Since she can't get to the bad guy and can't channel without healing him, Marzela turns around to loot the body of the fallen cultist. As part of this she also takes and puts on his dark robe so that she won't stand out as much trying to exit.
This is getting crowded I should move to a better position. Jaed tries to outmaneuver the cultist using his acrobatics skills.
Once next to the foe he launches his attack:
Carrakas grins as the cultist's fist bounces harmlessly off of him. The tiefling responds in kind, launching another swing with his earth blade. However, his swing goes wide as he gets too eager for the kill.
Since she can't cast any of her spells, Lily settles for firing her bow at the hound.
Not really sure about making attacks at him from the position that I moved to, maybe there is a penalty either may Millsy and Finnrick will move and attack.
Millsy
I just saw Finnricks current health so he will not be attacking but instead taking a 5 foot step back and going total defense. AC 18 I believe 10+3 DEX +1 Size +4 Total defense.
Marzela: 19
Carrakas: 18
Jaed: 13
Finnrick: 12
Lily: 12
Marzela searches the body of Rennec, but only finds his fine rapier; it's pretty clear that despite having it, he wasn't really expecting a fight and isn't even wearing any armor. She manages to hurriedly remove the black robe he had been wearing but doesn't yet have time to put it on. There are numerous cuts and slashes in it from the fight and a significant portion of it is sticky with the dead man's blood.
Jaed attempts to nimbly dodge past the man the get a better angle on him, but is met by a forceful shove to the gut, winding him and pushing him backwards. As he stumbles back, Jaed tries to take the opportunity to hit the cultist, successfully scoring a deep gouge in his arm.
Carrakas and Lily's blows are not quite as lucky and go wide, but Millsy does manage to rake the man twice with her claws. Now bleeding quite profusely, the man cagily looks around. He takes a moment to try to make a decision before pulling out a potion and drinking it.
Ugh thinks Marzela, seeing the state of the robe. I'll wear it if I have to, but I'll check if he had a spare, first.
She steps into Rennec's room, looking for anything that might help them get out--An extra robe, his mask, etc. She remembers the city watch uniforms they got downstairs, but doesn't think they have enough time to put them on.
(add 4 for anything that is disguised or hidden)
She's primarily looking for an easy, quick disguise to go with the sword, so people might think she's Rennec. She thinks that she probably has enough height to pull it off, and a robe over her coat might give her enough bulk. The blood on the robe might actually be good in terms of convincing onlookers that he has taken care of whatever threat there used to be, but she doesn't really want to if she doesn't have to. (Plus any disguise with her has to be superficial--she will tell the truth if directly questioned.)
Also, if there are papers/letters here that look like they could be evidence, she will take the time to pocket them. If she sees anything that might be valuable, she will also take that if it doesn't take too much time.
As soon as the cultist begins drinking his potion, Carrakas attempts to take advantage of the man's distraction, shooting his shield forward in a rush.
If the man is somehow still standing, the tiefling will try to hit him with his earthen blade once more.
Otherwise, he will turn toward the double doors that they came in. To Lilly, he'll look questioningly toward those doors and mouth "More?"
Lily nods to Carrakas.
"See if you can find any more clues while I check the other doors. We should leave promptly, all this fighting may attract more of these guys."
Those clustered around the door lash out at the cultist, though only Carrakas' blow lands. There's a faint shimmering around him as it looks like the attack should have felled him, but some magic is keeping him upright and still fighting. He manages to pull the vial to his lips as several of his wounds close up upon swallowing the red liquid. The man's triumph is short lived, however, as Carrakas' second blow manages to take him out.
The threat now seemingly dealt with, Jaed turns to the door right next to him and begins checking it for traps. Failing to find any, he sheathes his blades and begins trying to pick the lock, but is unsuccessful in doing so. As the silence spell fades, you hear a gurgling laugh followed by the raspy last words of the slain cultist: "You'll never...get out of...here aliveeeee."
Brushing off the words and starting to return to searching the room, you suddenly notice that you're no longer alone. Between your intense focus on dropping the spellcaster and the utter silence surrounding you, no one noticed the group of five cultists that had rushed in to the room, the familiar (to some of you) form of Krant, unmasked and giving you all a crooked, sadistic smile among the white-robed acolytes.
"Well, looks we have some hera-ticks to deal with, don't we." Krant practically spits the words, small specks of spittle spraying out. His eyes gleam with a maniacal delight at the contemplation of smashing all your faces in.
As Marzela turns around, the silence spell over and able to cast normally again, and expecting a chance to escape, she instead sees the 5 additional enemies who have arrived, and she is tempted to despair.
Her brilliant silence spell doesn't seem to actually have been brilliant or done any good, and perhaps actually harmed them. She still doesn't have a chance to tell her allies about the books she found, some of her allies are not looking well and she is hurt herself, but if she channels, she risks healing the unconscious forms of those already defeated, which would be an additional disaster on top of the new foes. And because she came in here in search of a clean robe, she can't actually get to anyone that looks hurt badly to heal them in a more mundane way. The situation is not looking hopeful, and much of it seems to be the fault of her poor choices.
Instead of despairing though, she sends a brief mental plea to Sarenrae please help us, gives up on all thoughts of disguise, and determines to help the people that she has endangered the only way she currently can. She dives into the fray, attacking the cultist directly in front of her.
"Good luck with that" the tiefling growls, taking a small step backwards. He then begins to focus, and once more little stones and pebbles appear and begin to swirl around him, the earth seeming to shake with the power of it. This time, with the silence spell no longer active, the sheer volume of the effort shakes the room as well, a deep rumbling sound that you can feel in your bones as your ear drums throb with the power of it.
There is a moment of calm, as everything seems to still, before Carrakas rushes forward far faster than should be possible; the very earth seems to be moving him forward, as he blazes right past the group of masked fools and lands right in the group's midst. As he lands, the earth that was propelling him forward rises up into his outstretched hand, and form together into his now-familiar earthen axe.
His muscles flex as the heavy blade swings about, heading right for the unmasked leader of the group in a vicious swing.
As the cultists rush in, Lily reaches out and brushes the near one (diagonal to her) with her hand, which has a sickly sort of glow.
...but misses.
"Oh Krant, long time no see. I think we have a score to settle."
Jaed leaves his tools hanging from the door , unsheathes his swords and fiercely attacks Krant.
Finnrick steps back and returns to his human form while Millsy starts to attack the nearest person to her.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Orange: 6+7+4 = 17
Krant: 6+16 = 22
First Jaed hits Krant and then Carrakas. Rather than exclaiming in pain, the brutish man simply laughs. "Finally, a prop-per fight!" Still cackling, he brandishes his greatclub and proceeds to swing it viciously at the tiefling.
Meanwhile Millsy and Marzela lay into the cultists close to them, both landing solid blows. Millsy's target sways slightly until the vicious onslaught of tooth and claw, but manages to remain standing. The acolytes try to to give as good as they got, two going after the big cat, one after the cleric, and the final one after the clearly suicidal (or crazy) tiefling.
Marzela, seeing Carrakas (who she pretty much thought was invulnerable) getting hit as he valiantly tries to fight off this new horde of bad guys, is once again worried, but still determined to do what she can to destroy the new threat to the party.
Jaed looks worried about how the fight has started. "Big guy, you moved to the middle of the storm! Get out of there!" The rogue waits to see if Carrakas takes a step back before wielding his swords against Krant.
Lily lashes out once more at the nearest cultist with the sickly-gray glow surrounding the tips of her fingers.
Once again, to no avail.
Off-balance from his blade rush, Carrakas does not have his defenses ready in time to catch several different blows, mostly from the grinning Krant. Bloody bastard hits hard! I need to be more careful. The tiefling is clearly severely hurt, though he remains standing, if only just barely. He takes a small step back, trying to use the doorway for more protection. He raises his shield, defending himself from any more attacks.
Green: 10
Krant: 22+30
Marzela swings at the blue cultist and misses. At the same time Lily reaches out towards the orange cultist and runs her hand over his arm, eliciting an unpleasant shudder from him.
Meanwhile Carrakas steps backwards and takes up a defensive pose. Jaed takes advantage of Krant's distraction to unleash a pair of brutal attacks, gouging deep slashes down the man's back.
On the other side of the room, Millsy takes down the cultist in front of her before viciously slashing at the one next to him.
Despite the blood falling in gouts off his back, Krant merely grins at Jaed. "You wait your turn now, boy. You'll get your beating soon enough!" He then stalks towards Carrakas, intending on continuing his pounding. "What's the matter? Gonna go home and cry to ya demon of a mommy? Get her ta kiss ya all better?" He purses his lips and makes a kissing sound before laughing and swinging his greatclub two more times.
Seeing the tiefling fall, he then looks around for his next victim, finding only Lily nearby, he swings at her despite the awkward angle. Luckily for her, the club smashes harmlessly into the gilded door frame, smashing some of the lovely, Razmirian artwork. Far from being perturbed by missing, Krant simply laughs even harder.
The loss of one of their own is countered by their possibly insane leader dropping the armored warrior.
They mostly fail to hit anything, but one does score a solid blow against the cleric.
...
Finnrick begins to summon sorry
As Finnrick finishes casting a small creature appears next to him. Finnrick points at the person attacking Marzela and the creature seems to glide across the earth. He slams into the cultist and brings his huge rock fists down onto the man, or woman.
+1 is from earth mastery +2 form charge +2 from Augment summoning[/ooc]
AC=15
This Round
Finnrick then moves back and begins summoning again and Millsy continues her onslaught.
Krant 's first blow manages to get through Carrakas' defenses, and the mighty blow drops the tiefling to the ground, out cold.
"Don't go away, I have more of these for you," yells Jaed as he he advances towards Krant swords over his head.
Krant: 52+20
Marzela swings once again at her opponent and misses. She does, however, manage to distract the cultist just long enough for Finnrick's elemental to pop up and charge at it, catching the man unawares with a solid slam.
Millsy manages to bite and trip her opponent. It seems almost as if she wasn't expecting it as her first claw strikes where he used to be. Her second claw does manage to strike true though, clawing open the man's throat as he begins to bleed out.
Meanwhile as Carrakas bleeds out, Jaed swings forcefully at Krant, determined to try to kill the bully. He sways slightly and it looks for a moment like he might fall, but the maniacal gleam in his eye seems to keep him standing. "So eager to get a beat down. Not sure if that's bravery or stupidity, boy." Flecks of blood splatter from his mouth as he speaks. Unnoticed by him, Lily attempts to reach out and touch him from behind the door frame.
Krant then returns Jaed's strikes with two of his own, his eyes red from burst blood vessels.
Starting to look a little more nervous, the two remaining cultists continue their assault, one on the new earthen monstrosity and the other stepping forward to aid Krant.
Just then an eagle appears Flanking both of the cultists in the corner and viciously begins attacking the one threatening Jaed.
Eagle
As the eagle begins attacking his prey so to does the Earth Elemental, attempting to slam into the cultist again with his huge rock fists.
Earth Elemental
Millsy, having eviscerated her opponent feels now the all familiar blood lust and leaps forward and attempts to do the same to the cultist that the eagle attacked.
Millsy
And as for our friend Finnrick, he simply draws and loads his old untrusty sling.
Carrakas continues to bleed out on the floor, oblivious to the ongoing struggle.
The last blows really hurt, both physically and psychologically, but the rogue is determined to take down Krant.
"Is that all you got?" His eyes fixed on Krant's. "I'm gonna show how a beating looks like."
"And now, would you be so kind and just die?"
Lily lashes out with her sickly hand at Krant.
Then she follows up with a devastating attack on Krant, hoping to finish him off.
...but misses with her best spell.
Now surrounded by a veritable menagerie of animals, the two acolytes begin to look a bit edgy. The one next to Marzela pulls his blade back, ready to stab it in to the cleric but is distracted by the flapping of the eagle appearing out of the aether. The bird slices his arm open and distracts him long enough for the earthen mass to slam into him. There's a crraaack as several of his ribs break and he's thrown to the ground, motionless.
Seeing his friend fall, the final acolyte turns to flee, but Millsy grabs his boot, knocking him to the ground and stunning him briefly. She then reaches forward, using her claws to try to drag him back and opening several long gashes in his legs before tearing in to him. Red stains his otherwise pristine white robes as he thrashes, screaming for a few moments before he too is silenced.
Rather than seeming at all perturbed by his minions' being slaughtered, Krant seems to revel in the bloodshed. "Haha! I guess ya half-breed friend isn't quite as weak as I thought, eh boy. Look at how he manifests creatures to reign blood down upon his enemies! He could do quite well here. But you, you're too soft still. Too controlled. I can see that simmering hate in yer eyes. Ya gotta harness it like I have. Not bottle it up." He slams his club once more in to the door for emphasis as more of the golden filigree sprinkles down and a few masks crumple.
Jaed then lunges at his tormentor of the past week. Krant laughs as he dodges each of the rogues blows. Just as he had meant for the bully to do. He waits until the brute is halfway through dodging his off hand strike to quickly thrust forward with his other blade, burying it up to its hilt in the man's abdomen. Krant's mouth goes from a chuckle to slack surprise. He looks down, confused as Jaed withdraws his blade. His face hardening, he raises his club one last time. "Least I'm taking...one of ya...with me..." He turns and begins to bring it down on the prone form of Carrakas as Jaed slams his other blade into the man's back and through his chest. Jaed almost drops the blade as suddenly it's supporting all 200 odd pounds of dead weight at the end.
Marzela hurries over to Carrakas and reaches out to touch him.
She then goes over to Finnrick and touches him as well.
She looks around at all the bodies.
When we can get farther away from all of these, I can heal everyone.
I don't want to heal the people who were trying to kill us.
After taking a moment to recover from her emotional turmoil at almost getting her new friends killed, she suddenly remembers:
Oh, yeah, I forgot... I think I might have found the evidence back right before the battle. There were 2 books hidden in the bookshelf behind a false front.
After Marzela's healing touch, Carrakas looks a fair bit better than before - the bleeding has stopped, at least. However, he still looks pretty banged up, and he is still unconscious.
Seeing that Carrakas isn't conscious yet, she touches him twice more:
Since she has one spell left, she also goes over to heal Lily as well, touching her lightly on the arm:
That's all I can do. We should get out of here before we incur any more damage.
After the additional healing, Carrakas slowly comes to. When he wakes up enough to remember what was going on, he jerks suddenly, looking around wild-eyed for any bad guys. His shield comes up, and he looks frantically around. Seeing only his companions still on their feet, he calms down and lowers his shield. "What the hell happened? That bastard hits like an ogre..."
Since he's on the ground anyway and right next to Krant, Carrakas will examine the body, looking for anything of value. As he does, noting the stab wounds, the tiefling will look up at Jaed. "Your work, I take it? Well struck. You fight well."
To the others, he says "What's the plan now? More are surely coming."
Lily says, "If we leave now, we certainly won't get back in tomorrow. They will close down the temple and not let anyone in or out, with this many casualties. Do we have anything actionable yet? Are we any closer to getting to the bottom of this?"
Marzela pulls out the books she found and hands them to Lily so she can see if they are enough evidence.
Jaed slowly takes his sword from Krant's back letting him hit the floor hard. Without saying a word, but with a look in his face that tells it all, he cleans the blade using the only piece of the brute's robe that is not covered with blood.
"Thanks, you hit hard too," he answers to Carrakas, "but next time try not to become a punching bag for the bad guys. We all have our limits."
He listens the others opinions and he adds: "I agree, we are not coming back here but we need to find more proofs. The chain may not be enough. I'll try to open the remaining doors. We should take a really quick look to these rooms and get the hell out of here."
Jaed goes back to his tools hanging from the northeastern door and continues his work.
If the group chooses to leave, she will definitely join them.
However, as long as we stay, and nothing comes to kill us, Marzela will help loot the bodies, casting detect magic and maintaining it during the search so they can separate those things easily. She stuffs anything magical they find (non-sharp and not overfilling it) into the bag of holding, for later identification and so we are always ready to leave if we decide to.
If we are still here after that is done, she'll peek into all the smaller open rooms with detect magic still up to help spot anything else magical as well.
... If we are still here after that, she remembers that she left a coin on the floor in the other room, and goes to pick it up. Then she'll put on that clean black robe she found before, grab a mask, and practice saying mean Razmirian things in a low gruff voice like "We sure took care of them!," "Greed is great!," and "Profit is power" while flourishing Rennec's rapier (which she isn't very good at).
Lily looks through the journals quickly, trying to skim them and see if she can find anything actionable, anything that would hint at more nefarious plots from the temple or tell about who's behind all of this.
"Thank you cleric," Finnrick after being healed. "I believe we have much to discuss, but for now let's get as much evidence as we can and get out of here. As for remaining anonymous, I believe we are well beyond that point."
Finnrick will help in searching the bodies and then follow the group to escape.
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The second is an expense ledger covering how their income was spent. It includes bribing known officials and guardsmen and paying for illegal goods and services. There are also a number of entries noting vast sums of money being sent back to Razmir for the Living God as tithes.
The third ledger is mostly empty, but seems to cover various exploits undertaken in Kassen, including a detailed report from the priests sent there to retrieve the "fragments". There's also a short paragraph dated around 2 weeks ago.
Jaed successfully open the north eastern door. On the other side is a small bedroom, though it looks like it hasn't been used in at least a week. The bed is neatly made and a few robes are folded at the foot of it. There's a small writing desk, a chair in front of it, and an everburning torch to light the place.
Basic cultists
- Short sword x 4
- Sap x4
- Dagger x8
- Studded leather armor x4
- Light wooden shield x4
- gold
Rennec
- 3 magical potions
- Mwk rapier
- Mwk light crossbow
- Magic studded leather armor
- Magic light steel shield
- Sunrod x2
- Thieves' tools
- 124 gp
Egarthis
- Magical brooch
- 2 magical potions
- Magical wand
- Magical ring
Krant
- Magical greatclub
- Hide armor
- Magical mask
There doesn't seem to be anything magical in any of the open rooms.
Marzela gathers all the magic things and treasure they've found except the mundane weapons and armor and puts everything that isn't sharp into the bag of holding so they can sort it out later. As she is loading up, she also notices the half-written letter that she grabbed earlier from sweeping everything off Rennec's desk, and puts that in a more-accessible place for later perusal.
She carries the masterwork rapier, figuring pretending to be Rennec probably won't do any good, but it can't hurt either.
She looks over at Lily after getting loaded. Are we good? Is that the evidence we need?
"Still reading..." Lily murmurs. "Yes. Yes! Here. And here. These ledgers have their illegal business dealings - slave trading, protection schemes (we already knew about those), blackmail..."
She shuffles through the books, then holds up a small note. "This note talks about some priests sent to Kassen for a mission?"
"The guard will probably be a little miffed that we took matters into our own hands, but all this evidence shows that the cult here has been deeply involved in illegal operations of many kinds. If we need to retreat, we might even be able to convince the guard to let us help with a follow-up raid to finish this!" she says excitedly.
"Oh, yes, this is what we were looking for." Jaed takes the note in his hands. "But Kassen told us they plundered the vault, I don't understand... Well, we will have time to discuss later. Let's get out of here. How did you two come in? Can we take that route to get out?"
We came in over the wall and into the courtyard. I think people are up now, so it would be dangerous. Is there another way besides the front door? We might have a fight on our hands at the bottom of the stairs anyway... but there's always bluffing if we wear robes and act like the Razmirians have prevailed. You all would have to do any talking though. I can't lie. The best I can do is keep my mouth shut or possibly talk about a different subject.
"There is a window in that room over there, right? Does it lead to the courtyard? Can we get out that way?"