hadriel_logs | Event Log: End of Arc 2

Who: All characters
What: The event log for the End of Arc 2
Where: All over the city
When: November 25th-December 12th
Warnings: A full-scale battle, including character death, NPC death, and various other ways to suffer

It was bound to happen. The Null warned you, after all, and this has been building for awhile - and now it's here. First comes the initial attack, the agents of the Null attacking Hope's temple. Then, an SOS, warning the city of what's happened: a betrayal, and Hope being injured. Luckily for everyone, thanks to the actions of his guards Hope survives the attack. Unluckily, his attacker, the goddess Delight, escapes and lets the Null in.

Flooding into the cave, the Null will attack anyone who they believe is resisting them. They'll destroy buildings and deploy dangerous crowd control weapons, in addition to their sheer strength and speed. Confusion empties the monsters in the tunnels into the city, to help distract the Null. Some gods fight, others provide safe havens, but everyone is in danger.

After about a week and a half of the attack, Fear summons enough power to teleport the city. This stops any new Null from arriving through the tunnels, but the remaining Null must be hunted down and destroyed, or else they'll signal their location to the rest of their species. The danger will lessen as Null are taken out, but things won't really be safe until Fear moves the city again, so don't get too comfortable.

What will you do? Run and hide? Fight? Help the fighters? Turn on the gods yourself? Whatever you do, it's time to make a decision.

► This log covers November 25th-December 12th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you get taken out by the Null, please let us know here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He nods.] All right. I'll fight when you need me, but that's definitely needed, too, and I don't mind at all.

[He is afraid there's going to be quite a few before it's over.]

Curufin and I can cover you until you are able to rejoin us in battle.

[With the amount of Null coming, they'll need every capable fighter to come out and fight, but she's confident that they can keep the Null at bay long enough for Luke to get the injured off of the battlefield.

She has no intention of leaving the battlefield either. Her knowledge of how to treat injured people is limited to some basic first aid. She will be far more useful in battle than attending to the injured, and she's been wanting to fight the Null for quite some time. Beings that even gods fear? Now that is a quality fight, worthy of her time.]

[Luke hurries as quickly as he can, picking up the injured and moving them to safety, Force boosting when he has to, but not overdoing it so he won't get tired too fast. He hopes they can be helped and aren't too far gone. He isn't sure yet what happens if someone dies here.]

[ The other reinforcements arrive, and the battle commences. The Null try to overwhelm the Hadrielites, firing their weapons and sometimes simply stampeding them. But the resistance is fierce and determined, and they stand their ground.

Curufin gets to try out his firearms, and is pleased to see that as long as he can deliver a rifle shot or a blast of shotgun pellets to the dead center of a Null's body, where the central processor is housed in most models, he can knock the Null over and usually kill it dead.

Whenever he sees Luke going for an injured person, he steps into the gap and holds the line until Luke comes back. Hurray for the Force, and a truly adept Force-user!

He keeps track of Ikaruga and when he gets a chance, he grins at her in appreciation of her considerable skills -- and her warrior's heart. ]

[Superhuman speed helps greatly with dealing with the Null, as does her magic enabling her to cut anything. However, there's so many of them. Even with those assets, even with Curufin's great skill as a warrior and Luke's ability with the Force, even with all of the reinforcements...it cannot be denied that they're outnumbered. And this is where fighting experience matters the most. Knowing how to pace oneself and how to not get caught up in the adrenaline rush of it all.]

There will be so much scrap metal around when this is all over.

[There's a clean slice through a Null before she continues.]

We should see to building something worthwhile with it.

[ Three warriors here with varying skills, but all swift and avid to prevail. And all of them capable of thinking at the same time as they are fighting. They move with deliberation and rely on each other -- they make a good team. ]

That's for sure! It's a metalworker's dream. [ Smile ]

[ Shotgun blast. A Null is blown backwards and falls, scrabbling at the ground. The twitching soon stops. ]

My son Celebrimbor and I have a little cluster of workshops down by the woods. We have a forge and a machine-shop and a carpentry shop. We'll be happy to contribute our skills and labor to whatever you'd like to build. And Luke here is a great mechanic and machinist. [ He grins sideways at Luke. ]

I will leave the craftsmanship to you, in that case, and stick with planning and design. Although I can create flames hot enough to break armour specifically crafted to protect the wearer against fire magic...so perhaps I can help with melting down the metal, at least.

[But she's not using that here and now because not only does it take more energy than simply enhancing her slices with magic, but it's potentially dangerous to anyone who might jump into the fray at the wrong time. Her control of it isn't the surgical precision that she can manage with magically enhanced slices.

She's mindful of covering Luke as he moves the injured to a safer place within Hope's temple. She can only hope that he has more of a grasp of how to treate injured people than she does. She create a splint or bandage someone's wounds, but overall she's far more useful on the battlefield than off.]

I must say, although I thought there was a possibility that one of the gods was a traitor, Delight was low on my list of suspects.

[ Grin ] Really? I'd love to have you come and help us melt down the raw materials, in that case. This I have to see!

[ Armor-melting flames! Must be an awesome backup power to possess, if surrounded by Null and not near any other human beings.

Luke is a very good EMT. As great as it is, he uses his power with gentleness, and the wounded are moved quickly and efficiently to safety within the temple. ]

You were quicker on the uptake than I was, Ikaruga. I didn't believe it could be any of us betraying our location to the Null, but I also didn't believe it could be one of the gods. But even if I had, I wouldn't have suspected Delight. I guess I spent too much time in her bar before it was destroyed, and it was many a time she served me an excellent drink, accompanied by excellent bartender chat. I'm appalled to find out it was her.

I let myself be talked out of that being the most likely reason, though. I considered the possibility of the Null shapeshifting and taking the shape of a phone more likely. But in hindsight, all the details fit. The gods know where we are, have the greater access to the network...and since she went with Rage, she would be able to hinder some of the investigation.

[Which makes her regret voting for Rage and Delight to conduct that investigation, but it was better than sending Hope or Fear. If the gods weren't so set on their particular teams, she might have suggested Sorrow and Rage team up.]

You know, much as I'm displeased, I have to applaud how skillfully she pulled it all off. Even with my exposure to both a mercenary lifestyle and to courtly politics, I still did not suspect her.

[ He chuckles darkly at Ikaruga's picture of a Null taking the shape of a phone. What would you call it? -- an nPhone? ]

Yes, the details do fit, don't they? Only the gods knew where we were and where we were going. And only they had complete access to the network. And I've just had a really disquieting thought. . . since Delight was one of the investigation team, what if she had decided to make the evidence point to one of us as the traitor? If she was willing to betray her own, how much more expendable would we have been?

Oh yes, she was skillful. I'll give you that.

[ And he scraps another Null with his shotgun. ]

Event Log: End of Arc 2

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