[Training Course] Blowing off steam

[Baneful]

WE ARE HALLOWEEN

Sun Hunter
SHADOW RUN

General Information
The Shadow Run is both the simplest and most dangerous training course that can be run without a golem. A flurry of continuous attacks is what the Sun Division holds in highest respect, and the course reflects that. The course itself is a simple tunnel, reached via portal. Within the tunnel await hundreds of weak, hungry shadowlings. Nothing to worry about on their own, but capable of overwhelming a Hunter through sheer numbers at the first moment of weakness. At the other end of the tunnel is another portal, leading back to the course observation booth.

If you fail: your character is KO'd, but there's always a senior hunter in the observation booth with enhanced bandages at the ready. They should reach you in time. Really. Trained and trusty professionals on-hand 24/7.

If you win: peen points and bragging rights to those who take out the greatest number of shadowlings and go the most turns without needing to attempt a recovery maneuver.

Mechanics

• You must get through 5 waves of attacks to make it through the tunnel.
  
• Simply roll for attack as you would in battle.
  
• If you miss, your character falters in their attacking and is overwhelmed by shadowlings.
  
• After 3 successful hits, you may use your weapon's charge attack.
  
  Bonus Mechanics
  
• This bonus is consumable.
  
• The bonus in this course is in the form of "recoveries" ~ these are would-be missed attacks that are quickly recovered and turned into a successful hit. Basically, they can miss once and roll again for an extra try. If you keep consecutively missing, though, and run out of recoveries, it's lights out. These do not equal an automatic pass for a round, you still have to land a successful hit to proceed.
  
  
• Trainees: 0 recovery
  
• Sun Trainees: 1 recovery
  
• Hunters: 1 recovery
  
• Sun Hunters: 2 recoveries
  

Status

Wave: (current wave number)

Attack Dmg:
Total Shadowlings taken out:
Recoveries left:

[quote="Status"]
[size=14][color=#00BFFF][b]Wave: (current wave number)[/b][/color][/size]

[b]Attack Dmg:[/b]
[b]Total Shadowlings taken out:[/b]
[b]Recoveries left:[/b]
[/quote]

 

[Baneful]

Rep was feeling irritable. Not that this would have been any great surprise to anyone, but lately it had been moreso than usual, a steadily growing sense of penned up energy and anger that didn't abate or subside with time. That day he'd decided to stalk down to the shadow run and vent a bit of his anger on whatever unfortunate shadowlings crossed his path.

As he stepped into the long corridor he found himself thinking bitterly that at least here he was allowed to summon his weapon, if nowhere else. He took the first few steps along the hallway and broke into a run, scattering the stupid creatures as he did so.

Status

Wave: 1

Attack Dmg: 8
Total Shadowlings taken out: 8
Recoveries left: 2

 

[Baneful]

It was easier here, it was a controlled environment in the sense he probably wouldn't die but the danger was still present enough to be motivational, every bite of the shadowling claws against his shield a reminder that normal humans in this place would be so much mincemeat within no time. He wasn't a golem, every mistake would be written in very permanent flesh he couldn't simply slough off at the end of the run.

Tracey paid intent attention along with him, both of their respective points of focus converging on the battle at hand, two pairs of eyes watching everything and every movement run through two sets of instincts. He couldn't really imagine anymore what it felt like to fight truly alone without Tracey there.

He cleaved through a gathering mass of heaving shadowy bodies and leapt over another clot of the creatures underfoot, he didn't feel like being tripped up, he was in his element instead.

Status

Wave: 2

Attack Dmg: 13
Total Shadowlings taken out: 21
Recoveries left: 2

 

[Baneful]

More shadowlings surged towards him and he slowed, stopping short of the door to turn back and face them, to let them amass and turn on him, letting Tracey cut through the horde with every swing.

Horde. Hoard. He wasn't a hoarder but they'd taken it away anyway, the way he knew they probably would, people like him weren't allowed to have possessions, he should really have known better. Everything had to be shared because other people could hold onto their things when they had to, he couldn't, he never could.

Everything he held to him, he ultimately lost in time. The few things he still had he intended to fight for fiercely. Harrison, Jordan and Tracey could never be taken from him, he'd made ******** well sure of it, and training like this was always the first step.

As he plunged the serrated feathers deep into the next surge of creatures, the runes flashed brilliant in the dim light.

Status

Wave: 3

Attack Dmg: 10
Total Shadowlings taken out: 31
Recoveries left: 2

 

[Baneful]

The hallway was cramped, but there was room to jump, space in the shadowlings that he could occupy. In the dark he'd lost track of where Tracey ended and the creatures began, and in the dark it didn't matter. It felt right somehow, to be one of the things, one of the monsters, the same and yet infinitely different.

Something in Tracey agreed with the concept, he felt like he'd been the same once as everyone around him, but that deep difference was what brought him to this point, standing on the other side of the battlefield, helping the enemy and hunting his own kind.

Neither of them even pretended anymore they were doing this for the right reasons. Rep didn't care if the world burned, as long as he and the guys were left standing on the charred husk of what remained, at this point he fought simply for the sake of the fight. He didn't have his mother's photo any longer and he was forgetting what her face looked like already. One day he'd be a weapon with memories burned away himself, fighting because it was all he'd ever known.

He leapt, trailing light behind him, a vast magic circle on the ground snaking out, glimpsed between scrabbling bodies as he brought the blade down full force, clearing the floor, twisted gnarled and bony protrusions curling up and out from Tracey's edge.

Status

Wave: 4

Attack Dmg: 28
Total Shadowlings taken out: 59
Recoveries left: 2

 

[Baneful]

Hate made him stronger, it was what had forged him, hate and ignorance. Ignorance was worse, to be ignored was to be denied worth, denied existence. No matter what he'd done before the island he'd never really appeared to anyone other than when he acted out, now he'd made plenty of enemies, people who'd delight in his failure and pull him down given half a chance.

Everyone was karma's enforcer when it came to him, throwing in their opinions about exactly how much he deserved to suffer.

He suffered every day, every day he made himself get out of bed, throw on that smirk and keep going, every time he sunk investment in another human being only to have them say something wildly inappropriate about him, disproportionate trial by peers.

He gathered his wits, and then he leapt back into the fray.

Status

Wave: 5

Attack Dmg: 2
Total Shadowlings taken out: 61
Recoveries left: 2

 

[Baneful]

They tried to pull him under -

Status

Wave: 6

Attack Dmg: --
Total Shadowlings taken out: 61
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

- but he leapt clear of them with a snarl of defiance. He'd dealt with worse than them, much, much worse than them. They were just the shadowy echoes of imagination, a pathetic waste product of humanity. He'd faced down the heart of darkness in the human ******** soul, looked into that abyss, felt it look back and not given a ******** felt the growing charge and it felt glorious.

Status

Wave: 6

Attack Dmg: 4
Total Shadowlings taken out: 65
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

And as the power grew so did his drive, the push ever onwards. The door was forgotten, he didn't care to escape, Suns didn't need to escape the battlefield, theirs was not to question why, theirs was but to do and die.

Fear flooded his veins and lifted his tired muscles as another charge twisted its seductive tendrils around him. It felt different somehow, he wasn't sure why.

Status

Wave: 7

Attack Dmg: 14
Total Shadowlings taken out: 79
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

So he let it take them.

It wasn't Problems. There was none of the aching desire to fly, to reach as high as he possibly could, leaping heavenward until everything was below him, instead something else overtook him, something black and terrible. It reminded him of the time at the dentist he'd had a tight mask over his face and the sweet cloying scent of the gas had overcome him, when he'd been floundering on the brink of blacking out but fighting with everything he had.

The world changed, everything changed, and from the cluster of shadows he saw a twisted talon lash out, familiar - his talon - no, Tracey's, sometimes it bled over into his thoughts, sometimes he thought he was going mad. He would have written it off as nothing but a hallucination if it hadn't seized a shadowling in its grip and consumed it, if it hadn't moved onto the next and the next, if he wasn't moving with it cutting and hacking and twisting and losing who he was and where he was.

And it hurt. In some deep intrinsic way lending the shadow material solidity cost him something dear, something deep in the very core of him. He couldn't sustain it, couldn't hold it out or he would dissapear, used up like burning wood, too far beyond the veil. The laws could only be bent not broken, he was tripping, he was falling.

He was back, breathless, panting, facing the oncoming shadows wide eyed and terrified by what he'd just seen.

Surrounded by the space where now vanished shadowlings once stood.

Status

Wave: 8

Attack Dmg: 38
Total Shadowlings taken out: 117
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

<>



He wasn't sure it felt right, more wrong than right. It was something no human really should ever have been able to do and deep down, it scared him.

But he fought on anyway, trying to break the lingering sensation of surreal strangeness.

Status

Wave: 9

Attack Dmg: 10
Total Shadowlings taken out: 127
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

And still he wasn't done. He wouldn't surrender until he was overcome, and until that moment arrived he was going to fight with everything he had, everything. Once he was a hollowed out shell of exhaustion, pain would overtake his world and replace that sense of restless anger and now fear at his own capabilities.

He needed one more charge, just one more ******** charge.

Status

Wave: 10

Attack Dmg: 4
Total Shadowlings taken out: 131
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

He wondered if the shadow run would ever run out of shadows. He hoped not, he would stay locked in this deadly dance all day, possibly forever if he was allowed to.

And again the charge rose up on him.

Status

Wave: 11

Attack Dmg: 6
Total Shadowlings taken out: 137
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

Too many charges always left him feeling drawn out and spent, as if he'd cashed too many energy cheques and was somehow overdrawn. There'd be a collection later, he was sure, but for the time being he was fighting with everything he had. So he let it come, let the charge overtake him and flow through to the battle.

Mercifully this one was familiar, the blade turning slick and black, twisting out like razor sharp tendrils to impale anything too stupid to get out of its way.

In the wake of the fear he was left half sobbing as he fought to regain his breath. But despite the heavy tax on his body, in that moment in the afterglow of a charge, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Status

Wave: 12

Attack Dmg: 18
Total Shadowlings taken out: 155
Recoveries left: 1

 

[Baneful]

Endurance wasn't his strong point, and with all his charges blown there was nothing left in him but to fight like a normal human being, Tracey warned him gravely that tapping into any more abilities would potentially kill them both and wasn't worth it at all. He felt the honesty of the words in the fiber of his very being and didn't even try to gather more energy, instead every swipe was another desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable.

Status

Wave: 13

Attack Dmg: 6
Total Shadowlings taken out: 161
Recoveries left: 1