Regos shakes his head in astonishment, stunned at what just happened and the grace of Ku. "Go!" Kano bellows again, snapping the young man from his shock. His legs are badly burned from the heat that licked up around him as he tried to cross the fallen tree, which is not an unfamiliar feeling. But it hasn't grown any more comfortable. Until they peel, sleeping is going to be rather painful again.
He looks quickly for the other bug-man that had already crossed, finally deciding that it doesn't matter much where the man went as he still needs to get back to that clearing where the others were. Some guide you turned out to be, he chides, then rushes toward the crashing sounds up ahead. Every branch and frond that scrapes against his blistering legs sends flashes of brilliantly white pain.
Grunting and sweating, he bursts into the opening in time to see two large elephants--one of which is covered in swirling insects like a living second skin. Gonna need to read this one for a second, before I launch another fireball.
Rrrghhh Bolus strains as he tries to use leverage with the shield impaled on the tusk and his own strength to twist and bring the panicked elephant down to the ground.
Good effort Bolus, but actually wrestling an enraged elephant to the ground would require extra effort and special circumstances. Your fundamental success takes this form:
You leverage your strength well, swinging your body around on your shield until it comes loose. Your feet find purchase and you find yourself struggling to balance on the tusk of the enraged elephant, inches from its beady, furious eye. You can't stay here for long and remain balanced. Do you jump off to the ground and risk being stomped by the elephant's feet, or leverage to jump onto the elephant's back, risking attack by its living bug-armor?
Olivius slides out of the way of the elephant as it charges past with its shield-wielding cargo. Sinathel is defying reason again, so he decides to hitch a ride. With a running jump and a couple leaps he is up on Sinathel's back. He sheathes his quickly cooling rapier with some catches, then flicks his wrists. Two blades appear.
Animals like that need the mercy of death He says with a sigh. Shall we show our new friends here how us future folk do it, my dear?
Bolus jumps on and starts sweeping away the bugs with his baton electric energy crackling and sizzling it makes contacts with the bugs.
It's taken a second to assess the situation, and not a lot of it makes sense yet. But the pachyderm covered in insects likely isn't helping at the moment. So with a bullet pitch, Regos flings his second fiery papaya at the crawling mess, then tries to position himself somewhere with a tree or rock between himself and the other one. He imagines these things can charge, and wouldn't mind anything that could potentially slow that run.
Sinathel is saddened at the sight, for she does not wish to hurt the elephant in front of her. But seeing the bug-men traumatize the poor elephant more fills her with anger. "These vile bug-men! I shall destroy every last one! Those who refuse to respect nature and The People deserve no respect from me."
When Olivius jumped on her back, her rage became more focused. As much as she did not wish to fight the elephant, she might not have that choice. If she must fight, she would give the elephant peace.These bug-men would not win. No. There was a reason all that was left of them was ruins. She stamped her feet some, "I am... sorry. May you find peace."
She turned her voice to the forest and the land around them, "These jungles are being defiled. It's citizens tormented. Will you help stop this madness? Help protect what is your own?" She speaks through noises and through foot-stomps, speaking to the forest around her. The creatures, the plants, and the earth all around her.
Bolus' baton and Regos' flames scorch and smash the insects off the hide of the elephant in places, exposing its gray hide, covered in sores. The beetles had apparently been digging into the poor creature's flesh as it lived on - no wonder it was enraged!
Sinathel's despairing cry nearly falls on deaf ears. Most of the animals appear to have vacated this area of the jungle, or area hiding. But Sinathel notices something odd as the beetles are beaten off - the voice of the tormented elephant changes from the odd distortions of earlier to a normal, if extremely pained, elephant male! He screams in pain as his voice begins to distort once again, beetles starting to crawl over the spaces that were temporarily cleared away. The elephant isn't lost! Sinathel, you study the elephant's behavior in shock, and get the impression that it could be saved.
The islander bug-man that Regos chased across the river suddenly leaps down from a nearby tree onto Sinathel's back! With a scream of fury, he swings a club at your face, Olivius!
Regos and Bolus, both of you notice that large beetles are beginning to converge around your feet. They're crawling up your legs! What do you do?
Sacrifice.
One can flail, or roll, or leap... whatever sort of preservation tactic they prefer. But it's likely that every creature these bugs have overtaken has tried the same. To really deal with problems, once must be willing to sacrifice, and our own nature always drives us away from that option.
Regos flees to the semi-circle of smoking flames, and steps into the dancing light. His legs already burn, and this will be unbearably painful. But it's the surest way to remove the vermin before they can do to him as they have the elephant.
Bolus decides to get the hell away from the beetles by jumping off the elephant's back and away.
Olivius tucks and rolls just to the right of Sinathel's newly raised spine, coming out of it just inches before her rump. He is about to knife the bug man when he remembers what happens when they die. The last thing he wanted was beetles on Sinathel's back. A flick of the wrist stores his throwing knives. He reaches behind his back and draws the nunchucks stored there with a flourish.
He advances on the bug man, trying to knock him off balance (and therefore off Sinathel) with a flurry of nunchuck blows.
Sinathel: no water around. You can see that the elephant's rampage tore a hole in the foliage that leads down a rocky dirt slope that was likely opened by the earthquake. The plants and trees around look on in horror, but unless their foes enter the grasp of their branches there is little they can do but look on and watch.
Regos: You can take 1d4 damage that ignores armor OR try to take a CON roll, because if you defy the pain of the flames just long enough to burn off the beetles, you can avoid taking HP damage.
Bolus: You lift your heavy boot to try and escape but the beetles have swarmed over both your legs, locking you on the elephant's back! The bull elephant trumpets in rage and the beetles begin to bite your skin painfully! Take 1d6 damage that ignores armor!
The elephant is wavering on its feet, bleeding in many places as the bugs consume its flesh! The bug-man on Sinathel's back battling Olivius gives a whoop as the elephant sinks to one knee! What do you do?
Olivius: The bug-man knocks your nunchucks aside and they go spinning off into the undergrowth, slamming against a tree and sliding to the base. He presses you backward, sitting on your stomach and grasping your neck with both hands! Bugs crawl out of the his wrists and over your cheeks, and as he leans over you, his weapon discarded, he opens his mouth and more beetles crawl out! His distended, distorted jaw looks almost like a mandible itself as he reaches down to eat your face off, what do you do?
Thankfully, Olivius is not without backups. Another flick of the wrist produces his trusty throwing knives once again. He brings both up in a scissor like motion in an attempt to cut the man's throat before he has another visit with his old pal Death.
After everything the young man resolved, considering the requisite of sacrifice, even he flinched as he entered the flames. Even he is not as resolute as he had hoped.
"We must get the bugs off him!" Sinathel, filled with hope, calls to those around her. Rushing forward, she tries to clean the bugs off of the Bull as she attempts to get him in range of the foliage. If they could get the beetles off of him...
Ouch ouch ouch ouch. the beetles manage to make their way into Bolus' boot and they *hurt*.
Coming up to a crouch Bolus tries to exact some revenge
and driven by quite a lot of fury again disregards his defenses to exact maximum retribution by making an extra wide sweep over as much of the elephant's back that he can reach.
The smell of electrocuted bug fills the air.
Olivius and his assailant roll back and forth on Sinathel-the-elephant's back as she heedlessly charges forward, swiping at the elephant's hide with her trunk. The bouncing of the elephant's movement is too much for balance, and you and your assailant tumble off and fall about 10 feet to the ground.
The landing isn't soft. Fortunately, you're able to get the bug-man to take the brunt of the fall, but it still knocks the wind out of you. Take 1d10+2 damage from the combination of the bug-man's attacks and the fall from Sinathel's back. Both you and the bug-man are badly bruised from the landing, and are unable to move for a moment.
The bug-man is trying to reach for his spear nearby, his muscles trembling with the effort. You can see bugs crawling all over his face as he glares at you. Roll Defy Danger Con to force your muscles to respond and become mobile again after a fall like that.
Sinathel, you are aware of Olivius falling off your back and hear his cry of pain as he lands. Glancing back, you see the bug-man trying to get his spear, to finish your friend off. However, stopping him would mean that you'd be leaving the elephant to the stranger riding its back. What do you do?
Regos: the fire licks at your flesh hungrily, like it always does. You feel the heat burning away the beetles, but the smoky fire makes you lightheaded - take -1 forward to all non-basic moves. On the bright side, the beetles fall off and run away, singed and smoking.
Bolus, your speed and accuracy are knocking beetles away by the swipe, sending them whizzing off into the jungle. However, you have to squeeze tight on the elephant to maintain your balance as you swing, and the elephant is going nearly mad with stress! You can hear its trumpeting - encouragingly, it sounds more like a healthy animal now than before, despite its fear - and it charges among the trees in the surrounding jungle, knocking forest plants aside with sideswipes of its massive head.
As it runs around the perimeter of the combat, trumpeting in confusion and pain, a low-hanging branch crosses your path! If you don't move or do something it's going to smack you in the face full speed! What do you do?
Bolus ducks and throws himself on to the elephant's back!
When your head is thrown back, your ears are pressed up against some of the beetles that are still riding around on the elephant's back. Voraciously, they begin to swarm around you, clinging to the gray hide - but you're distracted immediately by what you hear, coming from the...beetles? -
bzzt...initiate directive gamma 1482701...drive core corr-corr-corr-...restart...command protocols...Terminus Ci*bzzzzzz* re-re-re-re*bzzzzzzt*
This stuff is tech! Bolus realizes. Where are the nerds when you need them he mutters to himself and flips over to lash out at the bugs again
and again tries to hit as many of them as possible
[dice=defy danger (con)]2d6
You're unable to move. You try to force your arms and upper body to respond, but your muscles are still trembling from the impact. The bug-man grasps his spear and turns to you, his injuries are clearly very bad but he wants to kill you still.
He lurches forward, using the spear for support as he crawls near you. You desperately try to raise your dagger to parry but can barely do more than lift your hand in order to feebly ward off the blow.
He climbs to his knees over you and raises his spear overhead, bringing it down in a sharp stabbing motion! You throw your hand up to block it, and feel a sudden white-hot stab of pain through your palm! The spearhead, bloodied and dripping, stabs clear through your hand and comes to a stop, dripping some of your own blood on your face. Take 1d6 damage, and take 1 HP of damage whenever you try to take an action with that hand from the pain. You're holding the spear there through your hand, preventing it from following all the way through to your eye, what do you do?
Olivius screams in pain. He can't help that instinctive reaction to the pain. He does hold his sanity, however. Oh gods! Again! Why me! He brings his knee up into the side of the man in the hopes that his currently unstable tripod stance will allow his weak self to knock the man over.
It was actually running around the perimeter of the clearing, Regos. Elephants instinctively know to rub their bodies against trees to dislodge pests, and that's exactly what it's trying to do with Bolus. In mere moments the crashing of the elephant's feet will be upon you!
Olivius, things are not looking good for you...take another 1d6 damage as he yanks the spear out of your hand and stabs you in the gut. It doesn't pierce your skin through your leather armor but your leather armor gets stabbed almost through and it hurts.
Olivius grunts as the wind is knocked clean out of him. The edges of his vision blur and the world goes quiet. He's been here once before. In a certain monestary on top of some rocky, barren mountain. One last chance. One last desperate move. There is no room to draw his rapier, so he reaches over his chest to his shoulder and pulls his last throwing knife, the damaged one, free. He pours every last conscious ounce of focus and strength and will into this extraordinarily short range throw. Just as the man lifts the spear again...
Rolling her eyes, Sinathel swings around, using her trunk as a battering ram to knock the Bug-Man off of Olivius. 'Always attracting trouble.'
Your dagger flies true and buries itself to the hilt in the man's eye socket. He crumples backward like a puppet with its strings cut, beetles crawling out of every orifice as the body of the man gives up the ghost. You look on in horror as the beetle swarm emerges from the corpse and runs off into the jungle. The dagger itself broke on impact.
Things are quiet immediately around you for the moment...you can hear Sinathel in elephant morph chasing down the other elephant and trumpeting madly, and you hear the strange newcomer struggling and swinging that weird weapon of his. Your hand throbs with sharp pain. Looking at it, you can see the jungle on the other side.
Olivius falls to the ground and doesn't move for a moment in an attempt to get a handle on the pain. When he does move, it is slowly. He pulls a set of nice cotton bandages from his pack and a bottle of high proof alcohol. He was either drink it or use it, and now was the time. He finds a nearby stick and clamps down on it before pouring alchohol through the wound. He nearly passes out, but he does manage to get the whole wound cleaned and wrapped.
Every inch of him ached, but he was alive. Things were looking up. He looks up into the sky imagining Death watching him with greedy eyes and flips the old boy off.
Regos steps quickly out of the flames, though he's still in the path of the rapidly approaching elephant. Using the last of his conjured projectiles, it hurls the object at the ground near where the coals he was just standing amidst have already been slowly drying the lush greenery. It's a play to create a burst big enough to stop the charging animal. And with any luck, he'll have some flames he can work with as well.
You can feel your heartbeat in the palm of your hand, Olivius, you're pretty sure that isn't good.
Sinathel, the bull elephant is doing little more than scream in pain and rage, but his elephantine voice sounds less corrupted, and the beetle swarm has less of a hold on it, thanks to Regos' flame and the stranger's weapon.
You succeed in causing a flare-up! The smoking coals pulled from the lava by Olivius' rapier ignite under your magic, creating a brief but tall and intense pillar of flame.
The elephant halts in its charge. Seeing the open fires burning the forest seems to trigger some elephant instinct despite the pain of the biting insects, and its trunk lashes out to wrap around your waist! The bull elephant yanks you off your feet seemingly with no effort and makes to begin slapping you onto the fire to put it out, what do you do?
As the elephant isn't charging around anymore and actually seems to be putting a fire out with some object he can't see Bolus figures attacking the bugs is effective and drops down the side which has more bugs and continues to sweep away at them.
Again not bothering to defend himself Bolus makes long sweeps with the weapon
Sinathel, taking advantage of the Bull's pause, approaches him and helps with the sweeping removal of the beetles. She tries to be aware of his injuries, but these bettles Must come off.
Bolus, you see that much of the swarm has retreated - there's a single, large cluster of them remaining on the elephant's chest. With a mighty roar, you swing your weapon - and notice as you're doing so that the elephant is actually lifting up his massive head to expose his chest further to your swing.
Your weapon connects with a crackle of electricity and the beetles scatter, revealing what they were covering up before. What you see next makes you nearly drop your weapon in surprise.
A single, enormous beetle, more than 20 inches across, is embedded like a tick in the front of the elephant's chest. There are bloody wounds in six places on the elephant's skin where the legs penetrate.
Your reckless blow smashes the beetle's hard exoskeleton! You hear the crackling of electricity as the beetle is dislodged and falls to the ground. It lies there, twitching its legs, as the elephant lets out a long low groan and collapses to the earth. The ground itself shakes when its body hits the island. Regos is released from the elephant's trunk's grasp and lands in a heap on the ground.
You think you've seen this tech before in your own homeland, Bolus - specifics will require Spout Lore roll.
Sinathel moves to check on the Elephant, concerned for his well being, but glad that the beetles have finally been removed.
The elephant's still breathing, though its breaths are labored. You see clear gratitude in its face as it looks at you, tears filling up the pachyderm's relatively small eyes.
Bolus scratches his head, he knows he's seen stuff like this before but he'll be damned if he remembers anything about it. He leans down to pat the elephant before turning to the other elephant, the heavily injured robed man, and the thin man with the beard. They certainly didn't SEEM like bug people which was a good thing in Bolus' book but still...
Who are you people. What is this place? he says waving his stun rod around to punctuate the words.
"No one gets away with hurting any of The People. Rest, I'll take care of you. I must make sure there are no more near by first." Sinathel gently checks his wounds, being kind and comforting. She looks around for a moment, checking for any other enemies. If the coast is clear, she'll resume her own form to retrieve her poultice and herbs to tend to the elephant. Otherwise, she'll deal with the threat first.
The coast is clear for now. You tend to the elephant's wounds while he lies there, his breathing lifting its huge chest up and down. On the ground before it, the beetle's legs twitch and wave feebly.
Normally, Sinathel would put on a show of transforming in front of others, but the elephant ranked higher in her concern. She changed quickly this time. Where the second elephant had once been, now stands an elf. The vivid green eyes the same that the elephant before had bore. Her hair braided with bright and colorful feathers woven into it. Her armor was made from various pelts of the animals and her feet remained bare. Her focus is mostly on the elephant in her care, though she gives the large beetle a scathing look before returning it back to the elephant.
At first, she ignores the question asked by this strange but helpful man. He had helped the elephant. Otherwise she might have ignored him fully. "This is a jungle. On an island." Still, her answer was blunt.
Elves are haughty and brusque to strangers in every time period, Bolus, so her answer isn't that surprising.
Regos rolls free from the trunk, quickly skirting free of the flames he was being used to smother.