Sinathel had not been just sitting around since getting on the skipper. She had been searching for any an all spirits of the People and Nature. 'This elf is a traitor to all. He wishes to bring destruction to all who call Gaia their home. Nothing will remain if what he wishes comes true. My companions and I work to stop him, but we could use the aid of anyone willing to give it. This traitor must be stopped before he dooms even Gaia herself. He was headed toward the Beacon that draws the World Eater here." Sinathel sent images with her words of Temellen as she speaks of him, images of her and her companions when she mentions them, and finally, images of the world eater and the state of Gaia from the view in space.
She repeates her words to of the Spirits that will listen, stopping only when Bolus commands the skipper to fly faster. "How long till we can be to the beacon?" She handed her Darkness wand to Bolus, "I wish this returned, but will engulf what it hits in darkness. Since I plan to shift, you will find more use for it right now."
Verdant green scales began to crawl across Sinathel's skin as she started to shift into her chosen form. And this form, this one was going to be new. One she had once tried for and failed before, but now, she knew she would succeed. Her fingers turned to claws and her mouth filled with sharp fangs. As her clothes molded into her form, thin membranes stretched from her sides and her braid followed down her spine as a tail extended. Soon enough Sinathel paused in her changing, for her new form would be too large for the skipper. She would finish outside it. "When we are close, let me out. I'd rather not destroy this skipper."
Cortes looks over his shoulder at Sinthel's strange transformation and pushes the 'skipper faster, flying over the remnants of the orcish mosh pit. You'll be upon them in seconds, and you see Cortes glancing over his shoulder at you for direction, as if to say, this is your show, Bolus. What should I do when we arrive?
Dambreth:
The spirit of the mountain Haujobb regards Dambreth from seemingly high above him. Looking up at the dwarf, one can see blazing constellations through his transparent brow. His blazing fiery orbs seem to pierce Dambreth's armor and gaze upon his very soul.
Then, the merest ghost of a smile tugs one corner of the dwarf's lips. Dambreth, your recent awakening to the higher powers, in communion with the spirits of the land, has not gone unnoticed. You feel the blessings of Gaia fill you who speaks for your fellows.
Gain Hold 3. Spend 1 Hold for: Intervention of Gaia
For being the first among your companions to speak, Gaia is watching over you. When you spend this hold as part of a personal plea to the Great Earth Spirit, She will intervene for you in the story in some meaningful way.
1 Hold Spent.
As the elf was speaking, he was pointing a wand of some kind at the beacon, drawing a sphere of protective force around it. It grows a yellow-colored shield that covers it completely. Now, Temellen's finished talking. Reaching back inside the skyskipper, the elf produces a handheld weapon of some strange design - unbeknownst to you, the weapon that he almost used to kill Bolus and Sinathel, before Cortes drove him off. He considers a moment, and fires at the largest target below him - Viola's drake - first. He fires with a casual disregard. Instead of a visual beam of light, there's only a hissssscrack sound, and the drake's skull is instantly perforated with a dozen tiny holes. It happened in an instant. Viola, drake blood sprays across your hands, but you can't move to wipe them clean.
The elf smirks and takes aim at Olivius next. "I love when the targets can't move..." he murmurs to himself. Just as he's about to fire, there's a rumbling in the earth below your feet. Temellen notices it too, and looks about him - sees Cortes' skyskipper coming! With a curse, he flees back into his skyskipper - shouting wordlessly in rage. Inside, he grasps the 'skipper's PA and triggers the external speakers.
As he shouts into the PA, he tilts the 'skipper's engines, allowing it to tilt dangerously backward while remaining in hover mode! The huge bomb that you stored in the skipper tilts and slides backward until it's nearly fallen out of the hold! Bolus, Sinathel, what do you do?
The earth continues to rumble beneath your feet. Dambreth, despite the dire situation all around you, you can feel the presence of Gaia. Whether that means it's all going to be alright, or that means you'll be dead soon and she's welcoming you to the Afterlife, you can't tell for sure.
Viola doesn't act like much of an elf, in the best of times. She doesn't do anything an elf would do. She fully believes that her ancestors wouldn't have kept such detailed histories if they didn't mean for her to use them to her advantage. She's not at all opposed to using a 'lesser' creature to gain an advantage.
But this was too far.
As the drake, unable to defend itself, is hit with whatever strange device the man was using, blood sprays over her hands... but it isn't red she sees. It's white. A white-hot rage flows through Viola as this monster slaughters an innocent and defenseless animal... moreso, one that was in her care and had defended her against all of these orcs.
She couldn't move. She couldn't act... She was completely unable to even fidget, only stare at this man that had such a casual disregard for everything. Betrayer was the wrong title. Beast was more fitting.
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Lord Borak takes the sudden turn of events with a mixture of seething rage and chilling calm. And a little bit of glee at having found a worthy opponant.
He's not usually one for overly long and needless expositions, but this seemed an opportune time. He wasn't really one to die silently anyway.
For as much as he can, he screams at the elf, who is screaming in her skipper.
"I GIVE YOU ONE CHANCE TO RECONSIDER YOUR ACTIONS! THINK WELL, ELSE YOU WILL LEARN INTIMATELY THE DEFINITION OF !"
Hope whatever you turn into can grab a huge explosive Sinathel Bolus mutters before getting their own skipper's loudspeaker
To Cortez he says Hover when you get close, anyone here a crack sniper?
Then he gets on the skipper's loudspeaker and blares as a distraction.
"It will be. Though I suggest you turn off the lights first."
Sinathel moves towards the nearest exit, preparing to disembark.
Give the word Sinathel and the lying murderer over there gets a shot of darkness right in the face
As soon as Sinathel gives a sign Bolus will aim the wand and fire the wand to cover the late professor's craft in darkness right before she tumbles out.
More shouting from the skyskipper's speakers.
He tilts the skipper a little further back. The front edge of the bomb is over the lip of the rear exit hatch of the vehicle, only scant meters from Olivius and Eldar's helpless heads. Looking up, you can see that the weapons dealers had drawn an attractive gnomish woman wearing a technician's outfit on the front, blowing a kiss, with the words "CALL ME" written in red.
Urrggghhhh... so much name dropping...
"Now" Sinathel was out the door only a breath later. The moment wind started to hit her face she let the rest of the transformation complete. ref pic Spreading her wings she took off towards her target. This form felt wonderful, but she had other things to be concerned about than the joy she felt at finally taking the form of a jungle drake. She rushed towards the hopefully darkened traitor and his skipper.
Bolus fires as soon as he hears Sinathel aiming the wand so the darkness covers the craft and the area above it leaving the area underneath bright for Sinathel to do her thing.
Olivius, still unable to move, admires the art as it teeters dangerously. Honestly, being smashed by a pretty lady wasn't the worst death he could think up. They had certainly gotten the details right. He wonders for a moment who had done the...
SINATHEL! Finally! Oh Sinathel, my dear, you have such a knack for entrances! He cheers up to his friend.
Spending a long held hold...
Dambreth's thoughts flash back to a mountain top and a dwarf and a feeling of righteousness and remembers what he had forgotten...for being the first to speak for his friends, Gaia had granted him the ability to call on her in his time of need and for her to answer.
Gaia...return the flow of time to my friends and me so that we can smite the Betrayer and destroy the foul beacon that calls to the Thing From Beyond......as Dambreth finishes his plea for aid he feels a pulse of power explode out from the earth and suddenly he can move...
Halwyr knows one thing about his predicament already. Body and mind are separate in time. If that wasn't true, he wouldn't be thinking right now. In his mind's eyes, now his only pair, he pictures the magic holding them in place. The aura is thick, and incredibly strong.
His purely mental magic is also not voided by the time-stop, as it moves at the speed of thought which cannot be altered. Such a lovely experiment, he thinks. But the mage's abject calm is replaced by white-hot anger. His friends, new and old, could be about to die, at the hands of this elf with little respect for life. Give in to the anger. Emotion begets power.
Halwyr stops trying to burst the barrier with power of will. Instead, he lets the chaos of his mind become pent up, creating a resonance of not willpower, but simple thought. The thought is bolstered by the maelstrom of his emotions, his shrewd thinking and calculations, and finally his power over thought. Like a battering ram in the realm of magic, he slams his emotions against the barrier.
Perhaps ironically for those frozen on the ground, the next few seconds pass very quickly.
Bolus, shouting in fury as he leans out of the skyskipper and fires his wand at Hardworthy's craft.
Sinathel, her elven form surrendering to an old form, long extinct in this timeline, from her distant past.
Olivius below, desperately trying to scream in exultation and incandescent joy at her sudden arrival.
Halwyr, summoning the depths of his impotent rage to struggle against the time stop spell, begins glowing with a hot white light while still being unable to move or act.
Lord Borak, his face a mask of rigid determination as he fights to scream threats at the wicked elf above.
Viola, her heart feeling like it wants to beat its way out of her chest as the blood from her slain mount slowly drips off her fingers.
Dambreth sees all of this as he is trapped in the vile perversion spell that twists Lord Chronos' will. Chronos and Gaia are of like mind in this matter. Some intervention is called for.
All of you on the ground are suffused by a feeling of lightness. The air you breathe is sweet to your lungs. As Dambreth finishes his mental plea to Gaia, Gaia answers. With a final rumbling of the earth beneath your feet, the spell is finally broken, just as the emerald drake that is Sinathel swoops in and and grasps the bomb! The bomb lands safely in her claws, inches above the impact point! All of you are able to move and act again at the very moment Sinathel catches the bomb!
Meanwhile, Bolus' wand works just as it's described - bathing the windshield of Hardworthy's skipper in darkness. From within the darkness, blasting can be heard from Temellen's strange weapon as he fires wildly. He may not be able to see, but he manages to clip the wing of Cortes' skipper!
The wing is blasted with dozens of tiny holes and fuel immediately leaks free of the craft to the dirt below. Cortes gives a shout of dismay as the craft begins to go down!
As Cortes' craft crashes to earth, roll Defy Danger to escape a fiery death, Bolus! Meanwhile, inside the globe of darkness, you hear Temellen's incensed cursing as he struggles to pilot his craft clear!
What do you all do?
Viola's hands tremble with rage as the dragon, now freed from the time dilation, slumps forward... her only hint that the spell has faded from her position.
Drip. Drip.
Her hands move up to her face, drawing lines of red beneath her eyes, as she slips off of the drake, lying dead beneathe her. She rips an arrow free from an orc corpse, and in the same motion, tosses the bow and additional arrow to Borak. Now he has two.
Drip. Drip-Drip.
In one fluid motion, Viola leaps from rock to rock and finally leaps into the darkness.
And the beat goes on.
Olivius had a promise to keep. With the craft fifteen feet up, Tamellen is in easy range of his recently acquired jumping boots. That coupled with the night vision goggles on his head made for a moment that couldn't have been better if he planned it.
Never one for intricate plans, Olivius bursts into a sprint the instant he is free. The goggles are pulled into place, Spirit Dagger comes free from it's place at his side, and one of his original daggers appears in the other hand. Second later he leaps and the boys engage, sending him flying for the open door of Temellen's craft. The Deep Past, Past, and Present all go to meet the Traitor.
The jump is perfect. Olivius lands on the deck just at the apex of his jump and is ready to react to whatever faces him.
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Wordlessly, Borak receives the arrow and bow tossed to him by Viola, as if it was a rehersed maneuver by long-time teammates.
Cooly, his eyes look over the blob-of-dark that is Temellen's craft.
His fertile mind quickly runs an infinite number of calculations. Most likely pilot actions, vector of craft, wind speed and direction, and type of craft: standard, hover-mode capable, with air-intakes that should be just about...
there.
Raising the bow and drawing the arrow back far enough to almost bend the bow fully double, he calculates the parabolic arc that it would take to fire an arrow into the intake fans to cause...oh, many intersting things.
Let this please Propoket.
"Prepare to be despoiled," quoth he, as he releases the arrow.
With almost no time to react Bolus grabs whoever is closest to him from the craft and jumps out twisting in the air to shield them from whatever happens when the craft crashes.
Halwyr has come to appreciate his mind's eyes. Sure, they didn't busy him out of the spell, but they can do plenty of things normal ones can't. Though he can't see Temellen, he saw Olivius, and he can see both and more presences on the deck of the skyskipper. The elf's presence is easy to discern, what with the emotions flowing through it: Rage, confusion, and so on.
And so it's child's play for him to find Temellen's lungs and pull the breath from them and violently as he deserves.
Dambreth slumps to the ground in relief as the time stop spell is broken and gives thanks to Gaia (and Chronos).
Leaving the others to deal with Temellen the Betrayer, Dambreth concentrates his efforts in dealing with the foul beacon. Again grasping his ceremonial dagger, he slashes his arm, spilling his Elven blood on the ground as he calls on Gaia to infuse his simple staff with power. The simple staff, made of the metal that is the bones of Gaia, is hopefully bolstered with power to shatter the shield that protects the beacon. Sacrifice made and staff hopefully empowered he smashes at the beacon with all of his strength.
With all of this going on. Eldar was silent. His eyes closed. His sword away under his cloak. His mask a black stare. No eyes showing behind the small holes. Wisps of smoke blowing away from his body. He was not there.
His mind was in a place of grey shadows. Wisps of memories. Shadows that played out the last terrible moments of their owners. Some shadows relived their last moments with their loved ones. Nothing was solid. Nothing was there. Yet. Everything was there. Like pictures over other picture. The pencil imprints of so many erased sketches
There he floated. Looking at the world below him. Indifferent. Then. A shadow. A presence. The thing that called him there. No. Not a thing. Never just a thing. His master. Death himself appeared
He held out his hand. And grazed his face. The world exploded. His eyes snapped open. Yes. His life was over. But his duty was not.
-Posted with Wayfinder
The time-stop spell is broken, and the Hand of Gaia closes into a fist around the best-laid plans of Temellen the Betrayer. The tide begins to turn!
First, the fate of Cortes' craft, Bolus and Sinathel...
A whistling crack from Temellen's weapon is all that can be heard before the wing of Cortes' skyskipper is obliterated and filled with more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. Bolus, you're tossed violently sideways as the craft rocks, swinging wildly through the air as the stabilizers struggle to kick in. You'd been trained for this, as a Guardian of Terminus City - trained to act, to put all conscious thought aside in favor of the right now. Your wrist is crushed against the bulkhead, sending pain rocketing up your arm. Take 1d4+4 damage, and you think your left wrist might be broken - it's tender and difficult to use. Take -1 on all rolls that involve the use of your left hand until it mends.
Chaos, confusion and pain are briefly the three rulers of your existence. You manage to grab hold of the nearest Guardian to you - the woman with the close-cropped brown hair - but even as you secure her, the skipper crashes and you're thrown clear right through the open hatch that Sinathel just vacated. You and the female Guardian are the only ones you're aware of for a moment - you don't know what happened to Cortes and the other one in the smoking wreckage over about 15 feet from where you land, tumbling end over end until you roll to a painful stop. Take another 1d6 damage from the hard landing.
Meanwhile, Sinathel the green drake is triumphantly soaring away from the battlefield, bringing the bomb to a safe distance from her friends. It's difficult to look down at it while flying in your current form, but you think you see red ticking numbers in your peripheral vision. What do you do?
Now, cut to the battle in the skyskipper...
Viola, even as you free yourself from the time-stop spell, you know that there's no way you could jump high enough to reach the skyskipper un-aided. That human with the weird-looking hood only managed to thanks to his rocket boots. You cast about yourself, desperate to bring some painful justice to that a&~%!!# in the craft overhead...there! You see one of the other prisoners you were trapped with, running toward you across the blackened fields of the valley! Aside from the PCs, this is the only prisoner that survived the ordeal in the cage. He's a tall, powerfully-built human with medium-dark skin and wild hair, and he's running toward you from the direction of the slave pits, with a huge chest slung across his back! Your gear! The other prisoner got your gear!
You toss your bow to Lord Borak and turn your eyes to the real prize - your precious stuff! Those orcs better not have damaged your instrument...
Olivius, as you pull the hood over your head, you feel a momentary flash of unpleasantness from your memory of nearly being hanged. Never mind the discomfort - you need to see. Like a parkour artist with decades of experience, the thief activates his rocket boots with professional skill, using only the amount of boost needed to lift him to the skyskipper's level.
Your vision is in infrared, and there's a HUD that displays useful information as small, unobtrusive text next to the target in your FOV. Your vision looks a little like this. The darkness of the interior of the skipper is no impediment to you. You see Temellen there, standing from his pilot's seat in the cockpit. The speed at which you got to the skipper clearly took the traitor elf by surprise, he doesn't have his weapon trained on you yet...and he can't aim very well either, with the darkness that Bolus cast on the windshield.
Even as the two of you advance toward one another, there's another disruption. The arrow fired by Lord Borak flies exactly where the hobgoblin's calculating mind wants it to, lodging itself firmly in the exhaust manifolds of the skyskipper's right flank! Concurrently, Halwyr directs his magic right at Temellen, but the buildup of magic that Halwyr experienced while frozen in time threw off his aim. The fact that the skipper is partially shrouded in darkness doesn't help it much.
Halwyr, your spell fixates on the nearest thing to Temellen it can - Borak's arrow - and pulls it, violently shoving the arrow from the exhaust wings through the passenger compartment and bringing fire from the engines jetting into the cabin! Halwyr, your damage is dealt to both Temellen and Olivius!
Inside the skipper, alarm klaxons are blaring in several different tempos and pitches as various systems of the skipper are destroyed. The skipper begins to spin out of control, but isn't as damaged as Cortes' craft was, and still remains in the air. Unsteadily, wobbling through the air on 1.5 usable engines, the craft begins spinning in crazy circles overhead, trying to stabilize!
Olivius, you and Temellen both just got burned by exit flames. The elf fires at you wildly, shooting blast after blast and filling the bulkhead all around you with holes! You can see he's going for a side panel near the pilot's seat that has an escape suit of some kind, what do you do?
You can't train for crash landing. What you can train for is keeping your cool when things are going to hell and going with the flow as best you can.
Ignoring the pain in his wrist Bolus grabs the Guardian tending him and jumps out of the doomed craft, turning slowly in the air he makes sure that she lands on him rather than the other way around. The movement causes them both to somersault to an agonizing stop.
Hey, you ok? he gasps when they finally stop moving.
Dambreth shuts out the chaos of the battle raging all around him. Never has his purpose been more clear. You deal 6 damage to yourself, ignores armor, from your sacrificial cut, Dambreth.
Your swing is watched with approval by the Earth Goddess, and you shatter the shield that Temellen cast over the beacon - but at a cost. The beacon seems almost alive, before you and pulsing with white light and purple lightning. The lightning is all around you from this melee range.
You feel the years of your long, elven life being drawn out of you. As certain as you are that the beacon is before you, you are as certain that you are aging faster than you can handle. Already your body becomes more frail as you enter the later stages of your Elven life. As you stand before the exposed beacon, wrapped in its temporal energies, you feel older and older and older and older. If you were one of the shorter-lived races, you might already have succumbed. Take a -1 penalty to all physical ability scores. What do you do?
Dambreth fights back best he can against the forces decaying his body but refuses to falter in his task. Reliving his youth as a gourd carrier (and not any old gourd, but the red high point scoring gourd) in the rough and tumble Elven Gourdball games, he scoops up the beacon and runs as fast as he can after Sinathel SCREAMING at the top of his lungs to his cousin that has always been there for him..."SIN...COME BACK...USE THE BOMB ON THE BEACON...WE CAN DESTROY IT!"
Olivius throws his cloak over his face as the flames roll through the cockpit. His vision is other worldly and he takes a moment to make sense of what he is seeing, all the while dodging shots from Temellen.
In spite of all that, Olivius is calm and quiet like a great cat on the hunt. He can see; the mark can't. It's dark, confusing, his hatred of flying and the feeling that he's about to get hanged again are hanging up on his clear head, but the target is in sight. The mark is in reach. And Olivius, well he's a professional. He doesn't choke.
A simple, quiet roll to the right brings him behind the Elf. Any noise is easily masked by the blaring alarms. Olivius couldn't be more in his element.
As hope springs eternal for the Elf, even add his hand gasps the suit, Olivius strikes.
Olivius clobbers Temellen over the back of the head with the hilt of the Spirit Dagger, then fulfills his promise and expertly inserts his dagger from home between the shoulder blades of his prey and, hopefully, between vertebra for effective paralysis.
Was that elven gourdball? Ha, yes! He was doing the thing!
Even as Viola was heading for the prisoner, she saw what Dambreth was up to.
As Dambreth hurried towards the Dragon, she spotted something he didn't: a loose rock formation that may have tumbled from beneath him in his mad dash for his beloved pet Dragon. Another fall towards Gaia that would be easily prevented. Plus, she figured he could use all the help he could get. She tosses the orc Sabre into the Rocky outcropping, trying to help stabilize it by wedging the crude sword into the stones.
Then she turns her attention back to the prisoner. "Let me get my stuff. Innahurry. Gotta kill a guy fast-fast." If he didn't move to stop her, she'd already be trying to get into his chest as they headed back towards where the beacon had been.
Lots of stuff that she wanted... but the leathers, harness and elven straightblade were her primary concerns just now.
She'd be trying to get dressed in her own stuff as she ran.
Sinathel, upon noticing the ticking numbers entered a turn to fly back towards the beacon, if it was going to go off, she was going to try to take the beacon and hopefully not the others with it. If the others could just get away from the beacon and the bomb in time... They had to make it through this time. She had just finished her turn to begin her return flight when she felt Dambreth's desperation to reach her. Scanning the ground, she searched for him. There! There he was. Running after her... The beacon! He was carrying the Beacon! Away from the others and towards her!
*RAAAWR* With a loud roar she acknowledged that she had heard him. She headed towards him with the bomb in tow. She gave him a snarling growl she hoped he understood to mean to 'get away from the beacon'. She didn't want to take him with it. 'Chuck it, drop it... something. Anything... just... get away too...' The others could take care of that back-stabing jungle-fowl...
Your aching wrist notwithstanding, you feel pretty good when you realize that you managed to pull the other Guardian free of the crash and shield her from the worst of the impact with the ground. She looks shaken, but unharmed, except for a slight flow of blood from under her hairline coming down the right side of her face. She pushes away from you and stands unsteadily to her feet, shaking a little bit side to side, and helps you climb to your feet afterward by grasping tight to your forearm. You notice a bloodstained nametag on her uniform that reads Ocampo.
"CORTES!" she shouts, and begins to sprint, rocking side to side, in the direction of the fallen skipper. "Here!" Yala answers, having run up and climbed on top of the craft almost as soon as it "landed." She manages to get the jammed-shut windshield hatch open just as Ocampo arrives and holds it open for her to climb in and attempt a rescue. Fire and smoke escape from the cockpit when Yala opens the hatch for her, but the Guardian is heedless, scrambling to get inside and calling out for Cortes and Vallarco. Bolus, what do you do?
Viola, you recognize that the rapidly-aging elf carrying the beacon is exhibiting true Elven Gourdball form, but you notice that his rapidly-advancing age is preventing him from getting clear of the altar! He stumbles, about to trip on a patch of loose earth - when, quite improbably, your accurately-aimed saber wedges itself in nearby and provides the stability that he needs to advance!
You allow yourself a small smirk of satisfaction, but you dedicated too much of your attention to your wrist's precise aim as you sprint across the rocky field. You trip over a fallen orc corpse that was initially blown up by one of Olivius' grenades, and land hard on the orc's weapon that was lying nearby. You get a nasty cut on your leg, take 1d6 damage, but you don't let it slow you down long.
The swarthy prisoner carrying your gear literally has the entire chest of prisoner-captured loot slung across his back, kinda like this guy (though the prisoner obviously isn't a Frankenstein monster). When he doesn't react to lower the chest quickly enough for your liking, you simply hop up onto the chest and open it while it's still tied to his back. With quick and efficient darting of your hands here, there, and everywhere, you're completely re-equipped within a minute and a half flat. Damn it feels good to be a gangster, etc. etc.
Lord Borak, your stuff is on the ground in front of the prisoner, who looks slightly dumbfounded at Viola's speed. Viola's already taking off back in the direction of Hardworthy's skipper. As you begin to strap your old gear back on, you glance casually over your shoulder at Hardworthy's craft. The darkness spell of the wand would be wiped clean soon, but with the damage that you and Halwyr did to the craft, you'd guess for it to crash within the next 3 or 4 minutes.
With the aid of Viola's saber, Dambreth carries his terrible burden as far as he can away from the altar, finding himself running at a slightly downward slope as his path takes him toward the nadir of the orc valley. You're among tall, jagged stones that jut out of the ground all around you like a forest of rock. Overhead, you can see drakes with collars over their necks peering down at you curiously from holes in the rocks, but keeping well clear of the dangerous energies that are coming from the beacon.
Sinathel spots her cousin immediately and descends in a rapid stoop toward the ground, divebombing with the ticking bomb clutched in her claws. She lands on a rocky outcropping near you and you can read a timer with less than 3 minutes remaining on the side, right next to the sexy gnome technician artwork! "CALL ME" in red letters may very well be the last words you ever read...Sinathel, Dambreth, you hear a sound coming from behind you! The skipper that was formerly the Professor's is wobbling and veering toward you, barely able to stay in the skies! What do you do?
After reaching the man, and beginning to collect her stuff, she double-checks her gear, paying unduly careful attention to it. Eh, nevermind. It should be fine.
"Love to stick around, but I've a plane to catch!" Viola explains, as she slips a samurai mempo, modified to have a rebreather over her face, which distorts her voice, once it's on. Her armor is actually very eastern in design. Very flexible material covers the majority of her body now, leaving plenty of flexibility in the joints, while metal plates cover the lines of stiff sections like bones. To add to the complexity, there are perhaps three dozen straps all around her body, buckled into place, securing some sort of strange backpack into place, from which a thin, straight razor-like blade hangs. Definitely something meant for carving out dragon steaks.
She slips back towards the skipper, examining how the shifting field is changing. Once again overcome with boredom, she launches a spike tied with a ropy line towards the ship in question.
Inside the skipper...
The alarm bells are ringing, the ground under your feet is whirling around, and there's still a bit of fire coming through the hole left by Borak's arrow/Halwyr's spell. Your focus on Temellen blocks all that out. The traitor has a lot of blood on his hands to answer for, and you know better than many others that Death always collects on his debts eventually...
You dodge underneath the weapon blasts that the elf fires wildly. It's hell trying to aim any kind of ranged attack in this environment - better to do your wet-work in point-blank range. Part of the bulkhead is blasted full of holes right next to your head, and the bulkhead is ripped out of the skipper by the trauma of the air turbulence outside - you barely notice, but in the brief split-second that you acknowledged it, the elf gets in a stab with his rapier that he thrusts immediately behind him when you move into flanking position. It's a weak thrust, Temellen is clearly not as good a fighter as you are - take 1d6 damage from the shallow cut he inflicts on your leg as you move in.
You don't let the pain distract you any more than the crashing skipper does. Your blow to the head drives you both forward onto the flight console, your combined struggles sending the skipper's flight engine into a wild career that roughly follows Dambreth. You smash him in the temples, preventing any further counterattack, and your Spirit Knife plunges into his chest!
(TEMELLEN HP: 9/12) The elf snarls in pain and backhands you across the face roughly, Olivius. Though his attack is wild and uncoordinated thanks to your blow to the head, and you block it easily, the elf's arm hits you so hard as to nearly knock the knife clear out of your hand! The blow forces you a step or two backward, and you notice that the blood on your Spirit Knife is blue.
Temellen laughs at you and reveals that his teeth look too long to properly fit inside his head. You can't make out any more because he is diving for the controls of the craft, trying to spin them even harder and throw you off balance! Outside the windshield that clears of darkness from the spell, you see that the skipper is entering a field of jagged stone spires coming out of the earth! What do you do?
Bolus bites back a curse. He sprints after Ocampo taking out a hypo spray and jabbing it into his left wrist. It might not fix it but it'll alleviate the pain at least. He tries to remember what he can of skipper construction that could help the two stuck Guardians out
Not remembering anything useful Bolus clambers up using only his left hand as much as possible and shouts. Get Clear Yala! and follows Ocampo into the fiery darkness.
If this was a heist it would be time to cut and run. If this were a simple job he would have declined in the first place.
But this wasn't just a job. And Temellen wasn't an elf. That made things easier, believe it or not. If the monster wanted to spin...
Let's dance, b#*¢@rd.
He shoves the lever over until it stops, then slashes at Temellen's face.
Olivius ignores the awkward stab because it is deflected by his leathers.
"Sin, you heard me...thank Gaia...we have to destroy the beacon and the thing you carry will be exploding in 3 minutes...without the shield protecting it is my hope is that the exploding thing can destroy it...give me the exploding thing and then fly to safety...I will stay behind until the last minute to make sure that the betrayer can't stop it," Dambreth gasps out as he stumbles up the rocky outcropping to his cousin. Out of breath, he slumps done next to the bomb.
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Lord Borak finshes strapping the heavy metal plate onto his torso and stands up. On another the bulky weight might slow them, but years spent on campaign has made him inured to such difficulties.
As Viola stumbles and falls, Borak nods curlty, to himself. That she fell there means that the humidity in the air must be over 50%. In order to be at that level of moisture, the wind must be carrying a cold front in from the NorthEast at just over 6 knots. The net-forces from a cold front of that strength would generate flumes in the density of 1200 per cubic furlong, raising the spin rate that his arrow imparted on the craft of around 200 Newtons.
Which, were someone wearing jump boots to plunge a dagger into the pilot's side, would negate their inner-ear function enough to result in an over-compensation of an incoming flume right about...
now.
As Temellen dives for the controls in side the juttering craft, he over-compensates, and instead of deftly clamping down on the panel, he crashes his head into the bulkhead.