100 HP MAX HP 100 EN MAX EN Officially, this was the coolest corn maze he'd even been inside. Considering he was from the mid-west, that was saying something. Not only was the corn high enough that even he at six foot couldn't see past it, but there was also supposedly a river, underground passages, and an honest to goodness castle in the middle of if it. This was going to be "Amazing! I can't believe they actually made a maze this cool!" He turned towards @Emerath Katou with a genuine smile on his face, "I owe you big time for telling me about this! Do you think they have monsters in here? Probably a bit much since there are kids involved, but that would be divine~" Yeah, he was totally geeking out over a corn maze. Like all great mazes, it started off with a choice: left, right, or straight. Rodger turned down all three paths, but he couldn't gleam any clues or indications of a dead end just by looking. He figured he could try to using his investigation to track other people, but he felt like that might be considered cheating, so he held off for now. "What do you think buddy, straight and true?" He was so excited that he didn't even notice he was already walking down the path, choice made. Navigating the Maze / Roll 15 + 0 = 15 Maze Progress: 15 / 500
100 HP MAX HP 100 EN MAX EN Emerath was doing his best to walk in a straight line. The medicine from Solaria had managed to soak up some of the liquor running through his veins, but it didn't help that he had started drinking again right after. And now he was in a corn field. He had dragged Rodger over, after looking at the sign for it. He needed a buddy, and who better than the guy who was basically becoming his best friend in Terrasphere? Rodger had taken the lead, once the race had started, and everyone scurried off, with Emerath having trouble keeping track of his teammate let alone the other competitors. His vision was a bit blurry, and he swayed a bit as he walked. But he had this. They would win this race, he was sure of it. As they had reached the literal fork in the corn stalks, Emerath had considered carefully how they should work this. But Rodger was already on his way again, breaking into Emerath's thoughts. He started to try to respond as they walked, though it took most of his focus to keep on the actual walking part, considering how far drunk he had become. "I doubt they put monsters in here. It's more like a haunted house I think. The monsters can't touch you or something. You know, kids and the like. Like you said." He had burped out the last bit, and excused himself as they walked, wondering how best to contribute. "You know, in movies. I've watched people basically get through these things by just going through the walls of the maze. It's cheating, but there wasn't a sign with rules that said, 'Don't walk through the corn stalk walls'. Right?" He nodded to himself, in answer to his question, as they reached a wall and Emerath just... walked right through it. It resisted a bit, but Emerath managed to push his way through, and then called out to Rodger from the other side. "See? Technically a shortcut. C'mon, we should just keep walking through to the middle!" Emerath did this for a few more walls, but was met with an unpleasant surprise when he realized why walking through walls might be a bad idea. Suddenly, his foot had no ground to land on, and next thing Emerath knew he was tumbling forward. There was nothing but air in front of him, and in his drunken state, there was no way that he was going to be able to turn around and grab the corn stalks behind him. And then everything was darkness and wetness, all at once. He struggled against the water, and found himself breaking the surface of a waist high river, before gasping for air and calling out quickly, "Don't go through that wall! There's a river on the other side!" He hoped he had caught Rodger before he blindly followed him. "It's about waist deep..." he muttered, as he wiped away the muddy water from his eyes and spit out some of the liquid. "You might be able to jump over it. Just be careful," he continued, before climbing out of the water on the other bank, only to find themselves in a small clearing with some branching paths. "Probably a resting point. I wonder how close to the castle we are after that little detour?" Navigating the Maze / Event Roll / Roll 100 + 50 = 150 Maze Progress: 165 / 500
100 HP MAX HP 100 EN MAX EN Rodger continued on with Emerath with all the eagerness of an excited child. He was trying to get a layout of the maze in his mind's eye, but that was just giving him a headache so he stopped. Rodger felt like they were making good time, they had yet to run into a dead end, and the castle was getting closer with each turn. His hopes of encountering a monster were pretty much dashed with Emerath's words. It really wouldn't due to have children and monsters in a maze, "Well, guess we'll just have to enjoy the maze to its fullest!" He was about to continue walking but Emerath caught his attention with his talk of cutting through the maze, "Wait what?" Rodger couldn't fault him, his words made a lot of sense. There was no rule against it, and really, it wasn't like the corn was reinforced or anything. Simply finding a space to slip through shouldn't be that hard. Before he could muster up a response, he found Emerath already slipping between a wall and into another row, "W-wow, you're really good at this." Trusting his partner, Rodger began to follow suit. The hunter continued to follow his friend for a few more rows, but stopped short when he heard Emerath step through a wall only to be followed by a loud splash of water. "Oh right, they did say there was a river running through this thing. You alright buddy?" He didn't get a reply, just the sounds of someone splashing in the water,"Eh? Buddy?" Rodger poked his head through the corn and found Emerath surfacing from the no doubt chilled waters with a warning on his lips. "Oh man, you ok?" Emerath was walking to the other side of the bank, but with the warning received, Rodger was able to clear it with a jump. He waited for his friend to catch his breath as he looked around, "Well it looks pretty close! I'm not sure how the maze wraps around it, but I think your shortcut worked." Rodger found a path that seemed to take them closer towards their destination, "When you're ready, I think I might've found the way." Navigating the Maze / Roll 73 + 0 = 73 Maze Progress: 238 / 500
100 HP MAX HP 100 EN MAX EN Emerath shook the water from his hair and his clothes, trying to be careful not to spray Rodger with it. "I think I'll be okay. It's just too cold to be wet. I feel a lot more sober though." In fact, much of the drunken haze had been lifted from his eyes from the good watery shock to his system, as he found himself feeling much more awake. He huffed, hoping that he would dry sooner rather than later if he could just deal with the chilly breeze blowing through the corn stalks. It did feel good to have given them so much progress, despite the disadvantage of falling in the river. They could actually see the castle in the center of the maze a lot more clearly now. He had considered trying to continue walking through the walls, but he was certain that even without knowing fully how it would work, he'd get hypothermia and probably die if he fell in another river. So he opted to follow Rodger down the path that he had chosen. See, the problem with this race for Emerath, was that he was inventive and innovative, but not necessarily good at finding his way around anything. So his creative solution had worked, and would probably only work once. But for the rest of this he would probably just end up tagging along behind Rodger. But he didn't want to just be in the back seat, so as they came upon some more turns, Emerath looked at them carefully. One led directly in a curve around the bend but straight to the castle. One seemed like it led away from the castle but Emerath could see a turn in the distance. And one led straight in the wrong direction. Emerath thought carefully as he said, "The straight path is usually the wrong one in these types of mazes. I say we take the one that leads away, but curves. That one should be correct." Emerath nodded, sure of this decision as he pushed through the maze with Rodger, still shivering a bit from any sort of air that hit him. Navigating the Maze / Roll 54 Maze Progress: 292 / 500
90 HP MAX HP 90 EN MAX EN Rodger couldn't fault the logic of his friend when it came to directions, so he shrugged, "Well said, let's give it a go." Following the curve, Rodger was just about to comment on how close they were to the castle, when out of the corn stalks came a giant red ant that knocked him to the ground as it emerged. The creature, for it was no longer a regular ant, was about the size of a small pony with its snappers glistening with some sort of excretion. Rodger fell hard onto the ground with a hiss, before he began backing away with his hands from the enlarged insect. Oddly enough, he was rather calm given the situation. "Well, I wanted a monster. Guess giant bugs will have to do." Calm giving way to adrenaline, Rodger scrambled to his feet, doing his best to avoid the ant as it snapped its maw twice. He put two fingers to his temple, activating the investigation mode before moving to ready his bow. It didn't tell him much more than he already knew, it was a giant ant and it had a decent health pool. If it had any weaknesses or special abilities, he would have to find out the through combat, 'At least i have a way of tracking damage I guess.' "I'll do my best to cover you buddy, but this thing looks strong." He was moving to load his arrow, but the creature had no intent to wait. It began crawling towards them aggressively, its body creaking and snapping violently as it did so. He would have shivered if there was time. Rolling to the left, he avoided the creatures bite but lost the arrow in the process. The archer then bolted towards the rear of the ant, trying to confuse it or at least by some time. He was able to load his arrow and fire, hitting the bug in the rear, where the arrow stuck. He noticed that a small blip of its health had left it, "Not good enough. This might take a while buddy." Fighting Monster / Roll 24+ 10 = 34 Giant Ant (Anty): 116 / 150
90 HP MAX HP 90 EN MAX EN Emerath hadn't really been watching where they were going. He just kinda hoped he was going in the right direction, and was pretty much ready to walk through walls again, rivers or no, when he heard a commotion from his friend behind him. "No monsters, supposedly safe for children. I guess it was too good to be true..." he muttered, as he watched Rodger dodge some blows from the giant ant. "You know, if you weren't dodging it, I'd wonder if I had really just gone into drunk hallucination territory. But you didn't have nearly as much as I did. I think." He got a bit lost in the thought, as Rodger continued to duck from the ant's pincers, before Emerath snapped back into reality. He wasn't sure if he could fight something drunk, but he figured he should at least try before Rodger turned into ant food. And so, Emerath gave a whistle, and the ant slowly turned its large jaws to the redhead, and Emerath cracked his knuckles as he slid his iron knuckles onto his fist. "I was kinda hoping I wouldn't have to use these, you know. But never a dull day in Terrasphere, even in a 'safe' corn maze." The ant chattered at him, and he felt what he thought was an antenna brush along his face. Though in the darkness it was hard to tell. Really, that could have been a lot of things, and Emerath didn't want to think about half of them. "Alright, buddy. Don't go getting too friendly," Emerath said, as the ant skittered and loomed over him. It brought its jaws down, and Emerath grabbed each one as they tried to pinch his head right from his shoulders. "No, no, you see, this is where we disagree. I like my head, and you don't get to eat it," he muttered to the creature. Clearly being a bit tipsy made Emerath more talkative with menacing creatures. So there was that. When Rodger's arrow found the rear end of the creature, Emerath could feel the creature jolt, and it tried to turn around to assess the damage, but Emerath held fast on its pincers. He could feel the slimy mandibles moving under his fingers, and so he dug his nails in and shouted, "No, you pay attention to me!" It tried to turn its head away, and Emerath managed to use this as leverage to viciously rip one of the mandibles from the creature's head, as he heard what could probably only be assumed to be an ant screaming in pain. Emerath huffed, and threw the mandible aside before delivering a solid punch to the side of the creature's head, causing it to reel. "Okay..." Emerath huffed at his partner, "I think that was a pretty solid blow. Finish it off, please!" Emerath would just kinda... kneel down for a second so he didn't hurl. Too much exertion for being drunk. Fighting Monster / Roll 70 + 15 = 85 Giant Ant (Anty): 31 / 150
80 HP MAX HP 80 EN MAX EN The Archer grinned as he listed to Emerath talk to the Ant as he moved about to avoid a great deal of pain. Thanks to the brawler, Rodger had all the time he needed to deal his damage and hopefully drive it off. Well, that or kill it, but really he wasn't going to fight a creature as it ran away. He was not that kind of 'Hunter'. Rodger fitted three more arrows into the ants hindquarters, thick sappy ooze began to emerge yet it still seemed to just shrug off his projectiles. The same could not be said for Emerath's fists. With a loud snap and a shriek of agony, the ant fell still, his drunken friend calling for him to finish the fight. "Finish what? You already cleared the plate." He allowed himself a moment to breath properly, sitting next to his drunken friend for a spell before raising to his feet. "Well, that might have been a bit out of season with a giant ant, but as far as monsters go, that one wasn't bad." He offered his hand to the red head, helping him to his feet should he choose to take the appendage. Once they were ready to go, Rodger would nudge his friend with his elbow, "You ever thing of getting an animal companion for adventures? I've been looking into acquiring a horse, but they're an investment for sure." Fighting Monster / Roll 60+ 10= 70 Monster Name: 0 / 150
90 HP MAX HP 90 EN MAX EN Emerath watched as the creature stopped moving. He hadn’t realized that he had managed to land the killing blow on it when he had asked Rodger to finish it. But that wasn’t really here nor there. The fact of the matter was, the fight had made him incredibly nauseous. He had sat for a decent moment to let the world stop spinning, and had taken Rodger’s offer of help up when he had given it. “You know, I’m starting to understand why drunken style of martial arts was actually done sober,” Emerath commented as they continued into the maze, “Fighting drunk sucks.” He was trying his best not to hurl into the corn field as he walked, his legs wobbling beneath him, with each step. Though he wasn’t walking fast, Rodger offered him something else to put his mind on, and he considered the man’s question. “I’ve always had a fascination with owls,” Emerath admitted, with a light burp at the tail end of the sentence. “I think if I was going to have a companion pet, it would certainly be an owl.” Emerath considered the idea of having a pet, before another thought sprang to mind. “I could probably make an owl. Like an automaton one. Probably not as good as the real thing, but an interesting thought.” As Emerath walked and thought less about his body processing the poison in his veins, the better he felt. But he realized they hadn’t made much progress. The ant had really slowed them down. Navigating the Maze / Roll 18 Maze Progress: 310 / 500
80 HP MAX HP 80 EN MAX EN Rodger rubbed his side gingerly, he knew that blew the cloth was a nasty bruise forming. A reminder that he really needed to invest in some armor. He laughed at his friends enlightenment about the drunken fist, "Yeah, I'd wager they was probably lots of clean up from those types of practices." It would take days to clear his head of the image of monks bumbling around in drunken brawls. His curiosity was peaked when the conversation turned to the idea of robotic owls. The archer knew his friend was skilled with making small devices and switches, but to think he could likely make something as complex as an owl was mind blowing. Then again, maybe he was making a bigger deal of this than it actually called for. He did say it wouldn't be as good as the real thing, after all. "Pets are nice too. Figured a bowman like me could use a stead, you know, like in the stories. Though, I guess they wouldn't be great for hunting." He tried to imagine a horse going through the brush quietly and chuckled, "No, if I were to choose a pet I'd likely want a dog. Great companions, good sense of smell, able to defend themselves, and most importantly, they can be trained in stealth." As he listed his points, Rodger looked around and coughed, they hadn't made it that far. But they were making progress none the less, "So, what do you look for in a lady? Or guy, if that's more your style." Navigating the Maze / Roll 27 + 0 = 27 Maze Progress: 337 / 500
90 HP MAX HP 90 EN MAX EN Emerath listened intently to Rodger's explanation about why a dog makes a great pet, thinking about each of these being exactly they were one of the two most popular pets in the real world. It was enough to give Emerath a good chuckle. He chuckled even more as Rodger shifted the conversation topic, and even inserted a good politically correct comment in there about Emerath's choice in mate. It was respectable, and Emerath had to commend him as they walked and talked, weaving around corners and moving through the maze, almost effortlessly at this point. Emerath couldn't tell if it was the bonding, the recent monster fight, or the conversation that made everything feel so at ease between him and his friend, but he was glad for the man's companionship. As they walked, this started to feel less like a race, and a game, and more like just two best friends messing around in a corn field and enjoying the hell out of it. But he shouldn't be impolite, as he got around to answering Rodger's question, "I prefer the nerdy girls. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they look nerdy, but that they're smart. Smarter than me is a plus, but not required. But the smarter they are, the prettier they are. At least to me." Emerath shrugged at the end of his explanation, hoping it was sufficient. If Emerath were going to be truly honest with Rodger, he would have to say that his interests in relationships were little anyway, but that was mostly just because he wasn't looking. If he found someone, he found someone. It was as simple as that. "How about you? Any particular interests in either gender that just get you fired up?" Emerath said with a grin, before pointing to the castle after he had asked, "And look, we're getting really close! Make sure you answer before the time is up!" Emerath said with a laugh, as he elbowed his friend and started to walk faster through the maze. He was enjoying the company, for sure. But the bigger that castle got, the more his heart raced. He hadn't seen anyone else in front of them, maybe they could actually win! Navigating the Maze / Roll 95 Maze Progress: 432 / 500
80 HP MAX HP 80 EN MAX EN Rodger kept a loose smile on his face as he and Emerath continued to journey through the maze. He couldn't help but feel at ease. Even in the middle of a contest, Rodger just wanted to enjoy the experience and loose himself in the music of conversation. 'Never know when we're gonna be able to do something like this again. Giant ants and all.' That being said, the dreadhead couldn't help the cheese grin that spread across his face as heard Emerath describe his ideal woman. He nudged the red head playfully, "Eeeehhh you like the brainy ones huh? Hehehahe, nothing wrong with a woman with more than air between her ears, makes for much better conversations." At least, that's what he thought. The archer actually found himself thinking about his previous relationship, which had ended a while ago. She wasn't the brightest, but she was nice enough. Easy on the eyes with long brown hair, a heart full of generosity, and a smile that electrified his blood. She was quite a catch. But in the end, it hadn't worked out. 'Such is life, I suppose.' Rodger smirked as he had his question turned on him, shouting at the nudge from Emerath before he moved to catch up to his friend. He was right, the castle was getting bigger, probably just a few turns away, "Yeah we're really close now! I guess, I've always favored the talkative ones. They usually have so much passion and excitement in their personalities, its almost impossible for me not be drawn to them. They don't have to be bubbly models or anything, but then it wouldn't hurt either hahaha!!!" Navigating the Maze / Event / Roll 64 +0 = 64 Maze Progress: 496 / 500
90 HP MAX HP 90 EN MAX EN There it was, the castle. Emerath had listened to his friend, sharing a laugh with him about his comments on bubbly models. But neither had realized that the castle was right there. That they had been basically standing on the finish line. And as they crossed the finish line, chatting away, they hadn’t even known. But upon the realization, Emerath turned to Rodger, and said, “Oh hey, we did it!” He smiled and folded his arms across his chest. It felt good, not only finishing the race, but doing it with such good company. “Next time let’s avoid any ants, though,” he said with a chuckle as he waited for the race results. Navigating the Maze / Roll 95 Maze Progress: 591 / 500
