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Amie calls upon the magic of her deity and banishes the invisibility that was protecting the bugbear shaman, revealing a hulking, battlescarred and very smelly bugbear dressed in animal skins and adorned with strands of small bones and teeth. He appears to be injured from Hans' fire and Miho's blade, but he presses forward, ignoring the small fox flying towards him (perhaps to his chagrin), and intent upon the cleric than gave him away.
Since there was a lull in action between the battle downstairs and the one upstairs, we should roll new initiatives.
Initiative
Init:
Initiative: .
Well, it looks like Benedetto is going first. He stands, and takes a couple of steps towards the shaman. He's deadly serious as he says, "You there. You've done some terrible things. You ain't fit for any sort of decent company, an' this here ghost of the lady you tortured is decent company enough."
Benedetto concentrates on a mindthrust against the shaman. The Save DC is 21. If the bugbear fails, he'll take points of damage.
Hans directs the flaming sphere to attack the bugbear, and he adds a magic missile for good measure.
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On her initiative, Yalla does not attack, but instead lands at the feet of the Shaman and shifts into her hybrid form (standard action), which is slightly larger than her humanoid form (but still Small), but with rust-colored fur, sharp claws and wicked-looking fangs. She also produces a glowing blade of pure energy, similar to the one she used to cut her last chain, which just appears in her right hand.
The Shaman wheels around and prepares a spell against her, casting defensively: 1d20+10=22. He suddenly blinks out of your field of vision, just as suddenly reappearing next to Hans, the most obvious spellcaster in the group (until Yurgan shows up).
The Shaman failed his Will save against Benedetto's Mindthrust. 1d20+13=18
And I'm not sure what the save DC is for the Flaming Sphere, but I'm pretty sure an 8 ain't gonna cut it!
He's taken 85 damage so far, and he's still up.
DC 17.
How is Rochelle's ghost reacting to all this?
Miho strides forward and attacks the hobgoblin brutally.
[dice]2d6+6[dice]
second roll
Hans redirects his flaming sphere and blasts away with another magic missile from his lucky stick.
Benedetto moves over to the bugbear shaman, taking his scythe in two hands, and striking.
Attack:
Damage:
I think we might as well stick a fork in this one; it's done. :-)
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Sorry guys, it's just been a very busy week. I'm moving next month, and we've been cleaning up the place I'm moving to (the owner has used it for storage).
If you guys want to kill the game, that's cool (unless of course, you meant the bugbear and not the game, in which case, it isn't quite dead, because it's got a round of action left to it, which I'll get to tomorrow night, after I retrieve my books, which are on my laptop which I accidentally left at a friend's house today). I know I've been unpredictable of late, with my busy work schedule, health problems and now the work toward moving. If you don't mind an irregular posting schedule of maybe only once or twice a week for a little while, I'd be happy to keep it going. But you know how play-by-post tends to go, it's hard to keep things regular.
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That's fair enough. He wouldn't be able to kill of of you with just one round of attacks anyway, and the next round of attacks already posted put him into negatives. Yalla will step up and perform a coup de grace. Then she turns, fur bristling, and looks at you all. Her fists clench, and her jaw curls up in a snarl as she struggles to maintain control. After a few moments she is able to calm herself down and shift back into her normal form.
Benedetto gingerly tries to remove the crucified body from its position without setting off whatever wards might be indicated by the green aura. Psicraft: .
"Yurgan, Miho, an' myself were just a'wanderin' about, havin' gotten us-selves chewed up by a green dragon out on a bridge a mite yonder, some days back. We were lookin' to find some reinforcements when we happened on this fracas. So, who's who, and why were you gettin' blood all over the furniture here?"
He looks over at the winged fox. "Is that one o' you folks?"
Benedetto repeats his query in Orc and Undercommon.
She doesn't seem to understand those languages any better. You recall that earlier when she spoke to Amie, she spoke in Sylvan, and also asked if anyone speaks Goblin.
Then Benedetto shrugs. "Sorry. I know no Goblin words."
"Sorry I knw a few languages, but it seems we share none in common."
Benedetto tries to remove the body from inside the green aura and take it downstairs to the ghost. As he does so, he asks, "Yalla, what in the world's been a'goin' on here?"
As Benedetto brings the body downstairs, Rochelle emerges again from the wall and gazes at the body forlornly.
"If you or one of your friends knows the rites of the dead, please put him to rest. Put us all to rest. We tire of this half-light. Please find the others - Rebecca and Regina, and my own body as well. I do not know where my body lies, but Becca's is at the bottom of the well."
"Rochelle, what happened here?"
"It has been many months since we last enjoyed life. These beasts burst upon our home and made it their own. They killed our father and made us watch. They killed Rebecca and I. Rebecca's body was defiled in ways that I cannot mention, and I fear that she cannot be made to rest. Regina was able to secret my body away before the beasts could do similar to my remains, but she also met with ill ends before I could learn where she removed my remains, and in her afterlife, she cannot remember. This one (indicating Yalla) came later, believing the home abandoned and that she could nest here away from the attentions of others so that she could grapple with her condition, but the beasts found her and took her captive. We thank you and your companions for freeing our home of their presence, but we cannot yet move on."
It would seem that the djore of Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions, which allows Benedetto to view the history of a place, might be useful here, if he can use it to retrace the goblinoids' steps and locate her body.
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With your dorje, you are able to see a confusing mix of impressions. First you see what appears to be Rochelle being dragged kicking and screaming into the far corner of the room, then abused and debased repeatedly before her throat is slit. Her corpse is adorned with crude and foul mystical symbols as the bugbear shaman dances around her. They her body is carried outside and dumped unceremoniously down the well.
But then it gets confusing, because you see Rochelle dragged back into the room, seemingly unharmed. She is beaten mercilessly until she falls bleeding to the floor. As a hobgoblin approaches her with a leering grin, she pulls a dagger from her sleeve, shouts defiantly at the hobgoblin, then plunges the blade into her own heart. The hobgoblins laugh, and the bugbear prepares to do his foul ritual once again, but the scene is interrupted as yet another human woman bursts into the room. She looks strikingly similar to Rochelle (and to the previously murdered woman who you realize must be the twin sister Rebecca that Rochelle's ghost mentioned earlier), except that where their hair is the red of autumn leaves, hers is black as the feathers of a raven, and her skin is deathly pale.
The third woman storms into the room. After a moment of surprise, the hobgoblins shriek in rage and rush to attack her, but she tosses them around the room like rag dolls, betraying an inhuman strength. She then picks up Rochelle's body and flees the room, moving swiftly to a secret door at the back of the cloakroom downstairs, and down a flight of stairs that leads into a subterranean cave system.
As Benedetto moves to the cloakroom, and thereafter to the caves, he relates all of what he saw --minus the horrific debasement-- to Rochelle, as well as Miho and Yalla. "Ma'am, does that sound like it makes sense? Would yer sister have taken yer body down this-a-ways?"
"I remember bits and pieces. Yes, yes, I do remember - I think we used to play down here when we were kids, Becca, Gina and I. Daddy used to get so mad, because he said there were monsters down here, but we never saw any. Some of the caves do lead to the cliff face, and that is dangerous for little kids, so I guess Daddy was right to be angry."
"So, let's get the lady's body for her. Maybe find her sister, too." Down the stairs to the caves.
Firing up a hooded lantern, if necessary. (No, I'm only turning into an Illithid, one of the terrors of the Underdark. Of course that doesn't mean I can see without a lantern.)
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The tunnels are hewn by hand for the first few hundred yards, then they break into a maze of tunnels that have been carved out by underground springs, some of which still trickled through, though only a few inches deep. Dank and wet, any tracks that may have been left in the past have long been washed away. Dim light can be seen from a northerly direction, while to the south and east, the tunnels descend into ominous darkness. The sound of skittering and scratching can be heard from the east.
Rochelle stops at the intersection of tunnels, looking from tunnel to tunnel. "I vaguely remember these passages, but I have no idea which way Regina retreated before her ... change. If only we could find her." She looks back at you, "But you are flesh, of course. If we find her, you should take extreme caution. In her new ... condition ... she can be very dangerous."
Nope. It gives Benedetto thick skin.
The tunnels are hewn by hand for the first few hundred yards, then they break into a maze of tunnels that have been carved out by underground springs, some of which still trickled through, though only a few inches deep. Dank and wet, any tracks that may have been left in the past have long been washed away. Dim light can be seen from a northerly direction, while to the south and east, the tunnels descend into ominous darkness. The sound of skittering and scratching can be heard from the east.
Rochelle stops at the intersection of tunnels, looking from tunnel to tunnel. "I vaguely remember these passages, but I have no idea which way Regina retreated before her ... change. If only we could find her." She looks back at you, "But you are flesh, of course. If we find her, you should take extreme caution. In her new ... condition ... she can be very dangerous."
Benedetto gestures, half shrug and half nod. "So am I, but there ain't no cause to fight.
"Regina," he calls out. "It's all good. We done killed that hobgoblin feller. I come for Rochelle's body. It ought get buried proper-like."