Rehil watches the arrows skitter harmlessly off the beast's shell.
"Wultram, I want it to stay out in the water."
"Curse this beast, and stave off fears!"
Vaard moves towards the edge of the dock, and throws a javelin at Kalaktua.
The cold sun then adjusts his posture in preperation to fight with claws in water.
As Kalaktua approaches she is simple a vast submerged bulk evidenced only by a large wave rushing towards the village. But at the last moment she rises up, her arched shell rising up above the surface and her clawed front fins sculling in the water. As the adventurers' missiles bounce harmlessly about her, her beaked head looms up and she gapes. A blast of steam erupts, blasting the three nearest huts to pieces and cooking the fleeing lizardfolk. She then drifts closer te inspect the damage and pick for food.
Cole stomps along the water’s edge, his warmaul at the ready, trying to gauge the spot the giant creature is most likely to come ashore.
"Be ready to fall back. If it runs out of food, it may not be interested in coming out of the water."
Ashshar watches as the monster annihilates some of shis peers... and flies into a rage.
With seemingly impossible speed, the lizardfolk fires two magic arrows at Kalaktua.
[Ooc]Mmm... crap. I'll rolldamage for the second attack, just in case.[/dice]
"I was hoping it wouldn't get close enough to hose us," Rehil replies laconically.
Ashshar's arrows patter on Kalaktua's shell like rain, and have about as much impact.
Somewhat fatalistically, Rehil nocks and looses a second arrow.
,
This mood leaves him steady enough to place his arrow between two of the turtle's shell plates.
Or maybe becoming a riverboat pirate. You probably can't trust me with any form of transportation.
Wultram's spell makes Kalaktua take notice, even as she shrugs off the effect. In a low susurrus more felt than heard she grumbles, "You dare..."
Nalverren raises the stick he has enshrouded with magical energy, presenting it as an object of aversion before returning to cover behind the hut.
As Wultram's spell fizzles, Nalverren casts his own. Kalaktua turns her head away with a hissing roar. She pivots her body in the water and swims away downstream.
"That ought to buy us a few hours! Don't waste your arrows on it and Bokehn, we might wanna get out of here soon, do you think? For reference, I'm surprised what I did worked. I just didn't think my arrows would do anything."
Ashshar turns out to Nalverren with a grateful look and speaks in broken common "You sssaved many of my kin, Nalverren... but ssshe will come again. If I am to leave my people and travel with you I can't do sso with fear of sshe returning. No, I won't do that. I'll help the resst esscape and I will hunt her down, one and for all."
The lizardfolk seems filled with determination... but also hate towards Kalaktua.
"Should last about five hours. As for your kin, unless I am mistaken, kalaktua was a guardian? Perhaps dying has made a mess of my memory, one of the bad guys sacrificed some of his kin to wake the beast to attack outsiders. Now, even if that isn't the case any longer, all they have to do is life a little farther from the water amd they'll be fine. We honestly do not have what it takes to kill that thing and even less so if you are gonna try to run off and go it alone. Wultram's right, a trap seems better but that is something that we probably can't do in five hours. The tribe could probably manage, kalaktua might find easier prey wherever she is in five hours, but I'd like for us to be far away from it especially if we have to go the same direction it did. The tribe could even hunt and leave offerings by the water if they're determined to stay, though attracting that thing for any reason seems bad."
"It talked. If it figures out you magicked it, it will be mad. Arrows were useless. Wultram's spell didn't work and Nalverren's surprised that his did. We got lucky. Best to just move the village."
Rehil stares over the river. "I can understand you want to kill it,Ashshar. But we have a debt to pay."
"I agree with Rehil," grunts Cole, watching the point where the massive turtle-dragon retreated. "This isn't some mindless predator. We angered it, and it'll come back when Nalverren's trick wears off. The people in this village need to be as far away from here ... and any easily connected and large enough water sources ... by the time it returns."
He breaks off to nod at Nalverren, "Good trick, by the way." It's obvious Cole's appraisal of the human is growing.
Then his gaze shifts back upriver, to Bokehn's boat. "Also, are we headed the same direction the Kalaktua just fled? That could ... complicate things."
"Yeah," says Bokehn, "That'll complicate things."
"Kalaktua is not a guardian of my people," says Pooma, "She has always been a danger, not a help. And it is likely that your spell will anger her. We were lucky because she did not expect to face resistance. Next time she will, and she will return. We can flee, but to where?"
"I would hesitate to flee immediately if it means leaving my tribe in danger of an extra enraged Kalaktua. Given that many of our group are better adapted to land, I concur with Wultram that we ought to avoid fighting the dragon turtle in the water. Nevertheless, she is far from weak on land."
"Hmm, what can we think up? Does the airship have weapons? A ballista ought to punch through it a little better than arrows."
"Then there is a guerilla war of attrition. In this plan, the tribe would make a path into the jungle. Kalaktua likely would be slowed by trees in its way. Lizardfolk stay out of breath range, leave traps in their way, big spikes and whatnot set for charge and hidden. Fell trees strategically to have avenues of unobstructed fire, maybe with rudimentary siege weapons. Swinging logs with the wood and vines from the felled trees, that sort of things. I think ballistae may be a tall order on that one, but with live wood and braided vines, catapults may be doable. Rocks or big logs if rocks can't be found. Anyway the general idea is to keep kalaktua pissed off and moving in more or less a line where any forward progress is met by swinging logs, pelting rocks, spears and spear pits and the like. With this plan, the tribe could be working on the far end of the path even as kalaktua is walking it."
"Both plans could be enacted at the same time, but is the airship within five hours away?"
"My plan risks relatively few lives unless kalaktua is faster than i give her credit for. To come close to accomplishing it in a timely manner we will need a lot of lizard-manpower."
Pooma replies, "Kalaktua has been beaten before. If you have can come back from the dead, like friend Bokehn says, then perhaps you can manage this too. We will fight. I do not think we can manage the many things this plan would require before Kalaktua returns. But I agree that if we can lure her on to land than she will be easier to beat."
"Well, we could at least prepare something because arrows and spears alone are not going to cut it. Is poison meat on a barbed hook viable?"
"Kalaktua is crafty, I doubt she would fall for bait in a hook," says Pooma. "We have fishing nets, though."
"We've got some alchemist's fire in the boat - not much, but a few flasks," says Sergeant Haan. "We could take the boat upriver to get it out of the way."
"Good idea, we do not want that boat trashed by a pissed-off turtle."
"That seems to me to be an awful lot of effort spent on appearances for a dim-witted animal with reportedly little more than low cunning. Effort that would be better used in offense. Arrows proved useless, they shouldn't be the focal point of our offense. It doesn't matter if Kalaktua escapes, that only gives us more time to prepare for the next assault. However, a better way to prevent escape is to lure her as far onto land as possible. Cut trees down in a path to lure her down, then honestly you could just drop some logs behind her to make eacape difficult. I think swinging, possibly spiked logs as well as logs rigged to drop are our best bet. A decorative wall would serve as well as pearls before swine."
"All that notwithstanding, attempting to slow it by putting logs in the river only blocks one direction and is easily circumvented. Luring it all the way into the beginnings of a wooded area would be better. A fence for show is still, in my opinion, a waste of time, effort, and wood. But i will defer to the local expertise of Pooma, as I don't believe others have faced kalaktua."
Cole shrugs, "I like simple plans." He looks over at Nalverren, "I'm guessing kalakaua wants to make a meal of you. Do we have any magics to make an illusion of you in a spot we want Kalaktua to end up? That could be our trap's ground zero. That's where our melee units could be waiting, as well, ideally hidden somehow."
"Maybe we dress that main spit of land as some kind of offering location, from the tribes to Kalaktua. A 'please don't eat us' kind of thing. Fake Nalverren can be tied to a post or something. I can be buried in the mud or something. When she comes to eat him, we hit her with everyhing we have ... all at once."
Rehil shrugs. "Simple is good. But this buried in mud plan might be too simple. We have the palisade and it is a show wall against that giant turtle."
Rehil shrugs. "Simple is good. But this buried in mud plan might be too -- simple. We have the palisade and it is just a show wall against that giant turtle."
"If people are willing to throw their lives away trying to put their weapons through kalaktua's hide and shell, i won't stop them. But i am just very surprised and disappointed that with nearly five hours of time and at least four vastly better ideas, you'd wager lives on 'hit it with weapons while it scalds the flesh from our bones'. Use an illusion of me if you can, i don't care. But how could you not understand that we have time to make, effectively, really BIG weapons? And you want to hit it with comparably small weapons. AFTER extrucating yourselves from the mud, which assumes it hasn't stepped on you yet."