move on...and the Streets that were found would be a dangerous game for him.  There was a bloodthirsty air to it, and it was here he thought that it would be less than simple shades slipping by.  

He informs his partners that he will try something, and to detonate it behind him should things go badly.  Raziel walks straight into the heart of the streets, specifically trying to invoke the worst of the inhabitants of that place, and with a flick of his hand reveal the Soul Reaver.  

Raziel is more than willing to cut a line through them the best that he can, to try and improve their route, at a risk to himself only.  
Starbound Flotilla     Raziel has some sort of SCHEME. And the Flotilla agree to abide it! But he also invites them to collapse the streets behind him if anything should go wrong, and that means George and Pavo start working together to cut the street off cleanly through a combination of weakened buildings that Albert and Biteblade work hard on, and controlled demolitions that should make totally unnavigable terrain, courtesy of the subversive pair. They're going to wait for Raziel's plan to be attempted, but for their part, their efforts are currently swarming to cut off what seems to be one of the most major significant abomination hotbeds, and they're trusting the others to manage the route difficulties that this might introduce. Trade-offs are trade-offs! Let's hope Raziel can handle this properly, though. Detonators are set and await his failure state...
Guzma As Raziel enacts his plan to murder abominations, and the Flotilla enacts their plan to blow up the streets if Raziel fails, Heracross is sent back out by Guzma, who lingers as far away from George as possible, because he always smells like medicinal smoke, probably even if he's in armor!

If the Flotilla has to bring down the charges, Heracross starts smashing things up with fake martial arts, trying to blow through the path with pure raw strength, even if it specializes in lifting. Other bugs are sent out where needed, to just blow the path open!

Only if Raziel fails, though. Guzma's not gonna fuck him up and drop bombs on him. He's a homie, after all.
Eryl Fairfax     "We go back a long way," Eryl says to Guzma. He leaves it long enough that it seems like that is all the punk is going to get out of him before continuing. "Our efforts in Lordran predate our factional difference. For the former, I will set aside the latter. You have no need to fear sabotage or factional matters influencing my decisions."

    He guides everyone into the aqueduct, and realises. Of course. They're not motes of light, they're eyes. A frantic battle ensues. He can't hit them, but light and flame scares them. He produces his vibroblades and scores the surrounding rock with them, kicking up bright sparks to drive them off, but it's compromised the INTEGRITY.

    "Well done everyone," he says afterwards, but especially to Zero for filling in the damage created. "Our first victory against them. Let's step up the lighting on our path to try and keep them at bay.

    With his relentless stamina, he does just that. There's a trick to lighting the way. One must be sure that even the least obvious nooks and crannies be illuminated. He directs how torches should be placed to do just that. In wider areas, he directs the lightning and fuelling of bonfires, even using the scattered bones as fuel if need be.

    Lordran always comes back to Fire and Dark.
Zero Kiryu "Yuuki..." Zero begins, only about a quarter of the way to a scolding tone. He could have wandered off from her, if he /really/ wanted to, but he's too concerned with the half of her that flung herself into the void to actually depart without saying his piece. So when she begins the trek towards the Church, he joins her wordlessly. There's a lingering sense of tension, though.

It's only the subject of leading flames that brings him back up to the surface in a socially useful way.

"The Sun here is strange. I suppose there must be some kind of sympathetic quality that makes flames exposed to the darkness down here want to exit towards the Sun. Or... something along those lines." There's a strong hint of curiosity that might be aimed generally in Artorias's direction, but he doesn't get too direct with it.

After a moment or two of frustrated silence, he says to Scarf!Yuuki, "I wish I could say, 'Please don't do something that you'd scold me for.', but I'm not sure we're there anymore."

Inhaling and exhaling sharply, Zero turns his attention towards challenges at hand. As Raziel goes into the winding STREETS and the Flotilla prepare to just blow them up entirely, he flicks a seed in among them and begins to spread a subtle layer of vines that are less for either destruction or structural reinforcement, and more for giving any taint that may be hiding in the rubble known channels to travel along.
Mordred      When Artorias gives the group the opportunity to take on the ABOMINATIONS directly, it's a no-brainer for Mordred to head right in herself. She'll gladly take the blessings, although the taint is still a concern. Alas, with only brute force and swordfighting to her name...

     "I'm heading in. Bet I could do it without busting up so much of the passage." She's still going to boast. She certainly isn't lacking in confidence, at least, although she does have to take a few moments to figure out her actual approach. Light from her lightning, magical in nature as it is, might not be quite as effective as a simple torch, and she'll make sure to grab one if available to help guide her path as well as drive back theABOMINATIONS.

     Mordred does have to head straight down the center, of course, as befitting someone trying to clear a path. She opts to focus more on speed in trying to get the shadowy monsters within reach of the light she brings rather than being thorough, though, since she's far more confident in being able to catch them before they can escape rather than spotting them through the darkness.
Haseo      The fact Haseo's not feeling anything that's particularly painful and yet Skeith is constantly dissolving as the entropy eats away at it is extremely concerning, to put it mildly. In reality, he should just nope out. And yet he hasn't. He's pushing himself past a reasonable point. And for what?

     Some scenery that, by himself, means very little to him, but he's pretty sure it's useful. He briefly considers going a bit further to get an even better look, but common sense finally kicks in.

     Skeith spastically phases in and out of sight, upwards, a massive hand grabbing the upper lip of the chasm as it finally starts pulling itself out before it disperses.

     In its place is Haseo's hand, and it finishes the job of pulling themselves up, he deeply fills his lungs with air as if it's the first time he's breathed in ages. The air is so much nicer here.

     He takes a moment to just lay on the ground and recover, dimly noting the fact that parts of his armor's texture has peeled away to reveal wire frames and static.

     It's not safe to lay prone in a place like this for too long though, so he eventually shakily pulls himself up, placing a hand on his head as he collects himself enough to elaborate what he saw.
Tomoe The effort to clear the waterways out is pretty serious, she quickly took to light-based magic to fend off the ABOMINATIONS when all is said and done the combined efforts of everyone is enough to deal with a number of them. Thanks to the efforts of Zero and Haseo? They keep the taint from getting wildly out of hand. They meet up some plans are made and she'll move to get going though it was good to work with Eryl again. She will know she's not the best.

She ends up following after Mordred to back them up, it's a strange thing, then again Mordred did help with Shyra's world and she gets the idea the story of Camelot is a lot more complicated in the end. She intends to take on the ABOMINATIONS alongside Mordred and will make heavy use of her light-based magic to do it.
Yuuki Kuran AT THE CHURCH:

Yuuki places a gentle hand on...

Well, she'd want to place it on Knight Artorias' shoulder, but she can't REACH his enormous chad collar, so instead, places it on his hip. The hip, you see, is the shoulder of the pelvis.

"Artorias, if Priscilla were to lose you through some tragic mishap or terrible threat... Well, no."

She resets herself, squaring shoulders and making sure her head's tilt up (and up and up) is still regal and commanding. "I am very sentimental, and we are all quite capable. You are right - please, grant us your guidance and blessing."

MEANWHILE, IN THE ABYSS:

Yuuki smiles, nodding. "I feel that way too, most of the time. Longing for something I can't quench, a fever that will never break. If you'd like to be friends, please let me know. I have to help my cute junior out, he sounds hurt."

With a puff of smoke and the sound of beating of soft wings, Ribbon!Yuuki disappears from the Event Horizon, reappearing behind Haseo as he smokes and chokes. She crouches in a toe-balanced squat. "Are you okay, Haseo? I saw you jump down the cliff." He didn't, she did, but that's besides the point.

BACK TO THE CHURCH:

Zero comments on the topics of scolding, and Yuuki gives her little 'busted! dang!' smile again. "That's true, but also, we aren't really there any more. A little fall won't stop me: And I'm not trying to die. I'm trying to live. Living in a way that explores what we can do, what is risky but not to us, to gain better understanding. The privelege of time and power..."

She smiles, picking up one of Zero's hands in hers and lacing in her fingers between his. "Lets us take our measures and find answers in unlikely places. There's no need to rush. Still, I didn't find anything out. Just the scents and signs. Also my feet got all numb, which was really unsettling."

BACK AT HASEO'S SIDE:

Yuuki isn't wearing any shoes, and her leggings seem to be burned to the knee. How curious! Her legs are fine, though.
Priscilla     Cutting straight through the plaza, down from one end and right out the other, turns out to be a very significant shortcut, bypassing days of careful extraction and reinforcement, saving +4 ROUTE, and walking the pre-existing streets for a while hedges another +1 INTEGRITY, though 'defacing' the area makes the blessings on it shrink to only the immediate statue area, making the area more susceptible to -2 TAINT and -2 ABOMINATIONS.

    Stalking the former deep streets of the Burg, searching for foes, has mixed results. On immediate examination going block by block, Raziel, accompanied by Mordred and Tomoe, find out that the task is more expansive and less direct than it'd initially seemed.

    There are exactly as many alleyways as there should be -- one between every two buildings -- which mostly aren't dead ends, but spread out into further junctions, other intersections, and other roads, jacknifing back and forth to cram as much construction together as possible, with little aim but to stuff wildly vertical housing into as little space as can be. There are underlying sewer tunnels that don't meaningfully go any further down, sprawling out in a broad web in every direction and frequently coming to ground. There are exposed corridors from broken foundations above, and holes punched through walls meant to segregate areas. It is an absolute jungle, and it's all pitch dark and nearly entirely blind corners.

    Hunting through the place has some results for a little while. Here and there, piles of gnawed bones precede sudden, ferocious attacks by packs of feral dogs, physically rotting away from decades of being down here, certainly no longer alive. Creatures with too many hairy, multi-jointed legs leap partway out of windows like huge trapdoor spiders. Formations of grotesque sewage ooze rise up from the floor and drop from the ceiling by surprise, constricting with bone-crushing force around legs or heads, and spewing carefully collected pieces of sharp iron and bones.

    After fighting through enough of them, though, it has the effect of seemingly chasing away the rest. Or, perhaps just as much, clearing a route through is safe for now, but certainly won't be safe two weeks from now -- or even tonight. The perilous exploration affords an understanding of the way ahead, between several people culminating in +2 ROUTE, but it's simply not feasible to completely sterilize the area without an immense effort to properly reconstruct all of it, and the grotesques that flee into the undercity through newly opened channels to infest them with new spreads of webs and ooze add up to -2 TAINT, though once again Zero mitigates half of it, largely by his thorns catching things, rebounding with +1 TAINT.

    The collapse caused by the Flotilla and aided by Guzma is eventually settled on to seal the deal. Nobody needs to contend with the hunting aberrations released from their closed ecosystem by the digging, on top of everything else. The entire level cannot be reasonably crushed, but the only exits are easy to locate and blow to smithereens. Collapsing the teetering 'skyscrapers' and walling off the sides of the passage with controlled demolition helps with +2 INTEGRITY and extinguishes a massive source of fresh enemies, resulting in +4 ABOMINATIONS, however it sets back -4 ROUTE by intentionally giving up a broad spread of the most reasonable ways down.

    Artorias, influenced by Yuuki, holds back his sword for now, instead handing down an immaculately intact, elaborately engraved onyx and silver sun-pendant. Bringing it about and striking it repeatedly against various surfaces causes filth and dark and old curses to evaporate like mist in the morning, save that its power is exhausted after a while, and must wait to recover before being used at length again. Eryl connects these areas with lines of both safe and symbolic lit passage, reinforcing the places of purity for an improvement of +2 TAINT.
Priscilla     Going in a laborious spiral around the lower area of the Burg in order to reach where its zigzag of short bridges and steep stairs and dead end drops would go, you break into what must be the original foundation of the metropolis -- or as close to one that is still even slightly accessible. Here, the flames didn't quite reach all the way. Nearer to ground zero, molten city from above has flowed and pooled below, and toppling towels had fallen miles down, but given a bit of distance, the flagstones are the same as they've ever been, cold and stark and dusty. Broad paths wind here and there for seemingly no reason, occasionally connecting to doors so underscaled that they're incredibly easy to miss. The interiors are old enough to all be rough-hewn wood, with hard landings and spiral stairs, filled with empty containers and rustic junk, as if they were laid down provisionally and never renovated.

    Those tiny doors open into the oldest and most disused, technically habitable places in the Burg. While the previous streets had been host to cutthroats and feral dogs even in its heyday, this level is so dark, so empty, and so far away from everything that one could possibly need, that only the dustiest and most hopeless of rejects would wander down here. That, or people trying to hide something as best as possible.

    They are also definitely the single best way to reach the all but completely forgotten understructure. Exploring the interiors of this section of the foundations would be a great help to the ROUTE at no cost of INTEGRITY, but potentially stumble across unwholesome things that may create unforeseen problems, or encounter just about any kind of sudden, unwanted development. Closing them all up means not dealing with those problems, but making the way through more of a trade of the realities of trying to directly cut through absurdly thick foundational construction with millions of tons above it, where one has no choice but to choose how much ROUTE and how much INTEGRITY they want to sacrifice.

    Further, these streets seem to have absorbed something else than above. Rather than steeped in ethereal shadow or colonized as an environment for monsters, a deep, terrible, intangible kind of malice has pooled in the cracks and soaked into the stones. Channels of streets leading from the ground zero area blister with phantom heat and prick with invisible needles to walk, worse and worse going forward. Certain sections are filled with a completely imaginary sound of awful keening like hot screws dragged across chalky glass, becoming absolutely skull-splitting if lingered in. Some stones actually just catch fire when stepped on. Some doors combust in the hand. Some promising dead ends just dissolve into impromptu pyroclastics, poisonous fumes and all.

    The TAINT here is incredibly strong and incredibly lethal, more stubborn than the others by far. Avoiding it compromises the directness of the ROUTE greatly, but not even ABOMINATIONS drawn magnetically to the depths could go through it. Simply purging it is impossible; these areas must be systematically destroyed down to their bones to be passable, causing immense INTEGRITY damage to lower the TAINT and preserve some of the ROUTE, albeit less of it, due to the extra effort compared to just walking a street.
Mordred      Mordred's not fond of the Burg's construction. She can get around easily enough with some precise leaps and not being limited to short hops, but it's no more pleasant considering that the spaces are so small, the construction so confusing, and the need to keep this place relatively intact is still lingering in the back of her head.

    Damn promises to actually assist with this place instead of breaking it down entirely.

     Still, things progress steadily until running into the understructure. The whole place has Morded gritting her teeth and watching for ambushes from more of those abominations, and the constant tension keeps her from finding a moment's respite at all. When the opportunity to keep pressing onwards and EXPLORING FURTHER reveals itself, she takes it perhaps a little too eagerly. Scouting out the area and knowing what the construction, seaing, or otherwise is going to be dealing with needs to be done, and Mordred's more than willing to put herself in the line of fire to do it!

    Even if it means unearthing more of that TAINT. A little more in this hellhole couldn't hurt, could it?
Raziel 'The streets twist and turn, the darkness threatens to swallow up anything that lingers too long.  Or worse, turn it into madness...it is like what has happened to the clans on Nosgoth.  Here something seeped into the hearts of men.  Here something turned everything to its own purpose.'

Eventually, the worth of what he had done was shown to be not a drop in the bucket, but they had gained some better understanding of the layout, and better planned the route, so it was not a total loss.  Still, it served to show just how dangerous the depths of this place were.  

When it came to the final layers, there was a call to avoid it altogether. That may have been the best route, but once more Raziel decided that he would try and risk the depths to see if there was anything he could do.  Taking his time to search through these places and see how far he could move deeper, even at risk to himself.  

Between the various traps and the lingering malevolent energies, it was far from a safe attempt.  However, anything he could do to preserve the route and integrity of this trip, he felt it would be worth the risk.
Guzma Raziel heads off into the depths. Guzma voices concern, but Raziel likely doesn't heed it, so he instead goes on his original plan: advocating, after Eryl made a good point, going AROUND the lethal TAINT.

If the group agrees, Guzma will move his spiders to make sure that they can find a path, and then navigate around with them. Preferably, the path has as little taint as possible, sensed by their spider-y senses and webbing.
Zero Kiryu Any tension that might have lingered in Zero's frame evaporates when Yuuki takes his hand. He nods, an affirmative noise of gentle assent rumbling in his throat.

Regarding the decision that comes to lie ahead of them...

He raises his free hand and disperses another round of creeping vines from his fingertips. This time the goal is less management of the Taint and more finding viable and relatively clear alternate routes. His emphasis isn't especially on finding the quickest alternative, though.

The deeper they go, he reasons to himself, the less likely it will be the ordinary people should be expected to be going this far in the future. The reconstruction is necessary, but if they have to live a certain measure of persistent danger, tolerating that danger nearer to the foundations is more acceptable than it is higher up.

<< George, there's something else I've been meaning to ask you. Concerning the world of Mortis. Just think at me, I won't be scraping your thoughts. >> Zero's voice echoes into George's mind. It's like he's whispering from nearby, more so than 'uncomfortably close'.

<< What ultimately made you realize that Hugo was too far gone? >> He asks.
Tomoe The efforts go deeper and deeper till they hit the mother of all TAINT so far, she's very much of the mind to find a way around the TAINT than to try to deal with this much directly. Tomoe would start scouting again trying to find a way around it, hopefully, one where they can not lose more time than they have to. So she will put in an effort into trying to map a way around.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki accepts the onyx sunlight medallion with the reverence of someone recieving a precious item from a friend that they are borrowing - or a relic from a bygone era that has been entrusted to them. Using her insight into the sounds - and sights - of the taint, she chases away this and that when she senses the hidden danger with a few taps of the medallion. The whole time, she does so hand-in-hand with Zero, because they truly don't get out that often like this.

Even if it's a dirty burg of garbage zombies who hate you. Even so.

"I hope this will remain beautiful, in the way of Lordran, when we're done. Destruction comes before building, and it is at the Lord of the land's request, but..."

Yuuki frets over the little nothings of the day.

"... I don't want her to be disappointed we destroyed this place in the process. It also means failure simply isn't an option."
Starbound Flotilla     The Starbound Gangbunch are hard at work here. Eryl suggested going around, and there's others working to enhance that. When areas are found that have some taint clearance, the Flotilla start deploying little torch beacons and chains of medieval holo-lights designed to make it much easier to navigate those safer paths. It's likely to be convoluted, certainly, and a longer route than before, but with some guidance from Zero and Guzma, it'll probably work out, right? They even want to leave little healing caches, full of everything necessary to survive the dire taint situation.

    Zero sends a query, and that query gets a response.

    << You know, I'm the cool uncle, right? So, kids, that's off-limits for me. Don't do it! Just doesn't fit. Far as I'm concerned, ya'know, he never really was too far gone. That's why I couldn't be the one to do the deed, right? >> George stops for a moment during the beacond-deployments, just for a smoke break.

    << Part of this whole job is understanding how you can have two ideas in your brain that are mutually exclusive! I could know an absolute ruler was inflicting eternal suffering on a child, and I could know a child deserved life without pain, and both of 'em were true as anything could be. Just had to hold 'em both at once, even when they wanna push away from each other. That's one of the steps you gotta deal with to do what I do, y'know? >>

    << Not really ever one moment, one specific time it all comes together. Not a switch to flip for that, not /exactly/. Boil that frog enough and you'll get two ideas in your brain too. Betcha you do your best to purge the dissonance, but it's actually something you should try more of. It's the way we were always supposed to think. >>
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl comes back down from lighting the path and assesses what they've found. He nods along with Yuuki. "Too much destruction is unacceptable. Not just for practical reasons, but personal. This place survived the Curse. As horrid as it is, we must preserve it."

    He's not participated in the construction aspect of this whole job. But here he pitches in. He wants to save it, so it's only fair he put in the necessary work to lengthen the ROUTE to do it.
Zero Kiryu << I try not to read colleagues outside of professionally required contexts. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Which is not to say that it is a tool that I do not or would not ever employ. >> Zero admits to George, largely because he absolutely did that exact thing during the Mortis situation.

<< But I see. I think I see. >>

<< That sort of situation, it is... very close to me. There was a time when I was sick in a similar way. Most people who reached the sort of condition that I did don't make it. >>

<< It's hard to stomach that the exceptions are so few. >>

"Don't worry," Zero reassures Yuuki, squeezing her hand, "if there was anything dearly precious to Priscilla beyond the greater goals of mending this place, I am certain she would have given special instructions to someone. As long as the region is not rendered uninhabitable or otherwise useless for her purposes..."

He leaves the thought incomplete, not feeling as if any further elaboration is needed.