Private - Greed, Need and Roll | Page 2

"That's right. NPC's can't see map data." She said mostly to herself, her hand disappearing behind her back as she returned the furled document to her front. With a step forward and unfurling the scroll, she wanted Nikephoros to at least get an idea of where they were. Of the militia men that had gathered, he seemed like the more sturdy character. She allowed his eyes to fixate on the map, get a general idea of their location and then she shuffled it back into her inventory.

"If you need another look, just let me know. I think we should head north and take a peak in room number two. We are here to loot the dungeon, right? Might as well make sport of it and traverse the entire area to see if we can find anything interesting."

Vivian, while not leading the party, she did give simple commands to the NPCs so they would not get in her way should anything happen. Commands like, 'stay,' or 'be ready' were pretty much what she used, but Nikephoros seemed to be more 'capable' almost too real to be an NPC. Although Vivian could not exactly place the fact that he was indeed a player or just an NPC. If he was the type that enjoyed the Role Playing aspect of character and liked the idea of acting out as an NPC, she was not going to bother him about it. Different strokes.

With their party coming up to a door and a continuing hallway, Vivian took a step forward and enabled her Investigation Mode to see if the door had any traps or locks. With squinting eyes, she saw a sort of pulse coming from the door. She took a step back and shook her head, "I think this one is booby trapped. Anyone have any experience in dismantling traps or anyone brave enough to trigger it?" They were at an impasse at the moment. While Vivian wanted to seek out what was inside the room, it was fairly early in the adventure to start losing party members.

 

The men moved down the hall and paused before a door, as Eyas inquired about plans and Vivian explained that the door may in fact be trapped. The three goons were clearly none too eager to run ahead of the women and soak up all of the danger and damage. They had glanced at the map of the dungeon provided by Vivian, accepting a casual glance of it as the best they were going to get for now. Hopefully, they could move through things quickly and make off with whatever treasure or reward was in this place. But, in order to advance, somebody had to bite the proverbial bullet here and take the first risk.

Nikephoros glanced at Jinn, then at Mason... the two NPC bandits he had recruited to assist in this journey. Jinn was the one with the shortbow, and was taking up the rear in case of ambush from behind. All were healthy and whole for now, and wished to keep it that way. They would need each other alive and well if they wanted to overpower the women, later on. If it came to that.

"Supposing the spellcaster has a way of getting past trapped or warded doors?" Jinn asked, clearly thinking along the same likes as Nikephoros. Let the people who boasted about magic handle the dangerous puzzle-doors. Vivian had recruited meat shields, not skeleton keys. They were meant to help fight through the dungeon, not solve every obstacle they came across just so she could walk away with her hands clean.

"I could hit it with a ranseur, or pour it a drink," Nike chimed in with an attempt at humor.
"That's my full bag of tricks."

 

Doors. Trapped doors. Well, Eyas was rather straightforward in her solutions most of the time, normally involving kicking them off their hinges. However effective that normally might be, the trap itself was an unknown. And she couldn't just slap a bunch of c4 on the door to breach like she might've done in other games in her past. Really, she had nothing to work with, so putting her foot through the door was right on out.

...but.

She COULD test the waters. Really, it'd be easy to do so, what with a big rock nearby already. Hefting the stone, she motioned to stand back a bit from the door, popping her neck. "Here's hoping it's not gonna explode." Of course that meant it was gonna explode anyways, but fuck it. She could survive an explosion. Right? Well, she wasn't armored up the ass in ceramic plating, but she wasn't dealing with twenty pounds of high explosives. She could survive a hit or two.

So she threw the chunk of rock at the door, immediately dipping behind a fallen chunk of ceiling with her eyes on the trapped door to see if it would blow up or not.

 

The woman looked to the NPCs, her eyes looked uninterested in his advice as she then looked to Nikephoros about his silly comment as well. She sighed, and placed a hand on her neck to rub the muscle thinking about what could be done. She honestly could disarm the trap by breaking down the door with one of her pyromantic spells, but that would be a waste of energy.

Nonetheless, they still needed to get past the room. With her hand lifting upwards as if to prepare a spell, the lovely Eyas decided to shine in her own way lugging a massive rock to her thigh and getting ready to toss the chunk of rock at the door. "Or we could do it that way..." Vivian's hand flicked waving off the particle energy she was absorbing from the air and the mana flow has stopped coming to her palm. She took several steps back into the corridor and out of the line of sight of the door should anything decide to shoot out if the trap felt the need.

With Eyas getting ready to chuck the rock at the door, Vivian squinted her eyes and watched the two collide with some force. The immediate contact caused the tile at the foot of the door to spring three spears straight up. If anyone had tried to open the door, they would have lost an arm from the rusty barbed tip of the spears. However, with the trap sprung and the party safe for the moment, Vivian smiled and gave Eyas a small pat on the back.

"I love women who take control of the situation like that. Good on you for using your head." Vivian took a step forward and shimmied the door open, the knob rattling as the door came undone from the hinges and nearly fell down with a plume of dust from the ground. With sharp azure eyes trained on the corners of the room, the woman motioned for one of the NPCs to take point once more.

"You and Nikephoros go in first." Vivian said with a more commanding tone than usual. They were henchmen, they were gonna do what they were told to do.

 

There wasn't any point in wasting magic or energy at this current point. No fight had broken out yet. Besides. Her method seemed to work as a bunch of spikes popped on up out of the ground. She had a brief passing thought of wondering how long they must've been there before they were gone again, and she finally came out of cover. Coated in dust from her hurried rush behind cover, having barely managed to avoid the spikes, Eyas stood back up, a small smile on her face as Vivian patted her back. She'd done good.

Now, it was time for round two. "No point in wasting magic and energy right now, right?" As a matter of fact, figuring that the door was trapped, the room should also be. Or at least, she had a gut feeling it would be. So she went and retrieved the rock that had been knocked back by the impact, popping her neck as she stepped up. "Twice lucky, huh?"

 

The was a clear delineation of alliances and loyalties as Eyas stepped forth to heed Vivian's beckoning call to action; the buxom woman in turn cast her eyes upon the favored pet and awarded it with mild praise in the midst of the party to make it clear who she favored. Then, with nary a batting of her long eyelashes, her mood made an about-face and she ordered Nikephoros and Mason into the room.

The latter seemed about to say something back to the magical maiden, but a hand on his shoulder and the shake of a head from Nikephoros forced the NPC into silence. Instead, he scowled heavily and drew his sword and buckler, following behind the elven man. Together, they stepped through the doorway and regarded the next room carefully. The fungus did not shine so brightly to illuminate the large room, but outlined its edges well enough to warn them of where the walls were. Reaching into their bags, Mason and Nikephoros pulled out some wooden torches and lit them, then began to carefully move about the room looking for some form of sconce or brazier to ignite. Iron rungs and holds set in the stonework revealed ancient torches long since lit and burned to ashen stumps... less charcoal than soot at this point. They wouldn't serve to light the room themselves, but once the old burned husks were removed, torches were set in their places, and suddenly the room was alight.

The room glittered here and there as if with beams of sunlight, but such was not the case. Rather, the light from the two torches reflected beauteously off of deeply polished brass mirrors set behind the torches, the light focused up towards a ceiling where more such discs shined it down all across the room. The room thus revealed, the two men let their eyes stray across everything, examining it for lucre as much as danger.

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The ceiling was a mosaic of colored tiles, chipped and muted with age but still visible and fine. The mural created seemed to be a depiction of geometric patterns, branching out and covering the ceiling in intricate fractals. Reds and blues and greens and purples, all manner of glossy dyed stone shimmered in the light of the room, but little of real value was to be found aside from the decorative stonework and polished brass plates. Oddly, old rusted iron spikes covered the northern and western walls, as if they were meant to slowly grind forward and crush a man to death... or else shoot the spikes outwards and impale trespassers. On guard for this, Nikephoros and Mason moved about slowly and carefully, least they trigger some trap.

They came silently from still-darkened corners of the high ceiling, where the light's desperate glow failed to waver and shine. Mason, turning his back on the northern side to head back to the door, suddenly became prey for a dog-sized spider that burst from hiding to try and sink its venomous fangs into the man's back. But it was a simple beast, and had not accounted for the teamwork that the two men might display. Though ignorant to its sudden leap, Nikephoros had been watching his comrade's back, and with a swift thrust of his ranseur he impaled the leaping fiend and caught it mid-air upon the rusted point of his pike like weapon. Charging at the northern wall, the elven man let out a battle cry and impaled the spider again against the spikes of the wall, pinning it in place with his long polearm, holding it there until the life drained from it.

The second spider came from the other southern edge of the room, which Mason had been moving towards, and this time he was prepared. Raising his buckler, he caught the monster's fangs on his shield and let it cling there a moment, as he moved his sword in a swift arc across its underside. Then, swinging his arm, he sent the thing flying across the room away from him... in this case, towards the doorway they had entered. Striking the wall, some of its guts spilled out with green ichor, and it fell near the entrance to the room, leaking its vitals. Seeing those still in the hallway, it began to limp-skitter towards them, but triggered the plate at the entrance to the room and was thrust upwards suddenly by rusted iron spears as the trap, which had reset, went off once again. Slowly the spears sank back into the ground, and slowly the spider rode down with them, rusting upon the plate again, which triggered the event all over. Green blood sprayed out and splattered across the hall and the entrance to the strange chamber, making a mess of things. This time, as it began to sink towards the ground, Nikephoros caught the spider on the edge of his own polearm and prevented it from setting the trap off, tossing it instead into the room to rot with its neighbor, or mate, or whatever the things had been to one another.

"Geometric pattern, on the ceiling..." he stated, his voice clearly unsure whether it should be annoyed or amused.
"It looks like a spider web, if you take a step back. This room was pointless. Just a trap room to waste our time and energy."
"Can't even steal the decor. Isn't nothing but glossy bricks and old brass. Barely worth the sweat it'd take to snatch them up, let alone drag back and try to sell. Hold on, I'll fetch the torches..." Mason said, his voice gruff with dissatisfaction. He went and did the thing, returning with his buckler and sword put away, a torch in each hand. Nikephoros accepted his own back, and they began moving down the hall again, ready for the next challenge.

 

Vivian's long, slender fingers curled lightly as it made for the side of her neck. The motion was to keep the long tendrils of silken purple hair from off her shoulder. It was more of a habitual routine for her, something she often did in the real world and was now taking place in the game as well. Rolling her neck as to give her hair a fancy shake to undo the knotty coils from her back, the woman stepped lightly into the room.

Both NPCs seemed not so eager by the woman's commands. However, they were henchmen and they did as they were instructed to do. While some people in the game regarded NPCs to be more life like and human, Vivian cared little for both types whether they were NPC or Player alike. So long as they helped her attain her goals, she would use every advantage she could and if that meant they were good meat shield, then that is what they would be.

Bare feet rolled across the floor with the delicateness of a Goddess touching down on the Earth for the first time. Vivian was not much concerned getting her feet dirty, if it meant allowing the earthen energy to be felt from the bottoms of her feet. She liked to be connected to the world and it's exterior, she felt more empowered in a more raw form. If she could walk around naked and just soak up the mana through the pores of her skin, she would do just that. However, armor was a necessity as was keeping her sexy and beautiful body free of blemish and scars. How tragic would that be if something so awful were to happen? And to think of the object that would taint her beautiful skin? Gods above save them.

The NPCs took to their nature and her command, setting the room up with fire aglow in a blaze to help shine the corners of the room of any more deadly or disturbing traps. She stood at the entrance allowing them to scout the room, her eyes in a soft squinting manner as she peered through the dark corners of the ceiling making out larger than life spider webs. Well, that was interesting...Surely that meant.

With the action starting, Vivian side stepped a few paces out of the way of the fighting. The NPCs were engaged in combat with the monstrous spiders. Nikephoros, the bald elf, had shown some finesse with his choice of weapon. Although she had been clear away from the spike trap by the door, when the spider had been launched into she only cringed slightly of the noise it made as it was skewered over and over again. The green blood spilling from the many puncture wounds and splashing it's essence over the dusty ground nearly getting that same gunk on her feet.

With a shake of her head and the battle coming to a close, the other NPC with the sword and board style was able to handle his foe just as quickly. While they had finished off the monstrous spiders, Vivian gave a sudden clap of her hands and smiled warmly. "Well, that is something you don't see too often. Fine job, gentlemen, fine job indeed. Now than...that loot..."

Pushing the air from her body and regaling in the victory as it had been her own, the woman scoured the dark corners of the chamber. Nothing but rusted junk, not even an old ring or a collectible could be salvaged from the amount of junk. Just some rat shit and spider guts. She sighed and shook her head, "I guess we are moving then." SHe watched as the main force moved out. Her eyes lingering on the room for a moment longer before she stepped easily enough over the spike trap. With her walking down the corridor, the woman shifted her weight towards Eyas, a small smile on her lips and then a playful hip bump as they traversed the hallway.

The archer in the rear kept his eyes on the rear and the shadows should anything sneak up behind. Vivian allowed her hands to softly sway at her sides, every so often with the casual hip bump, the back of her hands would gently rub against Eyas. If she were to be of use to the woman later, it was important to keep her toys happy. As if her smile faded the sharpness of her lips ceased as she saw withered corpses nailed to the wall.

She stopped to examine the bodies, "Don't suppose it's anyone you guys may know? Perhaps long lost friends of yours?" She had gave a subtle laugh at her own joke, and shook her head. With nothing more to examine, the followed the trail to a fork.

"Where do we go from here? Would could split up, but then again, that might be dangerous. Opinions?"

 

The fight had not been enough to leave Nikephoros huffing, nevertheless he inhaled sharply as Vivian appeared to waltz about as though she had been the sole savior of the day, and vanquisher of the venomous arachnids. The more she dug her nails into them, clawing at their id and ego to get her way, the more she dug her own grave at the end of this. Nikephoros and the two non player characters were ruled by their programming, programming that stated, man or machine, one's pride had a price and if the riches didn't measure the amount of suffering, they'd get theirs in the end by taking Vivian's life. Of course she had Eyas to bodyguard her, which would be a problem. He'd have to think of a way to get rid of them both, somehow... He'd seen how hard she threw that rock.

They rounded a corner, and came upon some dead bodies, apparently nailed to the stone wall by large iron spitons. Mountain climbing gear, used for reaching high and low places? Vivian gave them a casual once-over and was off again, apparently none too interested in who they were or how they died. But every corpse told a story, so Nike lingered somewhat longer to give them a more proper inspection.
No coins or valuables, so they'd been stripped of goods... but the wounds that had killed them seemed much older than wounds of the hammered spiked, and some sword cuts that showed here and there.

"They were undead," he called down the hallway to Vivian's back, to warn her of what may lie ahead.
"A party probably encountered them, and then nailed them in place, since undead are notoriously hard to keep dead. But if they're stuck in place... hardly a concern. Looks like the magic eventually wore out, and now they're just another bit of decoration."
Moving down the hall, he glanced at the fork in the road, considering Vivian's question. Did they want to split up? Did they all want to go the same way? If so, which direction?
"When in doubt, follow the right side wall..." the elven man muttered, holding to the addage that one caught in a maze or a labyrinth would eventually find themselves out of if if they followed one wall long enough. Moving down it, he glanced over his shoulder to see Mason and Jinn following, the girls left to make up their own minds. Nikephoros took lead and continued to test the floor for pressure plates with the butt of his ranseur, the others at the ready in case a trap sprung or a monster came rushing down upon them. After rounding a few corners in the long hall, he paused, glancing upwards.

​

In the ceiling, a hole, narrow but long. It lead to the floor above them, clearly some sort of pitfall trap they might have encountered later. No body was around to show that someone had died from it, and yet the hole was clearly visible to them all, meaning the trap had been sprung and not reset. Or... perhaps instead it was an oxygen shaft, considering the narrow size of it? It was big enough for one to move through, though not comfortably. Perhaps if one of them climbed up and tied off a rope, the rest could use the rope to climb behind them?
Maybe that small woman had a use after all...

"We'll need Eyas to climb this for us," Nikephoros said aloud, already pulling some rope from his inventory for her to tie off once she reached the top. It would be a good idea to scout what might be above. Just in case. Annnnnnnnd if something deadly was up there, waiting... One less obstacle to deal with later, regardless of if it died, or the girl.

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