"I'll say," grumbles a bleary eyed Ortik as he passes by the doorway. "I hope that the prayers were as good for Zon-Kuthon as they were for you by the sound of things." He continues on towards the kitchen, looking for some tea or coffee to help wake him up.
"Well, He did give me the spells I was praying for, so it looks like they were." Laori grins and starts gathering up her spiked chain.
It doesn't look like she noticed Ortik's sour mood.
Karri sees the end of Laori's display and is disgusted by it. She has felt the pain Laori seems to be seeking and is sickened that someone would seek such mortification. It's not as if I asked for what I got, is it? Kasdaye takes a moment to mock her discomfort, A bit dishonest, aren't you Karri? You love the power your scars give you and you resent this other fleshling for seeking the same path. Karri blurts out, "No! It's not the same thing! If you say so, fleshling.
Laori gives Karri a confused look. "Pardon?"
Nalun frowns. He's just as uncomfortable around Laori as he is around Karri.
We should get to it. he says to the group, while buckling his things and strapping various straps.
Seeing everyone's discomfort, Karri turns away, muttering, "Nothing."
Lyla tosses and turns in bed trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep, but resistance seems futile: everyone else is already awake and speaking. Loud.
She gets up and rubs her eyes before stretching her back with a long yawn. The girl mumbles a barely audible good morning and walks around the house opening and closing the cabinets, looking for food. "Anyone found anything for breakfast?", she asks while slamming the cabinet doors.
Unable to find anything to eat, she goes for her backpack, pulls out the formulae book and assembles her alchemist kit on a table. Only then she notices the contrast between Lorri's cheerful spirit and Karri's evident discomfort. "Alright, I see you're all making friends already," she teases while going to work on her daily extracts.
"So, what's the plan for today? Are we gonna meet the 'Emperor'?"
"It seems we have to."
"To be honest, I look forward to it." Karri looks around at her friends before explaining. "We were brought together to help Korvosa. This emperor is anything but good for Korvosa. I think bloodshed is the answer, and if some are squeamish about it, then they are fools." Suddenly, the dream of holding an ivory handled knife returns and she falls silent.
"The Emperor is not the sickness that afflicts Old Korvosa, Karri," Ortik replies, shutting the cabinets in disgust as he fails to find anything to help him wake up. "He's just a symptom. Doesn't mean we might not have to cut him out to save the city, but removing him doesn't solve anything to address the root cause."
Nalun shrugs Sickness, disease, symptom. He's a bad guy. He's bad for the city. He's bad for the Marshall. And. He sent those a%~&&@~s that attacked us, and that means he's bad for me.
"You all are right. Removing the emperor is something we need to do. Something we will do."
"So let's cross that from our to-do list so we can focus on finding Vencarlo and the Seneschal. Hoprefully, one thing will lead to the other." Lyla takes her time finishing the extracts and collects her book and alchemy crafting kit as soon as she is done.
Ready to leave, she stops at the door and turns to the group. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to stop by Vencarlo's house. I remember he had a bunch of rapiers lying around." She points to Nalun and explains herself. "Slim here's been teaching me a few tricks with the rapier, and I'd like to put them to use. I'll try not to hurt any of you, don't worry. Also, we can grab a bite at the bakery on our way there, how does that sound?" Lyla's stomach growls, and she looks down placing a hand over her belly.
"Well I can't argue with that last part. We can't save the city on an empty stomach." Demitri says with a slight smile. "Are you sure you want to be up in the front? You've seen what we've had to deal with."
"Not sure. But I need to get used to it," she replies with a mixture of resolve and anxiety. "I'll step back if things get ugly, you know I'm not reckless." Pff, he knows I'm totally reckless.
"Right..."
Once everyone has had a chance to eat breakfast, the party departs from Salvador Scream's home--first, to make a quick pit stop at Vencarlo's.
Nobody challenges the party as they move. Perhaps it is because of the overly cheerful priestess of pain with them, or perhaps word of their combat prowess without her as spread far enough to dissuade any potential challengers.
As the rest of the party is waiting for Lyla to return, Laori glances over at Karri--or rather, the scars that adorn her arms. "Those look pretty cool. Kinda messy though--how'd you get them?"
Am I glad someone is so direct? Karri frowns in distaste when Laori asks her bold qeustion. But, Legion is silent...What, no mockery? Assured that their silence speaks volumes, Karri takes a risk and answers with a blunt honesty. "These are more than scars. They are the demons I was given in order to make me a more suitable vessel for another's power." She holds her arm out, and says, "Watch" Her arm trembles for a moment as Laori watches, then Karri begins thinking of her ever loyal hounds and the scars on her arm begin to writhe, pushing outward. She drops her arm and her sleeve falls back into place. "The scars are my connection, my conduit to pulling the abyss from my flesh." Karri looks down for a moment, knowing that she never told anyone this much, but of all the people she has ever met, no one could understand. Except Laori. She bore her own scars, and maybe there was something she could teach the elf. You don't really want these terrible marks.
Laori is quite attentive as Karri explains how she got her scars. Her eyes shine a bit, before her grin wavers for a moment.
She purses her lips, her smile disappearing before appearing once again. This time, there doesn't appear to be any mirth in it. Only viciousness.
"So, uh... is he still alive?"
"No, he was killed. Not by my hand, but I was there when my master was slain. I helped." Karri doesn't go so far to say who did the deed.
"Aww." Laori looks quite disappointed for a second before her usual cheer comes back. "I'd have welcomed the chance to show him how WE do scars."
"Why abyss, though?"
"I can't answer that. Maybe because the Devil's would have demanded more in return? Demons only want destruction. Trust me, that's all I hear. Flame and lies."
Lyla gets out of Vencarlo's house with a smile and brandishing a small rapier. The weapon seems to have seen a lot of use, but there's no mistaking the quality of its craftsmanship. "I'm ready. Let's have a talk with this emperor," she says, unwittingly interrupting Laori and Karri's discussion.
The emperor awaits.
The party remains unchallenged as they make their way through the streets, the sound of howling winds being the only thing that accompanies them. The closer they get to their destination, the more garbage and filth they see piling up in the streets--eventually, the smell of decay and burnt timbers becomes overpowering. The tenements and old apartments here appear to have suffered greatly from looting and fires.
Eventually, the party reaches a street called Silk Street, in Old Dock. It may have been a decent enough place to live, once... now, it's home to nothing more than regret and pain. Laori seems to be quite cheerful, as usual.
Demitri frowns as he sees the desolate street. "Stay sharp. We might be ambushed by the emperor's goons here."
Nalun draws his rapier Good. Let's get this done with. as he moves forward
Nalun begins looking around for this "court"
+3 more if it involves tracks
Nalun's search turns up something interesting... it appears a particularly burned and looted tenement complex gets heavy amounts of foot traffic, from what he can find. The trail he finds leads him to the doorstep of 11 Silk Street.
"Is it here?", she asks Nalun, standing next to him. "Let me look around and check what's going on." The halfling girl sneaks away carefully, investigating the perimeter and peeping into the house to assess the situation.
Karri waits. Her netvousness is palpable. She turns to Laori, "Before Legion comes I wanted to tell you this is what I fear. And thank you for listening." With that Karri turns away and lets Legion's tide begin to come up in her blood.
"Go for it, Lyla. In fact, let me ask the city for its assistance as well." Ortik withdraws a small tincture of honey from his pocket, and kneels to smear it upon the street. As he chants, a beetle crawls up from between the cracks of the cobblestones to consume the honey. Its carapace is black, shiny, and...oddly marked. Impossibly, the pattern seems to resemble the crest of Korvosa.
"Ah, Brother John!", Ortik says with a smile, addressing the insect. "We're about to enter this place. Can you scuttle about and let me know what we're getting ourselves into?"
The little insect scuttles away from Ortik and buzzes off, flying into the building before the party.
of rubble—broken timbers, bits of wall, ruined furniture, and other debris—lies heaped in the centre of the room. Rickety wooden stairs wind up to a splintered hole in the wall near the roof above.
Laori looks over at Karri with a curious gleam in her eyes. "Ooh?"
"Legion is coming." Karri returns her attention to holding back the Abyssal energy.
Hearing the activity on the rooftop, Lyla uncorks one of her vials and chugs an extract of spider climb. She presses her body against the building's wall and crawls upward to spy on the voices.
You creep up the wall without making a sound. The blackened timbers of the old, burnt wood rub off on your fingertips as you climb.
The voices become more distinct as she reaches the edge of the building's second story, 15 feet off the ground. A rope bridge connects the tenement complex with a burnt-out home's attic nearby. Inside the building you've climbed are five roughs, all of them armed similarly to the gang the party fought at Mr. Scream's home. The room they're in is free of clutter, and another rope bridge can be seen to the southeast, leading further and further into the compound.
"--I mean, have you ever taken one apart to see what it's like on the inside? I swear, there HAS to be a skeleton in one of those things!"
"Have you ever seen one of those things move? How rubbery their skin is? They can't have a skeleton--they move so... weird!"
"Come on--with hands *that* big? A choker HAS to at least have bones in its hands!"
Their conversation continues in that vein. None of them appear to have noticed you.
Lyla climbs down quietly.
She gets back to the group and speaks softly to convey the results of her scouting. "Well, I didn't see any activity inside or around the house, but I heard voices on that roof and decided to take a look. There are five guys there discussing whether a choker has a skeleton or not, so, yeah, they are a bit distracted right now. We can take them by surprise, I think."
Lyla scratches her head and reflects for a moment. "These guys are equipped like the thugs we met oustide Salvatore's house, I suppose we can expect the same level of resistance. Now, a bunch of dimwits discussing a choker's physiology makes me wonder what surprises might await us in there." She looks up the wall. "So, basically I have two questions for you all. One: is everyone able of climbing up there, so we don't have to go in through the front door? And two: do we storm in kicking their butts or does anyone want to try a diplomatic approach?"
"While a diplomatic solution would be great, I don't think it's in the cards. I'm not terrible at climbing but unless we all can do it, we might as well kick in the front door together."
Nalun gives one of his trademark shrugs I'm all for using force.
Blood is best Legion's voice croaks from Karri's throat. Let us join this slaughter
"I suggest we split the difference," Ortik says, sending Brother John back to the city. "We enter in the front door, take one or two of these guys alive, and force them to grant us an audience with the Emperor. I don't know a great deal about this man, but if we're going to demand Scream back, we're going to need to show we mean business, and breaking his guards sounds like a good way to do it to me."
"That sounds like a reasonable middle ground."
"Fine. Let's take these guys down, then." Lyla drinks a phial of mutagen and cleans her mouth with the back of her hand. Her features slowly begin to turn feline-like. She walks up to the front door and tries to open it.
Init +5; Senses Perception +12
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DEFENSE
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AC 21 (+5 dex, +4 armor, +1 size, +1 dodge), touch 17, flat-footed 15 (-1 vs. enemies of same size or smaller)
Ref +13, Will +2 (+2 vs. poison, +2 vs. fear effects, +1 vs. trampling)
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OFFENSE
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Melee masterwork rapier +13 (1d4+5/18-20x2)
Ranged repeating light crossbow +11 (1d6/x2) (+1 bonus on atk and dmg if target is within 30 ft.)
Special Attacks bomb +12 (3d6+5/x2); 11/day, DC 18 (+1 bonus on atk and dmg if target is within 30 ft.)
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STATISTICS
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Dex 20, Wis 10
CMD 18
Skills Acrobatics +16 (+25 to jump), Disable Device +16, Escape Artist +12, Perception +12, Sleight of Hand +10, Stealth +15
The front door opens easily, revealing a home that's been gutted by fire and the elements. A huge mound of rubble—broken timbers, bits of wall, ruined furniture, and other debris—lies heaped in the centre of the room. Rickety wooden stairs wind up to a splintered hole in the wall near the roof above.
Laori casually twirls her spiked chain. "Believe me, I know more than a few ways to break someone." She says with her usual cheery grin.
The party storms up the stairs and across the rope bridge. The gang of toughs cease their chatter as they approach and draw their weapons.
"Stop right there! Only those with an appointment with His Majesty are allowed in His court!"
"Well, I'm sure his Majesty is waiting for us," Lyla replies matter-of-factly. "Go on and tell him we want an audience. Go; you know very well who to announce," the halfling concludes opening her arms and presenting the whole group.
The lead rough snorts. "The only way you'll get an audience with him is in irons, 'hero'."
"Well you can either take us to him, or we can go through you. Your choice."
"You know who these folk are," Ortik says. "You know what they're capable of. Use your head on how this will go, or you might just find it relieved from your shoulders." He shrugs. "Your decision, mate."
The rough's faces pale and their tone changes in the blink of an eye. "O-oh... er--uh, of course, we'd be happy to make an exception for ya. Y'know, His Majesty can't stop talkin' about ya."
From the back of the party, Laori pouts in disappointment, but doesn't speak up.