Pagrip groans from the hit. He grits his teeth and raises his warhammer for one last go, determined that if he's going down, at least one of them is going with him. He swings at Karralo.
Then, without a word, he collapses.
Malder misses and only Baldrago manages to hit Esmerelda as she gets back up; but his attack only deals feeble damage - and the smirk on his face petrifies a moment later as Esmerelda's club clobbers over him and he sinks to the floor unconscious. An oddly satisfied smile on his lips.
Parns gives Pagrip a sadistic kick in the stomach; not all that life-threatening, but it'll make sure the dwarf will stay down.
Karallo and Malder both fail at their respective attacks, though Ten now faces two opponents that clearly think violence is part of business.
"Find Vancaskerkin before he runs," Caulder urges Esmerelda, as he swings his morningstar once again. "I'll be right behind you as soon as I get this big, ugly doorstop out of the way."
Where's my 11 damage when I actually hit? :P
Caulder's attack does not really do his choice of weapon justice, but even so it leaves a horribly red drizzle that paints Malder's left shoulder crimson.
Next up: Ten, Pagrip, Esmerelda, renegades, Caulder
Esme turns away from the leering unconscious brute with not a little disgust "And leave you to have your way with the butcher? I know how much you like using those manacles."
As she swings at Malder, Esme adds "Time for your afternoon nap."
"Damn it, Pagrip! For a dwarf, you go down too quickly!"
Ten swings his club at Karralo once more:
Ten then takes a 5-foot step back through the double doors.
The four heroes fail to douse themselves with generous quantities of success: Pagrip is slowly bleeding out, Ten is fighting a retreating battle, Esmerelda fails to connect - only Caulder has a small measure of Erfolg.
Malder slashes out at Caulder; his face lined with hatred as he swishes away the fresh blood. With grim satisfaction he pulls back his blade glistening with Caulder's blood.
Parns kneels down on Pagrip, checking for basic vital signs then starts looting the dwarf. Karallo spits in Ten's direction, shouting, "Yea! Run f+~@er! If I see you here again you'll end-up like your friend here, hah!"
"I said, " Caulder roars again at the butcher, hoping to achieve with added volume what he had failed to earlier.
"I am hitting the floor. But I should be hitting this horrible little man."
Ten makes a run for it - withdrawing from battle and hoping that the two companions of the cloth had more success. He doesn't even break to measure the wall but scales it in stride, throwing himself over the top to land back on the street outside the butchery.
Pagrip's fate is uncertain, but Ten's sure that he'll pull through - the dwarf was a tough one. He'd make it. Maybe... gods, I usually care little for you, but right now... please...
Malder's face plants chin-first into the floor, "YOU F**@ING HOLYSHIT! YOU'LL PAY!!" True to his word, the butcher swings his sword upward in a violent arc; cutting a frighteningly deep gauge into Caulder's leg that had only just begun to start healing. It is only by a small miracle that his leg is not severed right off the hip.
Caulder lets out a roar of pain and anger as blood sprays from his wounded leg. He brings his morningstar down heavily onto the man on the floor in front of him before stepping back and pulling out one of the curative potions he bought from the temple.
Esme brings down her sap on the back of Malders head.
Malder lies in an expanding pool of blood; both the cleric and paladin hit the prone man. He won't be standing up any time soon. Caulder heaves, standing on the last of his reserves. Just then Ten bursts into the front door, causing Caulder and Esmerelda to look up in alarm. He's out-of-breath and manages, "They - they got Pagrip!" He points deeper into the butchery.
Up next: Esmerelda and Caulder
"Wait, what?" Caulder snaps in confusion. He unstoppers the potion vial in his hand and downs it in one shot; the gush of blood from the deep wound in his leg lessens.
"Pagrip snuck in the back? Why arn't you with him?"
Esme rushes down the passage deeper into All the World's Meat and tries the double doors.
Caulder limps after her but gets no farther than the two bodies creating obstacles on the floor. "What the Hells did the two of you think you were doing?" he complains back at Ten. "We're supposed to be apprehending a deserter; now you've made it a rescue mission!"
Ten thinks to himself, right, next time slay them with a morningstar. He points to the bodies, "This how Abadar apprehends deserters? I would've thought it involved less leg hacking. We tried to spy out more information, ran into two more butchers on the inside. One got a lucky hit on Pagrip, I got out before they could take me down too. Now step faster! They didn't look like they were going to be nice with him."
Esmerelda has no trouble with the doors, they open to reveal a large meat handling area with Pagrip lying unconscious on a table and a butcher apparently intent on taking him apart. He turns his head towards the paladin, then instantly turns hostile. "Parns! There's another one!"
Next up: Esmerelda, renegade, Caulder, Ten
"You will pay for what you did to Pagrip." Esmerelda moves in next to the butcher and attempts to lay him low with a blow to the head.
" Get in here! The b#%&@ ain't messing around!" Karallo shouts, he uses the knife he has to hand to cut at Esmerelda, but doesn't have much luck.
Esmerelda finds herself flat-footed as out of the blue Parns attacks her. She's fortunate that in his eagerness he miss-times his slash and the attack goes well clear of the paladin.
"Darkbane!" Caulder calls. "Is Vancaskerkin down there?" He steps over the prone crossbowman and opens the door, weapon at the ready, not wanting any more surprises to come at them from the depths of this place.
"No Vancaskerkin. There is a Pagrip though. And he doesn't look good. More so than usual I mean." Esme shifts to the side and attempts again to put down the butcher. "Hold on a bit longer Pagrip"
Ten moves along pulling passed Caulder, "Those two! Yes! Those two are the ones." He sees how Esmerelda smashes a powerful blow into the one butcher, who promptly falls over. The remaining guy quickly follows up though, and this time his attack is only deflected by the paladin's superior weaponwomanship.
Next up: Caulder, Ten, Esmerelda, Renegades
Caulder reveals a room with stale air; with a pungent musk of day-old meat and blood. The air in this room is stale, stinking of day-old meat and blood. Straw litters the floor, scattered to catch what drips from the meat hooks affixed to the walls and ceiling on metal rods. To the north is a low blood-stained table and two barrels of salt, while to the south, a pair of double doors stands. An iron bar extends through a narrow hole at the top of the doors; the bar runs along the ceiling for five feet before ending at a vertical pole running floor to ceiling.
Caulder moves further down the hall, giving a glance up the stairs.
"Doing a great job in there, Darkbane!" he calls to the paladin absently, keeping an eye on the foot of the stairs. "Finish that other one off and bring the dwarf out here; I'll take care of him."
Ten goes for Parns, his club connects the regenade butcher squarely, leaving the man looking worried and ready to retreat. "Where are Malder and Baldrago?! MALDER!?"
"Not now Caul...ah blessings of Abadar. Continue." With a sense of finality, she brings her sap down on Parns "Your deserter friends can't help you now."
Esmerelda misses. Parns takes a deep breather, and looks about to surrender. Then, just when the paladin's attention wavers, he smashes his warhammer through Esmerelda's face. She manages to roll the blow off partially, but her jaw feels instantly heavy and near dislocated from blunt trauma.
Next up: Caulder, Ten, Esmerelda, Renegades
Caulder stumps heavily to the door and stands in the doorway keeping an eye on the staircase. "You're the last one of your friends conscious on this floor," he informs Parns, "and your boss is probably climbing out the window right now and leaving the rest of you to take the rap for unauthorized occupation of a business, contributing to the delinquency of the neighborhood by giving meat away for free, and attempting to butcher a dwarf. By all means, continue to add to the list of charges you'll face by assaulting a Banker."
Parns' wavers a little, he mutters something but is otherwise undeterred.
"He's as much a fool as you are."
"Why you little!"
"Wait, Darkbane! He knows something..."
Parns lashes out at Ten when he goes for the weapon - Ten's hand is painfully smacked out of the way by the heavy hammer. But the momentary distraction is all Esmerelda needed. Her sap comes sailing down on the butcher like an avenging angel, knocking the man out cold.
Finally, it appears that all visible renegade threats have been subdued. The bulk of the dwarf resting on the work table is motionless, and in context carries strong overtones of a cadaver ready for butchering.
"Knows something? What does he know?" Caulder demands. "Here," he retrieves a set of manacles and tosses them to Ten. "Lock him to one of those poles. If he comes to when we're seeing to the dwarf, we can question him. Darkbane, pull the other one down the hall to join his 'friends' at the front. No point having them all awake and yapping." When Parns is secured and Karallo out of the range of the positive energy, Caulder will channel to heal everyone.
Esmerelda ignores Caulder and lays a healing hand on Pagrip "Pagrip? You in there?" Then leaving Pagrip to the better healer, Esmerelda drags both the butchers from the front room to the back room. "Got more manacles for these, Caulder?" Esmerelda asks with a bit of a dazed expression.
Pagrip's eyes open. He blinks several times and squints to get the blurriness to go away. "Please tell me I didn't drink too much. Oh right! I remember now. That guy hit a lot harder than I expected." He sits up, and rubs that back of his head. "I hate being unconscious on the floor. Leaves you with a terrible headache. So, I take it we won?"
Pagrip wakes up in what is obviously the killing floor. The floor of this grim chamber is strewn with blood-stained straw, and the reek of slaughter is almost overpowering. The room itself is a killing floor. A metal track affixed to the ceiling dangles meat hooks here and there, allowing the hooks and their gory loads to be moved easily from the northwest where a large hammer sits on the floor amid a permanent bloodstain. To the south, a bloodstained grill covers a wide hole in the floor. Just north of the grill sit two large vats of water; one boiling and one cold. Two large butcher blocks stand to the east next to barrels of salt, and in the southeast corner sits a reeking vat of cast-off meat and bones.
"So, I take it we won?"
"Not yet," Caulder growls. "Vancaskerkin backed out of our deal. Don't suppose either of you saw him when you were sneaking in the back and getting yourselves almost killed?" he asks Pagrip and Ten.
Pagrip shakes his head. "Nope. I was too busy closely examining the floor for structural inefficiencies." He grabs his warhammer, makes a quick double-check for anything else he might have dropped, and then pulls himself to his feet. "I suppose we'd better look for him then."
Caulder nods toward the stairs. "If he was anywhere on the ground floor, he'll have scarpered by now. If we're going to find him, we'll find him upstairs." He provides Esmerelda with three more sets of manacles. "Lock them together, then to a pole," he advises. "If one of them manages to get out, the rest will put up a ruckus rather then let him leave them behind to face the judge without him." He turns back to Pagrip with a smile. "It's a good thing we got to you when we did," he teases. "Would have been bad for business tomorrow. I'm sure dwarf meat is tough and stringy."
Pagrip finds that his pouch of gold is missing on his person - but it only takes a brief search of Karallo and Parns to find it. Now that the four unconscious renegades are gathered a more thorough search reveals their collective inventory.
- 4 chainmail
- 4 heavy steel shields
- 3 longswords
- 1 warhammer
- 4 light crossbow
- 40 bolts
- 80 gold pieces
After helping Esmerelda shackle the renegade guardsmen, Ten takes a moment to examine Parns.
"Any cut of meat can be improved With a good marrow bone and red wine sauce - even dwarf. You can save a lot of money by rather sprucing up cheaper cuts, instead of buying more expensive meats like elf," Ten mentions absentmindedly.