No worries. Thanks, Aardvark!
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As the party heads into the depths of the hospice again, Rutter struggles with the decision the party made to betray the vampire. He was probably going to kill the driver, anyway, so at least we'd be saving him. But what if he wasn't? What if he was going to keep his word? We're going to kill him just because he's a vampire? Not that it matters - the world won't be any worse without him. Like it wouldn't be worse without any of us... And it's too late to change this plan now. Rutter settles for tacitly chastising the others with the risk they've put the driver in, "Well, we better not screw this up. If we get killed down here, that driver's going to be dead when the vampire wakes up and they're not close enough to Ustalav." He draws both kukri as Neva prepares to open the door.
Rutter returns 3 hours later with the bleary-eyed merchant. "Did I miss anything? Deal still on?"
"Alright. Just want to be able to wrap this up before anyone notices what happened here." Rutter takes a collection of gold from the rest of the party to pay a driver. He then rushes out and starts waking people up to track down Pete Whatshisname, that he's seen grousing in the bar the last couple months.
Rutter turns to Raliscar, "He belongs to Kroft." "Alright. I say we bring him along with us for now, see if Pete's willing to take him out of town tonight for the wagon and a bit of gold." If the plan is approved, Rutter will go spend the money he needs to among his local contacts to find someone who's desperate enough to leave this night, if not Pete, the stranded merchant who sold his cart and horse when he became stranded here, then someone else..
Yeh. At this hour, it'd be hard to find someone to drive the cart, even if we do give him enough money to hire someone. Rutter thinks on some of the people he knows around town. He thinks of quite a few people who would be interested in leaving, but he also wants to pick out someone shady enough that he wouldn't mind if the vampire killed them.
He looks to the vampire, "You be willing to let your driver keep the horse and carriage after he takes you to Ustalav? I might know someone who's itchin' to get out of town. Been complaining every night at the bar 'bout getting stuck here in the quarantine."
Maybe offer the scythe with the wagon, unless Feldy got the impression it's too powerful for him to identify? Otherwise, I don't know if we identified it to be worth a lot, though, metagame, I'm sure it's worth a couple grand or so.
What have we collected on this run? We can give him something we're not going to use that's worth between 150GP and 1000GP for him to use to hire the help.
"Yeh, the girl that asked us to find him doesn't have anything to offer. Would be nice to return him to her, but..." Rutter shrugs, not particularly inclined to spend 2000 gold on a good deed.
"Yeah, shootin' you is like calling me 'short'. Don't act injured. So where is it you need to be since you got 'purpose elsewhere'?"
Well. This vampire seems a bit daunting, considering we've already (presumably?) fought the big enemy. Did the designers think that players were going to rest in between encounters in this "dungeon"? I can't imagine how anyone could justify that in-character. They'd have to come to the conclusion that the place would be reinforced or relocated when they tried to come back 8 hours later. Purely metagame, I don't think we can take on this encounter in our condition. Rutter would recognize that, and he would be able to walk away from this fight begrudgingly. He'd want to get the musician back, since he did say he'd try, but he could also go back and tell the sister that he's already dead. In Rutter's mind, walking away will doom somebody - if not this musician, then whoever the nosferatu gets to replace him for his experiments - but it can't be avoided, considering the party's not prepared for this encounter. Besides, ending the plague will save enough lives to assuage his conscience. "Hey, people die. Sometimes those people have sisters. We can't save them all. But a lot fewer people in this town will die because of what we did here tonight. That's gotta count for something."
Rutter pauses in his approach when he hears Vyshael's warning, remembering their last encounter with vampires. He quickly shakes it out of his head in order to come up with another plan. "It sounds like we did you a favor, then, by clearing out the other residents. You can repay us by giving us this kid. He's the only reason we came here."
Rutter grabs Davaulus to drag along back to the first unexplored door. "Someone else grab that breastplate. We might be able to sell it." Outside the door, Rutter pushes the unconscious pile against the wall. He draws a kukri, and follows Raliscar into the room. Rutter punctuates Neva's threat by crossing the room toward the creep.
"Pfft.. I can't afford your drinking budget, Raliscar - you'll have to make do with one from me!" Rutter looks around the party, "Speaking of money, we'll be able to sell the scythe, for sure. Don't look like anyone here'll use it. And one of these eversmoking bottles." He examines the scythe.
Are we pretty much completely out of resources? There's a lot of door we didn't try along the way. Presumably there'd be nothing worse than the same relatively weak priests we fought along the way.
Rutter hangs his head in exhaustion. Without looking at anybody, he heads over to the same vat of poison he'd used before and washes both his kukri blades in the poison, thinking about how close that battle was. Eventually he sheaths his blades, still glistening with the deadly coating. He turns back to the party with a grimace. His face finds, Raliscar's: "I guess I gotta buy you a pint for that, huh? He finally cracks a grin and continues to catch his breath watching Feldy clean the valuable items. Eventually Rutter gets an idea. He takes off his quickdraw shield and uses it as a makeshift bucket, scooping up a bit of water on each trip from the fountain, and then pouring it over the goopy breastplate, attempting to dilute and rinse away the remains of the witch.
Our next characters can be inspired to take up arms by these characters' sacrifice. Maybe after the last of us falls, the City Watch will arrive and finish her off. One of the sick patients managed to stumble out and fetch them. Too late to save us, but in time to finish her off and arrest Davalus.
"Gahh!" Rutter exclaimed as she hit him with her scythe. Crap! I can't even get past her if I wanted. With no alternative but to fight, Rutter steps up and lays into her with both kukri.
Rutter licks his lips as she drops into his reach. He circles around her carefully, drawing both kukri. He shrugs, certain that this won't work if she's now some kind of pestilence goddess, but swings up at her with the poisoned kukri first.
Rutter moves behind the statue, careful to stay out of reach. Once concealed from the witch's view, he makes himself small against the statue and tries climbing again. Unfortunately, in his care to remain concealed, he's unable to find good handholds without reaching into her line of sight to give away his position.
Rutter reaches into one of his pouches, and pulls out his thunderstone. He hurls it at the ceiling above the risen witch's head. The sound of the exploding noisemaker echoes off the walls of the gruesome chamber.
Rutter cautiously circles around the risen enemy, drawing both kukri. Once in flanking position, he tries to find a vulnerable spot to strike with the kukri still poisoned..
Oh I forgot. Rutter also has a tanglefoot bag. So that might help keep her out of reach for a round or two. (She's large, not huge, right?)
Let's talk tactics for a moment. I know Neva's low on spells. Do we have healing potions/wands for Vyshael? Rutter has mobility (+4) vs AoO and a quickdraw shield (+1) and can take total defense (+6) to try to draw her AoO so Vyshael and Neva can move out of her range. We've got an eversmoking bottle - would that help us more than it would harm us? Concealment is 20% miss chance w/in 5 feet, or 50% miss chance further than 5 feet, and can't use vision to locate target. I was thinking concealment negated critical hits, but it looks like it only negates sneak attacks. It does, however, let Rutter enter stealth without cover. Could offer her death by a thousand 1d3 cuts. Of course, it's probably dangerous to attack her with melee without reach, since she's clearly diseased. Rutter also has a thunderstone, which could make it harder for her to cast spells - 20% chance to miscast spells with verbal components if she fails a DC15 Fort save to avoid being deafened (unlikely she'll fail, I'm guessing). Do we have any other tricks?
Rutter looked up at the large, disgusting creature. "By the gods, you've got to be kidding me."
"She might have some good stuff on her." Rutter muses. "Hope it ain't all scrolls." "I dipped my blade in some of this stuff before I slashed her. That might be why she's looking diseased." Rutter starts looking in the basins of various liquids. "This stuff might've come in handy. Can anyone tell what they are? That one's obviously the Blood Veil. Not sure if I want to keep coating my blade with that. Maybe one of these others, though." He looks over at Raliscar struggling on the floor and laughs, "10 gold says she comes down before he gets up! Any takers?"
Rutter lands effortlessly, and then watches the effect of his attack on the woman with glee. He holds his kukri up to regard it proudly, "If you weren't poisoned, I could kiss you!" Rutter reaches into a pouch behind his back and pulls out a flask of alchemists' fire. He throws it at the floating witch.
Rutter lands effortlessly, and then watches the effect of his attack on the woman with glee. He holds his kukri up to regard it proudly, "If you weren't poisoned, I could kiss you!" He watches Vyshael knock her out, then scoffs when she remains levitated. "Bah! Someone got some rope? I used mine on the doctor. But I can climb up and finish her off." After a beat, he suggests alternately, "Or tie her up." He shrugs, "Would be nice to show her off to the city alive. They could stone her to death." He finds Feldivar, and points at him, "You're alright!" Then turns to Raliscar, "Okay, he can stay." Then he catches the eye of Neva and Vyshael, "Did y'all see that? I jumped off the top of this b$%%+'s statue." He points his kukri at the unconscious floating enemy, "I know she saw it. I saw her face just before I slashed her."
Rutter curses his luck as the priestess travels away from the statue, where he thought he could reach her more easily. He pulls out one of his poisoned kukri and takes a deep breath. I wish everyone could see this! He then leaps invisibly through the air for the levitating spellcaster.
Rutter attempts to climb further up the statue, to gain elevation over the levitating enemy.
Rutter takes advantage of the cover provided by the statue to sneak through the water to the statue, sheathing his weapons along the way. He begins climbing up the statue to reach a height above the levitating witch.
Rutter turns back to the woman to see her levitating out of his reach. "You've got to be kidding me..." he mutters under his breath. He takes the opportunity to dip his other blade in the same pool, and then moves across the room, in case she comes down on the other side of the pool.
Invisible, due to Feldivarxon's spell, Rutter draws his second kukri as he moves to one of the basins. He waits until the cult leader is distracted, finding his time when she is struck by Vyshael's magic missiles, and then he discreetly dips his blades into the toxic liquid.
Best of luck, Aardvark!
Rutter draws a kukri. He tries to quietly open the door.
"Good idea, Raliscar. We've got some more doors to check out. We can drag him along with us from room to room. Man, I hope there's not much more to this place."
Rutter grinned when he looked up to see Neva executing the worthless enemies, happy to see another of the gang coming around to his way of thinking. His grin faded, though, as he watched her be comforted by Raliscar and Vyshael. He frowned and continued rummaging through the gear of the dead cultists, quietly reflecting about how ill-prepared she must have been for all this mentally, even though she'd impressed him so often with her capabilities. The thing he'd come to appreciate about her most has been her earnestness. He'd felt like he could trust her more than anyone else he'd met, and he wondered if experiences like this could take that away from her. As he finished, he stood and considered the Leukodemon with Vyshael, Feldivar, and Raliscar. "So, this thing is the source of it all? It's an ugly piece of crap." He looks at the other three vats. "The other ones dead? Is whatever's in the tank what's killing them? We should just let it finish the job on this one - he don't look like he's got much life left to him." "We should probably try to clear the rest of this facility, so they can't do any more of this." Though he stands with the men at the vault, he turns to look toward the troubled midwife leaning against the wall, choosing his next words carefully in an awkward attempt to reassure her conscience, "Just a few more a-holes to kill, and we'd help the whole town."
Rutter looks at the vat still intact as he sheathes his kukri, "What's this thing in the jar?" He starts searching the dead clergy, trusting the more intellectual types to investigate the trapped creature.
Rutter drops one of his kukri, and pulls a flask out of a pocket of his coat. He hurls it at the last Urgathoan before he can swing his weapon at the occupied vat.
Rutter moves around the cracked vat and passes the doors to block the last priest from escaping. He swings at him powerfully again, clearly learning nothing from his wild swing before.
Rutter continues his path around the empty vat and blocks a route to cover for one of the priests. He lashes out with a kukri, but misses.
Rutter rushes in and starts circling behind the vats.
Rutter takes the vials and keys from the corpses, even though he suspects the keys are all the same. Rutter looks suspiciously at Feldivarxon when he identifies the elixirs, but when Neva confirms it, his lips curl in an angry frown. "So these effers came all the way from Cheliax just to kill a whole town - my whole town - with some fake disease?! What. An. Effing... She probably killed the King herself, too, or had someone do it." He draws his blades and prepares to rush into the next room after Raliscar's bolt.
Rutter sheathed his blades and began searching the smoldering corpses. "That was good work! Y'all casters want to see what they were mixing?" After searching the corpses, he begins listening at each door.
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