On request from Tsukuyomi to enter the Destroyed Moon to rescue a lost item, that is to say, the Full Moon Syndicate’s ruins, Spider travels to Lunar District.
A once beautiful chapel at the very forefront of the Church of the Many Gods Above now destroyed. The ornately carved wooden pews that were once for Chandra and Tsukuyomi's churchgoers/cultists to listen to scripture are all but destroyed and black soot and burn marks cover all of them. The vaulted ceilings complete the location, showing just how tall this church once was. But that's strange isn't it? Wasn't the church above ground? Books on shelving near the altar can be seen. In fact, the Altar at the very end of the church is intact, as is the massive and tall steel pipe organ. Aside from the pews, everything else in the Chapel seems intact.
Three doors leading to different rooms within the former Church of the Many Gods Above are seen. Each of these doors has a golden nameplate with a title etched into them. One leads to a storage room, another leads to a library, and the final one would normally lead outside, but due to the Church being located underground, it is currently being blocked by rubble and dirt.
Ears flicking, Spider takes in her surroundings, despite the beauty of the church, she's been in too many times truly feels comfortable and it's strange that the interior is intact despite being in a hole. Walking over to the door Spider scans the nameplates and enters the second door.
Entering the room, Spider finds a very long hallway with books of all kinds on each side. Religious books, science books, a couple random shelves featuring manga, and all kinds of others are included. The Church is supposedly destroyed though, right? So why is this also mostly intact? With her heightened sense of hearing, however, Spider hears the vague clip clop of footsteps from down the hall. It seems that she and Error are not alone. It's yet unknown if these beings are friendly, but they don't seem to sense Spider.
Spider looks over at the hall, concern flooding them as her ears twitch and track the movement. Taking a deep breath she forces her gaze away and around the room. It's intact state only increases their confusion. Returning to the Chapel, no one seems to be there. The footsteps from the library seems to be getting closer to Spider, however.
Swallowing an annoyed growl Spider backs from the door then adjusts her stance and hold onto Error. If they're so insistent, then she may as well deal with them now.
Minutes pass, nothing happens. Then, a man steps out from the door, curious of the intruder. They're slim in build, about 5'9" with a very long beard and torn clothing. Some pieces in black and white are haphazardly sewn onto his shirt and trousers. Upon seeing the animal-eared intruder holding a bowie knife, he pulls out his own weapon, a rather simple wooden bat with a collection of nails hammered into it. He stays back near the door prepared to fight, but Spider can tell that it's almost like he's only going to fight if pushed into it.
Error attempts to shine a blue cone onto the man to try and detect magic, but it doesn't seem to work.
that's... weird. did my magic scan fail? :(
Though she doesn't quite relax, Spider tilts her head as she takes in the stranger, "I wasn't sure if I'd actually run into anyone here."
The stranger looks totally wide-eyed and nervous, and stutters while speaking, "wh-wh-who are y-you...? a-a-are you with them?"
Error attempts to scan again and fails again. Weeeeeeeeeird. I can't get a read on his Magic. ..wait.
Spider raises an eyebrow as she brings Error slightly up to better read its inscription, "them?"
The man fearfully holds his bat in a defensive stance scared that the animal-eared intruder will begin attacking, or even worse, frying him to death with fire spells. "Please don't burn me aliveeeeeeeeeeee!"
Error's inscription changes to: It's weird. I'm not sensing any magic on this guy. Like his soul is similar to yours and that Viper lady's. Magicless. :) Not counting powers you gained from outside this World of course :p
Spider now feels lots of eyes on her as if she's being watched from afar. With her hearing, she hears the slightest squeak of the library door opening up a crack.
Ignoring the confusion rising at the stranger's words, Spider focuses on the library door and waits to see who comes through.
After a moment, a totem pole of eyes peer through the door. Then, someone must've tripped because three small children crash to the ground followed right behind by a woman dressed entirely in black facepalming at the man, "Are you serious Jerry? If she was dangerous, she would've attacked by now. Am I right?"
Jerry, the lean bearded man who nearly pissed himself in fear, gets up and catches his breath, "A-ah.. s-sorry.."
The woman shakes her head, "thank you for checking up on the situation. Seems like the coast is clear. You're not with Nova right?" Spider notices this woman has jet black hair, pale skin, is about 5'4", is rather skinny, and has a shotgun equipped to her shoulder via a leather strap. Despite her clothes looking ravaged, she's rather pretty. Just like Jerry, her clothes also seem to have various bits of white and black haphazardly sewn onto them.
Spider blinks slightly bewildered by the fact that there's a whole family here now. However it doesn't stop her from responding, "Christ no."
The woman smiles and the man calms down significantly. The woman is the first to speak, "right, well, welcome to the former Church of the Full Moon. You uh might be confused why we're here and also underground. Long story short, it's hard for Magickless folk like us to find places to live, especially with all the shit Nova's been pulling lately. Turns out when your soul is completely incapable of casting magic two things happen:
1. People want to study you, like filthy rats in a much-too-small cage, prodded and poked for their amusement and their curiosity. What they don't get is that you get poked a little too much and rats fight back. We bite, we claw, we shit in their coffee!
2. You lose all ability to work and live comfortably. Employers don't want magickless people, what they call 'normies', around their magical people. Housing is nearly impossible to find as well since without money, you just don't have a place to live. We're a homeless family.
It was honestly lucky that we found the church we used to attend months ago underground, but it was a genuine mess. So we've been working hard to try and restore it back to its original state... though underground obviously. Oh! By the way, my name is Cherry. What's yours?" The woman seems very friendly, a soft smile on her face.
Jerry still appears apprehensive though asking awkwardly, "s-so you have magic then? That's..." he can't stop staring at Spider's ears. Perhaps out of sheer curiosity. One of the small children, a boy looking around 10 or 11, simply calls out to Spider calling her "puppy!"
Spider's tail flicks as she's slightly unsettled by all the staring. Regardless they listen to Cherry running a hand over her face frustrated by what she's hearing. "Wish I could say I'm surprised but at least you found a nice place here. And it's Spider." Turning to Jerry Spider hesitates before responding, "you could call it that."
Cherry shrugs then continues the introduction, asking, "so Spider what can we help you with? Or are you just urban exploring? The last time we had people exploring down here, they tried to steal our food supply, so I would suggest you don't. They were never found again after that." A smile creeps along her face after mentioning that.
Spider shakes their head, "I don't doubt, I'm trying to find ..something in one of the old offices."
"Would you like us to guide you to it? We've not mapped the entire church yet unfortunately, so some parts may be more. Difficult to reach. Than others. Jerry might not look like much, but he's an experienced spelunker. He's the reason we're even situated here in the first place. Took months of work to clear out enough rubble to even make this place livable. We've gotten down to Chandra's office previously, but we know there's another one deeper inside." Cherry explains as Jerry nods. Two of the children are standing around doing not much and one, a slightly older teen girl, is over by the organ playing some soft music on it.
"I'd appreciate that." Spider nods
Jerry nods intently and tells, "Follow me then Spider! Cherry, take Mary, Larry, and Sherry back to the living quarters. I'll see you soon."
Cherry nods and takes her kids back through the library, then Jerry leads Spider through it as well. A few minutes later, they arrive at Chandra's office, and nearby it, is a lot of rubble and broken down walls. Up to this point, the church seems to have been slowly revitalized, and Spider notices other people aside from this family also living here. "Right, let's begin digging our way through here. If I'm correct, there should be one more office we need to find."
Spider nods, and while glancing back at Chandra's office they ask, "how many are living here?"
While working on digging out the passageway, Jerry comments, "mmm about 30 or 40 of us. Magickless people, like us, are an extreme rarity; though I have heard rumors that Nova's extended their operations to somewhere that's only normal people like us. That'd be a nice place to live, away from magic, weird robots, and animalfolk." He then looks over at Spider and adds a hasty "n-no offense."
Spider shrugs not sounding that bothered as they respond, "and you trust that?"
Jerry shrugs, "Course not. I don't trust anything that Nova touches, but what if there was a place where magic didn’t exist? That would be incredible.”
With some more rubble cleared out of the way, the two of them unearth a relic of FMS's past. A mostly destroyed cybernetics laboratory is found, and the title on the still intact golden nameplate catches Spider's eye. LUNA Project Research Laboratory
"Hm. That's not the office. Oh well." He continues digging.
The door leading to the lab is on its hinges nearing collapse. As she's about to respond the nameplate catches Spider's eye, and intrigued they carefully make their way past the door and enter the lab. This is the Cybernetics Laboratory of FMS's former robotics sector. The place is, for lack of a better term, a mess. Large bed-like capsules exist in one end of the lab, and books of unknown content are on a shelf. The Laboratory has four rooms connected to it, but only one, the room with the capsules and the strange examination table in the very center, as depicted in the art above, is available for exploring. It is possible, however, to clear the way into the other rooms, but it may require a little bit of luck.
[BGM - The Lab of the LUNAs - https://youtu.be/SiQZiqtlGAU ]
Making her way into the room Spider glances around while heading over to the examination table which caught her eye.
It looks to be a padded seat with what appears to be places for restraints in the arms, legs, and neck. Despite the padding, it looks incredibly uncomfortable. Next to the examination table is an array of tools but many are either completely broken, as is the case with the lcd computer screen, or are missing components, such as wires or tools. A taped on sticker on the lcd screen called it the LUNA 1.0 Realtime Detection EXamination Device. (LUNAR DEX) A sheet of paper that's mostly burnt is found near the table with a familiar someone's face in the top left corner, basically confirming who was last seen here. Luna's blank stare and lack of smile is immediately apparent.
Error seems to react to the table. :(
After glancing down at Error, wordlessly and feeling slightly sick, Spider turns away from the table and distracts herself with examining the rubble blocking one of the doorways.
Spider notices the rubble has fallen in such a way that if it's removed in the wrong way, the remaining rubble will fall and block off the room. In fact, this same set up exists in all four connected rooms. With the correct piece removed, the rest of the rubble in this room stay put granting Spider access. She notices this room is rather small and contains Administrative paraphernalia connected to the LUNA Project. A single desk with locked cabinets, a completely destroyed computer, and a leather office chair exist in here. On the wall, pictures of some woman, probably in her 40s, are found. It seems it could be this person's office, or someone related to her.
Spider glances around the room then heads back, deciding to tackle the other rubble piles before doing any in-depth exploration. Spider notices that each further rubble pile is more precarious than the last. Great care must be taken to clear these or else they will be blocked off until Jerry can get in there. Upon removing what Spider thought was the correct stone from both the second and fourth rooms, they both collapse in a shockingly loud roar of rocks falling. Jerry looks in at what happened and asks, "Oh gosh, are you okay Spider? I just finished digging to the next room. Looks like it's your destination."
Spider jumps back as the rubble collapses. Taking a deep breath, she looks over and nods responding with, "yeah I'm fine."
He whistles out of sheer disbelief, "Holy crap, what a mess. I'll clean it up later. Well come on, we've reached Tsukuyomi's office. That was your goal right?" He walks out of the lab and back into the hallway.
Spider follows. Upon walking back out, Spider notices the once rubble and dust filled hallway is now back to a suitable state. At the very end of this hallway is Tsukuyomi's office, and the goal of this quest.
"Well, I won't hold you up. Go ahead and do what you need to do. If you need help, just holler." Jerry then starts to walk back to his wife and children.
Continuing on Spider pulls the door open and heads inside the office. A once beautifully candlelit office of dark blues, blacks, and mahogany woods is now destroyed beyond belief. Much of the walls are now gone with shards of glass all over the once pristine floor. Over by one of the walls, a steel filing cabinet is seen and seems to be mostly intact though knocked over to the ground. Another wall has shattered frames and pictures littering the ground. In front of the wall is a desk that's mostly intact and right side up with drawers. Perhaps the Quest Item is here?
Upon entering Error scans the room with its blue Detect Magic spell. A glow seems to appear at the desk.
Aha! Found it. That's... interesting. :) Check the drawers.
The glow catches Spider's eye and after checking Error, they walk over to the drawers pulling one open.
Spider finds a blue-glowing black velvet jewelry case that contains a very ornate gold banded diamond ring, probably worth quite a lot of money. On the band, the phrase "Sun and Moon, forever joined until death do us part" is etched in rather fancy cursive font. It may be worth a lot of money to the naked eye, but the memories of this ring are probably priceless to its owner, Tsukuyomi. Error's inscription changes to: Yup. Pretty sure this is what she wanted us to find. :)
While over by the desk, you notice framed pictures of Solaire Enterprises' former LEADER Sol knocked to the ground and very dusty; and in one of them, he's holding the hand of a much smaller girl with blond hair and emerald green eyes. It looks like Hinata but minus the dog ears. A bright smile is on both Sol and this girl's face. With gladness that she brought her rucksack, Spider shrugs it off and places it on the desk along with Error. Picking up the case, she examines the ring a bit more closely then places it into her bag. She's about to pick up her rucksack when the framed photos catch her eye and after shrugging to herself they too go into the bag and once it's back on their back, Spider picks up Error asking it, "you ready to leave?"
Please. :)
Spider nods and exits the office beginning to make their way back through the church. The way is clear through the church. At the end of the road, Spider sees both Cherry and Jerry relaxing while listening to their older teen daughter practice the organ. "Good job Mary! Keep it up!" Cherry smiles towards her. Jerry notices Spider enter the main chapel and mentions, "Ah so did you get what you needed?"
Spider nods, "I appreciate you helping me."
Jerry smiles warmly, "You're always welcome back if need be, right Cherry?" Cherry nods in that very motherly sense, "Of course. You've been pleasant. Just be careful out there okay? Oh and if you ever see our son Barry out there, tell him we miss him. You can't miss him, he loves strawberries."
Spider pauses taken slightly aback by the request but nods anyway, "if I see him I will." With a wave to the family, Spider exits the church.