Bernard moves slightly closer and fires a single shot.
Morgrym comes rumbling into the fray, like a small boulder.
Bernard's arrow lands a palpable hit! THUD!
Kenji closes with the little man and snaps a pair of flaming kicks at his midsection!
Unfortunately the little man ducks one and steps out of the way of the other!
Morgrym misses, but Lyraesel conjures an arcing sword of flame to threaten the little man, now that he's boxed in.
Shalelu moves in with her sword, standing precariously on the edge of the balcony.
She manages to score a small amount of injury.
Spivey flies to a flanking position.
The little man roars angrily, draws his chain-weapon again, and lashes out with it at Kenji.
He hits Kenji hard with the weighted end of the chain and keeps whirling it about!
Morgrym shifts so he is flanking with Kenji, and then attempts to hammer the bad guy.
Lyreasel steps in, taking advantage of Morgrym's attack to shove her flame blade deep into the enemy's back.
Kenji keeps up his attacks while he jockeys to get a more advantageous position, trying to keep the enemy distracted so someone could step in and do some real damage.
Bernard takes advantage of the scrum and launches an arrow into the little man.
Kenji snaps another pair of flaming kicks, this time a front snap that misses but gives him an opening to bring his other foot around to snap to the man's head, where it connects. At the same time Bernard thunks an arrow into the fellow's shoulder.
Morgrym swings and barely misses, but Lyraesel shoves a blade of fire at the little man and scorches his ribs, eliciting a shout of dismay.
Spivey slashes with her tiny starknife...
...and flits back away without scoring a palpable hit.
Shalelu takes advantage of the flanking position to stab with her sword...
...but also doesn't manage to fell the foe.
The little man swings the weight around his head and attempts to smash it into Kenji again.
He smashes Kenji in the side of the head!
Even as he fights, the arrows that Bernard has stuck into him pop out of his wounds!
Lyraesel slashes the man with her blade of fire, hearing the sizzle as it's tip scoring a burning line on the vile little man
Lyraesel's magical fire just barely manages to catch the little man, and he says in a low tone, "Oooooh I'll do you for that one."
Morgrym swings at the little man.
Only to miss again.
By the gods!!
Bernard attacks twice.
Morgrym just barely misses, but as the little man ducks away, Bernard fires and hits him square in the forehead with an arrow. The fellow falls over backward, unconscious, though shortly after he hits the ground there's an odd puckering sound and the arrow is pushed out of the already-closing wound.
Shalelu, your sword if you would. I haven't a weapon suitable for finishing him like this, and he's clearly too deranged and dangerous to leave alive.
"I have it." Lyreasel says stepping forward and plunging the sizzling flame blade into the man's chest, twisting it as she does.
The wild druidess studies the vile little mane carefully, ready to strike again should his body show any signs of beginning to heal.
Lyraesel stabs the little man with her scintillating blade of fire, then stabs him again, and again. Each time he shudders and chokes, and a horrid smoke rises from the sizzling wound. Then, suddenly, he twists and flails like someone in the throes of a divine apoplexy, and the little red-faced mannequin-like figure sprouts black feathers, a red beak, and a set of prodigious black wings. The creature flails about briefly and then arches its back and finally dies, giving off a horrid stench of burning feathers.
There is a sigh, like an old soldier finally getting rest, that seems to come from elsewhere in the castle, and for a moment you almost feel like the very stones themselves have settled slightly.
The feeling of the hair on the back of her neck standing on end finally fades as the little....bird-man thing dies. Breathing a sigh of exertion and relief as the flame blade fades in a flicker of spearks and smoke, Lyraesel looks to her companions. "What was all that?"
Spivey says, "I'm not sure, but... all the hauntings around the castle? The spirits and bleeding walls and wailing phantoms of dead soldiers? Maybe this... this guy?... was one of the invaders, or somehow connected to the castle's invasion."
Shalelu sheathes her sword and says, "If that's so, maybe Ameiko is better?"
"I hope so. And if that's the case I wish we'd killed him sooner." Lyraesel says glaring down at the corpse with a little extra animosity.
"How do you feel" she asks Shalelu quietly.
Shalelu says to Lyraesel, "I'm all right... not a scratch. Kenji took the brunt of his attacks with that chain-weapon." She nudges the kusarigama with her toe. "Going to need to find more arrows soon. Good trick with the flaming sword, just what we needed at the right time. You all right? This whole creepy castle is just the kind of thing to put one's nerves on edge."
Spivey focuses and says a short prayer to Desna, then says, "His chain-weapon is enchanted. Not a big surprise, I suppose, but some kind of summoning magic in addition to the usual charms and spells for striking."
"Yes I'm okay, though I'll be happy to get out of this place once we're done....and I need a bath." Lyraesel replies looking at the blood and ash and stray feathers sticking to her with
"I'll heal Kenji before we do anything else." she says drawing the wand from her belt and turning to the flamboyant fire- warrior.
She glances down at the weapon as she moves over to Kenji, clearly intrigued by it.
Kenji sinks to the floor, panting. "... Ow." he finally wheezes, trying to staunch his bleeding wounds. "What'd that guy have out for me? I think I only hit him like once."
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"I presume because of your flaming attacks," says Shalelu to Kenji. She kneels down next to him on the floor. "You'll be all right. Nasty bump on the head there though. During the first clash you came at him with fire right away, which was clearly his weakness. Thus he focused on you. Lyraesel didn't reveal her firey blade until later in the fight. I'd imagine he saw the error of ignoring her in the end." She smirks slightly.
Spivey says, "Well now we should definitely either get out of here or lock down a place to rest. I mean, unless you want to explore some other part of the keep."
Lyraesel notes that the chain weapon has a slight cyan sheen to the metal and the crosshatched pattern on the hilt bears tiny stylized wasp shapes.
"Yeah. Seems that he disliked that. Well, let's go over this guy's stuff. He's likely in charge, or at least one of the leaders." Kenji sighs.
Morgrym starts pulling all the bird like critters stuff out and piling it neatly. Including the chain weapon.
I dont know why I have been having difficultly lately. It seems as if the gods have told me to have troubles and try to preservere.
He then checks on his gear.
In addition to the chain weapon, the creature wears a leather side-pouch on a belt. Inside the pouch you find several vials of ink, five small pearls, and a small darkwood-and-silver disk decorated with an intricate etching of Brinewall castle under the noonday sun.
Spivey says, "There's some faint transmutation magic in that disk - not sure what, exactly."
Looking over at the odd disk, Lyraesel whispes a druidic phrase, the golden light in her eyes pulsing softly as she studies both it and the unique weapon.
Bernard gets to looking about the room as he gathers up his arrows.
How are we doing on spells? We still don't know precisely WHY Ameiko collapsed when you got close, or what this little man was doing here, and I doubt he was cursing Ameiko to fall into her coma directly from all the way out here so I don't think her condition has changed.
"Magic can work from farther than you think and in a lot of different ways." Lyraesel replies without looking up from what she is studying intently
Bernard rolls his eyes.
Sure, magic can, but can he? If he could why wouldn't he have done so to us after the first time we fought?
"Yep. I was thinking about it. I freaking hate this guy." Kenji admits, rising after Lyraesel heals him. "Thank you, Lyraesel. I appreciate your aid."
Giving the now-looted body a kick, he turns to the rest. "Doesn't that disk look like it'd fit in that one room we found? The one that has the barred off area?"
"The disk looks like it's about the right size and shape," says Spivey. "So where's the other one?"
Shalelu says, "We don't know for sure what happened to Ameiko so all we can do is keep going until we find an answer. On that note, where to next?"
"We should probably find and eliminate the rest of his minions." Kenji offers. "At least, we know where they could be."
"They have to be up here," says Spivey. "Those... haunts... and the locks on the gates downstairs would keep people out from below, unless there's another stairway down that we haven't found. We're up here now, what else is left?"
Well, all we can do is go on. But I am good for spell power.
Morgrym cleans off the axe head, as he looks at the others.
So which way first?
"Plenty of rooms west of the dining hall," says Spivey.
Bernard agrees that west is the best idea, and slowly moves room to room, starting with the northernmost rooms and working his way southward.
Picking up the unusual weapon, Lyraesel nods, moving to follow Bernard as he scouts ahead.
Bernard silently moves through the rooms of the castle.
Next to the dining room he finds a small washroom and lavatory. It is remarkably clean.
Following the hall around behind it, Bernard finds a pair of rooms, the easternmost of which has a stuck door. With effort the party is eventually able to force the door open, to reveal a bedroom covered in thick, colorful strands of fungus that have grown over three bodies. The bodies are mostly soggy bones at this point, but the skulls are all missing.
West of there is a room that was once a servant's room, with several precarious bunk beds. Under one of the beds Bernard finds stashed a small box with several pieces of quality silverware.
Further west, beyond the small storage space/attic where you fought the ghostly boy, is a study.
This chamber’s furniture—couches, drawing tables, and empty bookshelves—lie in disarray, with the exception of one writing desk and chair in the center of the room, its surface heaped with pages of parchment and paper.
Based on the smell, Lyraesel thinks this is where the red-faced little man spent much of his time.
Bernard checks the papers and finds them indecipherable, but Kenji recognizes them as Tien writing about a bizarre, convoluted play about a group of demonic crows that transform into bitter, insane humans.
There's a stairway up and a stairway down in the study.
Let's take the silverware, this is quality stuff.
As he says that Bernard starts putting it into his backpack.
Upstairs first?
"This play is in my homeland's language... But... The play's terrible." he observes.
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Shaking her head, Lyraesel scoffs. "Crazy. I agree with upstairs"
You carefully creep upstairs.
The walls of this semicircular room are lined with bookshelves, although the majority of the books lie in disorganized piles on the floor. A large, filthy nest of grass, branches, and strips of cloth is tucked in the northeastern corner of the room, while a wooden door sits in the wall to the northwest and a flight of stairs leads down to the south.
(You came up said southern flight of stairs.)
As you are coming up the stairs, someone is headed down, and you spot each other and pause simultaneously just as that someone is coming around the corner of the stair's handrail. The someone appears to be a winged woman with a bow and clawed, bird-like feet. She seems as startled to see you as you do to see her, but after a moment she very carefully and deliberately releases the tension on her bow, leaving the string un-pulled, in what can only be interpreted as a cautious gesture of non-aggression.
Ok, we'll relax too. Peace.
Bernard flits through common, hallit, skald, varisian and sylvan, saying the same general message.
The strange bird-woman cocks her head as Bernard goes through his retinue of languages. She nods when he speaks Taldan (Common) but does not seem responsive to the other tongues. She says nothing the entire time.
Lyraesel studies the bird woman. She didn't seem an immediate threat, but that could easily change if she was an ally of the crow demon man and found out he was dead.
"Do you live here?" she asks, stepping slightly to the side to give Shalelu a clear shot should it become necessary.