Seeing the creatures still alive, and feeling very miffed about how inconsiderate that was, Iorskan FWOOSH!
Guthruc finishes binding the fiend with rope.
Guthruc gets off the ground, picking up his wooden beat-stick on his way up. He stays put, leaving Sneeg's only escape route one that breaks his legs. "Come magic man, fight like man!"
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Abaos sees the wizard as he floats upwards, towards the ceiling. Ironically, he's now almost exactly in the same spot as the gambler! Huzzah! Unfortunately, he's not close enough. Too far away for Abaos to grab, and that's never a good thing. However, there is one escape route that Abaos can see, and, thinking quickly, deduces that the man is going to have to fly near him, somewhere, if he wants to escape. So, he stays put, and readies himself to spring....
Ozzy snatches up her spear, strikes at the howler, then takes a 5ft step back.
Ozzy does not attack the howler, which has already died and disappeared. Instead, after picking up her spear she hurries into the room where she can sense Mr. Blinky continuing to try to attack the wizard. She enters just in time to see him run at the wall and use it to direct his momentum upward, jumping into the air to try to catch him.
Finally seeing a reason to move, Awn shifts the passage of immediate time, quickening those about him. He rushes after the rushing girl, rushily.
Free Action: Drop Aura of Second Sight
Standard Action: Enact Aura of Alacrity
Move Action: Move 35'
Jen yells out a question about whether or not there are any more potential hidden creatures in the room. This is mostly directed towards Guthruc, to whom, in the heat of battle, she has forgotten a good deal of her trepidation towards.
Jen really wishes she could See Invisibility, but, then again, it's quite situational, and she does have...
Rapidly moving to face the area in which Gurthruc smelled the "magic man", she lets her sleeves fall back as she prepares to cast the hardest spell she has all day. A giant cloud of golden particles, carefully contained by a tight reign on her magical energies so as not to blind, explodes forth.
EDIT:
Guthruc (maybe) noticing the searching look on his allies' faces conveys some info about what he gathered when he had the new sense. one fire smell fly away, one guthruc trap. Magic man fly over desk here.
Jen considers her stick-like arms then decides, oh well, she does have a big whacking pole, might as well use it. Grabbing her quarterstaff (Oh, why did I get this dumb thing in darkwood?) she goes over to where the imp is tied up and attempts to bonk it.
Mr. Blinky's AoO does eight damage.
Mr. Blinky, springing off the wall, leaps up at the flying wizard, lashing out with maw and claws. His mouth closes around Falgrim's leg, and the eidolon dangles in the air, briefly, scrabbling with raking claws to find a handhold and climb the airborne caster. There's a sound not unlike a baseball being hit out of the park as Sneeg's leg gives out under Mr. Blinky's weight.
Unable to find purchase in the slippery, almost frictionless film that covers the wizard like an invisible and largely ineffectual carapace, Blinky falls back to the earth, the sudden absense of his weight sending the wizard he was hanging on careening into the ceiling.
Sneeg screams out in pain, spinning in the air while his leg flops about uselessly. He wrests control of his flight, and then uses his supernatural teleportation ability to disapear in a cloud of purple smoke.
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Abaos is coiled, his firm fingers on the ceiling clutching every second or so , as if in readiness to spring. He indeed is. Ozzy's odd wolf just finished maiming the wizard, and Abaos can sense the time to strike. The wizard is careening into the ceiling, and, as soon as he hits, Abaos is going to hit him. One of his hands nervously begins edging towards a starknife.....
....and then he's gone. In a flash of noxious purple smoke, the wounded wizard disappears. Quickly, Abaos flips about, expecting to once again find the wizard in another corner, another part of the room.... but he can't see him. He's gone.
He acrobatically rushes down to the floor. "Where is he!"" he hollers. "Where did he go? Ozzy, Awn, Guthruc? Can you sense him?"
His eyes narrow upon the newcomer, the supposed adventurer who offered her services as a mage. "Mage, if you want to prove yourself, you tell me where he is." As soon as he says this, he turns his back, knife still drawn, legs circling, spinning, as one might as if expecting an attack.
Slowly, tentatively, he works his way back to where Happs, Nugrah, Dharak, Sally's shoulder (), he speaks to the systemically- upset woman. "Thank you for your service, today. Stay here, and get back to the camp when you can. Tell them what happened. Garess, and Sootscale, Townsend. If they live."
A thought suddenly crosses his mind, but he thinks of the immediate first.
"Nugrah, we set you free. Now, I ask for repayment. You've saved me; help everyone here, and we will be even. This I ask." The request is odd; not because of what he is asking, but because he's not even looking at the wizened old druid as he says it. Rather, with a quick nod to Happs, he looks Dharak straight in the face; he can tell the valiant half- orc has had more than his share of the fight.
Seeing to it that his men are safe, he checks back to Ozzy. "How goes it upstairs?" he asks softly.
"Nugrah, we set you free. Now, I ask for repayment. You've saved me; help everyone here, and we will be even. This I ask."
By the time Abaos makes his way to the ground to make his request, the old druid has already healed the two archers in most critical condition. Now he's removing the spines embedded in Dharak.
"Hold still," he reprimands the orc.
"This is kinda unpleasant, yeah?" Dharak explains, frustrated.
Nugrah turns to Abaos. "I wasn't lying earlier. We have the same goal." He gestures with one of the howler quills for effect. "To kill the Stag Lord. And that's what I intend to do. I would appreciate your help doing it."
"Thank you for your service, today. Stay here, and get back to the camp when you can. Tell them what happened. Garess, and Sootscale, Townsend. If they live."
"Like hell," the butcher of badger's glade snarls. "Gonna kill that bastard." She snatches her bow off the ground.
Patton looks over his unburned limbs. "Think I'll chill next to the healer," Patton says. "Townsend's up there fighting, if I turn tail and run I'll never hear the end of it."
Nugrah moves to cast cure light wounds on Dharak, but the half-orc ducks out of the way. "Save your juice for someone who needs it; I can walk, I'll walk back to camp and get Bokken to heal me. Figure I've done my piece for just now."
Nugrah doesn't argue, casting his spell on Happs Bydon instead.
"Thanks," to hooded man mutters.
"I have one healing spell left," Nugrah declares. "Who needs it the worst? Or should I save it for later?"
"How goes it upstairs?"
Twelve seconds after being panicked by the mighty mite swarm, Auchs ripped a hole large enough to ride a horse through in the palisade and set off into the charred woodlands.
Having moved in through both the front door and the hole in the wall, horseback riders are maneuvering to the best of their abilities in the narrow confines. The kobolds have set up their phalanx formation, and are inexorably pressing their way forward. The kobold commandos are attacking targets of opportunity from stealth. The mites and their centipedes are swarming on the walls and walkways, with little leadership. Viceroy Dragonfly's giant dragonfly was shot out of the air by massed fire, and the viceroy is now on the ground fighting back to back with Chief Sootscale. Tatzy is not immediately visible, though a trail of six ruined bodies marks where she made her way inside the fortress. The giant whiptail centipede is dead. :(
Falgrim Sneeg is on top of the monastery flopping about like a dying fish and chugging a potion of cure light wounds, which does pretty much nothing to fix his ruined leg or sucking chest wounds.
You'd estimate causalities on both sides to be about ~twelvish. Most of the NPCs aren't stellar at damage dealing, and with the spellcaster otherwise occupied thus far, Auchs running around outside the walls, Tatzy doing whatever she's doing, Chief Sootscale currently unable to sneak attack, Akiros Ismort squaring off against the giant whiptail centipede; only Kressel and the cavaliars are hitting particularly heavily.
While Nugrah's healing people, thar be looting to do!
The familiar has, on it, a wand of infernal healing (50 charges) (never 'arore been used!), a scroll of Cure Serious Wounds (at CL 7), and a wand of silent image (3 charges).
The desk has on it Falgrim Sneeg's private notes and personal library (worth 150 gp), as well as the hefty rawhide-bound tome that is his spellbook. There's also the remnants of several basketball sized leathery soft shelled eggs, and one such egg that hasn't been split open or drained of it's fluids.
LV 4: Bestow Curse, Summon Monster 4, Rainbow Pattern, Phantom Chariot
LV 3: Fly, Comunal Resist Energy, Haste, Summon Monster 3
LV 2: Acid Arrow, Web, Invisibility, Bear's Endurance
LV 1: Protection from Arrows, Mage Armor, Alarm, Silent Image, Summon Monster 1, Feather Fall, Infernal Healing
Ozzy hurriedly pulls out her wand of Infernal Healing and begins casting it on anyone who is still wounded, while filing them in on what's happening upstairs.
As soon as Mr. Winky sees Sneeg appear, he casts Magic Missile, trying to finish him off.
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Nugrah turns to Abaos. "I wasn't lying earlier. We have the same goal." He gestures with one of the howler quills for effect. "To kill the Stag Lord. And that's what I intend to do. I would appreciate your help doing it."
Abaos hears the druids words. He doesn't acknowledge them immediately- he's busy listening to Ozzy's description of the fight upstairs- but once she's finished, he turns to the druid.
"Allies, then," he says, offering his hand to shake.
"Save your juice for someone who needs it; I can walk, I'll walk back to camp and get Bokken to heal me. Figure I've done my piece for just now."
Just then, Abaos notices the half- orc heading back out the opposite direction. Sudden comprehension dawns on him, and Abaos calls out.
"Dharak." he yells. After waiting to see the half orc acknowledge him, he calls back "Thank you. For what you've done today, thank you."
He heads to the top of the stairs, where he waits to consult with Happs, Nugrah, and the gang.
Guthruc, after hearing the exchange with abaos and dharak rushes over to the man, clasping his hand on the half-orc's shoulder.
"you fought good, like a true orc."
Mr. Winky knows darkness. Mr. Winky is made of darkness. Something about this darkness isn't right.
While he's been sharing the events upstairs with Ozzy, Ozzy has been sharing the ones downstairs with him, so this trick does not surprise him, and he's knows how it failed the first time.
He stares into the counterfeit darkness, trying to make it reveal what it's hiding, as true darkness always does.
Iorskan roared, the flames finally dying down. He stomped around, swiping his tail back and forth. He was hungry! Angry! Hungry and angry! He had killed so many things and there was nothing to eat!
His roars were no longer as little as they used to be.
Guthruc walks to Iorskan
had he always been this big?
Attempting to apply his draconic lessons to a real scenario, he remarks:
"anymore small not dragon, is sized guthruc now dragon"
Guthruc, getting his now 6 known languages mixed together uses the grammatical rules for giant instead of draconic.
Iorskan looked at Guthric, breathing fire from his nostrils. ”Friend! You speak the language of your soul. That is good. I hunger! We kill and kill and kill but there is naught but smoke and shadows!” There was a feral, animalistic glint in his eyes. He was becoming noticeably larger, and his body needed to replenish itself. It was taxing his self control to not charge off looking for prey.
"you fought good, like a true orc."
“. . . Thanks.”
[dice=Missile]1d4 + 1
Sneeg spends his standard action concentrating on his spell, and his move action flying sixty feet away from Mr. Winky, using the illusionary darkness to obstruct line of sight. (Pointlessly, but he doesn’t know that.)
** spoiler omitted **
Mr. Winky, who now looking more like a flapping wisp of shadow-stuff against the black night sky, sends another ball of magical force to unerringly strike Sneeg, then flies 30ft in the direction he's moving to keep him from getting out of range.
Mr. Winky follows after the wizard, launching a mystic bolt from his wand, and then another. At this point Falgrim goes into a dive that he doesn’t come out of. The wizard’s broken body hits the ground and rolls, before coming to a stop with limbs and neck bent in a manner that neither limbs nor neck were ever meant to be bent.
Mr. Winky informs Ozzy of Sneeg's demise and where he went down. Since Mr. Winky's part of the plan is over, she tells him to keep an eye on the body so that someone doesn't find it while they're fighting and make off with any magic items he might have had.
The mental message comes in as the group is getting ready to ascend the stairs. Yes! Ozzy exclaims, for no apparent reason, then turns to her companions. Sneeg's dead, she explains, Mr. Winky found him and finished him off. The last is said with more than a little of smugness (but in a cute way).
Jen sees the spellbook and flips through it.
She pockets it, then, grabbing the egg, runs after the others. She almost trips over the first step, so absorbed is she in examining the object, but she manages to best her inanimate foe.
It looks to be a wyvern egg.
Jen turns the egg back and forth under the dim torchlight of the room. It's a good bit larger than a fowl's egg and, though even her weak arms could hold it up for hours, has a decent amount of heft to it, too. She contemplates where she can keep it in the ensuing battle, as it would certainly interfere with her spellcasting and it seems as if it would push the constraints of her pockets...
And then, because Jen is something of a long-term thinker, she considers the uses and issues presented if and when the egg hatches...
Turning to Iorskan, who, she realizes, she's had the most friendly conversations with out of the party members so far, she asks,
He seems like one of the prouder dragons, one of the ones who fancies themselves a mighty lord... He probably looks down on them, Jen predicts.
EDIT:
Confident of his newfound skills in draconic, guthruc understands Jen's request and replies in common, another recently learned language. like dragon? Guthruc friends allies with big dragon, no just Isnrokagn
”They are so close to perfection and yet so far. I pity their ill fortune. Is that one of the eggs we came to find?” The egg looked so tasty... ”Hunger! I go to eat! I wait no longer!” Iorskan began moving towards the conflict above.
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Abaos puts a hand towards Iorskan, stopping him, and signals the two kobolds, and the rest of the bandits. He talks quickly.
"Ok, it's safe to assume our presence here is felt. Thanks to Ozzy's reports, we know that Akiros is already engaged in the battle. So we go in hot, guns blazing. Remember, we're here to kill the Stag Lord, just the stag Lord. If we can get him, we'll get everyone else to surrender. Sound fair? Heavies to the front, everyone else to the back. Let's go!"
With a cheer, he lets everyone rush past, upstairs, clapping Iorskan as he goes.
Guthruc leads the charge up the stairs with newfound strength and bloodlust in his eyes. Time to kill the stag lord!
Chief Sootscale had been wrong about Viceroy Dragonfly.
A massive human with long hair charged down the stairs at the viceroy, swinging it's sword with a two-handed grip. Sootscale ducked under it's guard, kneecapping it with his mace and gutting it with his spear. In so doing, he left himself vulnerable; the mite covered for the kobold, deflecting an attack of his shield and into the ground. The small blue creature was screaming unintelligibly.
The two of them stood back to back, blocking the stairs leading to the catwalks and rooftops overhead, battling humans on two fronts. The archers on the roof had broken the kobold's phalanx, killed those who couldn't get inside to shelter fast enough.
The mite was screaming something Sootscale couldn't understand. He began maneuvering his way out of the doorframe, and the chief understood, swapping positions, giving the viceroy a moment to catch his breath under slightly less fire. Even without a common language, Chief Sootscale felt that he understood the fey. Both of them were leaders, yes? Both of them felt the weight of command, both of them were strong by necessity, by expectation.
Cheif Sootscale had been wrong about Viceroy Dragonfly. Perhaps kobolds and mites weren't so different.
Guthruc throws open the trapdoor out of the basement to find himself in the middle of what appears to be a full-scale rout; everyone and their mother is trying to make their way up the stairs to avoid the kobold phalanx pressing inexorably inward, and the wyvern that is somewhere in the building with them. Unfortunately for them, the stairs were blocked at some point by the mite Kressel shot out of the sky, and by a scarily competent kobold assassin who's already killed two people in front of them.
Guthruc takes a 5ft step to be in reach of both 13 and 25, then clobbers 13 to death.
Guthruc turns to 25. "next"