Azure slashes at the hobgoblin.
With only one hobgoblin left and Skalla back on her feet, Faunra is more determined than ever to do her part and prevent the spread of fire. She wonders if she should try and open the doors or a window, but the fire is spreading so quickly that she would risk it consuming the roof before she could figure out how to free those trapped inside.
If it was stuck, she wasn't very strong. If it was locked, she didn't know how to unlock it. What she did know is that wet things don't burn, and so she doused the next section of roof to further prevent its spread.
"Skalla! There are people trapped inside the burning building!"
Climbing to her feet and sheathing her dagger, Skalla picks up her dropped flail and rushes towards the door, slamming her shoulder against it.
"Go around the building, check the back door!" she shouts.
A combination of arrow and sword makes the last hobgoblin very dead.
Faunra's summoned water is preventing the fire from spreading further for the moment, but only just. It is not putting the fire out, and it sputters back in places where it was tamped down before as Faunra moves the water around to keep the worst of it in check. By now it is producing quite a bit of smoke, the smoldering parts being the worst for it.
The door does not budge under Skalla's effort. She can hear shouts from inside the building as well as coughing. It would seem the doors and windows of the place were bolted and barricaded too well for the occupants' own good.
As the group moves closer to the building they notice several things about the yard. There is a pump well in front, a few yards from the building. A watering trough sitting in the pen with the dead animals is close to full.
The body of a man in a cloak lies near the well. The light from the forge in the outbuilding illuminates the body of a fourth hobgoblin lying just inside the outbuilding's open doors.
"Chain bucket! Grab something to hold the water and start scooping! We need to put out this fire!" Skalla commands, urgency in her voice. She digs into her backpack and comes up with a pot, then rushes through the open doors into the outbuilding, looking for buckets.
Caeleron returns his bow to it's sheath on his back and moves to the gate into the pen, pulling it open to allow easy access to the full water trough inside. He then follows Skalla into the building to look for containers to fill with water.
Callistra will check the body of the cloaked man and the Hobgoblin while the others get containers. If neither has anything she will start pumping the well to get water flowing.
Azure joins the others in grabbing the buckets to toss the dirty water on the fire. Even as he does this, he is too aware of the chaos only a bit away. They are in a battle, and he worries that they will be ambushed while trying to save the people inside. Despite his concerns, he grabs his bucket and starts tossing.
Faunra continues creating water, it being the best way to reach the roof.
"Skalla! Azure! See if there is anything in the forge to use as a battering ram! Or a lever! We need to get them out, there's no time stop the fire!
Everyone inside! It's me, Faunra! We need you to move as much as you can away from the door or we can't get you out!"
If we stay here too long, we risk everyone getting killed. But there's no way any of us can leave now we know others are inside. I just hope no other enemies come, this will be hard enough without needing to fight as well.
The little one was right, they didn't have time to put out a fire. Skalla abandons her search for a bucket and instead looks for any item that can be used to force the door open - a crowbar or an ax.
Azure attempts to smash the door open through brute force.
Azure, Skalla and Caeleron all rush to the smithy, but Azure diverts before he reaches it. He decides to try to force the door instead. He finds the door unmoving and bounces off of it.
Skalla and Caeleron find their search for items to douse the fire or force the trading post open cut short. As they enter the forge, they first see two red glowing points of light. As the points move they realize they belong to a body. They are eyes belonging to a small body, roughly humanoid in shape, but seemingly made entirely of earth and stone.
The small creature moves about, back and forth, near the rear stone wall. They also notice the battered body of a hobgoblin on the floor nearby.
Callistra finds the cloaked body to be that of a man, probably in his thirties. He has been cut down with extreme prejudice by the hobgoblins. By his dress she would guess he is perhaps a craftsman or a humbler merchant. His possessions suggest something different though. He wears a spring-loaded wrist sheath housing a well-made (masterwork) dagger. A concealed pocket in his cloak contains four glass vials. One of them has a reddish-brown liquid inside. The other three all contain a green fluid.
Moving on to check the hobgoblin, Callistra arrives to see the earthy creature along with Skalla and Caeleron.
Faunra continues to dump water on the roof. Her efforts are still keeping the fire from spreading, but little more.
Callistra will grab the Wrist sheath and dagger, the cloak and all four vials for later examination. She will double check for any letters or messages he may be carrying?
When she moves to the hobgoblin she stops when she sees the earthy creature.
Smarting from his bruised shoulder and ego, Azure scowls briefly at the door and runs to retrieve the remaining bucket and toss what water he can on the blaze.
Of all the things Caeleron expects to see in the forge, a small creature of stone and earth is quite low on the list. The creature's expression and body language are inscrutable, but the beaten body of a hobgoblin on the floor suggests that the small creature is capable of defending itself.
"We mean you no harm," Caeleron says in the human tongue, then repeats it in both Elven and Sylvan just in case. He keeps his body language unthreatening and neutral, trying to avoid conflict with the creature.
Skalla is completely baffled by the creature's presence and behaviour, but she tries to pacify it, just in case. She doubts that the creature understands any language that she speaks, but she speaks the words anyway, relying on body language and tone of voice to hopefully convey the message. It is not much different from speaking to a toddler.
"The people inside are in danger and we mean to help them. We have no quarrel with you. We would welcome your help, or at least if you could let us look around for tools to save our people." She repeats the words in all the languages she knows - Orc and Hallit.
Callistra can say with some certainty that the earthy being is not a natural resident of Golarion. She concludes it must be an earth elemental.
Skalla and Caeleron aren't sure what kind of impression they make on the little creature, but it doesn't seem to be particularly positive. It looks at them and appears to grow wary. If its body language can be read in the same way as that of more familiar bipeds, it takes a defensive posture.
It utters a few sounds, but it is impossible to say whether they are language or not.
"Careful." Callistra warns. "It's some form of Earth elemental? Does anyone speak Terran?"
Since she does not Callistra tries to indicate they want to help with gestures.
Callistra's attempt to communicate with the creature don't seem to make any impression. Your feeling is it would be risky to try approaching it.
"Let us just leave it alone and try again to break down the door." Skalla proposes, backing away. Taking out her flail, she attacks the door with desperation, very aware of the time running through their fingers.
Caeleron backs away from the creature, knowing that time is running out to put out the fire. He steps back out into the yard and moves towards the trough. "Help me with this," he calls. "We can fill the trough from the pump, it will allow the bucket to be refilled more quickly."
Azure hurries to Caeleron and begins to assist him with the pump.
As Caeleron, Skalla, and Calistra turn away to go back to firefighting, both Caeleron and Skalla notice two longbows laying on the ground down at the other end of the room from the forge. There is a hayloft above where the bows are laying.
On her way to another attempt at door-smashing, Skalla shouts towards the hayloft. "Anyone up there? Come down and help us free these people!"
"Everyone, although I can cast this spell indefinitely the people inside don't have that luxury with air. We need to get them out! Break a wall down if you have to, just get them out! We can't stay here!"
Unsure whether the discarded bows are of relevance, Caeleron ignores them in favour of continuing to attempt to fight the fire. "Skalla, Azure - Faunra is right. We need to break down the door."
Azure looks at Caeleron and nods. He drops his bucket and resumes his task of trying to beat down the door, even if he dislocates his shoulder in the process.
Skalla's shout gets a reply from up in the hay. A stage whispered voice calls back. "Aye! My sister and I are here. We scrambled up to get away from the walking pile of rocks, but lost out bows doing it. We're unarmed now."
Skalla's flail blow against the door doesn't seem at first to have done much but some surface damage. But perhaps it caused an unseen crack in the wood, because when Azure throws his weight against it this time, it splits wide open.
Smoke pours from the open door.
Faunra's work keeping the roof fire from spreading isn't keeping up with the spread. The fire now covers almost 15' of the roof.
"You'll have to get down from there, bows or no bows. I doubt that arrows would be very effective against the pile of rocks, and anyway the building next door is burning and we are evacuating the town. Come now, quick!" Skalla throws over her shoulder as she rushes out.
The door finally giving way makes the teacher hoot in triumph. That damned piece of wood had given them so much trouble, but now those trapped inside had a way out. Pulling her scarf over her nose and mouth against the smoke, she shouts to the ones inside. "The door is open now! Come out! Follow the sound of my voice if you cannot see! If there are people passed out from the smoke, tell us so that we can help carry them. Quickly now, there is no time to waste!"
Caeleron picks up Azure's bucket as he charges the door, and resumes throwing water over the thatch. "Those people need to get out quickly," he calls to Skalla. "The fire is spreading beyond our control."
In a few seconds several people make their way of of the building, coughing furiously. Kining Blondebeard is the dwarven proprietor of the shop. There are also two human men and a male halfling. One of them, armed with bow, axe, and dagger you vaguely recognize as a trapper who comes to town occasionally. The other, Adolar, is a local farmer.
The halfling is also a local. Petteri does odd jobs and some carpentry around town.
Meanwhile, the brother and sister in the forge area drop down from the loft, snatch up their bows, and make a dash for the exit. They must come too close to the earth creature for its comfort though.
It lets out a roar and rushes at them. It slams bodily into the woman, and you can hear bones crack from where you are. She goes down like a rag doll.
"NO!" Skalla bellows as she charges in to aid the pair, tackling the creature to try and prevent it from doing more harm, but she trips in her haste. "Help over here!" she shouts to the others. How did this creature come to be here, anyway? Had the invaders brought it with them?
Azure looks at the earthen creature with curiosity and wonder. Was this one of the monsters from beyond he had learned so much about? It seemed so. It was like a nightmare come to life, all this fire and screaming.
As building grows hotter from the spreading fire, Azure grasps his scimitar tightly and edges close to the woman on the ground. Not too long ago, he nursed aspirations of a guerilla campaign against the Molthuni. It seemed the best way to demonstrate his devotion to his adopted people with his particular set of skills. In a peculiar perversion of his upbringing, though, he had sanitized his fantasies. He couldn't smell the burning homes or hear the screams of the people. For so long, he had consumed himself with the memory of his own screams.
All he could do now was step forward, weapon in hand, and try to save one more person.
[ooc]Azure moves forward. He tries to reposition the woman between him and the earth creature. If that's a standard action, that's his action. If not, i.e. if we're in initative, and that was a move and standard, he will then attack it. If we go into initative, Azure will attack the creature on his turn, assuming he is between the woman's body and the earth creature.[ooc]
Callistra will advance and use the wand of CLW on the woman the moment Azure attack the elemental. "Who or what summoned and left that here?" She mutters angrily.
Seeing the rock creature smash into the woman Caeleron puts his bow away and rushes forwards. "Get out, quickly!" he calls to her companion as Skalla leaps towards the creature. Caeleron grabs the prone woman under the arms and tries to drag her out of the forge while Callistra tends to her wounds.
Now that the people are out of the building, Faunra abandons the house to the flames and dashes over to help with the escalating situation.
Azure recognizes the creature as a small earth elemental, but why it is here in Phaendar he cannot say. He strikes it with his sword and it registers the blow with a gravelly cry.
Scalla is unable to get her hands on it as it merges with the soil and disappears underground.
Caeleron and Callistra move the half-elven woman away. She is still breathing but unconscious. Callisra's healing mends her almost completely. Afterward she is able to stand on her own, though she is a bit disoriented from her ordeal.
Scalla recognizes the siblings. They are Lirosa and Taidel. In fact, the pendant found on the Erastil shrine in the chapel belongs to Lirosa.
Meanwhile Kining the dwarf begins cursing just as soon as she can stop coughing. She hurries back inside the shop and returns a few couple of minutes later with a sack filled with items.
"I won't be left destitute by this" she grumbles.
"Too much noise and too many non-fighters!" Callistra says quietly. "We'd better move and see if there is anything to salvage to Oreld's?"
"Agree. The fire risks drawing too much attention to us. We should leave now," Caeleron says, drawing his bow and looking round to make sure that the group is ready to move off.
Skalla nods, holding the youths close as she checks on Lirosa. "We found your pendant at the shrine."