Season Finale

[travelagency]

Who: Anyone who wants to be involved
What: The official pre-reboot/season end post
When: The spawner activation
Where: At the resort
Notes & Warnings: If anyone wants to play out any rescue scenarios involving the skeleton archers, there's a thread available for that/accounting for what happened as well. Violence as a general warning and whatever other warnings are mentioned.

EDIT: It can be noted that, once exposed to sunlight, the skeleton archers start to deteriorate. This can be discovered in the course of the threads.


THREAD STARTERS IN COMMENTS

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[what_ho_jeeves]

"What ho, Grainne!" He stood up and waved to her, then ducked back down behind his hiding place as an arrow buzzed past.

"If this is an early All Hallow's Eve dress party, I don't like it. Why, it's madder than boat race night out here."

[athousandcurses]

"This is no party, Bertie. This is necromancy at work." Grainne wasn't sure if he was making a joke or not, so she defaulted to the not. "Are you all right?" Of course, she's asking that considering the arrow sticking out of his hat.

[what_ho_jeeves]

"Right as rain and fit as a fiddle, and keen to remain that way, sans arrows. My hat, however, has given up the ghost and is, I think, no more for this world. Jeeves will grieve when he finds out. It was a dashed good hat."

He gave the hat a moment of silence, then resumed his chatter.

"Do you know how to stop this necro-whatsits from working? Maybe convince it to go on strike for a bit?"

[athousandcurses]

"No, I do not know where the source is." And with her powers limited, she wasn't sure she could even sense it if she tried to. "Or who the source is... come, we should get to safety. I can lead you some place safe."

[what_ho_jeeves]

"Are you sure? It would not be very preux chevalier of me to allow a member of the fair sex to face danger on my behalf. Should not I defend you?"

Bertie's incapability to defend anyone didn't stop his sense of honour from hitting him with the feeling that he ought to be defending the young lady.

[athousandcurses]

Bertie, Bertie, Bertie... it is lucky Grainne took that to mean something quite different, otherwise she may have had a few Words right then and there on the worth of a woman in battle-- especially a Celtic woman. She could name quite a few, in fact, starting with Scathach and Boudica just from stories in her first life.

"While I would agree we are far more fair as judges and peacekeepers I do not think speaking of such things is very useful right now. Pardon me, Bertie, but you do not strike me as a warrior and I am practiced at managing the undead, being one myself." Quickly and flawlessly, Grainne dropped that tidbit in the middle of the conflict as if it were nothing. They had more important things to worry about, after all, and she didn't wait for a reaction as she sent several ice spikes out into the open, searching for skeletons.

[what_ho_jeeves]

Bertie stared, a bit shaken by Grainne assertion that she was undead, and the shards of ice that sliced and destroyed the skeleton archers.

Bertie had to acknowledge to himself that he couldn't do that, Wooster pride or no.

"...right-o. Lead the way, Miss Grainne."

Thought I replied to this...

[athousandcurses]

"Don't worry, Bertie. These things are no match for me." She sighed, already feeling like it'd been a mistake to admit that to him. Standing up, she held several spikes at ready and looked around to see if the coast was clear.

"Come, there's a lull right now. If we're quick we won't have to deal with many."

[what_ho_jeeves]

"I have never seen a beazel who could destroy skeleton monsters, not even Honoria Glossop and she is a sturdy filly of the sort that in bygone centuries would have been well suited to a horned helmet and a spear. But I shall follow as swift and silent as a... I say, what is both swift and silent? Horses are swift, but they miss the mark rather on the silent bit."

Even with danger lurking, Bertie's mind was easily distracted.

[athousandcurses]

"Foxes." Grainne replied absently, focusing on the new threat of a skeleton turning a corner and starting to smoke. It seemed to ignore the smoking for a moment as it spotted her and fired an arrow before retreating to the darker area from whence it came. Sighing, she waited for it to show again and readied a large water spear. "And horned helmets are for ceremonial events. Rather wasteful of metal otherwise, but you have the right idea. What is a beazel?"

[what_ho_jeeves]

"Foxes, yes! I shall be like unto a fox. And those skeleton creatures are the hounds."

As the nearest skeleton rounded the corner, Bertie hit behind Grainne as best he could. A difficult feat as he was significantly taller than she. He felt a trifle guilty about it. What would the Wooster at Agincourt say about one of his descendants cowering during battle? But 'the better part of valor is discretion, something something something I have sav'd my life.'

"A beazel is the opposite of a bird. A member of the distaff. The fairer sex."

I am so sorry the notif failed...

[athousandcurses]

Grainne just shook her head and waited for the skeleton to reappear. "Bertie, are you sure you speak English? Half of the things you say seem absolutely bizarre."

The skeleton poked its head back around the corner, and she made her move then. Like a flash, a spike of water crashed into the thing, knocking into its skull and taking with it some neck bones.

np!

[what_ho_jeeves]

"Of course, Miss Grainne, the King's English as taught to me at Eton and Oxford."

Plus the addition of any bit of slang he magpie collected along the way, most of which would have made his tutors tisk and huff to hear him say it.

When the skeleton appears, Bertie ducks and does not rise until he hears the rattle of bones hit the ground.

"Good show, Miss Grainne!"

[athousandcurses]

Grainne shook her head and sighed when the skeleton died. She didn't hold it against him that he was no fighter, she knew her share of gentle men, but... "Bertie, you are the strangest man I have ever met, and I have known some very strange men."

[what_ho_jeeves]

"You mean strange in a good way, I hope? The strange of the unfamiliar and exotic rather than the strange of fellows who think they're canaries and perch on the sofa and take two cups of sugar with their tea."

[athousandcurses]

Grainne stared at him for a moment, trying once more to decipher what he was even saying. Though, maybe she is getting used to his strange speech, because she had an odd image of a bunch of young men wearing canary costumes and taking teacups filled with a heaping amount of sugar.

"Well, I did know a man whose mother was a doe."

[what_ho_jeeves]

Bertie frowned in confusion.

"Do you mean her last name was Doe? Or she was, perhaps, of the Doe people of Tasmania or Tanzania or one of those distant countries that begins with 't.'" He remembered Jeeves talking about them once although he can't recall in reference to what. Sometimes Jeeves got carried away and would rattle off obscure facts that he somehow considered pertinent to the situation at hand although Bertie could never work out how.

[athousandcurses]

Grainne gave Bertie a look of disbelief mixed with an odd, and very dark, sense of amusement.

"No, this woman had angered a druid through some means, and he cursed her to live out her life as a deer. The only place she took her human form was the Hill of Almhuin." If Bertie knows anything about Irish mythology, he might recognize the origin of Oisin the Bard.

[what_ho_jeeves]

Bertie isn't familiar with Irish mythology, as his English schoolmasters as a boy were of the opinion that the Irish were not a fit example for a would-be gentleman. But he knows Greek mythology.

"Oh, like that Actaeon chap! The one who offended a goddess and she said 'Dash it all, I can't have mortals offending me, what kind of example would that show?' and turned him into a stag."

He doesn't recall the rest of the story, that the stag was killed and devoured by Artemis' hounds. He selectively forgets the more unpleasant things.

[athousandcurses]

Grainne would have a few things to say to those schoolmasters if she knew.

"Actaeon...?" Maybe it's because that guy didn't sound like a hero, but Grainne can't recall anyone by that name, either from the knowledge bestowed to her or from stories in her own life. "I'm not certain, but the story goes on when Fionn mac Cumhail took her to the Hill of Almhuin where she turned into a girl again. He married her, but the druid found her again while Fionn was out fighting a battle. She turned back into a doe and disappeared into the forest, but some time later they found a boy bearing a resemblance to Fionn and the girl. His name was Oisin."

At least the story has the double duty of distracting Bertie and keeping him from seeing the couple of skeletons she silently dispatched behind him, and the other being giving her a way to focus on something other than how like the Grail War these skeleton things were.