As they walk into the ruins Safia struggles against an assault that only she feels the moment they walk into an area where dozens of spirits gather on the other side. She grasps her head as she leans against a pillar, though that only seems to make things worse for her.
Finally she sighs, a puff of gray smoke coming from her mouth. She then draws her spear and hides with the others, awaiting the sligs.
Gorkhan draws his sword and moves with the others to the ruin.
Raun greets the news of the sligs lurking with a thoughtful expression, before breaking into a smile and hefting her hammer. She finds the sprint upwards, dragging the heavy sled behind her to be a bit more challenging. With her longer stride she keeps up regardless, pausing as they reach a good viewpoint. She glances at Safia who seems to be struggling, scooping her up as she moves deeper, setting her down as she recovers. She observes the practically ruined structure Grit identifies and shakes her head, loping around the sand banks and removing her harness, once again readying some spears in the ground. "Hit them when they come over sand banks." she suggests, pressing herself against the pillar, leaning her hammer against it and readying a spear to throw.
You have time to settle into position but are still catching your breath when the first of the sligs lunge into sight. A dozen of the mangy, howling humanoids lope across the sand toward the ruins, waving crude axes and swords carved from the bones of earlier victims.
Raun flexes her fingers on her spears haft as the sligs come into sight. Perhaps having learned from her potshots at the wyrm she holds off from throwing immediately, waiting until one of the sligs starts to clear the opposite wall before hurling the spear at it's chest.
The kreen remains still, focusing intently on the first slig to come in view. Picturing himself as a small mulworm, be attempts to slip into his opponent's mind and bring him into the fold of the clutch.
Gorkhan keeps to the shadows, waiting on the approaching horde. Damn, there are a lot of 'em.
Grit will delay until after the enemy has moved closer.
The sligs rush forward in a wave, their hungry howling rising in pitch as they enter the ruins, weaving in and around the rubble and ruined sandstone walls.
Raun launches a spear at the first to come into range. The obsidian-tipped missile strikes true, lancing into the slig's shoulder and nearly knocking it off its feet. A spray of blood erupts from the wound as the creature pulls the weapon free and scrambles toward the half-giant, oblivious to the trail of gore leaking onto the sand.
Nnn'tkklik'l, meanwhile, forces his way into the mind of another of the charging sligs , preparing to transfer any wounds suffered by the clutch to the shaggy creature.
Raun grins, impressed by her own throw, at least up until the slig pulls the spear free and keeps coming. Her gaze narrows then and she stoops to pick up her hammer, gripping it with both hands, ready to swing it at the first slig to breach the sand barrier.
Grit motions for his Tigone friend to come up and guard him (move up beside him and ready an attack) as he 5' steps and casts his flaming sphere on the target that Raun hit. As a move action he commands the elemental to move to the south of Raun and ready to attack.
Stumbling in the sand, the wounded slig trips and falls to its knees just as Grit's flaming sphere materializes in front of it, singing the creature's hair but not causing any serious damage.
The kreen will use his mastery of the way to aid Raun and Gorkhan, infusing them with his power to buffer their vitality.
Grit will move his flaming sphere onto another enemy.
Gorkhan continues to delay, waiting for the creatures to approach even closer.
When the beasts moved in Safia smiled. She held her spear at the ready, awaiting their encroachment. She moved out from hiding and as she did gray mists started to coalesce around her, enveloping her for a moment. When they parted her form had shifted and where she stood before now stood a human man in elaborate, ancient garb still clutching the same spear.
She stepped just out of the cover of the ruins, trying to get a view of all Sligs. She stood there ready, awaiting an attack.
Concentrating on the rolling ball of fire he summoned earlier, Grit directs it back toward the slig Raun struck with a spear. This time the flaming sphere engulfs the creature, which screams and thrashes as the fire consumes it.
Paying little attention to their dying comrade, the other sligs charge around the dune. A pair come around from the north, one splitting off and heading toward Grit while the other bypasses Raun and charges Safia - or the stranger she has become - only to be impaled on her shining spear.
As the creatures charge in, Raun catches one off-balance and smashes it with her hammer, splattering brain and bones across the sand with a savage backswing.
The half-giant soon finds herself hard-pressed, however, as two of the remaining sligs harry her with quick slashes from their bone weapons.
Not yet overcome by her battle-rage, the half-giant is able to fend off their attacks with the heavy shaft of her hammer.
Another hacks ineffectually at the earth elemental Grit summoned; knocking away chunks of sand and gravel but failing to completely destroy the creature.
Grit holds his shield high and advances swingin his enchanted club at the slig closing on him.
After the swing he sicks his new animal fried on the creature as well.
Nnn'tkklik'l reaches deep through the way into the heart of the farthest back slig, pulling him into the collective. (DC 15 will negates)
Raun grins as her hammer takes it's first victim and she feels the satisfying splatter of blood and gore from the slig's exploding skull. Her followup blow is not as effective as a slig rushes past her and is impaled by Safia for it's trouble though... there seems to be a strange man where Raun remembers seeing Safia in her peripheral vision.
The man seems to be on their side however, so she doesn't question it, raising her hammer again and bringing it down with a roar upon another slig's skull--or at least such is her intent.
Gorkhan moves towards one of the sligs and makes his attack.
Despite three of their number dead, the remaining sligs swarm the ruins with renewed fervor. Wading in with his enchanted club, Grit finds the beasts to be surprisingly tough - after suffering a rib-cracking blow to the chest and a savage bite from Grit's tigone cub, the slig has the strength to push farther into the ruins and lash back with an axe blow the mul catches on his shield.
The beasts are canny, too - as he blocks the wounded slig's attack, a second rushes up behind Grit, seeming to anticipate its fellow's move as it slashes at the druid's back - only Grit's thick scale armor prevents the blade from severing his spine.
Protecting by a psionic skin, Gorkhan moves to the south, drawing off a few of the sligs but failing to connect with a rushed swing of his magic blade. Quickly flanking him, the sligs attack with their crude bone weapons and vicious bites. Gorkhan dances away from the first slig's blows, right into an axe slash from the second .
In the larger melee near Raun, Grit's summoned elemental batters one of the sligs with stony fists but is quickly torn into pieces by the same beast.
Raun smashes one of the sligs in front of her with her hammer before side-stepping toward Not-Safia. The sligs follow in a swarm, quickly surrounding the half-giant, who swipes at one of the advancing beasts but misses.
The other's tear into the half-giant with their bone blades, but the half-giant miraculously emerges unscathed from the rain of inexplicably inept blows.
Nnn'tkklik'l, meanwhile, forces a second slig into the collective.
Raun laughs in the slig's faces as she dodges their clumsy blows, a few bouncing off her armor. "Sligs should find easier prey!" she says with a feral grin, before roaring as she swings her hammer at the creatures with brutal efficiency.
Smiling with satisfaction as the elemental does its job of soaking up attacks meant for Raun Grit says a quick prayer to the elemental powers that fueled his summons before attacking the sligs on him. With a mental summons the Flaming sphere rolls forward onto the Slig to his North.
He then focuses on the slig to his south. His Togone shifts into the flank and full attacks as Grit swings with his enchanted club.
The kreen attempts to siphon life from the slig nearest Grit and his tigone. He will spread the hp siphoned to fill up anyone who has taken damage.
However, if Grit killed that one, the kreen will spend a free action to drop that slig from the collective and instead focus on a different slig, pulling them into the collective (DC 15 will)
Gorkhan spins, his sword in two hands, to attack the slig behind him before taking a step past it.
safia carefully moves around one of the sligs attacking Raun, careful to avoid the reach of both it and it's friends. Once in position she strikes, leaning in to the attack.
Not satisfied with the result Safia once more tries to plant her spear in it's flesh.
Giving in to her battle lust, Raun brings her hammer down on the nearby slig with a deafening crash. Bones shattered, the beast can do little but try to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood in the sand.
Seeing his tigone tear the throat out of the slig to the south, Grit spins on his heels and smashes his club into the slig to the north, wounding it but failing to put the ragged creature down.
Seeing that none of his clutchmates have been injured yet, Nnn'tkklik'l tries to force another slig into the clutch. This time, the beast reacts with a crude but effective defense - when the thri-kreen's sends a dustgull-shaped mental probe toward the creature, a giant toothy mouth appears and swallows the construct with smacking lips.
Dancing east to put a ruined pillar at his back, Gorkhan levels a low slash that carves a bloody gash across one of his attackers' chests.
Working around to the north, Safia steps over the crushed body of the slig Raun just killed to impale the other slig the half-giant had injured earlier. Pulling her spear free in a spray of blood, the transformed warrior charges to the south, driving the steel weapon in and out of another slig's neck with such force that its head is ripped free, tumbling on the sand.
Surging forward, the sligs counterattack. To the west, a wounded slig slashes and bites unsuccessfully at the ancient form shrouding Safia, while another follows close behind, jabbing at Raun with a crude sword. The blow tears into the flesh of the raging barbarian.
In the north, the slig Grit battered with his club counterattacks. This time the creature's axe cleaves through the mul's fine armor
In the south, Gorkhan is hard-pressed as a pair of slig's maneuver into flanking position and unleash a series of uncannily coordinated attacks. Wielding Swiftbite in a dazzling series of parries, he manages to block each blow, but may not be so lucky in the future.
Gorkhan swings at the injured slig that had maneuvered against the wall behind him and attacks.
Grit, bearing his teeth at the wound slams his club into the Slig in front of him but is unable to connect.
The Tigone beside his friend tries to finish the wounded threat, using claw and fang.
The kreen attempts to pour vitality from the slig's cup into the mul's.
Dc 15 will negates, slig takes a -2 penalty to the save
A fiendish grin appears on Safia's altered form as she raises her spear to attack the slig that tried to hurt her. "May your death be swift and painless. Your friends are waiting for you." She grins as she lets the head of the spear sink into the creature's flesh.
Thanks to the kreen's mental conditioning and her own battle rage Raun doesn't even feel the blow. She joins Safia in finishing off the remaining nearby Sligs, before looking around for any more. Spotting Gorkhan defending against two more she lopes in that direction to loom over the nearest.