Feldivarxon has no weapon readied , so he lets the physician go by, opting to move into the room so he can see the maiden above the scrum and grease the catwalk on which she stands.
Rutter slides around to use the same tactics the physician's themselves are using, to allow him to put his blades to their best use, as well as get out from between two of them himself. After a series of sharp stabs and slashes, he drops his target to lie bleeding out of the hospice floor.
Moving unseen into the room, Feldivar puts himself into a position to create a layer of grease along one of the catwalks. The floor under the maiden becomes incredibly slippery as she struggles to keep her feet. She doesn't flail long before dropping to the greased catwalk.
Focusing on her pain and anger, the held Maiden manages to force herself to move despite the mental restraint holding her still, and breaks the effect Neva had on her. Raliscar's Maiden victim slumps further, before her head lolls completely to the side. The Maiden above Vyshael trains her bow away from the cluster, and instead straight down at the 'troglodyte' attacking the Maiden below her. Her shot is far from the mark, plinking into the ground behind him. The Maiden that toppled over thrashes comically in multiple attempts to get back to her feet.
Grunting, though it can't be heard, Raliscar slips another few paces away from the needlesome physician before bringing his crossbow back up to his shoulder. Based on the look on his face and the way his beard wags, it seems the dwarf has a few choice words for the faux-doctor, but those are lost to Neva's enduring silence as well.
HP: 48/64
AC: 21 (14 T / 17 FF)
CMD: 20
F/R/W: +9/+11/+5
Ranger's Focus (+4/+4): [X] [ ]
Level 1 spells prepared (1+1): gravity bow [X] [ ]
Necklace of Fireballs: 6d6 [ ] // 4d6 [X] [ ] // 2d6 [X] [ ]
-Ongoing Effects-
Favored Terrain (underground/dungeon): +2 to Initiative, Perception, Stealth, & Survival for ALL party members
Aspect of the Falcon (1/3 minutes, 9/10 rounds): +3 to perception, +1 to ranged attacks, crit range = 19-20/x3
Gravity Bow (1/3 minutes, 8/10 rounds): hvy crossbow damage increased from 1d10 to 2d8
Bless (1/6 minutes, 7/10 rounds): +1 to hit, +1 vs fear (morale)
Haste (2/6 rounds): +30ft movement, +1 to hit, +1 AC, +1 ref saves, +1 attack with full attack routine
Deadly Aim: -2 to hit, +4 damage
Vyshael notes that his target is unable to strike back, then looks at the other combatants, If I abandon her to fight the others, she'll like as not break out of Neva's spell... So let's end her, then turn back.
Raliscar steps back a little more, firing at the physician nearest to him, hitting him once and giving him pause. The jolt disrupts where was aiming the next shot, but corrected his aim quickly to finish the man off.
Neva stepped back from the remaining Physician, into the blood of the two fallen behind her. She raised her hands and called on the Grey Maiden, brandishing her dagger as she did so.
A pale version of the weapon appeared next to her, wrapped in golden light. It shot out towards the still-standing "doctor".
Vyshael's eyes narrow as the maiden starts to move, ..this is why I took enchantment as an opposition school... Guess we'll have to do it the hard way... He reaches inside himself, and carefully unchains his righteous fury, feeling it burn away doubt and leaving only strength and focus, then swings his heavy blade with both hands, followed up by a strike from battleshaped horns.
for
for
Vyshael continues to assault the Maiden no longer under hold, striking her more by force than precision, as she just begins to regain movement. This switch in capability offsets his follow through swings, not being able to connect with the return slash, nor with the magically sprouted horns.
Neva, finally having the room and safety to step away and cast a spell, does so. She conjures a glowing force representation of Pharasma's weapon of choice, and sends it to stab the remaining physician. The blade flies out and slashes the 'healer' pretty hard for a blade of its kind. With the blade as a distraction, she recovers her other weapon.
As the majority of the physicians lay dead or dying on the southern side of the room, the remaining one decides to cut his losses there, and work on helping the remaining Maiden on the ground floor for a little strength in numbers.
The one in armor will have more trouble with balance, I wager.
Feldivarxon greases the ground under the maiden facing Vyshael.
Just like on the catwalk above the southern portion, a large slippery puddle of grease appears from nowhere. Unlike above, however, the Maiden here is very sure-footed, either by having sword and shield in hand or the proximity to the wall to steady herself.
Rutter pursues the last physician who went after Vyshael, and swings clumsily at him with a kukri.
Rutter moves up to help in the fray that is collecting around Vyshael, but his eagerness gets the better of him and he swings way too early to even make contact.
The Maiden in the grease makes a swing at Vyshael, while just keeping her feet in the puddle. Her focus on aim seems to take priority, and in the end she barely scratches the man. With the battle piled up in the central area, the upper Maidens try to focus on the one facing their sister in arms. The one right above him fires down at him, and the angle is just enough to make a dent, but not a deep one despite the punch it had. Finally, after much struggling, the other one manages to stand up in the slippery puddle.
Vyshael winces at the unexpected blow from the medic, turning his head to face the man, his reptilian face snarling, "You'd better hope the halfling gets you before I finish this one... though I prefer to eat my prey live."
With that, he spins, bringing his blade down on the maiden in a wicked two-handed chop, then follows up with a second slice and a strike from his battleshaped horns.
for
for
Raliscar turns his attention to the maidens up above and looses a trio of bolts for the one who just managed to regain her feet. His comments, yet again, are swallowed up by Neva's silence.
HP: 48/64
AC: 21 (14 T / 17 FF)
CMD: 20
F/R/W: +9/+11/+5
Ranger's Focus (+4/+4): [X] [ ]
Level 1 spells prepared (1+1): gravity bow [X] [ ]
Necklace of Fireballs: 6d6 [ ] // 4d6 [X] [ ] // 2d6 [X] [ ]
-Ongoing Effects-
Favored Terrain (underground/dungeon): +2 to Initiative, Perception, Stealth, & Survival for ALL party members
Aspect of the Falcon (1/3 minutes, 10/10 rounds): +3 to perception, +1 to ranged attacks, crit range = 19-20/x3
Gravity Bow (1/3 minutes, 9/10 rounds): hvy crossbow damage increased from 1d10 to 2d8
Bless (1/6 minutes, 8/10 rounds): +1 to hit, +1 vs fear (morale)
Haste (3/6 rounds): +30ft movement, +1 to hit, +1 AC, +1 ref saves, +1 attack with full attack routine
Deadly Aim: -2 to hit, +4 damage
Neva tried to keep her mind on both her magic and her weapon as the melee swirled around her.
Adeptly and adroitly, Raliscar works the mechanics on his cumbersome crossbow, turning and firing upward at one of the overhead maidens. His first shot catches the woman square in the shoulder, reeling her backward enough that his speed was too fast and he misaligned his follow-on shot. Regardless, as soon as she reels back forward in recovery, he launches a third bolt into her stomach, causing her hunch over, before toppling on the catwalk.
Vyshael lets the the rage of the physician sneaking up on him take over, and turns back to his original quarry to release a empowered and vengeful strike. With a spin, he twists from his threat to come clean across and lop the head right off the woman, before continuing the rotation facing the physician once more. Driving the blade deep into the man, he gets close enough to drive a horn into the man's eye. The physician slumps to the floor, bleeding heavily.
As the bodies quickly drop around the room, Neva has to reorient herself, and as such finds that her only option is to send her spiritual weapon up toward the last remaining enemy. The glowing weapon of force flies toward the woman, but does not pierce her armored exterior. Neva loads a bolt, and readies to let fly.
As two of the physicians either continue to succumb to their injuries, or cease to continue bleeding, the one that Vyshael stabbed with both blade and horn clearly doesn't make it.
Feldivarxon waits, knowing he doesn't have a lot of firepower to offer and the team can obviously handle an individual, even out of reach.
Raliscar lets another trio of bolts fly from his crossbow, his beard puffing and dancing with more shouted oaths and insults lost to the silence around him.
HP: 48/64
AC: 21 (14 T / 17 FF)
CMD: 20
F/R/W: +9/+11/+5
Ranger's Focus (+4/+4): [X] [ ]
Level 1 spells prepared (1+1): gravity bow [X] [ ]
Necklace of Fireballs: 6d6 [ ] // 4d6 [X] [ ] // 2d6 [X] [ ]
-Ongoing Effects-
Favored Terrain (underground/dungeon): +2 to Initiative, Perception, Stealth, & Survival for ALL party members
Aspect of the Falcon (2/3 minutes, 1/10 rounds): +3 to perception, +1 to ranged attacks, crit range = 19-20/x3
Gravity Bow (1/3 minutes, 10/10 rounds): hvy crossbow damage increased from 1d10 to 2d8
Bless (1/6 minutes, 8/10 rounds): +1 to hit, +1 vs fear (morale)
Haste (4/6 rounds): +30ft movement, +1 to hit, +1 AC, +1 ref saves, +1 attack with full attack routine
Deadly Aim: -2 to hit, +4 damage
Vyshael releases the rage and carefully slides his blade back into his scabbard as the fatigue washes over him. He staggers slightly, then steps toward the maiden while drawing his bow.
Seeing no other enemies on the ground floor, Rutter crosses the large room, looking for stairs to the level above. Seeing none, he approaches some doors at the back of the room, sheathing one of his blades as he does so. Man, these boots are awesome! I'm crossing this room as if I was running!
Feldivar remains unseen as he waits for a chance to once again trip up one of the woman warriors. Rutter, unknowingly taking advantage of the speed he gained not only from his boots but the spell cast by the aforementioned gnome. The halfling zips across the large room in almost the blink of an eye to arrive at one of the doors on the far end, previously guarded by one of the women.
Despite the odds and results of the fight thus far, the remaining Maiden does not make any move to flee. Instead she calmly crosses the catwalk with her bow drawn, taking aim at the one true threat to her at her current vantage. Moving closer to Raliscar, she lets fire her arrow, but it casually glances off the dwarf's armor.
Raliscar turned on the remaining Maiden, as her shot is diverted, and lets loose a hail of bolts much like the others he has fired thus far. The first shot punches her hard, with the second one delivering the finality of the attack. He doesn't even need to continue on with a third, as she drops to the catwalk with two bloody bolts sticking out of her.
Though his cursory look at the catwalk only revealed one standing Maiden, which he figured Raliscar would finish off, Rutter wanted to make sure the place was cleared out and no one had gotten away to call for help.
"I got this door! Y'all check through the curtains!" He wondered if his message would be heard on the other side of Neva's silent zone. Magic! Who knows?!
He burst through the door in front of him and scans it quickly for enemies or exits.
Feldivarxon moves to the nearest enemy and gives it a cursory search, mostly for keys and the like, but he uses detect magic to look for any magic, also.
Curtains? He looks up at the others to see if any are going to investigate the curtains, but realizes his invisibility makes him a reasonable choice.
"Come! Let's join Rutter, and I can heal our wounds. The space behind the curtains must be the storage room I divined earlier."
Neva ran through the magical silence towards Rutter and the doors. Her glowing magical dagger floated silent and eerie at her side.
A disembodied voice issues forth, "Oh! Wait for me! Do you want your silenced rock? It's doing a marvelous job of keeping Raliscar quiet, don't you think?"
Vyshael nods, sliding the bow back onto his shoulder in favour of his blade, then rushing to join the others.
Rutter's words come out oddly muffled, as they fail to pierce the magical zone of silence, but the height of the room as well as the side room being only closed off by curtains allows for it to still get to the others. Well, Raliscar doesn't hear it, but he hasn't heard much of anything almost from the very start of the fight.
As the others move to catch up, Rutter opens the door to a much smaller chamber beyond. Several cubbies and wooden lockers line the walls of this small workroom. Four rickety chairs surround a water-damaged table, and a well-used but solid-looking cargo lift rises up through the ceiling.
Feldivar's quick and unseen look into the room beyond the curtains does indeed lead him to staring at the room that Neva had earlier seen with her spell. Granted, he is neither aware of this, nor that the spell was even cast before he arrived.
Raliscar walks toward the group, gesturing at one of the downed maidens then to one of the crooked physicians when all of a sudden gruff voice fills the chamber. "-ut ye on the bleedin' grou- ah! I can hear again! Bless my boots, that was awfully strange." He looks around for a second, then scratches his head, "Where's the gnome? I felt that rascal's magics but is he still hiding? Feldy? Feldy! Come introduce yourself already!" He then looks to Rutter and Vyshael and adds, "Oh, and nice job with those nasty cutters, boys. That was work finely done!"
"I'm right here, Sir Stoutaxe! We were just discussing the nice ambience with that stone of silence laying around... I peeked behind the curtain to see if there was a fellow running the show, but all I saw was a room full of crates and barrels with three enormous doors. They must ship a frightful amount of materials from here, eh?"
"Oh! I'm Feldivarxon Rumblestithem, illusionist extraordinaire! Some of my friends were afflicted by whatever malady has stuck so many and I heard that Raliscar Stoutaxe and his friends were putting paid to the folks responsible, so I went looking for the lovable old dwarf and here I am! Can I ask, though - what are you doing here in the sick ward, anyway?"
Neva jumped slightly as the gnome appeared. Her grim face attempted a kindly smile, but her attention was being drawn towards the other door.
"Hi, we're trying to figure out what the "doctors" are doing with the sick here. We don't think they're healing. Rutter, before you open that door, everyone gather around me."
Neva raised her hands over her head, and called out: "Grey Lady, heal us. Give us the strength to bring judgement to those who would hurt the sick and dying."
Rutter turns on Raliscar, "Who you calling a gnome?!" As he continues, though, Rutter starts looking around, suspicious of anyone who can hide better than he.
When Feldy speaks up, it makes more sense, and he nods with understanding. "Ah, magic. That figures." He spits on the ground. "Gnomes. Can't even sneak honestly."
"Well, hope you enjoyed the show. Feel free to pitch in next time."
"No stairs in there. Some kind of cargo lift. Last one's down, then? I'll start searching these, if one of you wanna check that last door. You okay, Neva? Didn't think these docs should know how to cut someone who ain't strapped to a table."
Neva snorted ruefully at Rutter's comments about the doctors' cutting abilities. "Yes, very interesting skill set for 'surgeons'."
Neva walked over and opened the remaining door.
Raliscar chuckles as Neva shares a bit of Pharasma's grace, "Now, now, Rutter. No need to get surly just because I dropped more of these stinkers than you did." He claps the halfling jovially on the shoulder and sets about helping to search, paying more attention to the patients than the downed foes. "Feldivar! Give me another set of eyes, won't you? Let's see what these scoundrels were really up to with these poor folk."
The group heals a bit from Neva's channeling, and then proceeds to investigate what they can of the ground floor area itself. The patients all appear to be well taken by the symptoms of the Blood Veil, and any number of them look like tonight may be their last breath.
Neva opens the last door to reveal a staircase that leads up to the catwalks, and just a little further to a floor above that. Most likely, they lead to wherever the lift also leads.
Rutter investigation of the physicians themselves turns up very little of interest. They are all dressed in leather and bearing finely-made cudgels. Beyond that, all they have are the weird bird masks and a healer's kit on them.
With Rutter looking over the physicians, Vyshael takes a look at one of the nearest Maidens. Despite being decked out in well-crafted weapons and armor, there is nothing else of note on the women either.
Vyshael whispers, "The maiden's gear is well-made.. but I note nothing too..." He stops as his form starts to waver, shrinking sightly as the scales shifting back into flesh as his spell expires. He blinks, mentally adjusting to elven eyes, then finishes his sentence, ".. too noteworthy. Still, I can't help but wonder if these 'doctors' haven't been a cover for something more sinister this whole time."
"Well, let's check upstairs and make sure there aren't any more of them. Then I can start examining the sick and try to judge the care they've been given. You all can see if there is any other evidence about."
Neva started up the stairs, calling to Rutter to join her and making sure Raliscar was coming along too.
"Never fear, Rutter - I make no claim to being a sneak. Your talents remain uncontested if it is up to me. I will surely find a way to contribute next time." There is some apparent amusement in his tone, but at what, who could know? He's a gnome...
He assists Raliscar in his investigations.
Rutter makes his way to the others as they head toward the staircase. "That lift in the other room seemed to go higher than the catwalk. Maybe we should try to get it to work, and send half the party up that way? Just in case someone is up there, we'll cut off both means of exit."
"Hells, maybe we should just keep a couple folk down here, in case he's crazy enough to go off the balcony like his girlfriend."
"If we can disable the lift, we will won't have to worry about it as an escape route. Always problematic dividing a team that works as well together as you lot. Um, who is it you think is up there?"
Vyshael says, "Someone in charge, presumably.". He snickers and adds wryly, "Maybe the Queen."
"Well, Rutter said 'he' and 'his girlfriend', so I thought you had a good idea of who it might be."
"Some necromancer. We never met him."
"Necromancy. There's some nasty business."
Vyshael turns toward Rutter, trying to keep the surprise off his face, I know Raliscar knows the gnome, but are we sure he's not a spy pumping us for information?. He sighs, Then again, he's as involved in our little raid as the rest of us... it's only fair to warn him about what we might be facing....
He nods, "It's not been pleasant, for certain. At least not as we've been brushing against his followers."