Southryos: The Infinite City [Archive]

[Mizagium]

It was a wonderful day in the land of Southryos. The sun was obscured, the gangs were shooting, and the Urban Power Company was busy blackmailing all of the Senators.

Oh wait. Those are all bad things.

Regardless.

A portal opened somewhere in the northern section. Conjuring openings over long distances was something of a crapshoot unless the proper calculations were made - which they weren't - so sometimes the exit was not exactly where the caster intentioned. Jeffrey Valentine desperately hoped it wasn't the Keeper's intention to drop them from two feet up into a dark alley of moldy garbage bags and a handful of sleeping (and possibly dead) hobos.

"Remind me to give that old man a thorough ass-kicking when we get back," he muttered to his fellow heroes whilst brushing various bits of refuse from his travel clothes. Actually, they were his normal, everyday clothes that had rapidly become his travel clothes.

He gave the area around him a cursory look. "Well, he wasn't kidding. This really is a giant city. Alright, somewhere out there" he waved vaguely "is the Green Keystone. Any guesses?"

[Mizagium]

Magnus grumbled under his breath about sloppy portal work as he casually brushed off the mix of trash filth and dead hobo from his longcoat.

Then he got a good look around the place where the portal had dropped them. It certainly wasn't the best place the wizard had ever seen (but shockingly it also wasn't the worst.).

"Hmm...well, chances are with our luck it's in the general vicinity of the gunshots." Magnus gestured towards the end of the alley where the faint sound of mundane city ambiance/ gunfire was heard.

There was a faint groan that alerted Magnus to the fact that he was standing on someone. He looked down and grinned. "Ah, Leske. Good to see you made it here in one piece." he said to his faithful follower. "But where are the other two?"

"We're here." Ash and Desmond, the other two "apprentices" of Magnus made themselves known.

Magnus nodded. "Good."

A long pause, and then Leske finally asked, "Sir, could you get off of me?"

"Ah, I suppose."

[Mizagium]

The Torrent of Souls ritual probably wasn't supposed to be used for seemingly trivial things such as this, considering one was technically opening the floodgate to a hundred minor spirits and could achieve dazzling feats with them.
But a sensible necromancer an angry Perish does not make.
Precious few seconds seemed to pass in silence before most of the alleyway apparently exploded upward as black spirits shot up violently carrying bits of garbage and such away from the master.

"I SHOULD HAVE KILLED THAT OLD FART!" Perish yelled in frustration as she was thrown to her feet, shoulders up and hands raised in a gesture of supreme fury, frozen with rage for a moment.
In that moment, one of the spare spirits cautiously picked an old banana peel off her head.
"I need to violently kill something..." Perish said, one of her eyes twitching for a moment before she jerked a little as though realizing something.
She actually deigned to sniff a few times before taking up an expression of intrigued thought.

"Hmm, under all the stench there's a hint of blood on the air, very faint... actually there's quite a lot of old blood here and there too... maybe this city isn't too bad..." Perish said, letting out a breath in attempt to discard her anger. It'd probably be easier to start her ball of minions rolling from here, as from the sounds of things she wouldn't even have to work to get herself a supply of corpses and blood.

"We should probably find someone exceedingly important and dangle them off a tall building for some information," Perish suggested airily.

[Mizagium]

The glorious prince suddenly found himself in a heap of filth amongst the poor, oh how he hated the poor. No really, he would sooner let a woman leave the kitchen than to allow a poor man even look at his city. The poor are very foul creatures. Also the one he had fallen on seemed to be covered in such a pile of filth (as the poor tend to be covered in, filthy, filthy vagrants), that the prince jumped to his feet and began to vomit uncontrollably. Actually, scratch that. The prince would have me remind you that the rich do not "vomit", they are merely expelling impurities from a past life, and impurity means the poor relatives blood that courses through their veins, from the past, his family is rich now, he wishes to remind you of his status yet again.

"My words! Look at this...this...POORNESS!! Do you all see this? ME! A prince! Surrounded by such, mundane commoners! Oh hush now don't be offended I do not mean you all (entirely), just these vagabonds here. Good thing my shining royal cod piece is so bright and royal (especially royal) that this dark alley is illuminated enough to allow us to avoid stepping on these...poor things. And by poor I do not mean I sympathize with them, I am of course speaking of their social and economical status. Did I mention I have a shining cod piece? I do not see any of you with cod pieces. A true adventurer has one you know. Well I do suppose we are here for a reason are we not? I believe we should follow these...dirty...filthy...poor...fellows and we shall find our trouble. You know what they say, 'The poor have no jobs or purpose in life, so they just stir up trouble.' I'm not surprised really, they have no cod pieces to guide them in life. Pity."

[Mizagium]

"Ah, there you are!" Kid Leon hovered into the alleyway on his personal helicopter, an aircraft so black that, had it not been for the prince's codpiece illuminating the area, it surely would have looked like Leon was floating in midair in the sunless sky of his own accord (which was not impossible).

"You all really should get out of that filth if you intend to go questing. Adventurers should take better care of themselves," he snickered. Being a seasoned dimension traveler himself, the moment he felt them all being pulled into Southyros, he created his own little portal to take him to a (comparatively) safe (or at least clean) part of the city. He then used another portal to call forth a helicopter and had been searching for his companions for a good 20 minutes or so. Truly a marvelous thing, dimension magic.

[Mizagium]

Thomas laughed atthe Prince's Inhability to withstand the poor for in his homeland in the north was ripe with the poor and crippled.Slaaping him on the back Thomas sid In a gruff sarcastic tone trying to impersonate the faney and well to do voice the prince had. "Would Your Highness like to be carried? or perhaps just to shot all of the invalds who cross his path?"
He let out another gaffaw befre he lit up a cigar but all of the sudden a termendos noise came down from the sky looking up to his surprise was a contrapation that could suspend itself in the air with the uplifting power generated by spinning blades he had seen no such thing like it back in his island far to the north but it interested him."Hey Kid! Land here we can barely hear you over the noise generated by those blades!"THomas Yelled as loud as he could in hopes of getting his voice over the sound of the propellors.

[Mizagium]

The prince ignored the sloppy hand print (obviously NOT of noble birth) that had no defaced his flowing purple royal cloak of royalty, which was a signal to all of his royal status, of..being a royal person. Royal.

"Why yes, I do prefer to rid the world of these abominable...things. My royal dog has a larger cod piece than any of these men do. Pathetic. Fortunately for them, my attention is currently diverted at the moment."

He looked up into the sky with a royal grimace and called out to the disgraceful fellow in this hovering bird contraption, "You there! Whooooo do you think you are? Gallivanting about the skies in such a manner? Even from down here I can see you possess no cod piece about your loins and you CERTAINLY have no flowing purple cloak, and even if you did, it CERTAINLY would not be as purple and flowing (and royal) as mine. The skies are only to be tampered with by those of noble birth! I shall show you a REAL flying contraption!"

With that he opened up his endless utility belt and pulled out, quite unfortunately, a rubber chicken.

"My word what is this nonsense? Chickens are certainly not made of this flimsy material, they are made of meat. Nonsense I say. You win this round flying man, luck was most certainly on your side. One of these days I shall show you how royal royalty patrols the air!!"

He tossed the rubber chicken aside and watched the vagrants chase after it as it bounced down the alley way and around the corner.

"Well atleast we are rid of that filth now."

[Mizagium]

Jeff frowned. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute." He pointed at Thomas. "Who are you? I don't remember you being with us at the...Keeper's Tower. Unless you're, like, from around here. And if you are, have you seen any shiny magical glowing green stones around here?"

-

Back in Centros, the Mechanist King paced the observation deck of his factory. "Looks like we've bought ourselves some time, Rurik."

Rurik stopped to watch the assembly of a squad of robots, recently upgraded to include beam weapons and flight capabilities. "So it seems." Centros's resources were being stretched to the breaking point. If Salma delayed any longer, the whole plan might just collapse in on itself. The Two Queens wouldn't have to even lift a finger. "Have they discovered our deception?"

"Not yet," the king mused. "But she's intelligent. She will learn."

"What then?"

"We hope this Jeffrey Valentine and his motley band of heroes move faster."

"I don't like this. We're counting on our enemy to discover our plan. But what if she doesn't, or chooses to ignore the threat and marches on us?"

A shrug. "Then you and I make our stand here. Regardless of the circumstances, the Keystones will be assembled again. The outcome will be the same no matter what Salma decides to do."

Rurik didn't voice his further thoughts about the Northyric Magisters. He just prayed Khilbron was still alive.

[Mizagium]

Perish had been deep in contemplation as the prince and a vaguely familiar kid popped onto the scene and made lots of noise -she had trouble deciding whether the prince or the kid was the most annoying, even with the current noise level.
The strange man with the cigar and the pipes on his armour and such was just that: strange, so Perish paid him little heed and focused on getting away from this noisy bunch.

"Jeff, I'm going to be out there somewhere," Perish said with a slight grumble, rubbing one of her temples as though everyone was just a manifestation of a headache whilst she walked down the alleyway and straight into traffic.

There was a squeal of tyres as a strange, shiny, wheeled machine came to an abrupt halt inches away from Perish; a brief pause before it emitted a rude, loud noise crossed between a beep and a honk.
Perish's eye twitched as she turned to face the vehicle, placing one hand on the front and murmuring under her breath as the smoky black energy gathered to her from thin air. A black ritual circle built itself under the car, and a moment after it was built and charged, did an enormous black spirit burst out and lift the entire car into the air, deftly rolling it around in the air so it was upside down and just held it there while Perish walked around to the driver window.

"Now that I have your attention," Perish began, but was blasted with screams, "Tell me where the Green Keystone is or I'll crush this vehicle with you in it!"
More screams... Perish covered her face with a palm.

[Mizagium]

Leon lifted his finger and opened his mouth to address the prince - Leon really wanted to point out that he was, in fact, wearing his royal purple, gold trimmed robes. He decided not to push the issue, however, and landed the helicopter. The rotating blades slowly spun to a halt and the noise level returned to what it had been before Leon had shown up.

He cautiously stepped out of the helicopter, making sure to avoid stepping on anything that would sully his immaculate travel sandals (how an adventurer could be concerned about keeping his shoes clean, of all things (and how he could actually succeed at it) is anyone's guess.)

"So, what's this quest all about, again?" Leon asked. "Some sort of keystone, was it?"

[Mizagium]

Magnus sighed, running a hand through his hair in exasperation. He was already beginning to regret this little adventure, and it had yet to get started. Vaguely he wondered if it was too late to back out....nah.

"Okay," he spoke up. And looked at Thomas. "Who the flurg are you? I'm pretty sure you weren't with us at the Tower. Two,"
he glared at the Dayman. "I'm pretty sure we left you behind (after mugging you) how are you even here?"

He stopped, inhaling deeply. "And third...Perish, stop that!" he turned and stalked out after the necromancer, who was busy terrorizing the citizens. "Would it kill you to be a bit more subtle?"

This coming from a man who conjured storms of weapons to fight with.


~~~~~~~~~~

A lone figure stood at the edge of a tall skyscraper, watching the scene unfold below as a strange woman assaulted an innocent civilian in his car. Unacceptable! This was his city to protect, and he would not allow harassment of its citizens to go unpunished.

Theme music began to play from...somewhere, and the Bread Wizard launched himself from the building and, using his fabled breadmaturgy, conjured a floating disk of some form of flatbread to glide on as he made his descent.

"Halt, evil-doer!" He cried out, swooping in close to the scene. He conjured a pair of french-bread batons into his hands and struck a gallant (read: ridiculous) pose.

"Fear not, good citizens! For the Bread Wizard has arrived!" He exclaimed, to the cheers and cries of many of the citizens on the street. Actually, most of those cries were of exasperation, or loud moans of disgust, as a few people let out the call,

"You suck Bread Wizard!"

The Heroic Wizard carried on, ignoring this. He pointed his weapons at Perish. "You there, unhand that vehicle!"

[Mizagium]

Having been unconscious for several minutes, Chase awoke to find that he was laying face down in a dumpster. Overpowered by the stench of corpse and ass, Chase hurried to climb out of the dumpster.

Realizing he had no idea where he was or how he got there, Chase took a moment to collect his thoughts as he removed the severed hand that was stuck to his face.

Drawing a blank, Chase decided to chalk it up to memory loss.

Whatever.

Happy to see that his friends were there Chase approached Jeff, tugging on his shirt.

"Sup, Dawg."

[Mizagium]

After determining a voice atrophication spell that she might use on the screaming citizen, Perish discovered her rival mage companion attempting to keep everything from falling into chaos -which she thought was kind of funny until his wording when he spoke to her. Would it kill her to be subtle? Kill? Her?
Perish gave the flattest stare imaginable at Magnus before her attention was inevitably drawn to some flamboyant eccentric nutjob that floated down from somewhere on baked goods.

"What... the...?" Perish said, a little bewildered at the arrival of this 'Bread Wizard' who was also apparently playing the hero of justice.
She blinked a few times as she looked at the bread wizard before glancing at her captured upside-down car, giving a shrug and pointing at the wizard.
The spirit mindlessly obeyed and carelessly tossed the vehicle at the bread wizard.

"Okay, so," Perish began, turning to face Magnus again with a business-like disposition, as though the bread wizard hadn't happened, "What's your idea for finding this stupid rock? Since I'm apparently not subtle enough."

[Mizagium]

"Er..." Magnus began, then stopped to think. Pointedly ignoring the arrival of the Bread Wizard -seriously, bread? What the hell- Magnus tried to think up a plan. "Well, I'd say it would be a good idea to figure out where exactly we are first. Since this appears to be a civilized area, then we will have to consider that the stone as already been discovered."

He looked around at the city. "Maybe it's in a museum somewhere." he shrugged. "I know one thing for certain, after the battle for Hero's Refuge." he glared pointedly at the necromancer. "Weird shit is going to happen to us; don't go around making it worse."

At that moment the Bread Wizard (having been knocked clean off his bread-disk mount by the flying car) leaped up, pointing his bread-based weapons at the pair of magic users.

"A worthy opponent! I see that I will need to go all out to defeat you, vile fiends!" he shouted.

Magnus nodded. "Case and point."

[Mizagium]

Jeff gave Chase a shrug. "I hate being an adventurer." Actually, he rather liked Perish's idea of threatening citizens until he got the information that he wanted, but then more odd character like this Bread Wizard would show up.

Jeff casually conjured up his barriersword and brought the point to bear on the breadmancer. "Alright, look you. Tell us where we are or I'll hurt you."

That sounded better in his head. Oh well.

[Mizagium]

Why was it that the most logical course of action had to be the most boring? As Perish was far more inclined to just continue shaking down every person she meets until enough useful info falls out, Magnus had produced some sensible observations. A giant city like this couldn't have possibly missed something as important-looking as a Keystone thing -that was, if the Keystone did actually look as important as it sounded...
Either an archaeological dig or something would have found it while the city was expanding, or it was in a catacomb-like environment under the city which Perish was kind of hoping for. But for the former, a museum would probably be a place to start, as long as the stone was found by someone reputable... wait...

Perish resolved to just sighing again as it seemed this Keystone wasn't going to make things that easy.

"I don't think things can get any weirder with my help, so I maintain we find someone important and dangle them off a tall building, it'll do all the work for us," Perish said to Magnus, still mostly ignoring the bread wizard and the fact Jeff was trying to intimidate him.
The nutter had weapons made of bread, honestly; Perish only didn't like metal weapons because they had the ability to lop limbs off, but she wasn't particularly afraid of them, so a bread weapon... well, Perish might have been more concerned if he had been using his fists...

Her hulking spirit was still stuck in the middle of the road, head propped up on one hand while the other drummed its fingers on the ground, as apparently the spirit's lower half didn't exist and it was tied to the large ritual circle Perish had used to summon it.

[Mizagium]

Leon strode over toward Magnus and Perish and gave them a very disapproving glare, wagging his all powerful FINGER OF SHAME at them with much gusto. "Shame on you two sorcerers!" he yelled. "Have you no honor? When a challenge presents itself, we magical adventurers are obliged to accept it - not just pretend it doesn't exist! Haven't you ever read The Code?" From his robe pocket, Leon withdrew a magazine entitled "A Magical Hero's Guide to Traveling the Universe: The Definitive Code on Adventuring with Magic Powers" and shoved it in Perish's and Magnus' faces. "You owe it to the spirit of adventuring to face this bread wizard before we even think about going to find this Keystone!"

Truth be told, Leon had just written that magazine in his spare time, and it wasn't even finished. There was no "Sorcerer's Code" as far as he knew, and even if there were he would probably be the last one to abide by its rules. Leon had ignored many a strange person in his day - a perverted, fat dimensional traveler and a cow themed superhero, to name a few. Frankly, he was just looking to cause trouble and get into a fight, having amassed a ton of boredom in the three week pause between the first Centros and this one.

"Now, fellow mages and non-mages alike! Let me show you how adventuring is truly done!" Leon ran back inside his helicopter and fired it up again, this time to utilize its secondary mode. "CSX-100, execute Battle Plan Alpha!" The moment Leon said those words, the helicopter stood right side up, its tail splitting apart to form two thin legs. The landing gear then moved out to the sides of the helicopter, transforming into blade like arms. Finally, the nosecone of the helicopter flipped backwards where the landing gear had been moments before, revealing a dome like cockpit from where Leon controlled this machine. The helicopter now looked rather like a decent sized mech, with the four blade propeller of the helicopter forming a massive "X" shaped chest plate.

"CSX-100, Alpha Form!" Leon pressed a button labeled "Show Off", causing his mech to strike an...intimidating battle pose. The blade arms of the CSX-100 machine were positioned as if to say 'I watched a martial arts movie once and I'm not afraid to use it." With the flashy transformation sequence over, Leon sounded his battle cry. "Bread Wizard, your defeat shall be the greatest thing since sliced bread!" The CSX-100 took off its propeller chest and threw it at the Bread Wizard like a giant shuriken, aiming at his bread based weaponry.

[Mizagium]

The Bread Wizard moved quickly, ducking out of Jeff's way and running towards the giant spinning blade. He drew upon the might of his magic (thought the word 'might' is a bit of a stretch) and braced himself, locking his bread-swords in an X shape.

The spinning blade struck....and the bread weapons actually stopped the advancing weapon. Citizens stared in disbelief that their bread-based hero could actually pull that off. The Bread Wizard himself seemed just as surprised. "Huh..I didn't think that would work." he muttered.

"Regardless!" He shouted, pointing his weapons at Leon's battle mech. "A challenge has been issued, and I must answer." The Bread Wizard began to draw upon all his magical powers and started chanting in a mysterious language that sounded suspiciously like pig latin.

He summoned bread, thousands of forms of bread began to form around him, larger and larger until he stood equal with Leon, armored in an impossible bread-mecha. The Bread Wizard laughed triumphantly, basking in the glory (read: horror) of the citizens that watched in awe.

Magnus, at this point had begun taking notes, the foremost of which was 'acquire giant robot for future use.'

Hey, if everyone else had one, why shouldn't he?

"Have at thee!" He cried, lunging at Leon with what everyone would later agree to be a pretty bitchin' Kirk-style drop-kick.

[Mizagium]

Leon stared at his foe. Hard. A million questions raced through his head, but all he could manage to ask was "You're...kidding, right?" before he realized that he was about to be dropkicked. "Go go, Gadget Shuriken!" Leon cried, and before the kick landed, the CSX-100's propeller flew back toward its chest like a boomerang, intercepting most of the blow's force. Once he felt the attack had been safely deflected, Leon raised his finger and was about to point out how much sense a bread mecha didn't make. "Never mind. It's not worth it," he decided. "Well played, Bread Wizard! But I've still got a few tricks up my robot sleeves!"

Leon pressed a few more buttons and caused the CSX-100 to rip off its propeller chestpiece again. This time, however, instead of throwing it at the Bread Wizard, he slammed it into a brick wall of the surrounding alley and rotated it violently. This ground much of the wall into a fine brick powder, suitable for throwing in people's eyes. Or making a storm with. "I hope you don't mind, but I think you'd make a nice sandwich!" Leon laughed, reattaching the propeller to the mech's chest. The propeller's rapid rotation generated winds of about 117 miles per hour, picking up all of the brick dust and hitting the Bread Wizard (and everyone in the surrounding area).

[Mizagium]

One had to wonder whether Perish had brought this upon herself after saying she couldn't make this weirder, as no sooner did that annoying kid from before start gallivanting around did suddenly a giant mech fight break out, somehow the bread wizard was involved.
She just stood there in disbelief with an almost threatening expression, as though she was this close to just killing everything in sight out of pure exasperation.
Then again, killing everything would produce a lot of blood, and blood was insanely handy for Perish... but she'd better not... instead, she decided to do something almost as bad.

Perish glanced to her bound spirit who jumped up in response, right before it was unsummoned and Perish stepped into the ritual circle and started building power again. The runes of the circle quickly changed and the size almost tripled, spanning nearly the entire street.

Even as the kid kicked up a duststorm, Perish just sat their channeling, somewhat glad she didn't actually have to care if dust got into her eyes or lungs, though she was still going to kick that kid's ass for doing so.
While she drew power to the circle, another two vertical rune circles appeared before each of Perish's hands as she held them out.
It went without saying that a ritual circle that big was going to cause something devastating, they were just lucky Perish still needed to finish charging it up.