Feeling desperate, Jeji aims low thrusting at the human's legs. The alchemist leaves herself open and Garmen stabs her again with his sword, but her gambit pays off and Garmen topples over tripping on the spear. Drahlneep leaps upon the fallen human whacking him with the baton. Garmen's remaining minion is caught off guard by the move and boxes air. Garmen attempts to stagger back to his feet and retreat.
*******
Meanwhile, Reep erupts from his hiding place and charges across the room! Only to nearly pass between the thug's legs. Perrik thrusts his crossbow into the golden kobold's claws. Dranjek the Bold hurriedly fires it, but the bolt flies high to embed in the wall up near the ceiling. Perrik continues around to invigorate Vornop with a touch.
Watching his prey attempt to run and dropping his guard in the process, Drahlneep lashes out.
Jeji snarls as she raises her spear high in the air and brings it down right where Garmen used to be.
The albino, grateful for the healing but suddenly very worried about the thug atop him, scoots away as quickly as he can, putting as much distance between himself and the woman as possible.
Garmen attempts to stagger back to his feet and retreat... but falls back to the warehouse floor as his body suddenly realizes that it is dead. His minion takes a half-hearted swing and steps away. He calls out to his companion in the next room.
Drahlneep snarls and charges at the minion, attempting to barrel into him at full force.
Perrik backs away from the thug and extricates his longspear from the crate, ready to stab the woman if she tries to close. "Vornop, kill it quickly! It's badly wounded!"
Drahlneep charges the thug just as he turns to flee and smashes his truncheon into the human's lower spine with a crack. Arms flailing spastically, the man plows into the wooden floor.
Taking careful aim, now that he is better positioned, Vornop lets loose another arrow from his trusty bow, hoping to end the woman.
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The human female turns and runs for the door. Vornop nocks another arrow and releases, but the arrow is released in a rush and flies off target. Dranjek cranks the crossbow and raises it just as the woman reaches the doorway. He releases hitting her in the upper back and the thug freezes grasping the door frame as she slides down to the floor.
All is still in the warehouse again. It is dark except for the scattered sunrods that the fallen thugs have dropped. In the quiet everyone senses the deep subsonic hum from the crate at the back of the warehouse that penetrates your thoughts.
With the cessation of immediate hostilities, Perrik takes a few deep breaths and addresses the other kobolds in Draconic. "Hello! Thanks for the timely distraction--the p--" He gives Vornop a quick glance. "--human guard on us left to fight, and we were able to escape. This is Vornop the wanderer, and I'm Perrik." He indicates the fallen woman and grins at Dranjek. "Good shot there."
With an almost imperceptible nod of appreciation to Perrik, Vornop moves back to the crate of equipment, retrieving his supplies as well as any that belongs to the others. He places what does not belong to him on the ground, before donning his various weapons.
"If I could have assistance with my hide shirt, as well as my tail-blade, we could be gone sooner. That box-" he notes, gesturing with his tail, "-is still making its noise. It is grating, to say the least, and I fear this ruffians were only part of our trouble."
"Who is the most badly hurt? I have a little bit of healing left. And is there a place we can hide and rest?"
The gold-scaled kobold hands Perrik his weapons back with a respectful nod and then rushes to the next room to see if the others are alright. Upon seeing his dark scaled leader fallen, he rushes to his side. "Sarahthenal! Is he...dead? Please, help him," he begs Perrik.
Reep slips forward, holding a wound in his side. "I have injury."
With no immediate obvious threats looming, Jeji rushes to Sarahthenal's side. She rolls his body over and begins to administer first aid.
Perrik casts stabilize on the fallen kobold. "One other thing...." Shading his eyes from the glare of the sunrod, he rolls the fallen thug over on top of it. "Better." He then casts cures on Reep and the inquisitor.
Once everything goes quiet, the kobold barbarian sways and drops to his knees. "That was...exciting," he mutters before falling onto his face and snoring. He is covered with tiny cuts.
Thankfully, Jeji finds that Sarahthenal is stable and breathing steadily. At Perrik's touch, the leader hisses and sits up in alarm. "The humansss?"
"All dead, Inquisitor," Dranjek replies. "I am embarrassed that I was captured. If only I had had these brave new allies with me when the humans came into the caves. The Hidden Ones are cowards."
"I am sad to say that Olp is lost. I do not think he is dead, but when I came to, he was gone. I think the Hairy Ones would have kept his body if they killed him. I heard Garmen say that one called Meyanda was offering a bounty on kobolds! I think that Meyanda is the purple-haired woman."
"Garmen was keeping something for her. The buzzing thing in the box. I don't think any of them knew what it is, but it must be powerful."
Perrik starts at the name. "Meyanda? It works for the one who drove my tribe from Scrapwall! It wanted us to bow to Hellion, its master, but we refused." The kobold stands a little straighter. "Bow to something not a dragon? Ridiculous! We have followed it here, but when it went into Torch we waited too long and were taken by the ropefisted ones."
"The humans have either been killed or fled. We do not have long, as those that fled may bring more. We must take what we can and depart as quickly as we can." Jeji moves over to the buzzing box to investigate.
The big humming thing is definitely TEK, but Jeji has no idea what it does.
Gritting his teeth at the unpleasant noise, Perrik follows the alchemist over to the humming box and examines it with interest.
Equipped, Vornop moves over to the slumbering, fallen comrade; Dralneep is clearly wounded, and exhausted.
"I have no way of healing him, but he does not look well."
Sarahthenal lays his hands on Drahlneep and a sickening feeling passes over him a moment as Gakzara's holy radiation burns through him. Afterwards, he feels better though.
"We must find Olp," the dark-scaled inquisitor laments. Dranjek nods as he gets his gear together and arms himself. A moment later however, Sarahthenal is attracted to the thing that Perrik is examining. The device is far too complex for Perrik to figure out, but obviously it is emitting strong energy. Not blightburn, but something else.
Sarahthenal scratches his horns in thought. "Maybe the human merchant with the ROBOT would know what it is. Do we trust him?"
"No. I think he betrayed us, but I'm...I'm not sure. I don't trust him, but if we have something he wants, he may cooperate" she says as she nods at the humming TEK box. "We need to leave quickly with as much as we can carry while we still have the cover of night. Reep's boom-stick was loud and may have alerted others." She moves over to Reep and offers him her last cure light wounds extract.
Reep takes the extract with a thankful nod, but goes back to repairing his misfired rifle.
"I think I have some magic for that, if your gun is light enough and we have time."
Misfires: If the natural result of your attack roll falls within a firearm's misfire value, that shot misses, even if you would have otherwise hit the target. When a firearm misfires, it gains the broken condition. While it has the broken condition, it suffers the normal disadvantages that broken weapons do, and its misfire value increases by 4 unless the wielder has gun training in the particular type of firearm. In that case, the misfire value increases by 2 instead of 4.
This spell repairs damaged objects, restoring 1d4 hit points to the object. If the object has the broken condition, this condition is removed if the object is restored to at least half its original hit points.
The barbarian continues snoring through the chatter and even magical healing.
the fact that the hammer fell off the musket probably saved the kobolds from announcing trouble in the warehouse to a large part of the town, but it would probably still be a good idea to return to the caves before the day begins and the humans start moving around. There is still time though.
Sarahthenal nods at Jeji's observations though. "Perhapsss there is another way-" He digs into his backpack and removes the devil box, a puzzle box that incinerates any fool that tries to open it without knowing the trick to it. Evidently, it is bigger inside than out as well because a big flat metallish tray with a screen comes out and is no longer making the hissing noise it has been making since Sarahthenal took it into the lake.
The inquisitor grabs a shirt off one of the dead thugs and carefully wipes the device of any trace of moisture or dirt then pokes at it. The dark screen flashes and then the human woman's face appears again!
Perrik's eyes widen. "What is that?"
Sarahthenal shrugs. "I do not know. Yammarayk, the egg warden, oracle and new first horn, gave it to me. I was told to open the devil box when we reached the Mountain of the Violet Fire. This was inside. I think it may have some information, but it has not been very helpful so far."
He addresses the woman's face in the human language, "Thing! What are you?"
The face looks human, but is something else: It has ugly long brown hair, but the eye are filled with blue light and its cheeks have strange glowing blue runes. It replies, "I think my name is Casandalee. I am an android, but I do not know where my body is..."
Vornop shivers slightly, and turns from here he stands over Drahlneep, his snoring form far less interesting that the face appearing on the screen. He wanders over to Sarahthenal, leaning close and peering over his shoulder at the woman on the device.
"How is it you can speak through this box with no body, and no knowledge of where it is?" Following example, Vornop switches his speech to Common, as well.
Perrik bares his teeth at the unnatural thing. "Casssandalee! Can you see what is around you? If you can see it, tell us what this box is."
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Casandalee attempts to answer Vornop's question, but he has no idea what she's talking about- what are "newer circle trees"?
She does appear able to see through the screen and explains the device in terms that the kobolds can, kinda, understand. The device which weighs about as much as a kobold is called a power relay. It sends energy which allows TEK to function from one place to another. "The power is coming from inside the mountain. It is not from the God you asked me about before, but from a- a reactor core within the mountain."
Perrik nods slowly. "Where does the power go? What TEK is it powering?"
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Reep keeps repairing his musket, but his ears are listening to the speech that the box droid keeps making.
"If the power is coming from inside the mountain, then that must be where the purple-haired woman is going, and where we must follow. We must return to the mountain. Spread out, search the bodies. Grab what you can. Look for anything magical. And somewhat wake up Drahlneep."
Perrik nods slowly. "Where does the power go? What TEK is it powering?"
The face narrows its eyes thinking, "It is going that way... um, northwest about 150 'kill all meeners'- 100 of your miles. I cannot tell what it might be powering from here, but it is A LOT of energy."
The diminutive oracle hisses in surprise. "This is sending power back to Scrapwall! If Meyanda put it here, the power it sends must be for Hellion. Jeji is right. Let's take the human's stuff, make sure they're all dead, and leave."
Sarahthenal nods and puts the woman back in the devil box. Reep finishes fixing his weapon while Drahlneep sleeps. The rest of the kobolds scatter to quickly search the warehouse. The crates are mostly empty or full of useless junk. The thugs have a total of 46 gold coins, their spent sunrods, ropes, slings and standard sling bullets. Their leader, Garmen, has more things of value: a magic buckler (small shield for kobolds), hand crossbow, well made rapier and thieves tools, a potion and 89 gold coins.
In the office, 50 of the strange silverdisks are found in a hidden chest and then there is the question of what to do with the horribly buzzing power relay.
Everyone is starting to feel ill from the strange device, so Perrik pokes at it until it stops making the horrible sound. As the kobolds gather their things to go, Sarahthenal holds up a scaly claw.
"Wait, I have been thinking," the inquisitor begins. "I must find Olp, but I believe that we must help our new allies as well. We have nearly lost our lair and they have lost theirs to this Hellion and its lackey, Meyanda. It is not wise for kobolds to travel in smaller numbers than necessary, but I believe it is now necessary. Dranjek and I will look for Olp. Jeji and Reep, you will stay with Drahlneep and help these new kobolds."
"If we find Olp quickly, we will look for you in the Hidden Ones' caves. If not, then we will return to our home down the Dragontongue River to tell Yammarayk, if he still lives, that we have not found the Dragon in the Mountain of Violet Fire, but there are others up there that we might join. You should help these others reclaim their home and come seek us if you succeed."
"Meyanda will be able to turn the box back on if it comes back here, so we need to stop it. Thank you, Sarahthenal and Dranjek. We will kill the purple-haired one and take revenge for my tribe, driven out from Scrapwall."