The table is fortunately sturdy, but it still creaks as Cahel moves along it. His spirit thumps into Lanky and he collapses with a groan. Jareen's spell leaves them confused.
Th'Kal pauses for a moment.
Furio joins the rest of the group and draws the attention of the remaining attackers.
Arakan shifts over to stand opposite Furio, hoping to harry Half-nose some more. Now that he's visible, he strikes out with a touch of panache, drawing Half-nose's attention toward his hand crossbow before stabbing the man in the shoulder with his widow's knife.
Somehow Half-Nose moves out of the way of Arakan's first blow even though he cannot see him. But he doesn't avoid the second.
Now that Furio has halfnose's attention, Th'Kal purposefully strides through the melee, positioning himself for a lunge at the dwarf.
Th'Kal scoots round the table, earning a swipe from Half-Nose's club. He is promptly rebuked by a slap from the flat of Furio's gouge. Th'kal then hurls himself at the dwarf, cutting him down with a single overhead chop.
Half-Nose considers the situation. "Um, perhaps we can negotiate?"
Jareen looks at Half-Nose in disgust, but stays his hand for the moment.
Th'Kal's left antenna twitches in the silence that follows half-nose's surrender. Th'Kal is still ready to leap over the table and finish the hunt, if need be, but is willing to let the clutchspeakers do their job.
[ooc]Waiting for someone to say something, even if it's just "DIE SCUM!"[/spoiler]
"So, now you've decided we wont make good fertilizer, what do you think we do now? We can't leave you behind to tell the world about the defilers you think came through and murdered your friends now can we? We are looking for a druid. You need to get us to him, and you need to think up some good reason for us to keep you alive afterword."
"Negotiate? You've got to be kidding me? We came in just trying to find a local druid to ask some questions, and you decided to get all violent with us. If you want to negotiate, you better have a damn good offer, because as you can see, my Kreen friend here is just twitching to finish this fight."
Th'Kal clacks his mandibles in the direction of halfnose. Doing his best to add to Arakan's and Jareen's words.
"Er, druid, er, yeah, I can take you to him. No problem. He's the adviser to Coyotl, who runs this place."
"Really? How will you explain what happened in here?"
Half-Nose shrugs and nods towards the grinder by the far wall. "That'd get rid of the evidence."
"Sure it would, but I'm guessing your friends don't just jump in there every other day, do they? Who'll notice them gone?"
"People come, people go. We do business in several cities and towns."
Jareen is slightly staggered at that, but hey ho.
Arakan steps up and takes over where once again the old man can't get right, "So, you just told us that the very druid we want to talk to is the advisor to the man in charge here. So, we don't need you any more. If you take us there, we have no reason to believe you wouldn't betray us to either of the men, especially with your false cries of defiler. Frankly, we got the information we needed, and now you are just a liability." He turns to Th'Kal "I think we're done with him, it's best he no longer remains a threat."
Th'Kal hesitates for a moment. He's unsure if he is missing some sort of soft-skin social cue, but Arakan seems to be honest in his direction. So, if the clutchspeaker says to finish off the attacker...
Jareen looks on as half nose kicks the bucket. "Foul scum. I suppose we should do like he said and throw the rest of the bodies into the mulcher and then sneak the hell out of here. Then we need an audience with Coyotl's famous adviser."
With that he starts looking through the bottles and vials on the worktops.
Th'Kal makes busy searching the area for anything he thinks the group will find interesting.
"Wait, no..." Half-Nose is cut off by Th'Kal's axe to the back of his head. He sprawls on the barn's packed-dirt floor, blood spreading slowly.
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Arakan looks at the mess, pleased with the Kreen's willingness to do what he says. Suddenly he looks worried, "Oh, mekillot dung! We've got to do something about this. This is a fairly small place, and we just killed five people, that just may have been allowed to do what they were doing."
He takes in the scene, hand on his chin deliberating, "I got it! We got to make this look like they fought among themselves. Killed one another. Maybe a few poisonings to explain how they died after the fight. Maybe, after we take anything useful from the place, we may want to cause a mixed concoction that will cause either an explosion or fire to break out."
With that he takes in the scene of injury type to weapons available, on top of eyeballing what mixtures lie about. As always, he guides the work of the heavy lifters, leaving himself to do the planning.
Arakan arranges the bodies so that they could plausibly have attacked each other. With any luck people, will jump to the intended, but wrong conclusion.
"That, makes a lot of sense." Jareen will help with the arrangements, but doesn't have a lot of input, basically just doing as directed.
"We need to find this adviser Coyotl, that shouldn't be too hard, finding the boss of the place. But we may want to let things calm down a little after our arrangement here. Shall we separate and keep out of trouble for a few hours? Small groups will attract less notice."
Th'Kal and Furio assist Arakan moving bodies and tipping over tables as necessary.
<zzzRT> "Agreed. Find the leader of this place and find the druids advisor." He pauses to consider Jareen's other words about splitting the group... "Small hunting parties may attract small preys, but it also weakens our clutch." Th'Kal folds his lower arms across his chest, rises up to his full height in an authoritative stance, and stares at Jareen. <brrRR zt> "I would worry about the trouble you would gets into."
"My ability to get into trouble is apparently quite a skill. Shared only by your good self. But I agree, if we are attacked, being apart wont make life any easier."
While rearranging the scene of the crime, the group also do a little bit of looting too.
I've been keeping my xp tracker up to date. I've got us at 4608. Sound right?
Jareen studies the items that look nice. "Hmm, we should keep these notes. The nbames don't ring any bells just yet, but they may come in handy."
Arakan seems pleased with the effort that they put in to make it all work, "Okay, grab what's worth something and let's skulk on out of here. We need to get back to the caravan, make an appearance and stash anything recognizable," he indicates the boots and knife, "then see about finding this advisor."
The adventurers peer out of the barn door. No one is around so they make a swift exit, all casual-like.
