Intimidate to Influence Attitude
"The prison." Karactus rumbled. "Take us there."
Ulmah listens intently for the action to get closer. If she feels like anyone is getting close enough to hear, she will cry out "Release me, you ingrateful bastards! I don't deserve to be cut down in chains! Let me fight!"
Following the guard into the room, Karactus and Nuandis discover another man chained and shackled to the wall, with blood trickling from his lips and a severely bruised abdomen. His arm is marred by the mark of the forsaken, freshly burnt into it.
Pressing his back against the far wall of the room, the guard lets lose one hand from his hilt, the trembling in the other becoming even more apparent as the tip of his sword sways.
"Y-you're already in the prison! It's t-the top three levels of this place..." he stutters as he pulls out a key ring, throwing it to the floor at Karactus's feet. "They keep it s-small, we d-do two rounds of exe-executions a week. Those keys open everything b-but the sergeants quarters and the towers. P-please just take it and go, I have ch-children." The cowardly guard pleads further.
"Don't kill him. That one's mine for thinking he can hurt me," he looks down at himself and grunts a little in pain but does not seem to care, "perhaps he even cracked a rib. No matter."
Seth is wondering where in the 9 hells all the commotion came from. Did someone escape? For now he keeps quiet and waits to see what happens.
The guard-who-was-not-a-guard picked up the key ring and walked silently to the rack. He layed his hands on it and small tendrils of ivy and moss welled up from the cracks in the wood. The metal began to rust and the thorny lash unwound from around his arm, threaded up through the mechanisms and chains and squeezed.
"Take thy vengeance."
Seth rolls his shoulders to get out the kinks of having been chained up for so long. "I guess that means I owe you, he said looking at the fake guard then walking over to the coward at the other end of the room. "I made you a promise, you will die before me. I always keep my promises. Perhaps you have a message you would like me to give to your family?" He chains the coward where he was just chained and takes off his breastplate, tabard and shirt. Seth grabs the sword and cuts deep, carving a pentagram into the man's chest then taking his own hand he places it on the pentagram, "Asmodeus, this blood is spilled for you. Grant me my freedom again and my campaign will continue anew." Then he swings the sword cutting the man's neck ending his life.
He wipes the sword and his hand clean and turns to those that freed him, newly acquired weapon in hand. "Why did you free me?"
"Thy release was numbered in my contract." The not-a-guard rumbled, caring little for the Asmodean ritual or the fate of the guard.
"From whence were you brought?" he said, passing the prison keys to the now-freed prisoner. "There are others yet. Two more before we leave this place."
Certainly able to understand and respect a contract Seth nods, "Then my debt is elsewhere," and takes the keys, "The villages and towns of northern Talinguarde where i have slaughtered many."
The living lash around the not-guard's arm thrashed like the tail of an annoyed animal. His sigh was more like a low growl. He was not the sort to repeat himself. Instead, he looked at the drops of blood scattered about the place and the scuffs of the guard's shoes in the dirt and dust on the floor.
If this man would not give him answers to where they needed to go next, the prison itself would.
Without another word, the man began to move.
Muttering incoherently something about telling Timmy he loves him and to be a good lad, the guard that tempted fate struggled in vain between the might of villains until he drew his last breath.
The not-guard walked on silent feet to the staircase and began to descend.
Bognus was rapidly learning something new about undeath: His body might be tireless, but apparently his mind remained as impatient as ever. He tested his bonds again with a bit more effort, growing increasingly frustrated.
"It's jest plain cheatin', is what it is," he muttered to himself as he pulled. He wasn't sure what exactly was draining his strength in here, but he was sure there was magic involved, and he'd never trusted any sort of spellslinger as far as he could throw them - which, as it turned out, had been pretty bloody far.
"Bah," he growled, baring his fangs to the empty room. He'd intended to wait until there was some sort of shift he could use to his advantage, but vampire or no, he was not a patient dwarf. He started to strain in earnest, tipping his inner self a little further towards the well of fury that still lay in whatever remained of his soul.
At the very least, Bognus's physical patience paid off: another chain noisily snapped, yet no guard rushed in to threaten, beat, or berate him.
On the other side of the door, five guards stood at ready, facing the stairwell leading up. Karactus and the others descended stealthily, but the commotion above was enough warning to have them prepared.
The shadows crawled ahead, the silhouettes of tree branches and ferns, hanging vines and stalking beasts crawled across the walls of the prison spilling out from the stairwell. With it came waves of suffocating fear that thickened the air and quickened the heart.
Initiative: First # is init, second # is init bonus. Ties side with players.
24.07 - Nuandis
19.03 - Guard Group #1
18.11 - Sethirom
15.03a - Karactus
15.03b - Guard Group #2
10.08 - Bognus
09.05 - Ulmah
Ulmah hears someone coming and taunts the guards, trying to distract them by commenting on the size of their packages and how shriveled their beans are.
Closing the distance between her and Karactus, she peers from over his shoulder, barely being able to do so even though a step above him. Turning her gaze to one of the two crossbow-armed guards in the rear, she furrows her brow in disappointment.
"This is all your fault," she muses. "This escape and the death of your friends. Why not just join them??"
The three leading guards converge on Karactus at the foot of the stairs.
From Karactus's point of view, they're all going on about the same nonsense, "Mitra will cleanse you, yadda yadda yadda" as they begin bringing down their blades upon him, causing several blurred images of Karactus to spawn from his figure.
The front three guards are declare Karactus as their smite evil target. Two of them are able to charge him, the third can only get an attack as a standard action.
"You soldiers have failed your orders," Sethirom charges down the stairs at the guard directly in front of him using the higher ground to his advantage.
Karactus waited until the guards closed before sweeping his angry lash across the legs of the oncoming soldiers.
Ulmah sees someone attacking the guards, she will try to discern what he is.
If she determines that he's a force of evil who might benefit from her powers, she will call to him to release her. "Come, remove these chains, my beautiful man. Release me, such that I may feast on the fear you sow and bolster your already-great strength even more, and create creatures of power from the corpses of those weaklings!"
The not-guard's eyes flicked to the speaking captive. He did not know if she was among those numbered, but even if she was not, releasing her was not against his contract.
His lash whipped out to the wall next to Sethirom channeling sheer destruction into the stone.
Four solid inches of thick stone wall unnaturally melt away, the remaining burst with an unrealistic trajectory, leaving a hole large enough in the wall to move through and revealing Ulmah on the other end.
One guard at the end of the hall raises his bow, and takes aim at Sethirom, hastily reloading with blinding speed.
vs. Touch AC
[Haste Attack]
The other guard wearily leans against the wall in sorrow. "She's right Ben, Mitra have mercy on my soul!" Switching the grip on his crossbow to use the butt as a blunt weapon, he begins smashing himself in the face with it.
Seeing the guards converge upon Karactus and him being the only thing standing between herself and them, Nuandis decided they had come as far as they would in this lifetime.
"Be still, insolent children! I want to have a clear look while my friend cuts you open."
The guards prepare to attempt to run their swords through Karactus...
but nearly freeze in place, unwilling to bear arms against him.
Seth angrily snaps off the arrow that pierces his unarmoured chest and continues cutting away at the guard in front of him in a furious hate against all humans that ever stood in his way.
The second chain binding his right arm finally came free at the same moment that the commotion outside reached Bognus's ears, and his fangs bared in a vicious grin. "O-ho! Someone's givin' em hell already, eh? Right then. Time ta join the party."
He reached across with his newly freed arm and took hold of the chain binding his left wrist. Snarling, his vision narrowed and his frame shook as he let the rage take over.
For the first few moments, at least, the chain resisted, but the one-time champion simply tightened his hold, growled, and tried again.
Ulmah waits patiently for the others to dispatch the guards, watching them through the hole in the wall.
The guards feebly try to defend themselves from Karactus and Seth's onslaught.
Of the two arches, one continues to bludgeon his cranium with his crossbow.
The other begins to flee, making it to the top of the stairs.
Meanwhile, Bognus twisted against his bindings. While not breaking another chain, he certainly heard them groan against his might.
Satisfied that Karactus and Seth will make quick work of the helpless fools in front of them, Nuandis shifts her gaze to the coward attempting to flee the battlefield.
"Where has your faith gotten you? Forget Mitra, you belong to me now!"
The archer at the end of the hall freezes in place, dropping everything in hand and toppling to the floor.
Two of the front-line guards remain enthralled under Nuandis's power, but the third, the same jerk that hit Karactus, breaks free and continues his barrage against him, yelling out to Nuandis as she hides behind him.
"Foul witch, you'd have already tasted Mitras wrath if you weren't hiding behind this demon like a coward!"
Losing focus through his anger, the Paladin misses Karactus every time.
"Waste not thy last breath on prattle to the girl, soldier." The not-guard rumbled in the shadows. "Thy blade reaches her only through me. Mitra's wrath I have tasted many times. I still find it wanting."
Ulmah addresses the witch who is taking over the minds of all the guards. "My friend, let me out of these chains, and I will aid you. Not that you don't have those weaklings well in hand, but I'd love to get a piece of the action."
Sethirom slashes away, his fury getting the better of him and his attacks easier to evade.