As Gemma swims around the giant rock fall, she thinks she may hear Willem’s voice but can’t be sure. Either way, it doesn’t have the tone of screaming or panic (the way Glix’s does), so she swims on.
As she makes it to the end of the boulder and sees the plumes of blood along the way, she can only guess what has happened and is glad that, for the most part, it was probably a swift death. Despite the grisly scene, Gemma remains detached and only has her mind on the group’s next moves and what will allow them to best survive and succeed. Even though she's never been a soldier at war, she's thankful for the natural ability to turn off emotional reactions.
I need to see how far the tunnel goes…let’s see…210 feet from ship to cave…60 to the rock…50 down the tunnel…end of the line shouldn’t be more than 100…130…give or take. More than that and I’ll turn around... 2 minutes there, 2 minutes back...
Gemma knows what needs to be done.
Tourniquet the goblin’s leg so he doesn’t bleed out…lever out his foot. If he doesn’t die from shock, heal him to keep him living. Can’t bring him down the tunnel and leave him in the mine shaft. If we die, he dies…have to get him back to the ship first. That’s going to eat up some time…may have to use more scrolls so we don’t drown…need to save enough for later though, just in case. Drop him off...get back to the mine...only off schedule by a little...fix the plan when we're on land and breathing air...
It’s all very clinical and clear. She can only hope that the others will figure out the plan on their own.
She swims back just a bit to signal Ifris at the beginning of the tunnel, but she’s surprised to see Jonathan there instead. Wonder what happened to Lanvaldan… She stuffs the sunrod under her arm and then signals Jonathan to stop and wait. She doesn't wait for a reply.
Turning, she gets the sunrod back in her hand and swims down the tunnel, hoping to find the bottom of the mine shaft and not an unending tunnel or rock face.
Johnathan reaches down and removes the ring from Celeana's finger. He notes Gemma's signal. "Where are you going?" he asks. "We should stick together." If she continues to ignore him and head down the tunnel alone, he shakes his head and goes back to the others, dealing with Glix.
"The rest of the Resiliance didn't make it. Not a very accurate name..." he complains bitterly. "Can I help with Glix?"
Emerson sees Johnathan appear from around the boulder. "Yes, we can all try to help Ifris free Glix's foot. Then we can figure out how to best extricate him from the right" He swims down next to Ifris gets as good a hold as possible and waits for the others to join.
Anneca knows that they should conserve their resources and free Glix with brute force and surgical violence. It would be the logical tactical decision to help Ifris and the others pull his leg free and amputate the other. With the rest of the team most likely dead and the loss of Makala still fresh in her heart, she cannot bear the possibility of another constable's death. "STAND CLEAR!" she shouts at the others as she yanks open one of the two scroll boxes. Water floods into them, something that Anneca barely considered, but she hopes that their magical nature will keep them relatively free of damage. She pulls out one of the three passwall scrolls, knowing that she can cause the rock to recede.
She quickly pops open the scroll tube and unfurls the magical paper. She is relieved to see that the ink does not run, with the delicate characters still in their meticulous order. Cyneburg's handwriting is simple to read and the casting is fairly straightforward. The scroll lists the components of the spell that were used to infuse it with magic. Strangely, sesame seeds seem to be the primary material component, in addition to the usual expensive ones. She brings Letmas's words to mind about how to harness the power already inside the scroll, to direct it even when it is a far more powerful transmutation than anything she can produce. She spits out the instructed words in Draconic, her preferred language for casting spells, and performs the required gestures. The final gesture is a thrust of the right hand with a rotation of the grasping fingers (somewhat like turning a knob, the scroll helpfully notes). The rock recedes in the same motion, melting back into itself and freeing Glix.
Ifris yanks the goblin out, gliding back in the water with great force from trying to free his trapped foot. Anneca tries not to look at his mangled legs or the blood flowing out of it. She shouts, "EMERSON, USE THE WAND!" She looks back at the still-forming tunnel, hoping that she got the angle right to free some of the bodies trapped underneath. They deserve a proper burial, she thinks to herself, not to be trapped here forever.
Willem backs away as other members of the team uses another approach to freeing Burton. "Let's come for the dead later, they are not going anywhere. Is Burton OK enough to continue or since we have time, return him to the ship before continuing?"
Now why didn't I think of that? He shakes his head slightly as he pulls forth the wand just procured from the Quartermaster.
He points the wand at Glix and thinks Heal...
The skin around the goblin's wounds closes and the bleeding stops although the constable's right leg still looks quite broken. He looks at Ifris and nods. "He should be alright to move now. Do we enough time to take him back to the ship?"
Willem looks from his current position to see if there is an exit in the cave to the island surface.
While he looks, Willem responds to Emerson,
"It took us two minutes to get down here and another (2) minutes to observe what happened here and help Senior Constable Glix. And we have approximately 27 more minutes of water breathing remaining. See if you can make him awake and ask him if he wants to go back to the ship or continue with the mission for pay back. That is one mean Constable in a diminutive package there"
Anneca can barely hear Willem in the dull quiet of the water. "Are you crazy? His leg is destroyed! We have to get him back to the ship! Either help or get out of the way!" She grabs the goblin by the arm, pulling him as she swims back towards the rope. He weighs more than she thought that he would, but she grabs on tightly to the lifeline. She looks back at the injured constable as she swims him back to the ship. "What happened, Glix? Did they know we were coming?"
Emerson helps the Senior Constable so that he is "standing" next to the boulder. "Well sir? Are you of a mind to continue the mission? Decide quickly as times a wasting.
Johnathan raises one eyebrow at Anneca's choice of language. This is war, not a nursery. He's lucky we even went off mission long enough to save his ungrateful green arse. However, he feels he is too new to the team to verbally express any of his disapproval. So he remains silent, waiting for the others and their great leader Ifris to give a command.
Willem takes a second look at Burton's leg, "Hey now Anneca, don't act like the Senior Constable your assistin', there is no need for it. Yeah, now I see it without dirt, water refraction, weird lighting, and magical light distorting its true condition after the heal. I will help you Anneca get him back on board the Impossible."
Is this a little bit of professional pay back by Willem of his former mentor, you bet!
The constables clear the sea cave entrance on the rope like with Burton Glix between them, slowing making their way back to the R.N.S. Impossible. It is slow going with Burton only being able to hold onto the rope and feebly thrash about; the mashed right leg trails fits and spurts of blood into the water with each steady breath, though Emerson’s first use of the healing wand sealed up many of the worst tears and splits to prevent Glix from bleeding out. One constable lights the way and swims in the lead, with the other two constables helping to mostly pull and push Burton along the rope like as they slowly ascend the line towards the ship…
stand at the front of the deadly rockfall with the bizarre channel magically carved into it, watching briefly as the sunrod light from the swimming group fades behind them. A glint of metal shines off of the sunrod that Ifris leaves on the floor of the cave just behind them – the beautiful feysteel telescoping rod-and-hook that Burton Glix had let fall from his hands when they got to him. Interestingly, the feysteel rod slowly transforms now before their eyes, retracting in size and losing its hook appendage until it resembles a silvery baton no more than a foot in length. They both look at it a moment until Johnathan picks it up – at which point a small flood of understanding comes to his mind, the enchanted feysteel rod imparting its usefulness to him.
With the tool in their possession, the pair split up to investigate different points of the rockfall and see to where Gemma Atherton has gone off to. Ifris lingers on looking at the dreadful remains of two corpses that the bizarre but effective passwall spell uncovers – completely squashed and pulverized. The nearer of the two forms appears to be Danan Jakes by both the size and the crushed and crumpled armor that he wore, with what appears to be the remains of a gauntleted hand reaching out to a pulped leg that sticks out of the passwall’s edge farther into rock. The other body at the very forward limit of the passwall is that of Tanya Sparhawk, unrecognizable except for the mashed remains of her mastiff underneath her.
Though R.H.C. protocols have no mention on this point whatsoever, the two bodies could be dragged out and recovered for later, though there is no way to retrieve the third except for a leg.
True enough to her approximate calculations, Gemma swims an estimated one-hundred-twenty feet past the back edge of the rockfall with her sunrod in hand until she sees what she was roughly expecting and hoping for: a fissure-like opening in the ceiling some twenty feet above her that seems to widen and slope upwards some thirty feet to where the water’s surface can be perceived, sloshing about with the low tide. Though the main sea cave continues on past this feature, it rapidly tapers down to an eroded dead-end just a few yards past it. The ceiling fissure appears natural and seems to be the only way forward from this point.
Though she contemplates heading up there to investigate further, she knows that she is not an adept enough swimmer to break the surface of the tidal waters stealthily in her armor. There is no illumination or anything perceivable past the water’s surface that she can tell from here. With half her estimated time gone and not knowing what the others are having to deal with the trapped Burton Glix, she decides to keep to her planned schedule and returns back the way she came.
The four constables break the surface of the sea and reach the Impossible under the stars and Hunter’s Moon low in the nighttime sky, waving for assistance from the sailors at the starboard side railing. Orders are given and several rope ladders are thrown from the side, with sailors either jumping into the water or descending nimbly on thick ropes to assist them up. Burton is hauled up first, followed by the others in quick succession.
As the three constables wearily make it to the deck of the ship, they see at least two sailors clutched over with hands over their mouths, with a third greenhorn lad now retching up his dinner over the side of the railing. Burton’s leg was a bad enough sight in the murky waters of the sea cave, but up in the air on the deck it is positively ghastly - bone fragments protruding from several places and blood spurting from splits in his leg that Emerson’s wand didn’t heal.
”Bleaking Heavens,” exclaims Captain Rutger Smith as he reaches them from the upper foredeck. ”Get that leg covered up! Blankets for them all now! And someone get Surgeon Phillips up here on the double-quick!”
Within moments the flurry of activity from the Captain’s orders helps to offset the shock and horror of the scene and gets men’s minds back to useful purpose. Blankets are thrown around the shoulders of the three uninjured constables, with other men both covering and raising Burton’s leg to try and keep his life’s blood from spilling out all over the deck. When the ship’s surgeon comes - a balding man by the name of Phillips in a thick canvas apron like what a butcher would wear - he takes one look at the wound and shakes his head. ”It’s got to come off, Constable. There’s nothing left to hold it together – even with magical healing it’s just a useless piece of meat trailing off of you, and will probably poison you with the taint.”
”You just keep my m-meat where it is for now, h-healer. Other business has to come before we get to that.” Burton Glix looks with pained but fierce coal eyes up at the Captain. ”Resilience is gone, Capt’n. The b-backup team is all that’s left. They’ll have to get the bloody thing done somehow.” Captain Smith nods in acceptance of the new situation as soldiers are trained to do, with Burton Glix turning to the three who brought him here to safety.
Despite the incredible pain he’s in and the loss of his friends and colleagues, Burton manages to keep conscious and hold it together to relate what happened to his team just minutes before. ”We had breached the sea cave in good order, Tanya in the lead by then and both Danan and Letmas behind her, with Celeana doling out rope and me in the rearguard. No problems at all and no signs of trouble. Then all at once we…we weren’t in the water anymore, not in the cave!” Burton shudders in pain as he tries to recall and relate what happened next. ”The place shifted? We were in a swamp, hot and stinking, under a…a purple sky the color of ripe plums. And yellow frogs – bright yellow like sunflowers in Summer, or Yerasol sweetfruit. At first I thought it was some ill-timed jest from Letmas with his illusions, but one look at his face and I knew it wasn’t. We had mud on our boots and clothes from where we landed in the muck…it didn’t feel like we were teleported to this place whatever it was – to my right I could still see the wall and water of the cavern, behind me the sea cave entrance. The rope was still stretching back to the ship all taut from Celeana’s coil, so I knew we hadn’t left anywhere…we were here and there all at the same time!”
Burton shudders again, slapping a hand down upon the deck as he keeps himself conscious to finish the story. ”And then just like that the swamp was gone, and the sea water rushed in all around us once more and threw us about the tunnel. Because I was starting back already to look at the rope behind us I was able to grab hold with Kirby and keep from being swept forward. That’s when I heard a loud crack above us, saw I did as the entire section of ceiling split away and comes rushing down on top of us. I saw…I…” Burton wipes his eyes quickly and his breathing starts to become faster and more labored then, ”…I saw Letmas try to cast a forcewall above us before the stone hit but there was nothing for his spell to anchor against…and then the water threw Dan at his feet to bowl him over and it was all over. Tanya and her mutt didn’t have a chance where they were. As for Kirby and I...she panicked when she saw the ceiling coming down on top of us and left the rope line to try and swim out the side, but the inrushing water was against her. As I was about to be pressed down I gave a heave using the rope as leverage to make it clear, but…” Burton lets the last bit fade, lying back on the deck as if fading to unconsciousness.
In a final spurt of grit and determination, the veteran goblin constable starts back awake and grabs at the constables who rescued him. ”You’re it now – you don’t get that gate open and two-thousand marines are gonna be butchered at the walls by dawn trying to scale those outer walls from deep water!” He fixes a stare at Anneca then, giving her a nod and murmur of thanks, the first true display of kindness any of them have ever seen from Burton Glix. ”I may lose the leg but you saved my life Summers…you showed you can use the scrolls, so use ‘em to get this mission done. I don’t know what that was down there, but it wasn’t no Danoran trick or Drakran trap, that I can be sure of. That was wild magic…Dan said once the place was cursed bein’ so close to the malice-wracked lands, but I never believed it until now.”
To Emerson he nods and says, ”Get it done, Hill, you and Summers and the rest of ‘em. I left my feysteel all-tool somewhere down there – I expect it back but use it if you need to. The sea gate mechanism should be simple enough to manage, but you never know what you need ‘till you need it.”
Lastly, Burton Glix eyes his former protégé Willem and smiles a mean smile at him. ”You’re still a right runty git there, Muhnee! Would ya have had the guts to cut me loose? I doubt it. Now prove me wrong about you and get those sea gates opened for the fleet…and put a round from your precious pepperbox into Ethelyn’s head for me if you see her.”
Johnathan is around the corner of the rockfall, determined not to look at the arms and hands of Celeana Kirby for fear of the old memories returning. Instead, he finishes his cursory examination of the rockfall, concluding it impossible for it to be a rigged trap, and therefore must be a natural schism of the rock. Well, not impossible perhaps – John supposes maybe a host of crazed fatalist Drakran sappers could have managed such a feat, given enough time and effort. Yet that makes no sense down here, not with the way the rockfall fell. For one the enormous size and sheer weight of the stone could never be rigged to fall with standard emplacements underneath to hold it in place in the tunnel ceiling. Secondly, the moving sea water and the tides would make any sort of tripwire impossible to set, and a pressure plate in the ground would be pointless if one could swim over it. Plus he sees no signs of tripwires, pressure plates, sapper carvings or runes of any kind that would suggest a trap. Finally, the angle of the rockfall as well as the fact the stone did not block the passage completely would go against any notion of having a deadfall rigged in the first place. It just doesn’t make sense.
Johnathan’s sharp eyes spies light from well down the sea tunnel approaching him – the return of Gemma Atherton from her scouting down the passage. As she reaches him without any signs of duress or injury, she signals to him that there’s an exit just down the natural sea tunnel as expected. Now they just have to wait for the rest of the constables to return before they can decide to proceed on.
Anneca, Willem and Emerson return back to the sea cave and the rockfall where they freed Burton Glix, the passwall still cutting a channel into the rock for the time being. The six constables form up to ably speak to one another, relating what they have discovered to each other, and what must come next. Not too far distant from Gemma’s scouting lies the exit to this sea tunnel as expected, and the bottom of the Danoran archeological mine shaft they have yet to explore. Time continues to press on...
Johnathan slips Celeana's ring onto his small finger for safe keeping. He tucks the feysteel rod into his belt and says, "Well, what are we waiting for, Constables? Let's roll out! the longer we're here the more chance we give queer occurrences to catch us."
Gemma looks to Jonathan and then the other constables. "I agree. The faster we're on land and breathing air, the better. There's nothing we can do about when and where these shifts occur. We just have to hope they don't happen to us and deal with them as we can if they do."
"When I swam up the tunnel, there is indeed a mine shaft. I didn't break the water's surface, so there's no way to know if an alarm will sound somewhere when we do. We just have to take our chances and get this done."
Willem just smirks at Senior Constable Glix when he insults him about retrieving him under the boulder then replies to Glix, "We will open the gates and I'll give her as many extra eyes as it takes."
Willem looks to Johnathan, then Gemma, "I'm ready to go! We have 18 minutes of air remainin' and we don't know much further we need to go to get to the surface. We also need to hurry to get those gates open."
"Well?" says Emerson as he gestures towards the surface as if inviting someone inside for a drink. "Ladies first."
Gemma gives a wink and a nod to Emerson and takes him up on his offer. With sunrod in one hand and knife in the other, she heads for the gap between the rock fall and the sea cave wall. She hopes the swim will go as easily and as quickly as before with no surprises.
Provided there are no more shifts to another world, Gemma will wait for the others before breaking the surface of the water at the bottom of the mine shaft.
Please don't let there be an alarm...please don't let there be an alarm...please don't let there be an alarm...
But right before she breaks the surface, a thought breaks through that brings a second of pause. What if the shifts are from the fey? Shit! Please don't be fey...please don't be fey...please don't be fey...
Together and in good order, the so-called “backup” team of R.H.C. constables swims their way past the deadly rockfall that spelled the end of the vaunted Resilience team of Slate Branch. Though they no longer have the rope line to guide them, the swim through the remaining one-hundred fifty-feet or so is easy enough for all to manage. With the light of several sunrods to illuminate the passage as well as their water breathing enchantments, the journey through the sea tunnel is simple. Yet in the backs of their minds remain of what happened to Resilience and the shifting to some strange place that defies all normal Risuri explanation. Will it happen again? What triggers it? When will it occur and why?
Soon enough they come to the natural fissure in the ceiling of the tunnel before it tapers to its end; the angled passage above them shows the surface of the tidal waters just a few dozen feet away. With Gemma and Ifris in the lead, the group swims up through the fissure and into the short passage that leads to the mine, breaking the surface of the water - the group reaching the surface is not stealthily managed, with light from their sunrods spilling into a cavernous area that can only be the bottom of the so-called archeological mine. They have made it, however, and quickly see that there is a means of egress for them which Lya Jierre said would be there.
The 80-ft. diameter, 60-ft. high cave in the bottom of this mine has no light sources, and from their vantage point they can only surmise what the entire circumference of the mine looks like. The air, however, is pleasantly warm for being underground. Less comforting are the dull glint of many iron spikes embedded in the shaft walls, each six inches long, driven into the walls every thirty feet or so on their side of the shaft. At low tide they estimate the water where they swim to be at ten to twenty feet deep, but in one area to their left it seems to slope upwards to a standing depth from five-feet to just a few inches. Wooden docks and platforms are anchored to the walls and form a makeshift dock and stairs about the mine shaft, which seem to lead upwards. The construction is relatively new by the looks of the logs and timbers used. From their side, however, the dock to their right is a good five feet or more above the surface of the water at low tide, too tall to grasp and pull themselves up on without considerable climbing skill. Strangely, a wooden ladder laid horizontally bridges the water from the dock to another platform higher up ahead of them, attached to a rather strange and distinctive pillar of stone.
A twenty-foot diameter pillar of dull gray stone rises from the water line to the darkness well above them; the wooden platform is anchored about ten feet up on it to provide closer inspection. Even more interesting is a dramatic splinter of white marble that extrudes from the gray stone, five feet wide and rising approximately fifteen to twenty feet above the water. Ages of high tidal surf has eroded its surface, but in places one can still find hints of ancient pictogram carvings, confirming the validity of some archeological purpose to this mine shaft. It looks like once the splinter was part of a longer column, but something snapped free its top. The missing section of pillar is nowhere to be found.
Emerson breaks the surface of the water with Sunrod in hand. He looks around but his low light vision is compromised by his proximity to the light source. "Can anyone see anything?"
"Lets get onto land," Johnathan suggests, pointing around the southern end of the cavern.
Gemma will look to the other constables and whisper, in case there are things listening in the dark.
"Constable Muhnee? Perhaps we can move to the dock and try and get up to get a better look."
"The rest of you, wait here a moment. If anything tries to kill us...well...swim quickly...either away or towards us, whichever seems better." Gemma tries to smile a little to make light of the grim situation before setting off with Willem.
She whispers back to Willem, so the others don't hear. "Don't think I'm crazy for splitting up. Someone has to go first and if we go down, at least they still have plenty of fighters and our caster's still protected. Although, I have no intention of any of us buying the farm today. We just have to be quiet and ready. You know the drill." She smiles back to him a little, hoping the gesture will make the situation less tense. "Plus, it will give us the best vantage point and hopefully the fastest way out."
Gemma will make her way over to the dock and hand her sunrod to Willem before she attempts to climb up. She's hoping she can be quiet enough and that her keen senses will alert her to any problems.
There's always the possibility of scary things in the dark, right? But dark warehouses and here isn't the same now is it? Get your shit together and keep it there. We're going to move forward and get to those damn gates and get them open and win this. Period. No other outcome.
[dice = Perception] 1+4 = 5
Emerson breaks the surface of the water with Sunrod in hand. He looks around but his low light vision is compromised by his proximity to the light source. "Can anyone see anything?"
Gemma will make her way over to the dock and hand her sunrod to Willem before she attempts to climb up. She's hoping she can be quiet enough and that her keen senses will alert her to any problems.
Climb: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (15) + 7 = 22
Anneca spots the strange coin embedded in the pillar. "What's that? Maybe a trap?" She swims a little closer to check on it, ever so slow in the water. Just like she practiced, she opens up her senses to feel the magical currents. It is hard at first, like it used to be, but she presses onward with her concentration until the difficulty fades. She turns her attention towards the coin and pillar, checking for magical auras.
Before Willem swims up to where Gemma is, he whispers to Anneca, Emerson, Ifris, and Johnathan about what is in the . Then he swims up to where Gemma is, remains in the water, and whispers up to her, "There is a floatin' magical patrol on the dock that went away from us and disappeared into the darkness but it will probably be back. Also, over there is a ladder to a higher platform. That may be better than being sittin' ducks here and will be at a higher vantage point."
Emerson follows Gemma and Willem towards the dock. "I'm going to need help getting up there. Gemma, can you throw down a rope?
Willem, still in the water, looks at Emerson and whispers, "We are goin' to pile on to the dock with a patrol? So when it returns, we will have no where to go? Of course, we don't know if that higher platform is any safer at this time as well?" Willem nods his head and continues to whisper, "If we are not movin' to the ladder up to the higher dock plank, we should tie off a rope to help people from fallin' back into the water making lots of noise."
Map of the Mine (after first actions)
For the first time outside of recent practice at the R.H.C., you see the magical emanations flowing out from the golden coin and around the white marble splinter jutting out from the grey stone column. With more time, you feel that you could discern more about the emanations: their strength and possibly the type of magic involved. However, that means you must swim slower than what is normally possible to maintain your concentration, and therefore stay in the tidal waters longer.
As best as you could tell, the shadowy "magical patrol" you spied out fled silently up the platform and disappeared from your view in the dim light above a ladder to an even higher platform . There was no sound to speak of and it moved very fast.
With a final heave all that is needed to get yourself on the docks , you'll be at a point where you can quickly anchor yourself and reach back down to assist Willem and Emerson up from the water...as well as any of the others who swim to your location .
Even as Johnathan voices his notion of moving towards the shallower tidal waters nearer to where the stone column is set, Ifris surges off in that direction, her strange black skinsuit allowing her to swim faster than anyone else in the group can manage. She's about halfway there with the light of her sunrod revealing more of the mine around you - the waters are definitely shallow enough to stand behind the column, and there is a faint impression of another dock or platform at the very limit of her sunrod's illumination. Ladders laid horizontally to the platform set at the grey stone column are clearly seen now on both sides, and look to be sturdy enough to crawl across.
Everything seems eerily quiet, apart from the gentle lapping of tidal waters at the bottom of the mine shaft. The large embedded golden coin at the white marble splinter glints faintly now from the sunrods for all to see. Well above you at the very top of the wooden platforms appears to perhaps be a horizontal mine shaft with some sort of wooden engineering crane . A rope dangles from the wooden crane, and another pair of ropes stretch in front of it from one side of the upper scaffolding platform into darkness on the far side, with what appears to be an old rusty unlit lantern suspended from it.
Gemma will heave herself out of the water and onto the dock as quickly and as quietly as she can. She turns and anchors herself so that she can pull Willem up with one hand and Emerson up with the other.
"We don't know if it's a patrol or not yet, but I need you two out of the water in case it is...or in case it's something else entirely."
As Willem is pulled out of the water, he whispers, "The patrol looked like it either observed us or was respondin' to somethin'." Then immediately and quickly moves to after climbing up on to the dock and uncovers his Double Musket, but leaves the other two covered for now just in case. He then tucks the wraps in his pack or between his armor which ever he has time to do.
Johnathan swims to shallower water.
Emerson gladly accepts Gemma's help up onto the elevated dock. "If they observed us, then why did the leave like we weren't here? Could they be some sort of magical creature?"
Hill creeps over a little past Willem to get a better look at the crane and the platforms beyond their immediate area. He takes a little time to clear his pepperbox and musket of the alchemical agents used to waterproof his firearms.
Anneca swims ever so slowly towards Gemma, getting her head above water. Even with the ability to breathe water thanks to the spell - which has now outlived its caster, she notes with both academic interest and a bitter sadness - she is thankful to breathe normal air again. She reaches up to the much stronger woman with one hand, glad that she isn't weighed down by heavy armor. "Thanks," she murmurs as she gets her feet on dry land. She briefly considers lighting something on fire so that she can dry herself, but the waste of resources wouldn't help. She pulls out her firearm and clears away the waxy protectant of the alchemical waterproofing, walking closer to get a better look at the pillar. "Something strange up there," she says to the others. At the same time, she tries to keep her head on a swivel to watch for an ambush or the patrol that the others seemed to have spotted.
Willem is covering the team with his double rifle so if he needs to change position for better vantage points or give team members more room, he does so tactically. He also takes position with the best cover. If there is none, he is in the kneeling position to give aggressors less of a target and he is more mobile.
Gemma makes sure that everyone's up and ready before sheathing her knife and starting to move forward. "Hope Lanvaldan and Jackson have a plan on the other side there."
Drawing her sabre, she cautiously advances forward, trying to stay closer to the wall rather than out in the open. But she knows that with the sunrod still sticking out of her belt, it doesn't really matter where she moves...she's still a beacon for anyone or anything watching.
Willem stays in the new group order, minus Ifris and Jackson, and covers the higher elevations with his double musket as they move and when pausing.
Ifris glides across the water’s surface in her skintight black suit fashioned from the ether, soon outpacing Johnathan as they swim behind the stone column to where the water is shallow enough to stand up. From there Ifris quickly sloshes across the shallows to the very far side of the mine where she spies another platform at the waterline, her sunrod in one hand illuminating and revealing it for all to see. Stepping up upon the platform, she looks around briefly to Johnathan and the rest of the constables at the other side, nods once and then fashions a shimmering amber blade in her free hand; the blade seems larger now than before when they fought together in the bowels of the Coaltongue, almost as large as a hand-and-a-half sword from the tales of old Risuri kings.
Whether it was due to Willem’s sharp eye on the lookout, the urgency of the mission after the loss of Resilience or the general preparations the constables undertook that afternoon, the sudden movement of creatures at the upper reaches of the horizontal mine shaft by the crane surprises no one. The cross-joining tunnel is still dark, yet the sunrods illuminate far enough to catch two figures moving up to the edge between the wooden crane and some stacked barrels at the mouth of that tunnel. It is then that the constables hear the familiar click of a firearm hammer being cocked back to fire, the source from a lanky man-like figure whose face is still obscured in the shadows. This is followed by a shorter squatter…man?...who seems intent on moving one of the barrels near him, though to what purpose is unknown…
…Willem sees it before anyone else does, but his sharp eye reveals the same shadowy “patrolman” moving along the upper reaches of the scaffolding, peering down at you briefly with a head but with no eyes or facial features of any kind, your vision discerning that you can somewhat see through the creature, its feet not touching the surface of the wooden platform…
"Does anyone know what those things are? They don't really seem to be a walking, talking human...well...maybe the one is. I'd like to know what I'm fighting. Any ideas?"
Gemma doesn't speak to anyone in particular, waiting for a response from anyone that might know what they're up against.
Johnathan gets out of the water as quickly as possible, moving up onto the series of platforms behind Ifris. "Got your back, Lanvaldan," he says quietly.
Gemma looks back to her fellow constables, hoping to get some sort of answer to her question. With no new information forthcoming about her opponents, all she can do is move forward and hope for the best. Instincts tell her, though, that if these are some sort of foul creature and not human, her current weapons may be of little to no use.
”Fine.” The only word the others hear before Gemma moves back past them and then up to the next platform.
With her sunrod still stuck in her belt and cold iron sabre drawn, she settles in to a defensive stance and waits for the enemy to come in.
Move to P18
without Total Defense
As Gemma passes,
"Gemma, they are either the walkin' dead or somethin' magical? Anneca may know more."
Then he moves to Q18 and is about to reload his double musket with Cold Iron rounds and then realizes his ammunition is still protected, so he spends this short frame time uncovering half of his ammunition at Q18.
"FRAK!"
Ifris has to make the decision to form the additional armor or shield from her mind, or move closer to get a better look at what they face. Seeing Gemma move up to the platform on the far side from where she is, Ifris decides to scamper up the ladder nearby and keep abreast of the others. She now holds the point where she could go forward to the next scaffold ladder or move across the makeshift horizontal ladder to the platform at the stone column and white marble plinth, a golden coin faintly shimmering there from the light of multiple sunrods in the mine.
Without hesitation, the mysterious man at the top of the vertical adjoining mine shaft ducks slightly under the wooden crane, readies his weapon and fires down upon the constables, apparently taking aim at Emerson Hill. The shot falls short and bursts through the dock planking in front of both Emerson and Anneca next to him. With a muttered curse the mysterious man reloads what appears to be a pistol...and then starts shouting at the constables in a distinctive Danoran accent.
"You mud-rackers! Dirty herb-$&*#ers! Think to take me by the sea? I'll DRIVE YA BACK I WILL! YOU WON'T GET ME AND MY WARDS YOU WON'T! MY FRIENDS STOP THEM KILL THEM DON'T LET 'EM TAKE IT!"
The shadowy scout "man" moves forward then with an eerie gliding ease, floating down over the scaffolding without touching it. Gemma's fears of how to deal with a shadowy "man" become fully realized as it approaches her and stops her advancement on the next-raised platform, reaching out with a faint hiss to touch her heart. She barely twists aside to avoid the creature as it does so, the feeling of an icy cold death from the shadow's touch seeming more than just fanciful imagination in her mind.
Emerson looks at Anneca and wryly says, ”Constable Summers. I do believe these men are hostile and using deadly force. What say we put them out of our misery?”
With a heave, he throws the sunrod in his hand up onto the raised platform 30’ above his location. The sunrod now shines brightly near the two men beyond the crane.
That done, Constable Hill calmly readies his musket to return fire upon their foes.
"Hang on," Anneca says to Emerson. She pulls the wand from her bandolier, glad that she got the requisition through. She squints trying to see more detail with the light, stepping forward a few steps even as she summons the magic of the wand. The magic flows out of the wand smoothly, enhancing his firearm and bolstering his aim. "That'll help."
The stout assistant heaves up a barrel over his head, the sound of sloshing liquid clearly heard within. It lobs the barrel far out in an arc to land with a thundering crash right next to Emerson and Anneca on their exposed left side. As the barrel ruptures and breaks apart, the smell of lantern oil fills their nostrils, followed by the BOOM! sound of a rigged firedust charge that ignites the oil all around them. Yet the rigged oil barrel is nothing close to what would be used by a demolition sapper or even Arthur Wilde's custom-made hand-bombs; the oil fire spreads across the surface of the dock causing both Anneca and Emerson to jump around and avoid getting burned, but soon the flames weaken and smolder or die out completely.
With Emerson's casting of sunrod up top, they can clearly see now the mysterious man and his stout assistant. The man looks lanky, ragged, unkempt and quite crazed even as he works to reload his pistol for another shot. The stout assistant is no man at all, but strangely a creature made entirely out of stone and dirt, with dark depressions where its eyes should be and no mouth. Wordlessly, it starts moving another oil barrel into position to hurl at the constables down below.
As the shadow’s hand passes near to try and touch her, Gemma is indeed worried that she has nothing on hand that could hurt this creature, but her weapons should have some effect on the man and his stone ward. I just need to get to them somehow. Hoping to alter the situation and buy her comrades some time, Gemma calls out to the man.
”We are not here for you, sir! Please stop firing and call off your wards! Perhaps we can negotiate without pistols!”
Gemma has a feeling that the man is probably not in his right mind, but it can’t hurt to take a stab at parlay. I wonder how long he’s been down here?
As she moves, she sees that Willem is making his way up the ladder. "Careful, Constable Muhnee. Choose your weapons wisely against this one. I fear mine will not help us."