"Alright, the door will hold for a little while if it must. What's next?"
Karmid smiles at Ro's whispered question, and points up the stairs.
"We go up!"
He then moves carefully, taking the stairs quickly until he can view the next level and any enemies...
Karmid carefully creeps up to the second story and realizes that this is where most of the noise is coming from. Two doors lead off the landing, one to where logs are audibly being cut and the second most likely to a small storage chamber; both doors are closed. The staircase continues up to a third floor. Due to the noise coming through the main door, it's unlikely that anyone will be able to hear anything from either side.
Karmid will check both quickly and quietly, storage room first then the other.
Ro will keep an eye on those areas Karmid isn't checking while she waits.
Drasven picks a spot where he could lend Aid to Karmid if needed. So far their actions had gone unnoticed but who knows when It might turn so best to be careful....
Clickety clack, clickety clack, goes the mill.
The sawmill in Sandpoint was smaller. And more bloody when we last visited.
Poor girl, cut open like that.
Do Sawmills attract evil? Because the sound drowns out the victims?
Lia ponders diverse topics, just tagging along far enough back so as not to lose sight of Karmid.
The first door is indeed a closet and contains various supplies for maintaining the machinery of the mill (e.g. oil, various tools, etc).
Karmid carefully opens the other door (which is unlocked) and pokes his head into the room from which all the noise is coming. The floor has a thick carpet of sawdust, penetrated by two large log splitters and saws set up over openings in the floor. Another pair of openings is fitted with winches and ropes to raise and lower uncut lumber from below.
Four mill workers move busily about the room, loading lumber into the log splitter with care and precision. None seem to have noticed the door opening.
Whispering to Ro with her cantrip still active, Karmid waves her over to the empty closet and sets himself to duck inside if anyone comes.
"I fear we missed out window yesterday. This may be a bust tonight? The 'Judge' isn't here. We need him to prove anything I think. The rest are just...fodder for his will I fear. I think we need to retreat, remove our roadblocks, and come back when they are all here. We could capture one of them...see if we could get him to talk. But cultist are just stupid 'sheep-les' really: probably just a waste of time. Just thinking...maybe they saw us yesterday and decided to lay low for a while? Hence all the 'working sawmill' crap that's going on...."
Ro waits for Karmid to orient, and continues to shadow him with enough distance to prevent accidental jostling as before.
Karmid moves to go up one more level if he can...
Jili continues to follow along invisible and silent. She keeps an eye on the workers as Karmid climbs the stairs. If she fireballs here, the whole place could go up with all the sawdust around.
That's one way of getting rid of a cult. She recalls her run from the Razmrian priests her home in the River Kingdoms. Her fingers wiggle, but she holds of causing them to spark for the moment.
The group moves up quietly to the third and topmost floor of the sawmill. As he moves up the staircase, it is clear that this floor has no inclosed landing, but opens into a much larger attic space below the roof timbers.
A thick layer of sawdust covers the floor, mounded nearly a foot deep in places. Workbenches sit here and there in the room, their surfaces cluttered with saws, hand drills, planers, and other woodworking tools. On the far side of the room are three sets of doors that go off into side chambers.
Two people in hideous masks resembling a patchwork, deformed faces, are moving benches and tables to clear some space about 20-30 feet from the top of the stairs. They are both armed with hand crossbows and war razors and are wearing leather armor. They seem to be casually conversing with one another as they work, but due to the noise from the machines below, it is nearly impossible to understand what they are saying.
Poking his head up he quickly gets a good layout of the room and passes this on to the others.
As Drasven slowly learns what Karmid has found he thinks.
Bingo!
Whispering carefully, Karmid smiles.
"Finally! I think we're here. I will try and take these two out quickly. Stay hidden as long as possible."
Waiting for the best moment to move, Karmid grasps his hammer in both hands and charges the nearest masked man!
In the wake of Karmid's charge Ro slips into the room, circling around to help Karmid by flanking when the time comes.
The dwarf inches forward slowly, ready to heal when needed.
Lia considers her options for a moment. Karmid had rushed off before she could grant him luck, and she could not grant Haste without knowing about her allies.
Instead, she prepared to cause some noise just in case they attempted to alert someone.
Jili slips into the attic, and moves to a corner of the room ready to attack when the time comes. She shudders as she sees the men in the masks. Those are horrid, and need to go.
Lia concentrates and seems to amplify the already loud sounds of the sawmill to a near-painful level.
Karmid charges toward the nearest masked man. As he does so, he materializes out of nowhere like a cloud appearing out of a clear blue sky, and he catches the two men completely by surprise. The man Karmid is attacking spots the movement out of the corner of his eye and instinctively ducks at the last moment. Even though he avoids a killing blow to the man, the Shoanti's earthbreaker still crashes into his shoulder, and the man screams out in pain.
Releasing his hammer to a single hand, Karmid immediately keeps his target engaged!
Thunder and Fang!
+
+
Karmid's earthbreaker catches the first cultist under the chin, lifting him off the ground. He comes down and crumples into a heap, unmoving.
The klar catches the second cultist in the midsection and before he can react, Karmid brings the earthbreaker around again, hammering at his right leg, and nearly causing him to buckle.
Jili sneaks forward, and casts Murderous Command on the furthest away Skinsaw Man.
Round 1
Drasven continues keeping watch. Staying true to the plan though to be honest, the dwarf doubts he could have hit anyone in that melee.
The cultist hesitates momentarily, then draws a wicked looking razor and slashes his unconcious companion's throat, fountaining blood over the floorboards.
Karmid silently wades into the fight against the last target, taking a short step to do so...
Thunder and Fang!
+
+
Ro circles around behind the remaining cultist and strikes him from behind.
Karmid and Ro quickly take down the sole remaining cultist who collapses on top of his murdered companion, bleeding out from several place.
"Everyone, quickly search this area for more cultists and anything that could give us clues to what they are about! I will watch the stairs and stop anyone from entering up here! If we find nothing, we work out way down and out taking each floor as we go. No holding back anymore..."
He then moves to guard the stairs, his hammer and klar still dripping on the floor...
Ro notices the blood problem and looks around to see if there's enough sawdust piled somewhere to absorb it.
"Hang on, we've a problem with blood here. It's going through the floor. We need to move them to a place where that's not going to happen or put something down to absorb it"
As Ro speaks up, Lia moves down the stairs a bit, to see for herself - and more importantly, to see if anybody else notices anything, ready to move upstairs again swiftly if any trouble came her way.
"I see the blood too. He maybe trying to raise the alarm." Drasven speaks up while being invisible.
"I'm coming to help move the bodies."
The noises of the working sawmill seem to be dying down, or at least they are becoming quieter, perhaps because work is ending for the day. You move the two bleeding bodies onto work tables, but a lot of blood seems to have already seeped through the floorboards.
The room you are in has three exits as well as the stairs going down.
Karmid maintains his dogged attention on the stairs completely.
Drasven maintains his position making sure to keep out of the way and yet keep a good view of his surroundings.
Lia tries to focus, but that's difficult with all the noises that suddenly go silent, while still being there in a different reality.
After the cultists are moved, Ro starts looking for an exit that looks like it might lead to an office or something similar.
"Let's fine the Judge's place, get this done, and get out."
As she moves down the stairs to the second story, she hears commotion from the workrooms on the other side of the closed doors. As the water-powered saws come to a standstill, she can now clearly hear someone saying:
"We may have intruders, go and see what is going on upstairs. Now!"
"Some of them will come check upstairs.", Lia whispers, before rushing down the rest of the stairs to this level and out of the way of anybody going the opposite direction, trying to find a corner.