Ruperta moves behind one of the dogs, and attack it flanking with the firepelt, using her starknife.
"Get away of here!"
Sephne stepped gently to her left, having spotted an opening. She took a defensive stance against the nearest wolf, carefully weaving her magic as a few sparks crackled along her fingers, prepared to unleash a powerful blast of lightning to help dispatch their foes.
(assuming the dog doesn't have any feats/abilities to raise her DC, but rolled it just in case)
Ruperta stabs one of the dogs in its jaw, drawing a howl of pain from it. Sephne's magic lightning roasts three of them, all of them dropping lifelessly to the ground.
Rukkus fumbles for the spear slung across his back, and stabs blindly at the dwarf in front of him.
,
Felthin easily sidesteps the wild stab.
On his turn, Felthin continues to attack the Giantkin.
Felthin takes off the giant's deformed hand in a pair of quick chops of his axe, and the bloodloss quickly does in for the large man, leaving him dead on the wet grass. The dogs have little will to fight on their own, after that.
The firepelt walks up to the corpse, and sniffs disdainfully at it.
Felthin wipes his axe on the dead giant's clothes, and then resheathes it, completely ignoring the dogs.
Ruperta looks at the corpse sadly.
"I've never liked the loss of life. But he left us no other choice."
She checks his clothing for information and loot.
He doesn't have much. A belt, a rain-soaked suit of roughspun clothes, two spears, one of them stuck in the ground across the clearing, and a large metal key for cranking the bear trap open.
His most interesting belonging is tucked into the back of his belt. It's a patchwork blanket made from a bunch of different fabrics. Several of the outer and less grimy patches are green with embroidered coats of arms; a pair of crossed black arrows.
In the meantime, the firepelt has taken up a curious behavior. She'll nip at the edge of Sephne's clothing and pull, then lope towards a particular spot at the back of the clearing, yowl, then repeat the whole thing.
Ruperta, trying not to get dirty with the blanket, stores it.
She will go an see what the Firepelt want to show them.
The firepelt has found a dirt path hidden among the bushes. It's not much more than a game trail, but it's definitely there. She's wordlessly urging you to follow her down the path.
Ruperta pets the creature.
"Just one second, pisică."
She goes back to secure the cart, let the horse free to pasture while they are gone, and use a rock to ruin the bear trap.
"I don't want another animal captured by this device."
She goes to the trail and turns towards the others.
"Shall we?"
"Sure. Hopefully there are more Giants!" says Felthin rather gleefully.
"I can break the trap now that the creature is not in danger," Darmok suggests. And barring any objection he will. Giant axes are fabulous for that sort of thing. "I agree, I also enjoy fighting creatures larger than myself..."
Ruperta thanks Darmok for breaking the trap.
Sephne followed along with Ruperta and the firepelt, smiling as the path was revealed. "Good kitty," she said, while petting the feline in thanks. She nodded to the others, and waited until they were ready to continue before she urged the cat along. "Alright, girl...or boy. Show us what you want us to see."
The cat leads you to a gap in the treeline at the end of the trapped clearing, which turns out to be the opening of a footpath leading north-west deep into the forest.
After about half a mile of damp walking, you think you spot a clearing, or something, up ahead. The firepelt clearly wants you to push on into it.
Felthin just pushes forward after the cat, using his axe to cut branches in his way.
Sephne followed the firepelt along, keeping her eyes open for any dangers, even though she was often too distracted to notice much of anything. The sight of a clearing up ahead was likely where the cat was leading them... Feeling it would be appropriate to go in prepared, she weaved a simple protective protective spell -- but took her time to make certain it would last a while. Afterwards, she gave the feline a nod, ready to press onward and actively looking for danger.
Ruperta also follows.
Darmok looks about as well.
His keen eyes take in nearly everything that there is to see, and some things that might not even be there to see.
You make your way into the clearing beyond. Someone's making their home here; there's a two-story farmhouse sagging at the far end of the clearing, with a rocking chair made from lashed-together bone and wood sitting on the rickety front porch. Across from it is a large barn. Aside from the muddy dirt path leading up to the house, there's also a small field of soggy corn riddled with weeds, overseen by an equally wet scarecrow.
Someone has taken a lot of trouble decorating the trees surrounding the clearing with crude, doll-like fetishes. While they're made primarily from hide and sticks, there's also a distressing amount of bone in there.
Darmok, keeping his eyes peeled, manages to spot the ugly man hiding amongst the trees ahead. He's quite deform - the right side of his head looks horribly bloated, the skin grown to a folded overlapping lumpy mess that gives him a lop-sided appearance. His good eye is focused at the party though, carefully watching as he flips a wicked, oversize sickle from hand to hand.
Battlemap, please do complain if you can't use it.
The half-man looks like he briefly wants to run at Darmok, but decides to go for unsuspecting prey instead.
Lifting his sickle-hook over his head in two hands, he runs at Felthin, bringing the weapon down in a diagonal arc aimed for the dwarf's squishy, if metal-covered midsection.
Felthin reels from the massive hit to his kidneys.
Darmok takes a step forward to be prepared for flanking in future moments, drawing his massive sword. "Why are you attacking?" He asks. [b]"Don't want to kill you, but I can. I very easily can."
The half-ogre ignores Darmok's question, focusing on the fighting instead.
Felthin returns in kind, Laughing even as blood tints his saliva.
Ruperta unleash a volley of arrows against the half-ogre.
Felthin lands a heavy blow with his axe, and the hide-clad deformed stranger is soon spouting a trio of arrows.
Even wounded, he still hefts his sickle in two hands, spinning on his heels and slashing an almost impossibly wide circle of crescent steel, catching the entire party in its arc. "Tresspassers! Die!"
His voice is quite at odds with his misshappen head. Even raised in warcry, it's a pleasant barritone, and he enounciates very clearly.
Ruperta is caught fully on the half-ogre attack.
Sephne took a short step back, seeing the terrible wounds the half-ogre inflicted. With a few quick gestures she cast a spell to ensure her companions could defeat the mongrel swiftly.
It seems as if time slows down percievably around all of you, as your movements become far more rapid.
Darmok embraces his orc side, fueling his rage and tapping into the reservoir of strength. He slides ever so slightly to the side, shifts almost imperceptibly his grip on the greataxe, and swings with all his might.
With a single mighty blow of his axe, Darmok sends the strangers head rolling in the mud.
All the yelling and fighting does not seem to have alerted anyone, strangely enough. Perhaps there's no-one home?
Ruperta casts Detect Magic, and moves towards the house.
His blood up, Felthin tromps right up to the farmhouse door and lets himself in.
Darmok takes a moment, breathing heavily as his blood cools. "Told you... didn't want to kill you. Not going to let you hurt friends, though." He doesn't seem sad, more disappointed. He was very good at killing, that was certain, but the fact that the actions of a minute could end decades worth of existence, indeed ending all future actions, it was quite a heady consideration. What would this being have gone on to accomplish? What would he have done? Whose lives would he have impacted, good or bad?
While not normally a characteristic of his type, Darmok had been burdened with conscience, and whenever a more human foe appeared he always hated slaying when another option revealed itself, but this didn't seem like the time to put on the kid gloves.
Felthin takes the lead heading straight for the front door, being the first to make it onto the front porch. Up close, the porch looks even more disturbing. Near the door sits an oversize rocking chair, lashed together from a mesh of plant twine, humanoid bones and sticks. It sits under a canopy of dreamcatchers and windchimes, the majority having been carved from bone. They hang silently in the rain.
That's not to say that all is still here. Ants march up and down in long lines disappearing into the house and down between the cracks in the floorboards, and a moth the size of a shovel-head sits on the underside of the roof, watching the approaching dwarf with alien eyes.
What windows can be seen have been boarded up tight, though an unpleasant stench of rotten meat, unwashed bodies and urine seems to waft from the cracks.
All of this makes for less immediate concerns though. As soon as Felthin sets foot on the porch, several saw blades come shooting out of the gaps between the floorboards.
"Filthin, are you ok?"
Before he rushes into the cabin, Felthin claps Darmok on the shoulder and says "Not a bad shot for a Half-Orc."
------------
"Oh, yes. Stupid trap can't catch me." says Felthin as the sawblades screech off of his armor, but don't manage to draw blood.
Falthin triggers yet another trap as he makes his way to the door and yanks it open.
Apparently, someone concealed a number of long, needle-pointed bone spurs among the wind chimes, and as soon as the dwarf opens the door, they swing down towards him on some sort of contraption of hinges and springs.
Beyond the door lies what looks like a common room. The boarded up windows admit almost no light, and beyond what light comes through the open door, Felthin relies on his darkvision to make out details.
It's a broad room, more than forty feet from end to end, but narrow, no more than fifteen feet from the outer wall to the inner one.
To the east sits an enormous hearth, with a mangy bearskin covering the floor before it. In the far other end of the room sits a couch, perhaps the ugliest couch ever seen - it has been upholstered in a mixture of hides and human skin, replete with a collection of talons, fox heads, enormous hairy spider legs and human hands potruding from the mess.
Just ahead of Felthin, opposite the entrance, sits a door that leads further into the farmhouse.
The air is rank with rot and the stench of long unwashed bodies.
Sephne followed cautiously, while Felthin sprung every trap between them and the front door. "Would you slow down?" She asked. "You're hurt, let Ruperta heal you and give someone time to search for tra--" Her voice caught, as she gagged from the smell wafting out of the cabin. She pinched her nose. "Oh my..."
"Be quick about it then. Ogres are stupid, not deaf. I'd like to not give them any more time to prepare than we can." Felthin's statement is, however, undercut when he starts swaying slightly.
"They can prepare all they like. It will not help them." Darmok grins. "Perhaps you would like me to take the lead? I am a bigger target, also maybe hardier?"
"But yer wearing paper thin armor, which means that you'll get hit, a lot, making your durability worth less."
"Tough skin, don't need as much armor. You can go first though if you like, I just thought you might be tired of getting hurt." There's no animosity or attempt at insult, Darmok just doesn't like seeing allies get hurt. Okay he did also want first whack at whatever was coming, but it's not an entirely selfish motive.