Guthruc returns to the meeting, Iorskan beside him. "Anura want to do prayer before attack. Allies, grab hand, make circle"
Ozzy doesn't say anything about Anura's prayer circle. She is a little bewildered, but as long as she's only being asked to join a circle of hand-holding, she won't object.
Iorskan can be seen getting restless. If nothing happens soon, he will set a fire while his minions dance and cheer.
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Guthruc returns to the meeting, Iorskan beside him. "Anura want to do prayer before attack. Allies, grab hand, make circle"
Abaos is slightly curious. "Prayer, to who??" he asks, curiously, before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I really don't do this whole religious thing." He finishes this with a dismissive shake of his head, before rushing off to grab Garess and Happs.
After a minute outlining the plan to them, he finishes quickly. "Happs, tell Ozzy that she's in charge. I'm going."
He turns his attention to Garess, and says in a voice that almost seems like a request "I'll need a horse."
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Happs Bydon is surprised to find himself in a circle, holding hands with his newfound friends and allies. He doesn't know what the words he's saying mean, as he recites after the boggard, but he does feel a sense of camaraderie, of fellowship, as he repeats after the frogfolk. He's never been a particularly religious man, but today he feels at peace with the world, his overwrought nerves calmed. Whether they will win the day or lose it, there's nothing he can do but his best, and leave the rest to the fates or the gods.
"Moloch, dread Lord of Hell, we beseech thee for thy aid in this, our ignoble and infernally mandated task, to slay those who would stand before us and leave nought but ash and ruin in our wake. We beseech thee that thou wouldst grant us the savagery to lay waste to our enemies, and the cunning to outmaneuver them and make them feel bad about themselves before they die. We ask for thy blessing that we might find their young and devour them. Amen."
He turns his attention to Garess, and says in a voice that almost seems like a request "I'll need a horse."
Blissfully unaware that she just asked a dark god's help in bringing fire and devastation to the land, Captain Garess is happy to oblige. "If you want to play decoy, you're welcome to the fastest horse we have. Which is Aamon's horse. She looks at Abaos gravely. "Good luck out there."
Ozzy, Happs, x bandits , and a strike force including Tatzy, Anura, and the party set off to set up their ambush, while Abaos rides to get himself into position. Dharak opts to come with him, using one of the bandit force's horses, to help Abaos set up his rope slide and give him a boost up into the tree. Through the foilage they can see the fort's fortifications.
"Pretty brave of you, climbing up there yourself," the muscled half-orc remarks, looking up at the canopy, far over head. "That's a mighty long drop."
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Abaos gladly accepts Dharak's help, though he does have a brief moment of worry "Wait, who's keeping Sootscale and Dragonfly from each other's throats? before shrugging it off, and heading off with Dharak.
As he begins climbing, he tells Dharak "Keep out of sight, and be ready to ride as soon as I come down. Alright?"
And he then climbs up, ready to risk life and limb to bring down the Stag Lord.
Awn accompanies Dharak and stands at the base of Abaos's tree, nominally "communing" with it but also warping the weft of fate as he is wont to do.
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When it looks like Abaos is struggling to get up into the tree, Dharak will give him a boost.
With a successful Climb check, you can advance up, down, or across a slope, wall, or other steep incline (or even across a ceiling, provided it has handholds) at one-quarter your normal speed.
With Dharak's and Bright Awn's help, Abaos makes it five feet up the tree. Now there's just sixty-odd feet to go to make it to the top.
Dharak watches Abaos begin his ascent of the prodigious deciduous with some trepidition; the climber loses his grip before he's out of arm's reach of the ground.
Having climbed this part before, Abaos has little difficulty traversing it again.
The gambler clings to the tree, looking for a branch that'll hold his weight, making no upward progress.
He found the branch he was looking for, and heaves himself to a precarious perch ten feet off the ground.
The branch under his feet gives out, and suddenly the luckbringer is dangling by one hand ten feet in the air. He doesn't panic, though, instead taking his precarious position for what it is - one moment in a long series of events that will inevitably end up with him on top.
Kicking wildly, Abaos is caught by a sudden gust - a gust that deposits his feet safely on a sturdy branch. It's kind of an uncomfortable position, twisted halfway around the tree, so Abaos pushes on, hands finding branches right where he needs them to be. Awful convenient the tree grew this way, really.
Finding a fairly comfortable place to stop and catch his breath, Abaos does just that.
Having caught his breath, Abaos soldiers on.
It's been a long climb. His arms are shaking, his legs trembling. He should have taken a longer rest when he had the chance . . . as is, his exhausted hands slip and suddenly he's wide awake as he plummets twenty feet towards the ground, fingers digging furrows in the bark of the tree . . .
He catches himself before falling more than a few inches. Heart pounding in his chest, blood pounding in his ears, he knows that could have been much worse than it was.
Nowhere to go but up.
The fatigue is setting in, but Abaos is halfway to his goal.
Oof.
His luck comes through for him again. Always, when he falls there's something there to catch him. It's enough to make a man reckless . . . and enough to keep a reckless man alive.
Again, Abaos trusts his life to branch that isn't sturdy enough to hold him. He watches in fascination and dismay as it peels away from the tree . . .
And stops abruptly. The branch holds, though he doesn't want to stay and find out for how long.
Abaos knows that even his luck runs out if stretched too far.
Up here, the branches are dense and easy to climb. He's making better progress than he was closer to the ground.
He's drenched in sweat, but Abaos actually feels more energetic now then he did on the ground. This is what they call a runner's high, though he isn't running so he supposes it's more of a climber's high. He looks at the ground far beneath him. He's pretty far up, which means that he's a high climber with a climber's high. The idea amuses him.
Caught up in the moment, lulled into a sense of false security by the easy hand and foot-holds, Abaos tests his luck once more.
Abaos is already above the canopy of the forest. He climbs the thinner branches in the shining sun.
Abaos doesn't trust the branches above him to hold his weight. This is as far as he needs to climb.
Abaos looks down on the forest. From this high in the air, it's all green leaves, the tops of trees that rise and fall like rolling hills. It's a view few get to see.
The wind is much stronger above the trees, and Abaos clenches his perch, white knuckled. The sun is much brighter above the trees, Abaos would shield his eyes against it if his hands weren't otherwise occupied.
Grinning from ear to ear, exhilarated and victorious, Abaos throws his head back and laughs. That had been fun. Hard, but fun. Throwing caution into the winds, Abaos takes one hand off of his tree and punches the sky, shouting his triumph for the wind and birds to hear.
But wait a minute . . . remember why he's up here. Where's the Stag Lord's fort? Isn't that the whole reason for the dangerous climb? Abaos doesn't see it.
Ah, he realizes, it must be on the other side of the tree. He must have gotten turned around while climbing. Carefully, Abaos shifts position. When he can safely look behind and below him, he does.
From his vantage, the defenders of the fortress look mouse-sized. Except for the manticore, which he can see clearly stretching it's wings and launching itself off of the top of the central building. The manticore looks squirrel-sized, but it's getting bigger.
Working quickly, Abaos secures his end of the rope he brought with him to the crown of the tree. Dharak tied his end to a protruding root far below, and far back, forming an angle suitable for sliding down on.
As the winged monster approaches the lucky ifrit, Abaos retrieves and grips the sturdy twig that he'd chosen for this task, whittled down from an equally sturdy but unwieldy -ly long sturdy branch. Abaos puts his zip line together, graps it with both hands, and throws himself into the air.
The manticore's wingbeats plaster Abaos's hair to his head as he secures his zip line. It's a tremendous monster, the size of a horse and with a thirty foot wingspan that's realistically still too small to lift the mammal into the sky but whatever, we're suspending our disbelief. It's face is that of a human, though, an ugly human with a mouth too wide for it's face, with rows of jagged teeth that protrude from it's mouth, as they hardly fit inside it's humanoid jaws.
Abaos throws himself into the air to escape the monster.
Vertigo is quickly replaced with exhileration as the ground rushes to meet him. He stumbles when he hits the ground, but keeps his footing as he sprints to his borrowed steed.
Without breaking stride, Abaos grabs his mount's saddle horn and throws himself atop the beast. Beside him, Dharak spurs his own mount. The half-orc had decided to wait around for Abaos rather than make his way elsewhere alone. He's regretting that decision a little, but not a ton.
Bright Awn presumably has a mount as well, which springs into action with little need for encouragement, it sees the winged monster overhead.
The three horses blast through the clearing where the ballistae have been positioned. The manticore, moving at dead sprint (or the flying equivalent) has no chance to spot the siege weapons before it's caught in your trap.
Suprise round goes to the people with the harpoon-ballistae. I have little idea how the contraptions work, so I'll rely on Ozara to run herself and all the NPCs she needs to help operate the machines.
Let's do this!
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Ozzy waits, gripping the handles at the rear of the ballista with white-knuckled intensity. Her shimmering red scarf flaps exaggratedly in the morning's cool breeze. In the days since the supplies she ordered arrived at Olegs, she's worn a different outfit every day, sometimes changing several times a day, though she carries no obvious luggage with her to keep all these outfits in. The outfits range from a tunics and breeches to pearlescent scaled leather, but all include a long, flowing scarf and find links of chain armor spilling out at the edges. All that remains of her old outfit of tattered leather armor are the long boots, the goggles, and the metal dome at her shoulder. Today, her attire is a whimsical mockery of the uniforms Garess's people wear, matching their cut (and somehow perfectly tailored for her scrawny frame, despite the nearest tailor being hundreds of miles away), but with garish yellow and black zebra stripes running down the sides the sides.
When she spots the first horse galloping through the underbrush, she immediately swivels the oversized crossbow to point just above the canopy, directly over their heads. She drops low, letting her goggled eye sit just above the harpoon's fletching so that she can look down its length and past the razor-sharp barbs on its tip.
ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump
She can hear the far-off horses' hurried hoofbeats growing steadily louder. In a flash, enormous wings appear above the treetops, lifting a grotesque lion-thing with an anthropomorphic face that even a mother flying-lion-thing would be hard-pressed to love. In less than a second, she lets the harpoon fly, silently pledging to improve that face by putting an extra hole in it.
Before sinew of the seige weapons massive bowstring completes its first reverperation, Ozzy has dismounted the device, and is hopping briskly to the second waiting weapon, while the bandit tasked with reloading the apparatus begins to heft a second harpoon into the place so recently vacated by the first.
Happs' harpoon is not far behind.
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Happy Bydon is not as confident as Ozzy in her element. He’s shot this thing a few times, the weird colorless girl showed him how to operate the machine (after puzzling it out herself), but there’s no good way to practice firing at an airborne target. He leans back, squinting at the sky, and releases the trigger mechanism.
The two harpoons embed themselves in the manticore, the powerful weapons driving their ammunition deep within the winged monster’s flesh. It howls in agony, spasming in midair.
It manages to maintain altitude, though the blood coming out it’s mouth in lieu of intelligible speech suggests that perhaps it’s various internal organs haven’t done as good a job at not trading fluids as perhaps they ought to have.
Whether or not Awn has his initiative aura up, y’all go first.
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Abaos pounds along the dirt trail, breathing heavy from the rush he's just had. Between the adventurous climb Would've taken a champion climber; I bet not even Guthruc could've done it! and the chase; well, this is what the gambler lives for. He swears he can feel the beat of the beast's tiny wings beating down on him, though he knows realistically that's impossible. Still, he spurns his horse even faster forward, desperate to reach the ambush site before the adrenaline rush fails.
Suddenly, he's there, and tow thundering THUD's echo, followed by a piercing scream from the manticore. Abaos raises a cheer to this, a loud WHOOP! as he goes, but doesn't stop to turn around. Rather, he reaches the safety of the ballistae, and begins to help as they load the machine.
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Ozzy lets out a WHOOP! when she sees both harpoons find flesh. That's how it's done! Her scarf streams behind her as she leaps through the air to take hold of the second Ballista. She plants her feet against the base and throws her weight backwards, pulling the back end down to point the business end at the sky. She pulls on the handles, holding herself nearly horizontal above the ground as she brings the weapon's sights to bear. She grasps the release lever that will send the a third harpoon plunging into the beast's gut, then holds only a moment as the manticore scrapes its massive wings through the air, seeing if it will slip from its place in the sky, before transferring her full weight to the lever. As it snaps free, the tension she is using to hold herself aloft disappears, and she drops out of sight, falling the last few inches to the ground and landing on her back with an audible OOF!
Lying on the ground behind the ballista, Ozzy doesn't see the harpoon fly true and bury itself deep in the Manticore's chest.
Happs pauses for a moment, smiling to himself before realizing that the job is not finished. He steps heavily, rushing to the other of his pair of ballistae.
The adrenaline threatens to make Happs heart beat out of his chest, and as he takes hold of the ballista, he reaches for the release lever too early. The harpoon flies into the forest canopy, embedding itself in one of the trees.
Again and again ballista tore into the manticore. Iorskan winced. Flying wasn’t as safe as he had dreamed. He wouldn’t forget this lesson! So he ran as fast as his legs could carry him, and when close enough (whether it is alive or dead) he shuddered, shook, opened his mouth and....
...spewed forth flame at the beast.
[+2 Dex]
Mounted, though he did not feel comfortable, Awn does not make it far from the tree Abaos so effectively climbed.
...
Before it can speak a word of common, the barrage of ballistae bolts brings the bully . . . I need more words that start with 'b'.
The manticore, writhing and flailing, had drifted almost directly above the ballistae, it's momentum carrying it forward even as it tried to pull itself away from the clearing. Ozzy, throwing her weight on the seige weapon to angle it at the target above, scrunches her face against the shadow in the sky and releases the lever.
She doesn't see her shot fly true, instead dropping out of sight. But fly true it does, the harpoon catches the manticore from beneath, pinning it's jaw to the roof of it's mouth and the roof of it's mouth to it's brain.
Spasming, the winged monster topples out of the sky, dropping too fast for Happs Bydon to get his sights straight. It hits the ground, bouncing and rolling, getting itself tangled in the ropes and it's own wings.
Before it's even stopped twitching in the dirt, Iorskan and Tatzy have pounced on the monster, scorching and mauling it's corpse. Convinced that her attacker is dead, Tatzy retreats into the shadows beneath the trees to gnaw on the wing she's detatched.
But before congratulations are passed in earnest, before backs are slapped or patted, Dharak notices something. "Uh, guys? That tree fellow, Right On, his horse came back without him."
Mounted, though he did not feel comfortable, Awn does not make it far from the tree Abaos so effectively climbed.
Fortunately, the manticore didn’t see Awn lying on the ground through the trees.
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And then the manticore is down, a piece of ballistae in it's brain- and Abaos is moving, jumping off the horse and onto the ground next to Ozzy.
"Fantastic work, Ozzy!" he yells, clapping her around the back. "Excellent work, Happs!"
"I've never seen anything like that shooting! That was phenomenal! I just.... this is going to work, isn't it? Really, work? Wow!"
"Uh, guys? That tree fellow, Right On, his horse came back without him."
"What?"
He turns back, scanning for Awn. "I didn't even see it land!"
He quickly takes charge of the situation. "Dharak, Happs, get that thing's head off- what's left of it, anyways. I'm going to look for Awn."
With that, he jumps back on his horse, and goes looking for the young treeling.
Unfortunately, Abaos is about as good at finding things as he is flying.
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Ozzy scrambles to her feet, appearing once again behind the massive manticore-murderizing mechanism. She looks around and, spotting the formerly-flying frightfully-fugly-faced freak fallen to the firmament, she jumps into the air, pumping her arms in triumph. She then runs over to the beast and, narrowly avoiding Iorskan's flames, climbs on top of it and jumps up and down, laughing as the beast's bones crack beneath her heels.
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Guthruc will also partake in the consumption of the manticore. It flies faster than birds, so then after eating it, Guthruc will fly faster too!
After hearing about Awn, Guthruc, without even attempting at holding back the half-chewed manticore in his mouth, says: "Tree-man fine. He know forest, and if dead, no good taste."
Townsend (who was reloading one of the ballistae) hops atop the horse that came back riderless. "You don't want to go out there alone, you could get eaten by a troll and no one would even know," he frets. "I'll come with you . . . Bright Awn saved my life, I'm not going to . . . I'll help you look for him."
He doesn't have the presence of mind to bring a spare horse, though, so Awn will have to share with someone on the way back.
"Dharak, Happs, get that thing's head off- what's left of it, anyways. I'm going to look for Awn."
Abaos and Townsend ride off in search of their friend.
Happs looks at what remains of the flying monster. "It's head?" he asks, though the one he's directing the question to is long gone.
"Maybe he wants to put it on a stake or something?" Dharak hypothesizes, "a warning, or threat, or a show of force or something?"
"Maybe," replies the ranger.
The stare at the corpse for a while.
Bydon breaks their reverie. "Sounds messy."
"Ayup," Dharak agrees.
"And we don't even know that he wants us to do it, not for sure," Happs points out.
"Ayup," Dharak agrees.
"And if we weren' s'posed to, there's no way to un-decapitate the thing."
"That's true," Dharak agrees.
"I'm thinking that we should wait for Abaos to get back before we do anything hasty."
"Works for me," says the half-orc.
While Happs and Dharak are deliberating over what to do about the Manticore's head, Ozzy casts Arcane Mark to etch her name in large, glowing letters across its face, then stands back to admire her handiwork, beaming.
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Ouch.
Awn opens his eyes and spits out dirt. He smiles ruefully.
Dirt tastes as bad as I imagine Guthruc imagines it tastes.
He tries to follow the general direction he was heading, and any available tracks.
He tries to follow the general direction he was heading, and any available tracks.
[dice=Survival]1d20 + 8
The horses rode off without him just moments before. Their tracks are easy to find, a trivial task for someone of Awn’s skill in woodcraft.
As he follows the tracks, musing about Guthruc’s imaginings and the similarities in taste common to woodborn and cannibalistic orcs, Bright Awn years the distant approach of hoofbeats, which, judging both by the precise sound of a horse of Aamon’s mount’s size bearing Abaos as a rider, and by the vague premonitions that Awn sees, is probably Abaos come to find him. And someone else. Also come to find him. Probably.
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Abaos comes upon Awn as he walks towards them. "Awn!" he shouts, coming up beside the woodborn. "We did it! We got him!" He gestures in the air excitedly, waving and talking as he does.
"Ozzy shot him dead on, and a second later, another shot, right through the brain! He was dead before he even had a chance to turn around! It was magnificent, Awn, I'm telling you. Come on, hop up, there's more work to be done!"
As soon as Awn hops on, he immediately yells at Townsend to follow, and hurries back the way her came.
Upon arriving, he views the sordid remains of the creatures head. "That's...," he says aloud, though mostly to himself "that's bad. Like, really bad."
He turns to Ozzy. "I mean, I understand shooting it through the brain, but did you have to carve your name in it? I mean, sheesh," he states. "Talk about overkill."
He looks to Garess. "Get the mites, the bandits, and whomever else you can to come forward. We ride for the gates in a hour."
He turns to Dharak, Happs, and Townsend. "Look, I know it's grisly, but help me really quick. We're going to mount this and shoot it back over the wall."
He looks to Tazty, Iorskan, Guthruc, and Anura. "Alright, Murder Squad- I mean, dragons and party- can you all look really fierce, and start marching towards the walls? We're going to need to get there soon."
"Ozzy- can you get this ballistae moving? I want to shoot the head over the walls. Once we get it off, can you help make that happen?"
"I'm going to shoot this over the walls, and ask them to surrender. They won't, but it'll hurt their morale, especially when they realize the manticore is dead. We CAN hurt them. We WILL win. I know you know this, but I'm going to let everyone else know it, as well."
With that, he sets off with a fierce determination and a small fluttering in his belly over the chain of events he's helped set off.
Awn hops aboard the horse and listens to the excited fatespinner. Upon arriving at the grisly murder scene, Awn looks at the mutilated manticore's mind box and shrugs - having not seen the creature while it's mien was not mangled he finds the garish carving inconsequential. The woodborn happily employs T'lass to neatly lop off the foul corpse' head.
Iorskan excitedly waddled forward, swishing his tail back and forth while roaring. Fiercely!
Ozzy instructs the nameless bandits that had been hastily trained to load the ballistae to prepare one of them to move. She then sets off into the trees with Mr. Blinky at her side and Mr. Winky flying above and ahead, to scout and identify a path through the foliage wide enough to convey it.
With grumbles and protests the head is removed from the manticore.
Ozara's name still graces it with glowing letters. (Arcane mark will last indefinitely, unless dispelled.)
The head is loaded onto a ballistae. It won't be accurate, but then, it doesn't need to be.
"I'm going to shoot this over the walls, and ask them to surrender."
Captain Garess nods brusquely. "Demanding surrender is the proper thing to do. I worry though . . . it'd be unwise to leave the treeline and expose ourselves to their arrows. But without making a showing, we can't make a show of force. They might take our mercy for a bluff, wrongly thinking we can't back up our threats. After all, the manticore was killed by ballistae, not by overwhelming numbers."
She shrugs. "Draft your missive, I'll see it delivered over the wall."
Mr. Winky Stealth: 1d20 + 19 ⇒ (18) + 19 = 37
Mr. Winky Perception: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (20) + 14 = 34
Mr. Winky finds a trail unknown to the bipedal races wide enough for a horse to cart a wagon to carry a siege weapon.
Ozzy returns and reports the location of the trail. When the wagon is ready and the head is mounted and ready to be fired, she takes her place behind the weapon to ride, waiting for it to get into position. While she waits, she casts her arcane mark on the ballista, and on the javelin loaded in it.
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Abaos quickly takes pen to paper, and creates two letters. He's quick, and concise- this takes him no more than ten minutes, for he's been planning what he would say since the start of the march. When he finishes, he quickly seals the letters up. The second, he leaves untitled. On the first, however, he adds the words
To Kressel
Afterwards, he quickly begins walking towards the baseline of the trees. Upon reaching them, he quickly asks Ozzy to prepare the head, and he ties the two letters to a pair of rocks he finds nearby. And when they are ready, he gives a loud whistle, and then fires.
Go find Akiros Ismort. And then read this with him.
My name is Abaos. As you heave no doubt heard, I am one of the men sent by Restov to survey this forest and bring peace to the region. Let me just say, I intend to do this.
You and yours have been accused and found guilty of banditry in the region; by the law of Restov, the charge of this crime is death. However, I have authorized a deal with one of the leaders of this mission, Lieutenant Garess. Turn over the one who calls himself the Stag Lord, and his father, the wizard Nugrah, and surrender the monastery; everyone else is free to go. No harm will be done to them, and I will even allow them to leave unarmed, provided none provoke aggression as they leave. Before you go thinking that this is merely a ploy of some kind, I suggest you talk to your lady Kressel- ask her, and she will tell you, that I intend this sincerely.
As you have seen by the killing of your manticore, I can hurt you. And, regardless of whether I win here or not- and trust me, I will win- Restov will take the Stolen Lands. I told Kressel once that I had a plan- a plan to defeat the Stag Lord. Now, I will tell you- I have another plan. I do not necessarily intend to stay with Restov forever. I have a plan; and while I cannot tell you of this plan right now, I do hope that you would join me in this venture. It is, as far as I can see, your only chance.
I will give you until sundown tomorrow to reply.
Signed,
Abaos
He turns to the crew gathered around. "Alright," he says, "let's go. Wheel this thing back to the camp."
He turns to Ozzy, Awn, Guthrucl, and Iorskan. "A word, guys?"
Face still covered in Manticore gore, Iorskan’s head perked up.
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Ozzy reads the letter and makes some suggestions on the wording.