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An Impromptu Inquisition

Scene details

  • Start date: July 23, 2022, 7:32 p.m.
  • End date: July 24, 2022, 12:02 a.m.
  • Location: Granse - Rugged Coast
  • Participants: Ivo Galvan, Yari, Aguri Nakayama

Setting: Concerned that some eidola yet malinger after their battle on the northern coast of Granse, potentially threatening the nearby fishing village, Ivo empowers the Crux of Creation with the aim of attracting any stragglers hungering for domain aether. But in a twist, the news of eidola has already attracted two nemeses: Aguri, sworn to hunt demonic forces, and Yari, who desires to consume their essence.

Log


 In the shelter of pines bowed by blistering winds, a pot of aromatic stew steams atop glowing embers. Mussels gathered from seaside rocks float within broth redolent with garlic and lemon, the sound of cooking only audible thanks to the wood and rock interposed between the pot and the gust-battered shore. It is another gloomy day on the northern coast of Granse, but this pocket of it offers at least some comfort to the senses.
 A blue-cloaked figure is seated near the still-cooking stew, but he does not attend to it. His gaze is intent on a silvery object resembling the hilt of a sword, solid metal studded with brilliant crystals. With great care, he taps a fragile-looking orb upon the artifact. The former cracks, a viscous haze seeping from it into the crystals beneath.
 "I wish there were a better way," Ivo murmurs, "but out here..."
 The party has ventured here in search of the final fragment of the Crux of Creation, the Vaeltrandian relic now in his hands. With their increasingly refined magitech sensor, they at last located it here on the northern coast and narrowed it down to some nearby ruins located on an outcrop often made an island by changing tides. But in a bizarre twist, they were confronted outside the ruins by a powerful eidola that was transforming local remnants into its minions.
 With the party electing to rest after dispensing with the otherworldly marauder and to send word back to the Vanguards about what they found before venturing into the ruins, Ivo has distanced himself from the group and moved back to the coast. As to what he is cooking up other than stew, however, it is not obvious at first glance. But the vicinity seems safe, and his cloak makes him easy to spot by anyone traversing the windy coast.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Having kept herself informed of various goings on, it wasn't difficult for Yari to learn of the party's encounter. Typically it wouldn't be of any particular interest to her unless she was paid to interfere, but the presence of eidola gives the ninja her own reasons to snoop around.

  In short, she's out looking for a snack.

  She seems unbothered by the cold wind as she trudges along the coastline, nose raising up in the air as she takes a sniff of the winds. And then, she spots something in the distance. That telltale blue cloak. With an irritated grunt a sharp looking piece of ice in the shape of a kunai comes together in her hand, the girl quickly slipping it up her sleeve before she heads off again squarely in Ivo's direction.

  It's way faster just to beat him up until he tells her where the eidola are. It's obvious he'll know, he's usually involved in these things.


 The inquisitor known to only a small handful of people as Aguri Nakayama has not been with the party of late. But differing paths can easily lead to the same destination. And while 'Tsuchi' has her goal of hunting down a certain traitor, the rumors of a more immediate and dangerous threat were something she decided took priority. By the time she arrived, the chief Mazoku had been taken care of - but if it was corrupting remnants, there could still be other abominations lurking about.

 She wasn't given a specific guidance on this sort of thing, and she's still not sure about setting aside her pursuit; but Aguri feels as if choosing to destroy lurking Deceivers - making the world a little bit safer for the people she and the Church are ostensibly protecting - is the correct choice. It must be.

 Which is why the blustery day finds Aguri out and about, wrapped in a traveling cloak that whips and billows dramatically in the wind. It could be called a patrol, or a hunt; what's important is that she's out looking for any stray Mazoku, oni mask off in a rare moment where she thinks herself alone. As soon as she spots Ivo in the distance, though, the crimson mask is back on her face, and the martial artist quickly changes course to head straight in his direction. As of yet, she's not nearly in range to see precisely /who/ it is, nor does she yet notice Yari's approach. But if someone's out here, it could be her prey, or at least someone with info. Either way, it's worth getting closer.


 "Steady now..."
 Brow furrowed in intense concentration, Ivo cracks another elesphere of a different color upon the Crux of Creation and watches its aether pour into the star fragments embedded in its ornate base. With three of the four arms of the Crux acquired, its power is potent. Though the first glass-like egg was red and the second green, their respective energies shimmer into the same white light as they pass into the relic, converting their distilled elemental potency into the raw aether of Creation.
 "...Is this enough?"
 Their party has spent more time than most in the presence of eidola, giving the Cosmopolitan some sense of how they function. Notoriously, they gather about the Gates as a source of leaking domain-aspected aether, a form of magical energy that is otherwise rare apart from souls. He does not know if any eidola remain after they defeated the marauder, but if they do, that would be exceedingly dangerous. They are closer here to the fishing village than to the Gate of Purification much further north. It is plausible that any stragglers will hunger for the energies latent in the consciousness of sapient beings.
 So Ivo aims to attract them with more appetizing fare. The Crux glows bright, its luminesence far surpassing that of the dwindling embers. With an exhausted sigh, the young man turns toward the pot, a lopsided smile quirking his lips.
 "Now to wait... and eat."
 Turning to rammage in a knapsack for a hunk of bread, the magitech tinkerer is unaware of anyone approaching, friend or foe, as of yet.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  As the Crux glows Yari's fingers form a pair circles in front of her right eye, forming little lenses of ice. For a long few seconds she watches Ivo from a distance before casting aside her makeshift spyglass and breaks into a run, a worrying grin making it's way onto her face as she goes. Whatever the man's doing, it looks tasty.

  It isn't very long before she draws close, her footsteps quiet as she approaches slowly, from behind. Sneak, sneak, sneak. She'll get the drop on him at this rate!

  Of course, Ivo's always got some handy magitech tool that might sense here. And then there's the matter of the martial artist who's in the area, too...


 The glow of the Crux is eye-catching. Aguri's brow furrows faintly behind her mask. She hasn't gotten a good enough look to tell quite who's over there just yet, but as she approaches, it's only a matter of time. She's already thinking about calling out to them; they'll notice her soon enough anyway. But before she can yell any sort of greeting, there's movement in the corner of her eye. Someone sneaking up on her own target. There's no telling what the third party has planned, but-

 ...wait.

 That outfit.

 "...are you kidding me," she deadpans quietly.

 And then Ishino Tsuchi breaks into a dead run, yelling out as she charges straight at Yari. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO WITH HIM, BUT IT'S NOT HAPPENING!" As she charges, kicking up furrows of earth with the sheer force behind every step, her own cloak is unclasped and cast aside, catching on the wind and blowing away.


 "Mm, that's better than usual," Ivo blithely remarks, happy as a clam, as he takes a bite of bread dipped in broth. "All thanks to you, chief."
 The whimsical Cosmopolitan has never had the intuition for cooking, tending to make impulsive poor choices when it comes to seasoning. But he's had the sense to memorize Reize's advice when it comes to show, and the results speak for themselves.
 "Hmm..."
 The ambiance, the sense of being sheltered from a storm, stirs his heart, and Ivo begins rummaging in his knapsack once more. He blinks in surprise.
 "Where is it? Did I misplace it?"
 That's unfortunate. He was in the mood to write another poem. The gust-battered sea reminds him somehow of Tsuchi. What could lie behind the shelter of her mask? Might her hidden beauty comfort him, like a haven in a storm? Maybe he can take some notes for--
 "Tsuchi!?"
 Flabbergasted, Ivo turns abruptly and slips, falling on his butt amidst sea-polished rocks, only to be further shocked as he turns to see her target. Yari? Could she have been sent on some mission by The Capo? What kind of timing is this?
 "W-wait!"
 He reaches out his hand impotently as Tsuchi charges in and through his little encampment. They can't afford to be fighting amongst themselves right now!
 "The stew!"
 Well, that's one reason, maybe.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Uh oh, rumbled. Yari's eyes flick from her original target of Ivo to the rapidly approaching martial artist, exhaling a derisive snort through her nose as her right hand sweeps out. The frozen kunai she prepared earlier launches out with the motion on a direct trajectory for Aguri's leg.

  The ninja isn't hopeful that one little knife will be enough to stop her aggressor, though. She'll need a something a little more potent. Two against one is never good odds.

  "Hey! What's he up to? What's that he's got?" she calls out, her hand coming up palm facing Aguri in a 'stop' gesture. "That thing, it made me feel like I needed to come here." she says...not /quite/ lying, but not entirely being honest either. "He's calling those monster things, right?"


 The frigid kunai comes hurtling out, and 'Tsuchi twists, shifting her leg out of the way - but at the speed she's going, the shift throws off her balance, and she's forced to slow down so that she doesn't go ass over teakettle. It results in a skidding, wobbling stop, but the masked girl is able to very quickly regain her footing and drop into a powerful ready stance.

 The oni mask tilts slightly, Aguri's attention very briefly on Ivo. "...Whatever he's doing, I can worry about it later. My prey is right in front of me. Only a fool would pass on such a-" She interrupts her own sentence, suddenly swinging her arm over in a huge, wide arc, a rippling halo shimmering around the girl as she draws upon her inner energy to deliver a crushing blow... to the ground. "Arts: Landslide!" The instant her fist makes contact with the earth, there is an eruption of magic, of stone, a line of rippling, spiking earth exploding along the ground towards Yari. "-sorry about the stew!" she adds, her tone distracted.


 "Gaaah!"
 Ivo can only clutch at his head in horror as a line of rippling earth tears through the encampment toward Yari, the embers of his smoldering campfire scattering as the pot of stew flips end over end before crashing upon the ground and spilling its delectable contents.
 "What has violence wrought!?"
 Ivo slumps to his knees, groaning.
 "My stew... was innocent..."
 The serene glow of the Crux of Creation by his side flickers, stirring Ivo from his grim meditations on the horrors of war. Glancing away from the dueling women, his expression of dramatic chagrin fades, his lips tightening. Despite his protestations moments ago, he is reaching for his sheathed sword, left leaning against his knapsack turning his prior experiments.
 "...and everyone's timing just keeps getting better."
 Dirt and stone may erupt behind him, but Ivo's gaze is fixed on the shadows of the pines. They shift unnaturally, a hint at what they contain. Slowly shambling into view are several dark-armored figures, barbed thorn-like spears clutched in hollow gauntlets, the air about them dizzingly distorting. He squints but forces himself not to look away even as his vision swims.
 "Perfect," he mutters. "They were hungrier than I thought."

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Well, turning them against one another was a longshot anyway. The ninja's eyes widen as the martial artist's technique is unleashed, tracing the passage of those earthen spikes. Barely a split second before the attack lands she darts suddenly to one side, a scrap of cloth torn from her sleeve left hanging at the tip of one of the earthen spikes.

  "Not sorry!" she calls to Ivo, a pair of kunai forming in her hands as she prepares another attack on Aguri. But then some actually rather expected guests make their presence known. Without saying a word she throws both kunai down, the blades slicing into the ground where immediately ice starts to spread, leaving the floor wonderfully slick.

  And then she dashes off, making a beeline straight for one of those armoured figures. She's going to need a little extra power if she's going to fight two on one, after all.


 Aguri's fighting style is stable. Steadfast. Not /slow/, per se, but very deliberate and powerful. When she draws back from her attack, she does so into a stable, defensive stance, prepared for any counterattack; but it's this defensive pause that leaves her enough attention to notice Ivo's turned back... and the things he's staring at. It's impossible to read her face through that mask, of course. But the tension in her body changes entirely. There's a soft, hissed, "Mazoku." And suddenly her attention is split, between the eidola and the ninja...

 ...who drops a patch of ice and then charges the monsters.

 The oni mask cants slightly. And then, mistaking Yari's intent entirely, she declares simply, "Truce."

 Rather than run over that patch of frozen ground, the young Inquisitor turns and angles around it, heading for a different eidola than the ninja has chosen. At the last second, she suddenly pops up in the air, twisting around to bring her heel down in a powerful, descending axe kick on the armored abomination. "YAAA!"


 "You would be if you'd tried it!" Ivo shouts back to Yari as he strains to keeps his eyes on the approaching enigmas. Their fragments of armor are held together by a thickened mist that resembles some putrid mix of webbing and goo. Closer proximity reveal that the armor itself seems to be hardened chunks of the same material with a glossy obsidian sheen. Faceless and alien in their movements, they look as though they have issued from a child's nightmare of invading soldiers.
 The lesser eidola seem fixated on the glowing Crux to the exclusion of the three here, which should provide some measure of confidence, but to any typical mortal, the mere presence of an eidola feels twisted and sickening. No religious teaching is necessary to intuit that such things should not walk the earth.
 "Ah, great--!"
 Ivo's perspective on all this is peculiar. He's aware that Yari has been consorting with eidola, from their first encounter and the readings of his sensor, and that she's some sort of traitor according to Tsuchi. But he and Yari are secretly both members of the Covenant to Control Chaos and he can't afford to irritate their leader too much, lest he lose access to the laboratory that makes all his tinkering possible. In so far as Yari remains useful to The Capo, he'd prefer to avoid fighting her for now.
 Besides, she's charming in her own way. It'd be a shame.
 There are a total of four enigmas now clambering from the shadows, their false steel clanking against the rocks like tolling bells. Tsuchi's kick tears into one, its armor splitting like a carapace shed by a molting bug. The creature seems undefended in its obsessive fixation on the glowing relic. But as she rends it asunder, the dark mist within it roils, tendrils reaching out, attempting to seize her and drag her into its pitch-black center.
 Meanwhile, steel glints green from the trees as Ivo whips his floating blade in an arc past the two fighters from Revonus. The pommel of his empty hilt is charged with the same green glow as, in a burst of wind, he aims to strike Yari's target from the side. Should his enchanted weapon be quick enough to cover the ground before a ninja can, that buffeting force is meant to launch the one eidola into the other with which Tsuchi struggles. Perhaps he is trying to help her.
 Or perhaps he is trying to keep the eidola out of Yari's reach.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Briefly, Yari wonders just why Ivo and this 'Tsuchi' are attacking these eidola rather than herself. But the reason why is secondary to the utility of not currently being attacked, leaving her free to perform an assault of her own. Eyes narrows as she senses the blade moving, her charge speeding up as a hungry instinct propels her towards her prey.

  Just as Ivo's attack hits Yari's hand thrusts out, a long thin needle clutched between her fingers, the slender weapon seeking a weak point into the eidola's armour...but she's just a fraction of a second too slow, and her prey is sent hurtling towards Aguri's target.

  It's shortly followed by Yari. She hasn't given up on eating that!


 Of course it wouldn't be so easy. Even the weakest of demonic creatures are tough customers! Even if she's a lot stronger than ordinary people, Aguri doesn't expect something like an eidola to keel over in one kick. Unfortunately, she also doesn't expect it to actively counterattack, at least not the way it does. When it doesn't seem to start paying attention to her, the martial artist relaxes her stance just a smidge - and of course, that's when she notices the tendrils reaching out to snare her. "Gh-! No, I am /not/ interested!" Rather than struggle, however, Revonus' Stone Hammer plants her feet, settles her weight back, and braces against the pull of the tendrils.

 And then reaches up with both gauntleted hands, and grabs hold. "Oryaaa!" A positively Herculean pull, meant to yank the nightmarish knight so hard that even it can't maintain its footing. And a pull turns into a spin, a swing, the relatively tiny girl swinging the huge armored monstrosity around in a wide loop intended to come around at JUST the right time to collide with Ivo's projectile eidola. Hopefully, smashing the two of them together will reduce the number of overall threats, and not just make one bigger one... right?


 Were a marauder eidola still present, the results might have been different. But Ivo's flung eidola meets Tsuchi's own in a shower of obsidian plating and morbid mists. The inky blackness, scattered thin across the rocks, begins to seep through, draining away into the earth as the destruction-aspected aether loses contact with the enigmas' twisted cores.
 "Now that's might to match MegaCapo's," Ivo cheerfully remarks.
 But it is too soon for him to celebrate. The other two armored hulks are breaking into an eerie loping run, their proximity to the Crux seeming to drive them into a frenzy. If Ivo won't let Yari feed, he most certainly cannot let these entities do so.
 "Since when did they run--!?"
 Since he came up with his brilliant plan to offer them an incomparable food source, no doubt. Legendary druidic artifacts don't exactly come along every day. But the blade of Ivo's sword is still mid-spin, as he didn't expect to have to summon it back to him so quickly. His buckler shimmering and hilt crackling with the energies that command the sword from afar, he hastily interposes himself between the two eidola and the Crux, desperately deflecting the first wild stabs of their barbed spears as they close the distance, the force sending him stumbling back.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  As those dark mists seep away and dissipate into the rocks Yari's hand lashes out, catching just a little of it to draw towards her mouth. But mere scraps are far from enough to be satisfying. Palming another one of those handy frozen kunai she spares Aguri a glance before her attention turns to Ivo and the pair of eidola he's busy with. Well, she's looking in that direction at least.

  Her attention is on the Crux. It's such an enticing little thing, isn't it?

  But it's not quite time to make a grab for it, with Aguri so close. No, now's the time to at least feign cooperation. With a huffy exhale of breath she darts into action, taking advantage of the way the lesser eidola are so focused in the Crux and Ivo who blocks their path. Coming in from the side she lunges out in a stab for the closest one, intent on skewering it...and of course consuming it, should her aim strike true.


 That's two targets down, smashed to pieces. On the off-chance they get back up, Aguri once again adopts a defensive stance; but they stay down. So she turns away from the felled creatures - conveniently missing Yari's unorthodox choice in snacks - to face the remaining two... which are both running. Alarmingly swiftly. And Ivo decides to put himself right between them and the food source they're so desperate for. "Ivo-!" Without his sword in hand, he's in serious danger. With no hesitation, the masked girl drops herself into a crouch, draws on all the might her gauntlets can give her, and pushes off hard enough to crack the ground beneath her feet. The charge this time is significantly faster than her initial attack on Yari; the unfortunate downside to that is she won't have time to change course or even prep a proper attack on the two remaining Mazoku.

 But that's fine. She has a body. Hardened and reinforced by quite a lot of aether, she's the next best thing to a battering ram, and as dangerous as it might be to get so close (and as painful as it might be to tackle an armored target), if it will take the pressure off Ivo and allow him to regroup without serious injury, it's worth it. So she throws /herself/ at one of the eidola, trying to slam the one Yari isn't attempting to impale.


 "Khh--!"
 Looking up at his forbidding dark-armored foes, Ivo wonders, not for the first time, how he ended up living like this. He should be visiting a promising new restaurant, or making some ill-advised adjustment to some new magitech trinket just to see what will happen, or writing bad poetry. He's not a demon hunter. He is, at most, a shepherd of overeager teens, barely out of his teens himself.
 He flinches as the voracious eidola, seemingly energized at the prospect of a magical meal, again raise the extensions of their nightmarish essence that he sees as spears, preparing to impatiently smash him aside. But one abruptly freezes, stiffening as though in shock, though it hardly possesses such a thing as emotion. And the other staggers, lurching forward from the impact of the martial artist's righteous tackle.
 "Tsuchi!"
 Hearing her cry, Ivo makes his choice. The blade whipping back toward his hilt changes course as, with a swift slight of hand, a red elesphere drops from his sleeve into his palm. He slaps it into his pommel with a click as his sword's dancing edge shears into the center of the eidola staggered by Tsuchi, the plates of its armor separating as it stumbles and making room for Ivo's pin-point strike. Hilt and proximate blade alike glow red, suffused with fire aether, before a highly localized explosion bursts grenade-like within the diabolical creature, the miasma within it hissing as it crumbles.
 "Thanks," he gasps, chest heaving. "Tsuchi, you were like lightning."
 He didn't imagine she'd be able to leap to his aid so quickly. But his focus on following up on her has meant that he has no opportunity to interfere with Yari. Her icy dagger is small, but it seems to be devouring the remaining enigma from within, its obscured core pierced through in an instant, the ninja able to unerringly sense the entity's composition no matter how much roiling mist is in the way. That mist is pouring into her now, the raw power of destruction fodder for her own aims.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Yari's smile is wide as that mist pours into her, a pleased little hum leaving her as the last of that power is consumed. While she's hoped to get more of them, even one is a satisfying enough meal! She holds her kunai carefully, keeping a watchful gaze on the pair with Aguri getting the bulk of her attention.

  "Hey, you." she says as her kunai comes up to point at Ivo. "Who's she, anyway?"


 "You'd be surprised how well strength translates into speed," Tsuchi replies, inclining her head lightly to Ivo in gratitude. "At least in short bursts." Over long distances, she'd lose to a proper speedster, or even a trained runner, and she doesn't have the agility to /corner/ at that kind of speed. But a short charge? That much, she can manage. She's going to be a little sore, sure, but...

 "...what are you doing to that Mazoku?!"

 It's an alarmed yelp that comes when Aguri finally catches what Yari's up to. Half a heartbeat later, the girl in the oni mask drops into a fierce, aggressive stance, entire body thrumming with that tension all over again. "...Tsuchi. Ishino Tsuchi. I've been sent to bring back a traitor to Revonus. Dead or alive. It isn't my place to question my orders anyway, but if you're mingling with Deceivers, I have all the reason I need."


 Ivo is backing up for a couple reasons. One, Yari is pointing a scary-looking icicle at him. Two, Tsuchi's stance is making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. And three, the Crux of Creation still glows right behind him. His intuition might not be great when it comes to cooking, but he has a feeling that he should keep a close eye on the relic right now. He reaches out to take tight hold of it without his eyes leaving the two, picking his way past his tragically spilled stew.
 "Ah ha ha..."
 Mingling with Deceivers, huh? Literally, in Yari's case, which is still not a phenomenon Ivo much understands. But he does understand that he must not, under any circumstances, let Tsuchi know about the eidola who currently resides within Reize's pendant. Kernunnos is benevolent toward mortals, but the Church of Aijanu will not be inclined to be equally benevolent toward him.
 "Well... now that we've heroically dispensed with the remnants, the nearby village will be safe, yes...? Good for us..." He clears his throat. "Sure, one of them was, uh, consumed, somehow, but... I think that counts."
 He's not going to be able to stop them if they start fighting, is he.

  • Character: Yari
  • 2 years, 1 month ago

  Contrary to Tsuchi's tense aggression, Yari seems oddly calm with this situation. "Traitor? That's what they're saying?" she mutters as the kunai is casually tossed aside, the blade skittering across the ground. "I don't mingle, either. Those things are just something to use."

  Really, she's unarmed. What could she possibly do? Maybe she'll even give herself up to Tsuchi's mercy.

  It's then that a little cylindrical object tumbles out of her sleeve, the pin of it tugged out by the ninja's finger.

  And suddenly the area is enveloped in a bright, eye-searing flash!


 "Let me guess," Aguri replies, carefully shifting her stance. "From your perspective, they're the traitors. Or you don't feel as if you betrayed your own values. Something like that?" It's obvious she's preparing for another of those charges, but she doesn't launch off quite yet. If anything, Yari tossing aside the kunai is more worrying than if she'd kept hold of it. She does, however, shake her head. "The Mazoku think the same of you. You're just a convenient-"

 There is a sudden, bright flash. "Kya-!" And a surprisingly girly noise of alarm.

 The bright side is, the martial artist has the presence of mind to drop into a protective stance, just in case this is an attack. The downside is, she's in no state to make any kind of pursuit.


 As he blinks the spots from his eyes, grip tight on the Crux, Ivo has one thought foremost in his mind.
 "Was that you?"
 The young man is grinning at the masked martial artist.
 "Very cute."
 Whatever Yari was planning to do here, there's a decent chance she'll return to Ivo eventually. Maybe Tsuchi can beat him up in the meantime.