JANUARY DUNGEON

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JANUARY DUNGEON

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→ 1/12 Lockdown: The Final Dungeon

When preparations are complete and the team is ready to tackle the dungeons, both Attendants can be found at the castle, with Minato sitting on the armrest of the throne with a plain short sword balanced on his knees, and Souji standing to the side with several backpacks full of food, water, and blankets at his feet. "Last chance to change your mind and join the Champions of the Just," Minato pipes up from where he's sitting. "They've got trail mix." The team he's heading, incidentally, he named the Legion of the Dead and there is no trail mix or any other supplies provided by Minato, because Souji is a responsible leader who comes prepared, and Minato just doesn't care.

A several day hiking trip up the mountains for the sake of team bonding was considered but ultimately vetoed, so Souji simply opens a portal up from the forest shrine's torii to the mountain shrine's, and from there, it's only a short trek through the drifting snow to reach the honden. At the stroke of midnight, each Attendant places their hand flat on their door, the surface glowing bright blue and turning translucent: a one-way barrier swallowing each person whole as they pass through the portals.



Legion of the Dead It's a straight ten-foot drop once you step through the ofuda door in the castle, with nothing to break your fall but hard stone— or Minato if you happen to be the next person after him. It's a large stone chamber, with two large indentations on the far wall the size and appearance of doors, but neither open when touched or attacked. The only other thing of note in the room is a pedestal at the center with three omamoris slowing burning in a weak flame, one with Rio's name and arcana, another with Kido's, and the last with Yamato's, the same ones that were thrown away at the forest shrine on New Years as a statement of rejection of the Kotengu and his lent powers. Really, it's just Rio and Yamato's, though, because Kido had two omamoris to start with and doesn't need this second one. But with nothing else in the room, the first choice is a time-limited one: will you save the omamoris from the fire so Rio and Yamato can have it to summon their Personas, or will you respect their decision and allow the omamoris to burn to ashes? Depending on your choice, one of two doors will open.

Champions of the Just Entering the honden brings the group to a large stone chamber reminiscent of the forest shrine dungeon: a circular hub with a dozen arches along the perimeter, clearly meant to entice the impatient to spread themselves thin. Instead of multiple Shadow ghosts appearing from the ether to ambush the group, however, there is only one: a semitransparent ghostly form of a young boy huddled against the archway on the opposite side of where everybody had entered. He looks to be around seven, with very little distinguishing features other than pale eyes staring at the group. The moment anybody takes a step closer to him, calls out to him, or tries to attack, he starts in fear and turns to run through the archway— anybody who gives chase is met with a barrier; in fact, every other archway is blocked by the same invisible barrier, cutting their potential routes in half. The rest of the room is empty. There should be a way to get the barriers to drop in one of the five available passageways... Will you proceed all together, or divide and conquer?

There is no Velvet Room within the dungeons, and using a traesto gem or goho-m will only bring you to the beginning of the dungeon in either main hub, not outside. Falling unconscious within the dungeons doesn't bring you anywhere to be revived either; all it means is that your unconscious body lies there to rot or get eaten by Shadows until somebody hopefully saves you. So look after one another in the dungeons, and don't be afraid to rely on your Attendants. Souji will keep everybody safe.

→ MOD NOTES

⬥ Both dungeons are team-based and require some coordination with other members of their team, with some decisions involving the entire team (e.g. Legion of the Dead's first decision regarding the omamoris). The teams will make their way through several rooms to find the exit, either split up or all together, with each room containing a battle, puzzle, decision, or another obstacle. The team as a whole will bear the consequences of the actions taken, so please give each choice careful consideration. As actions may affect subsequent rooms, new rooms will become available after the previous are cleared, rather than all the information given at one time.
⬥ A toplevel for the boss will go up once a team ICly reaches the boss' chamber, and overall, this deadline is the end of the month to avoid IC consequences.

Comments

[toybombs]

[Rio's a lightly furred, small fox. And boy does she look confused about this development.

So wait... they're all animals now? She gets it together fast enough to begin studying the others to see who they might be.]

[lotusroots]

[ Wei Wuxian is a black rabbit.

This is certainly new, and he takes a moment to adjust to this experience, taking in their surroundings. ]

[infiltrationtools]

[Good news everyone. Cat eyes are really good at seeing.]

[Well this is pretty recognizable as Hirajiro, now that he can actually pick out the town a little ways away. A lot of the forest has been cleared away, for some reason, and this small patch is very weirdly densely populated -- and it's not hard to pick out the mob of villagers carrying woodcutting tools, looking towards the woods.]

[Motherfucker.]

What do they want?

[As in, why are they doing this. The question is hypothetical, but the animal NPCs are free to answer it.]

[toybombs]

[Rio's looking over with some urgency as well.]

How long have they been cutting everything down?

[lotusroots]

[ Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian's point of view is limited, and he's heavily considering hopping up on either Akira or Rio so he can see better. ]

Hmmm... maybe for a while. [ He frowns as much as he can. He really wishes he could see better. ]

Hey, let me jump up on one of you.

[infiltrationtools]

[Akira realizes that he's still the biggest animal among the three of them, since he's large for a cat and that fox is small. The other two animals standing nearest him are probably team members, but he doesn't know who, so... he looks to the bun.]

Tell me who you are, first.

[All he sees is a rabbit.]

[lotusroots]

[ He hops a little bit. Right. That's probably important. He smiles as much as a rabbit can. ]

Wei Wuxian! Will you let me up?

[ He's not going to ask in return—he'll climb up on anyone. ]

[toybombs]

So we have Wei Wuxian... you're Akira, aren't you? [Curly black cat seems to track.] I'm Rio.

Whatever we do, we should decide quickly. It seems like we can understand each other - we can try to talk to the animals for information.

[infiltrationtools]

...Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Akira didn't exactly make it a point to hide his identity. But he still bends down a bit for Wei Wuxian to stand up, because in his last meetings with the guy, he seemed pretty eager and trustworthy... to put on his back, anyway. And while he's doing that, Akira looks to some of the other animals. The deer are skittish and frightened, the mother bear doesn't look like she wants to talk... so he settles on a random squirrel.]

Hey. Excuse me.

[Let's see if the squirrel understands his speech.]

[compendiem]

[ The squirrel indeed understands his speech, looking up in surprise to see a forest cat addressing it, tensed up and tail twitching because it's a cat— and also a rabbit, and a fox- here, two of the three being animals it would normally be wary of.

But even scarier than them are the humans marching towards the remains of the forest, so the squirrel drums up the courage to answer. "What is it? If it can wait, that'd be best. You'd better go hide until the humans are done and have left!" ]

[toybombs]

[Rio will keep her distance, at least. Please don't be afraid of her, squirrelfriend.]

Do you know when and why they started doing this?

[compendiem]

[ Squirrelfriend doesn't want to get eaten ): The fact that a rabbit is so buddybuddy with these guys is comforting, though, and helps it relax a little. As best it can in the circumstances, anyways.

Anyways, squirrels have a very vague sense of time and understanding of human motivations, so the best it can tell Rio is that they started many many suns ago (well over a week, but after that, time gets fuzzy) but it doesn't know why the people are cutting down all the trees. It says they cut the trees and take them away, but they've been cutting at such a fast rate that it doesn't think humans can eat the trees so quickly. Maybe they're storing trees for the winter, like how the squirrel will take and hide nuts away for the winter? Humans are weird, man, who knows what's going on in their heads. ]

[infiltrationtools]

[I just want you all to know that I can't read the word squirrelfriend without reading it in RuPaul's voice.]

...But they've practically razed this place to the ground...

[Just from looking at their surroundings, it's clear that the forest is much smaller than it should be. Akira sounds displeased. It makes no sense, but also, it makes perfect sense.]

There must be a reason.

[lotusroots]

[ Wei Wuxian takes advantage of this new height to look over at the villagers to see what they're doing, and then over at all of the different animals huddled together. He doesn't get down, deciding to stay on Akira's back unless he tells Wei Wuxian to get off. It's nicer being at this height.

He nods at Akira's comment, humming thoughtfully. The fact that they've been doing this for over a week is alarming, and with such determination too. ]

I wonder what they're after. It's got to be important enough to go through all this and something they would consider worth cutting everything down for. If only we could go up and ask them.

[compendiem]

[ The squirrel shakes its head, unfortunately unable to help with any more of this. But he considers Akira for a moment, and says that maybe one of the other Warrior cats might know more, since the cats aren't afraid of the humans, and spend some time in town for food and then goes out into the woods to play and sleep. The cats might not be able to fully understand human speech, but they might have a sense of what's going on, better than the other creatures who solely live in the forest. ]

[infiltrationtools]

[Akira makes a thoughtful noise, and it comes out as a soft mrrr, because if nothing else he sure is a feline right now. Maybe that could be used to his advantage in dealings with the cats.]

That's a good idea. Thanks.

[He shifts a little bit under Wei Wuxian's weight, but doesn't tell him to get off just yet. They'll have to go find ThunderClan soon.]

...Hey, actually... what about the crows?

[This is addressed more to Rio and Wei Wuxian.]

[toybombs]

[Rio's looking around to see if there are any crows now!]

[compendiem]

[ There are some crows in the trees. Waaaaaaaaaaaayy up there on the tops of the trees, but there aren't very many, much less than would be expected. With all these trees cleared, though, it'll be easy to spot the castle and the shrine, both of which has some more crows congregated, the rest of which can be assumed to be in the town where they're more than comfortable living. ]

[toybombs]

Does someone want to talk to the crows while someone else talks to the cats?

[They don't have too much time to spare.]

[lotusroots]

I can talk to the crows.

[ There aren't many of them around here, but maybe he can make it over where he sees a number of them grouped together. Hopefully they'll want to talk to a rabbit. ]

[infiltrationtools]

[Akira flips his tail up a little bit, as acknowledgment. The squirrel's uneasy reaction to him served as a nice tipoff that, just like in movies about animals, there are different dynamics at play depending on the food chain. So he'll keep his distance from the crows and let the inoffensive bunbun take care of it.]

I'll do the cats.

[And then he looks at Rio, silently asking if she's coming along with either of them.]

[toybombs]

I'll go with Wei Wuxian.

[Because those dynamics mean that he is the potential prey around here, so having someone who can help watch his back should help.]

We'll meet back once we're done.

[infiltrationtools]

Meownds good—

...

[Akira stops, and scrunches up his nose a little bit.]

I'll be back later.

[Quickly making an exit before he says anything else s-mew-pid, bye.]

[compendiem]

[ With the crows up on top of a high tree, it would take Rio yapping at them to get their attention in a way a quiet bunny cannot, but the birds are warier of an omnivorous fox than they are a rabbit. Three of them are huddled together on a tree, occasionally unfurling and refolding their wings. How will Rio and Wei Wuxian approach without scaring them off? It'll be a pain if they just flew away.

Lower to the ground, Akira can find one or two cats— they roam independently of one another instead of sticking together as one large clan, and he'll quickly come across an older cat napping underneath a sunspot near the edge of the forest where the trees have been thinned, as well as a younger cat a bit further away who's busy chasing that same squirrel they'd just parted ways with, who thought it was spared the fox's jaws, directly to becoming a play thing for this kitten who's driving it up a tree. Which will Akira talk to?


We can split this thread off into two threads; just reply to this comment separately! ]

[infiltrationtools]

[The older cat probably has more insight (when awake), but as soon as Akira sees that living thing being used as a toy, his decision is made. He bounds over in the direction of the younger cat, deliberately making himself hard to miss, meowing loudly to get its attention. In a perfect world it will create an opening for the squirrel to run away.]

Hey!