Martin moves to disarm the monkeys once again
HP:22/45
Fort Save:
Gareth LoH on himself, utilizing the mercy in attempt to remove the slowed condition. Healed for:
Dispel:
Hascya chops the wight in half.
Gareth resists the negative energy. He fails to remove the slow effect from himself .
Leto creates a series of walls across the entrance to the tower.
Martin fails to retrieve his sword from the monkeys.
"These new walls are false!" The voice shouts, "Wights - press the attack! Monkeys - bring me that sword!" The monkeys move north, through the wall and into the tower. Gareth and Martin both swing at the swarm , but only Martin's shield connects, braining a number of monkeys .
Three more wights emerge from the darkness. Each carries a longbow and wears leather armor. Despite the armor, one of them loses its head to Hascya's blade as it emerges . One of the survivors goes after Martin, while the second moves to attack Hascya. Both drop their bows and swing at their targets with their clawed fists, but neither manages to connect.
Hascya backpeddals and attacks the wight in front of him, destroying it with his massive blade.
Attack
Damage
Leto takes a step to the left and back and continues to concentrate on the illusion.
"Why monkeys? I feel I have to ask as a fellow magic user."
Gareth moves closer to the nearby wight and probably can't attack it because I think that's how the slowed condition works.
Attack:
Damage:
Hascya and Gareth destroy the two wights that remain visible.
Leto maintains his spell.
Martin pulls a bag of powder out of his pack. "Leto, light the fuse!" He commands, shifting to a throwing stance.
From within the tower you hear the voice shout, "Aha! Thank you, my simian minions! What a beautiful bl-" He's interrupted, however, by a malevolent voice heard only in your heads, "Discorporation." The darkness within the tower withdraws momentarily, only to burst forth into the open air as thousands of tiny, fleeting motes of darkness in the grey morning. They fly high into the sky before being lost among the clouds, all in a matter of seconds. As the darkness flees, you realize that the monkeys have fallen silent.
Discorporation is a necromancy effect that transforms the caster and all objects he or she carries into motes of darkness, depositing them in a darkened or unhallowed area within range . The spell can transport the caster a considerably greater distance when cast from an area of shadow or one that has been unhallowed , but at the cost of dispelling magical darkness or the unhallow effect in the area it was cast from. The spell releases a localized pulse of negative energy when cast, and again when the caster reaches his destination.
You don't think the voice in the darkness cast the Discorporation spell.
Spellcraft aid another
Spellcraft
Leto casts spark on the fuse.
spellcraft:
Martin throws the bag.
Gareth casts Divine Favor on himself.
Gareth casts a spell, Leto lights the fuse, and Martin throws the bag.
A wight begins to climb up the door and out of Leto's illusion . Seeing the target present itself, Hascya charges. His blow bisects the wight, and it falls through the illusory walls, breaking the illusion .
With the illusion and the darkness gone, you can see into the tower. There are two large ballistas facing you, along with a broken tripwire just beyond the doors. You see Gareth's bow and the bag of powder thrown by Martin just beyond the ballistas. The fuse continues to burn.
There are no wights in sight, and the monkeys are gone.
A staircase beyond the ballistas leads upwards, while a door stands ajar on the far right wall.
Current Initiative:
Gareth
Leto
Martin
Hascya
DM
Leto runs straight forward 6 squares (assuming ankou and hascya let him) and casts ray of frost on the fuse.
to hit:
Leto's spell extinguishes the fuse.
Upon further examination, Gareth's bow is damaged and will need to be restrung before it can be used (10 minutes of work). Martin's sword is nowhere to be seen.
Leto gathers up the powder and drops it in his handy haversack. "Gareth, do you think you will need to keep using your bow? Should we stay here while you fix it or do you want to use other weapons for now?"
"Those monkeys took my sword..." Martin says, shacking his fist at the empty room.
"And not just any sword. Remember that inscription I read? We need to try to get it back. We can fix my bow later. Where did that... thing go?"
Hascya, upon returning to regular size, walks up beside Gareth and lays a hand on the bow strung across his back. He mutters a few words and the bow twists back into shape. He grins broadly.
There, Twohey has fixed it.
He turns to Martin. What do you mean, inscription? Didn it not just say "For the Empire"? That inscription seems not unusual. Unless it means the Empire of Devils... or of Finches.
He shakes his head. I should have known the finches would be behind all this...
He and Twhohey exchange a few hoots.
Leto stares blankly. "Finches? Oh well let's head on in and clear out the rest." Leto waits for others to go forward, he is going to stay toward the back of the pack.
Hascya's spell mends Gareth's bowstring.
Hascya summons some Dancing Lights to guide them, and leads the party into the tower.
You explore the lower levels of the tower, encountering no more creatures. The ground floor contains a number of store rooms and a kitchen. The basement has three levels of barracks and associated living quarters. On the second floor, you find an armory . The third floor has officer quarters and storage rooms, and the fourth floor is where the survivors first intended to make their stand.
As you reach the fourth floor, Daren calls down to you from the gap where the staircase used to be. "Did you find anything? Is the way clear?"
"As far as we can tell yes. They are all gone now."
"Good," he says, throwing down a rope ladder with wooden rungs. "Let's get to the docks before anything else shows up." He shouts instructions and will help the other survivors climb down.
Leto follows along.
You travel to the docks and Daren starts directing the survivors to stock up the six ships present. There are three pinnaces, the Kestrel, the Albatross and the Porpoise, and a large galleon, the Triumph, all unarmed. There are also two brigs. One, the Lancer, has a pair of large ballistae mounted on its deck. The other is unnamed, but has wooden ports along its sides.
”I recommend you take that one,” Daren says, pointing at the unnamed ship. ”She’s new. Would have been christened by now if not for the wights. She mounts eight cannons – two bow guns and three on each broadside. Her design is fast, nimble, and shallow, so you can take her just about anywhere. Should take a crew of twenty to sail, thirty to use the guns. She needs a name, though.”
"The Black Dragon." Says Leto with a slight smile "May this one treat us better than the last." At that Leto clambers aboard.
Assuming that works for everyone Leto uses ray of frost in one hand and spark in the other to do a wood burning of the name along the side of the boat.
Martin thinks it sounds like good advice, and intends to follow him down to the docks.
"I nominate Gareth to be the captain of The Black Dragon. I am going to go onto one of the civilian ships to help protect the civilian population. I can use message to communicate with your vessel at times. So far as the distribution of troops is concerned, I suggest that we put the musketeers on the Lancer and the black dragon and use it and The Black Dragon to protect the civilian groups. We also go back and get those pistols and rifles that we saw in the tower and the ammo to go with it to arm ourselves at range. "
"Then we have some of the melee fighters on the brigs and have some of them in the civilian ships to help protect them if we miss anything. The reason I am suggesting that I go on the civilian ships is that I can use my illusions to protect them and make it more difficult for them to be waylaid. Does this work for everyone or should we distribute the fighters more?"
Gareth scratches his stubble and smiles, "Can't say I've been a captain before. I'll accept on one condition. The Black Dragon we fought was a result of bad luck at sea, so why should we name our ship after it? The last thing we need on a voyage is misfortune. But then again, we wouldn't have saved all of these people if it weren't for our bad luck. How about the Dragon's Reckoning?"
"I don't like the idea of having all of our soldiers on one ship. All the enemy has to do is sink our one ship, and the others are defenseless. Leto, that sounds like a good plan to work your illusions - how far away from us can you use your message spell though?"
There were muskets in the tower, not rifles.
Daren will say, "The brigs each carry a couple dozen muskets and ammunition for their weapons. Between those and the cutlasses, they're pretty well armed. We can fit all of the civilians aboard the other ships, though it will be cramped. Each pinnace can take two hundred people, and the Triumph should carry four hundred. The two brigs are very fast, but the other ships will be severely weighed down, so speed will be impossible for them."
"Dragon's Reckoning sounds good to me. I can send a message about a hundred and sixty feet. Not very far, so how about I send up some dancing lights to move us closer for messaging. One light for messaging, two if I see danger and am warning. Any more than that and I am trying to just illuminate. I guess I can only protect one other ship. The one that I am on. Should we put one other fighter on another civilian ship?"
Martin cracks a smile at the name "Black Dragon". Looking to Gareth, "I don't know if I would call it bad luck to call it the Black dragon. That was one mean son of a reptile, and it would be good to bring in some of that strength. Also, if we pay it homage with a name, maybe it won't ripe us to shreds this time."
Martin is about to board the ship, and then turns back to the party, "But do we really want to leave these shores? The whole point was for us to find that group of elves and learn more about the assassination attempt on the king. If we head back to silver keep, we're going in the wrong direction. And the whole reason we headed this way was to track down a lead on the person hiring the halflings, whom it seems like we've already meet on this isle. Again, if we sail for silverkeep we seem to be heading in the opposite direction of this goal. We could escort these citizens back, but we would be losing precious time, and these waters aren't suppose to be all that dangerous."
"I want to get behind the mystery of who this elf is, and why she tried to killed the king. She seems to have powerful magic, and could hold me with a simple word, yet why go through the effort of faking an assassination if your so powerful. There are so many things here that don't add up, and it seems like going back to silver keep will just be abandoning that line of thought. What do you think?"