Let's Go On (the last 1/5th of) An AdVeNtUrE!!!!

That voice sounds like your roommate’s little brother, Joachim! You wonder what’s the matter?

Hmm…

This is probably some sort of misunderstanding…

Hmm… Do you know anyone that looks like that, but also try to avoid Joachim?

You can only think of one person that might fit the description…

Joachim is definitely a spooky boy, but you believe him that he’s not a vampire. If it is Donovan that’s following him, all you need to do is let him know that. So you give Donovan a call, and ask him what he’s up to.

Ok, then it’s not Donovan.

You tell him about what’s going on with your room-mates’ little brother.

Oh yeah, those vampire were totally wearing maroon, weren’t they?

But why would a vampire- if that is, in fact, who’s following Joachim- be interested in some kid?

Now that you’ve got that cleared up, you hang up and call Joachim back.

Hmm, he does have a point. Bettina made you go along with him the other day to help when he clearly didn’t need help.

But this time it sounds like he might actually need help?

Well, he’s a little rude, but he’s not a bad kid. You decide that you’re going to help out Joachim.

Of course, you have no idea how to get home from here.

Maybe if you go back inside you can figure something out.

Hm?

You call for Aiden, so that you can both check out the portal together.

Looks like Aiden has already checked out the portal without you. How rude.

Hmm, can’t imagine why that is.

Oh, there’s Caroline! And Kitty, too.

So, what exactly is up?

It sounds kinda like you guys are done here. Which is good, since you’ve got something else you need to do, anyways.

Well… you could try talking Kitty into it.

No, you shouldn’t try to talk Kitty into it, she’s fine. You give her a hug and wish her luck on her way.

Good for them.

You head outside, while you think about what to do.

Since Your City does not have a standalone Archaeologists Guild, it operates from inside the Magician’s Guild. Considering the sorts of skills archaeologists have, it was either that, or the Rogue’s Guild, and having a bunch of priceless artifacts in the Rogue’s Guild seemed like a bad idea.

And it turns out that you did think of what to do while heading outside! You give Beth, the witch, a call and see if she wants to help you out with Joachim.

You tell her to meet up with you outside the Magicians Guild Hall and hang up. Now what?

You need to go help Joachim with his probably vampire problem, but what’s your plan there?

While waiting for Beth, you decide to review the spells available for both you and Joachim, so you can figure out your course of action.

You don’t really know much about Joachim, so you don’t have any idea of what spells he knows other than the basics you’d expect any level 18 Necromancer to know. Every magician learns how to conjure water and to do simple tricks, so he’d obviously know those two. Summoning undead is pretty complicated, so he might or might not have finished learning a summoning spell yet. He’d definitely have learned some sort of attack spell, though, basically all the disciplines you can study start you off with one of those. Beyond that, it’s a mystery. He might have learned spells from some extra-curriculars, but Joachim doesn’t really seem like that sort of guy.

As for you, you only know two ‘real spells,’ Conjure water and Prestidigitation. Everything else you know how to do is some combination of summoning and controlling plasma, but you’ve developed quite a few techniques that could be taught as spells by themselves: Plasma Pal, Plasma Punch, Plasma G- wait.

All of a sudden, you feel a powerful source of dark magic approaching you from behind…

It feels like it could be some sort of ghost, or vampire, or…

It could be some sort of ghost, or vampire, or… a witch! Like your buddy, Beth, the witch.

You give Beth the quick rundown of the situation:

Beth can summon witchfyre, either to use as a light source or to burn enemies. She can summon a small portion of swamp up out of the ground, and bring forth grasping hands from the bog. She can use her dark magic to create fearsome illusions and she also knows a variety of curses: Curse of weakness, Curse of clumsiness, Curse of frailty, and so on…

She knows a variety of other spells, too, but they’re not really practical for combat…

hey yall im on vacation so updates might be pretty slow for about week

Let’s see what happens if you combine Beth’s witchfyre with your plasma pal…

Your plasma pal has some autonomy, but is not very powerful, and Beth’s witchfyre is very powerful, but can’t move on it’s own. Surely, the combination of the two should be an incredibly powerful destructive force, it should be…

really cute?

OK, enough goofing off. To stop this vampire, you’re going to want a plan. Joachim is in the Magician’s Guild hall, and there are plenty of places you could think of to intercept a vampire stalker there. If you just call up Joachim again, you can tell him where to go so that the two of you can help him with his little problem.

You could arrange to pass him in the hallway and see if you can stop the vampire as you pass, or tell him to go to the library or cafeteria and try to spy where they’re observing Joachim from, or tell him to leave the guild and maybe watch the exit behind him to try and see the vampire leave. Perhaps something else?

What’s your plan?

You’ve just thought of the 100% perfect place to confront that vampire.

Assuming that the main owner is back, that is.

Oh, and also assuming Joachim is fine waiting a few hours as well, you guess. The truck does drive somewhere to pick up more ingredients between meals, and probably also take a break.

Maybe you should think of something else…

From: imgay at 2018-06-26 12:51:40
i still havent read all the shit i missed
are there like 20 donovans now

theres 4, actually

Though you go there frequently, you feel like Joachim has probably looked at a map of the Magician’s Guild more recently than you, and might have a better idea of the best place to catch that tail.

So you dial him up, and ask for his idea, making sure to let him know you have a witch with you to help out.

Joachim suggests doing it in the cafeteria. He’s going to sit in the middle of the cafeteria, facing away from the main entrance. Naturally, the stalker will sit somewhere that Joachim can’t see, so they will sit somewhere on the half of the cafeteria near the main entrance. At some point, you and Beth will both enter through opposite side doors closest to the main entrance. Having one of you on each side of the room will give you complete view of the room, making it impossible for the stalker to elude you.

Sounds like a good plan, right?

That plan sounds mostly good, so you tell Joachim you’re going to do that and hang up. You’ve got a good idea to check the stalker out before you two attempt to stop them, and see if you can do it alone or if you’ll need more help.

Darn! Now what are you supposed to do?

Oh, now that she mentions it, you do vaguely recall something like that…

So how do you want to waste time? Chat up Beth? Maybe play that trivia game you have on your phone?

You decide to check your phone to see if the Archaeologists Guild has paid you for your adventuring yet…

Nothing yet. Are they still processing quest rewards by hand over there?

Oh geez, that’s way better than your ‘Platelet Pal was too sticky!’ punchline. Maybe you should pretend that’s what you were going to say all along, or distract her or something.

Uh oh, now she’s doing it, too.

You’ve got a good idea for something to say to prank her. Plus, it’s not entirely untrue, so that’s a bonus. Here goes:

Wait, what?

From: applebaps at 2018-07-19 19:56:29
is the end of the adventure just everybody fuckin

you gotta sign up for the patreon for that

There she is.

There is a very important step you must do before you start your little plan, and that is petting the cat.

After a short walk, and many pets, you arrive at the cafeteria. You push the door open, and as it slowly closes, you release Beth’s cat inside.

While she’s inside, Beth uses her psychic ‘cat’nection to get a picture of what’s inside.

It’s between lunch and dinner, so there’s not a lot of people there right now. The cat easily finds Joachim. He’s sitting in the middle, looking away from the entrance, as planned. Surprisingly, the person following him (maroon jacket, white hair) is simply seated two tables back, eating by himself and pretending to read a book. Also in the cafeteria are a few couples eating together, a group of nerds playing dice games, and some other people studying, although much less conspicuously. There’s also some bugs, which the cat is very interested in.

You decide to go talk to Joachim, so you can get any additional details about the guy before you sit down and talk with him.

Oh.

Alright! Now’s the perfect time for a chase!

Whoops

Welcome to the world’s first Slow Time Event!

You have 10 minutes to press ‘W,’ and save Klaus from an embarrassing fate.

With the success at the STE, you manage to catch yourself…

…and assume the position, ready to chase after your target!

You have 10 minutes to press ‘A,’ and get a good running start.

You jump ahead, and start running across the tops of the tables after the creep!

To jump across the tables, you must press ‘A’ rhythmically, and since this is a slow-time event, that rhythm is 10 minutes. I’m going to give you 30 minutes to press ‘A’ to start, but then 10, 20, and 30 minutes after that, you must press ‘A’ again. There’s more leniency than you’d get on a quick-time event on the rhythmic presses, but try to keep it within 30 seconds on either side.

(I promise this is the last one)

The stalker is approaching the exit door to the cafeteria! You’ve got to act fast!

You leap from table to table after him, when you finally reach the last one…

You might not be able to catch him before he gets out the door, but you’ll definitely be hot on his heels!

You’re close on his tail, but not close enough to catch him. Perhaps if you were to create some sort of illusion you could trick him into running the wrong way.

You probably didn’t trick him into thinking those are you.

However, you did manage to distract him…

…And Beth takes advantage of the situation!

Beth’s trick gives you enough time to run up and get close to the stalker and-

Now, that he doesn’t have his glasses to hide behind, let’s see who this really is…

Huh. No clue who this is.

Something’s off about this guy, is he a vampire at all? Only one way to check. Well, that’s not actually true, but there’s only one way for you since you don’t have a mirror or holy symbol on you.

I mean, they’re sharper than average, but those are definitely not vampire teeth.

He is pretty cute, you guess.

He doesn’t seem so bad, but you should ask him a few questions before letting him go…

After you pull him to his feet, he flinches away.

He doesn’t seem so bad, but if he thinks you should be beating him up for some reason, you wonder what he actually was doing…

Whatever he’s doing, you decide to hear him out before you decide if you should beat him up…

That sounds reasonable, and even like something you might want to help out with, except for the fact that Joachim doesn’t seem to recognize the guy.

Hmm.

He seems legit, but you figure you should do something just to make sure.

Good, you’re glad to see that he’s-

Wait, is he actually trying to use the oldest trick in the book?

You grab his wrist as you pivot to look at where he’s pointing, just to be safe.

And what’s he’s pointing at is…

How did these guys get in there without anyone noticing!? Anyone, such as Beth?

Oh.

You almost want to just throw Phil into battle with these guys, but perhaps you can make him throw himself into battle instead.

How are you guys going to do this?

You don’t have anything that’s specifically for fighting vampires, so you’re not quite sure what to do. If you could get some sunlight in here, that would certainly help, but there’s no windows in this room. Actually, the sun- it’s basically just a giant ball of plasma, right? What if you were to make your own?

It’s not as big as the sun, but it’s much, much closer, so hopefully this will do the trick.

It seems to have stopped the big guy in his tracks, although the little guy is still getting away.

You’ve got a couple ideas for tricks you could pull in this situation, but unfortunately with this amount of plasma, you can’t do any of them, so you simply bring it closer.

You can’t simply disperse this much plasma quickly and as you shrink the plasma ball the vampire would surely realize what was going on and hit you, and if you were to throw it, not only would the blast hurt you as much as it hurts the vampire, but it would cause damage to the cafeteria and you’d probably get sent to a prison tower for it. Granted, you’d probably be returned fairly quickly, once they realized-

wait a minute- Where are the security golems? They re-tuned them a few years ago because they were way too sensitive, but surely a fight breaking out in the cafeteria should get their attention.

But that’s of no matter to you right now, because you are 力武 美三方- that is, you are Miyako Mikata. You participated in the raid the other day, but your payment- which you should have automatically received on your phone by now- has not arrived, despite your friend who participated getting hers already. The person at the front desk directed you to the payment systems office, back where all the computer nerds work. But that’s weird- you just heard a loud thump from one of the rooms.

You notice a noise!

Ever since you got your super suit your body language has gotten much more extreme. It helps to show people how you feel, since they can’t see your face when you’re wearing it. Of course, you tend to look kind of silly when you’re not wearing it, but that’s a small price to pay. But that’s of no matter now- something is definitely going on in there. You move closer to listen.

It sounds like… something being dragged across a carpet. Then the sound of some light metal doors closing.

You crack open the door ever so slightly a take a peek through.

Hmm…

Looks relatively normal for one of these computer nerd offices, and- oops! It looks like he saw you, he gets up and scrambles towards the door.

Sure, OK, you’ll leave, but first- You ask him what the noise was.

So the noise was him dragging a computer across the carpet and putting it in the cabinet? That doesn’t seem right. You feel like you saw something when you were peeking in that makes that impossible.

But that can’t be right, there were cobwebs on that computer!

Did he just not see them or-

Ok, something’s definitely wrong here!

You must be sure that there’s something wrong here, because if you punch down a door to one of these offices for no reason, you’ll be in big trouble.

That being said, you attempt to punch through the door.

You’ve got a serious hunch something’s wrong here, so you don’t listen to the man when he tells you to stop.

Maybe now he’ll tell you what’s really going on…

Elizabeth?

Is that someone you should kn-

Oof!