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Post by MagisterSphinx on Apr 12, 2017 2:22:30 GMT
Horace and Karla stand in the large sandy crater excavated by a horde of mutant crabs as the await the arrival of their friends. Around them are stone carvings of lightning radiating out from a skull marked tablet in the centre of the crater. The day before they had faced the crabs and their apparent master, a shadowy Inkay that seemingly possessed the Metagross that led them. So it was understandable that Horace was on edge as they awaited the arrival of allies, both old and new. A helicopter approaches, with Shoko, Cassandra and Evie within. They had been briefed on the situation by Professor Rowan and equipped with state of the art scanning devices. Unable to land on the smoothly sloped sand and unwilling to risk the wall of water surorunding the crater the three are forced to descend via rope ladder. Once down Horace and Karla instantly recognise Shoko, but not the other two women.
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Post by carnackiArdent on Apr 13, 2017 6:09:25 GMT
Once the three of them are on the ground, it's evident that one of the newcomers is significantly taller than the other, never mind Shoko. The woman in the black motorcycle leathers looks around the crater before her gaze settles on the two people waiting for them. Her eyebrows raise skeptically - understandable, since she's looking at Horace, and even being warned by the professor that he's got some eccentric habits didn't quite prepare her for that outfit.
She paces down the sandy slope towards them, not waiting for the other two women to catch up. "Well, this is a mess. Crabs dug all this?" The R in "crabs" is trilled slightly - she has a hint of an accent. She sticks out a hand towards the two of them abruptly. "Name's Evie. Any idea what we're looking at here?"
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Post by kagemaru656 on Apr 13, 2017 6:17:38 GMT
Karla nods respectfully at Evie, but doesn't take her hand. "I'm Karla, nice to meet you. Not sure what it is but Metagross and its family were digging pretty hard for it and an Inkay showed up when diplomacy failed with those guys..." Karla stares warily at the skull marked tablet.
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Oct 25, 2017 17:03:00 GMT
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Post by coffeegrigis on Apr 13, 2017 7:50:13 GMT
Horace peers over towards the newcomers with a serious gaze. Shoko and Karla are easily able to recognize that Horace isn't completely himself. He lets out a long sigh before responding before letting out a slow, "Well... whatever it is its not good. I have a couple of ideas, but what you need to know is that something malevolent resides within there. Something that we cant let exist. We need to go in and make sure it can never get out. You coming with?"Horace quickly turns around begins inspecting the object for any way in. While staying in the city overnight he compulsively researched all night with no sleep in order to find any information about the temple as well as any way he could enter it. While looking for a way in Horace seems to not notice the outside world. His only purpose at the point is finding how to get into the temple and then eliminating whatever has caused so much trouble. glbqmLyg6d6 Occult Education. Rolling again since it has increased. 4d6 Perception to use any knowledge 6d6·4d6
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Post by shouri on Apr 14, 2017 6:20:25 GMT
As shoko descends the rope ladder, Mirk pops his head out of her coat and looks around after a brief yawn. "Mirk, down." He uncoils slightly to put his face directly in front of her and pushes it so they touch noses. Despite his teasing, Shoko's usual uninterested tone continues, "Go." Mirk happily unwinds his way out of her lab coat and jumps down to the ground a few feet below. He then turns up to Shoko offering her his tail to balance herself as she steps down from the last piece of rope. She waits for the other two to descend before introducing them. "These are the other two you'll be joining, Karla and Horace.... and that's Mirk..... happy?" She directs her last monotone, rhetorical question at Mirk who faked a mild pout, not wanting to be excluded. As usual, he perked up right away and rushed to Shoko, coiled into her coat, and took his rightful place as her second head. "I suppose we can save any larger pleasantries when we're done here. Have you two figured out what's going on here?"
She walked forward, adjusting her coat along the way while Mirk appeared to be scavenging through her inner coat pockets. "The back left," she whispered to him. She sighed in relief, not nearly as low key as she'd hoped, but continued towards Horace who seemed very invested in the structure. "Horace~"
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Post by Raven on Apr 14, 2017 7:02:18 GMT
The third person to exit the helicopter off the rope ladder is probably the smallest person there, seeming more like a child than a young adult. Her face is quite young, but her yellow! eyes have a fierce intensity behind them. She currently is wearing a rather short and frilly black skirt with a light grey top and a black jacket over top. Her eyes briefly pass over each of the others standing about before she begins to investigate the area silently. She seeks only to get a sense of what the environment is like at the moment, and what/how many pokemon/people may have been in the area lately.
Survival: hqCoAAnp5d6 Perception: 4d65d6·4d6
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Post by carnackiArdent on Apr 15, 2017 3:26:53 GMT
Evie stalks toward the tablet at the center of the crater. She doesn't have a lot of knowledge about this sort of thing, but between the lightning pointing toward it and the big skull on it, it seems pretty obvious what the most important part of the structure is. Horace seems to at least have a clue what he's doing, which is a pleasant surprise - she expected somebody in that getup to just be messing around, but at least it seems like he knows when to get serious. She glares down at the tablet as if she's hoping to intimidate the carved skull. "Is there any reason we can't just take a hammer to the thing?" Sure, it might make some archaeologists cry, but if whatever's in there needs to be dealt with that badly, she's pretty sure that trumps historical value. Though come to think of it... she crouches down and digs her fingers into the sand at the edge of the tablet, wondering if it can possibly be as easy as just finding the edge and lifting or shoving the slab. Of course, if she can't find an edge and it turns out not to be a door, she's just going to look silly. Athletics to try to move the slab: 2Vq|zPZU6d6 Power is 7, if it matters. 6d6
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Post by kagemaru656 on Apr 15, 2017 10:06:08 GMT
"If anyone has a fire type we could try some rapid heating and cooling", Karla says as she approaches the skull with everyone else. "That could break it or weaken it enouch that one of us could break it." She watches Evie try to lift it, hoping it's just that simple. If our crew wasn't motley enough before it certainly is now. But we might actually have the right set of skills for this now... She thought to herself.
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Post by MagisterSphinx on Apr 18, 2017 4:34:17 GMT
Horace is certain the stone tablet and every other piece of stone in the area is intended to serve as a warning to keep away from an unspecified but horrible danger.
Cassandra can tell that the sand was deliberately excavated by numerous creatures, similar to how a cast of crabs would do so - clearly in line with the official report. The stone is far too old to tell much about it, though the markings are more likely to have been carved by humans rather than simple erosion or any pokemon.
Evie finds purchase on what feels like another carving easily enough, but fails to lift it up alone, partly due to positioning an weight, partly because of the sand surrounding it.
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Post by carnackiArdent on Apr 18, 2017 5:17:15 GMT
Evie grits her teeth, but she can't shift the slab. "Feels like maybe it could move? Bad angle, though. And I can't get a good footing." She kicks at the shifting sand underneath her feet, unwilling to admit that the tablet might just be too heavy for her to lift by herself. She glances back at Karla. "Heating and cooling, huh? Could bring out Ale, but brushing the sand out of her coat is a pain." She pronounces it "Al-ay", clearly the name of her Pokémon. "Guess she could help move it, too. She's pretty strong."She leaves it at that for the moment, as if to allow the others to ruminate on her suggestion. In the meantime she starts feeling around the edge tablet and brushing the sand away in vague search of anything helpful. She felt more carvings down there, she knows... Perception to try and find anything helpful under the sand: Zfcbs_Z12d6 2d6
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Post by kagemaru656 on Apr 18, 2017 8:26:07 GMT
"Not enough purchase? Oh I have an idea!" She releases Sparkles, who looks disdainfully at the gritty sand on her paws and then back to Karla. "Sorry precious. We're having trouble moving this big stone slab cause we can't stand right in all this sand. Think you could do the old Psychic trick?" The cat rolls its eyes, and then glows as it attempts to lift the slab. [Equivalent Power 6, yG7k4K2z4d6+2 Focus roll for Staggering, DC is 10 instead of 4] If it doesn't work from Sparkles alone, Karla will attempt to join in (Power 5), calling on the others to help.4d6+2
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Post by MagisterSphinx on Apr 21, 2017 1:00:03 GMT
Brushing away the sand, Evie finds what seems to be a Dawn Stone embedded into to the stone, in the centre of a concentric circular pattern that repeates around the edge of all sides of the stone other than the top.
Sparkles and Karla strain valiantly, but fails to shift the stone by more than an inch.
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Post by carnackiArdent on Apr 21, 2017 1:18:48 GMT
Evie frowns as she brushes her hands over the pattern. "Don't know what this is, but it looks important. There's a Dawn Stone, and circles around it... they seem to go all the way around. One of you want to take a look at this?"
She straightens up to beckon to the others, particularly Horace and Shoko since they look like the brains of the outfit to her. If they can't think of anything better to do than make another try at brute force she can join in and help again.
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Post by shouri on Apr 21, 2017 2:02:17 GMT
Shoko sighed, having hoped that she wouldn't have to join in on lifting the seemingly unmovable door; she wasn't exactly the strongest person around. As she stepped forward towards the entrance, she brought out her still unnamed Octillery hoping that they could hold the door open long enough for him to crawl under. However, she eyed Evie moving some dust around, uncovering a stone and immediately paced towards her. When she arrives, she begins to look at the various slabs. "Needs less sand... Tilda, Gust... ... ... You all might want to cover up," Shoko turns to the rest as she lowers her goggles onto her eyes. "It might get a bit... dusty."Tilda appears from her pokeball and, never one to take things calmly, she musters up as strong of a gust as possible to clear the sand all in one go (hopefully). Meanwhile, Shoko keeps a sharp eye out for anything familiar about this temple. Perhaps a few of the ones she's rummaged through before on her various shard hunting escapades might prove to be similar. "Once you've seen 29, you've seen em all," she thought to herself. Perception to spot potential mechanisms to open the door. _QprfmsU5d5
Occult ed to consider possible ways of opening this temple based on other temples she's visited. 6d6 5d5·6d6
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Post by coffeegrigis on Apr 21, 2017 23:19:42 GMT
Horace closely inspects the pillar and the patterns closely looking at the dawn stone. "Hmm... Interesting." He follows the pattern with his hands as high up as he could go feeling and looking for any inconsistencies. He is making sure to constantly use his disjointed ghostly self to feel around as well in an effort to see if it causes any reactions with the pillar. f3V3nthm4d6 Perception 5d6 Occult Education if it somehow comes into play "Picking up might not the best idea. Mainly because putting it back down might be quite difficult. Also as a forewarning pretty much every inscription on this warns us not to go in. I personally see that as more of a reason to investigate, but I thought I should tell you all."If nothing comes from Horace's Search he helps lift slightly begrudgingly. 4d6·5d6
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Post by MagisterSphinx on Apr 25, 2017 11:37:52 GMT
Tilda's efforts clear a large portion of sand, revealing the stone tablet is more of a cube, roughly 5 metres on each side. It is still half buried in sand, as is anyone downwind of Tilda.
Shoko doesn't find any obvious mechanisms to open a door, but the circular pattern repeats along the sides, with more Dawn Stones. The central pattern is one of a skull radiating lighting, with thunder stones as lightning bolts and dusk stones embedded into the skull's eyes.
Horace finds himself unable to penetrate the stone with his ghostly hands, the dawn stones shining every time he tries. They're clearly enchanted to keep ghosts out - or possibly in.
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Post by kagemaru656 on Apr 25, 2017 13:06:48 GMT
Karla stares down the box dejectedly. "Maybe it's safe to leave this after all... if we can't get in, it can't get out right? Less one of you wants to try Hyper Beam or Explode it. If that doesn't break it open then we'e probably good anyway."
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Post by shouri on Apr 26, 2017 4:01:52 GMT
Shoko pulls out here phone and snaps a picture of different angles of the structure, sending it to professor birch with the phrase "We're trying to get in a temple and found this. Tempted to take stones... mmm shards... Any advice?" Meanwhile she continues to explore the newly uncovered areas courtesy of Tilda. Meanwhile, Shoko turns to the others, "Anyone opposed to me taking these stones? They might prove useful for my research." Her internal excitedness at the thought of free stones to tinker with began to leak out slightly thought she quickly coughed and composed herself.
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Post by Raven on Apr 26, 2017 5:42:22 GMT
"In my admittedly limited experience with such matters" Cassandra begins, "It's better to leave well enough alone. At the very least, long enough to figure out what the purpose of this 'seal' (for lack of a better term) is. Is it keeping things out... or in?"
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Post by carnackiArdent on Apr 26, 2017 5:42:59 GMT
Evie looks confused as the pattern is revealed. "... So, do we need to find stones to put in the top, or take the others away?" Her first instinct is that this is a puzzle. She isn't overly fond of puzzles - she's never been very good at sitting still and figuring them out, and while she has more patience now than she used to, she still feels rather like it's taunting her.
Impulsively, she reaches out to grip one of the Thunder Stones, running her nails along the edge to see how firmly it's set in the cube. She's half expecting it to come away in her hand.
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