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Hrut tries to find a place to pull away from the creature,
"I would love to come out of the darkness, but the darkness is not letting go and I am losing."
"Be right back."
Seeing that Hrut was having a terrible time, Ary slipped forward to try once more to rip the thing free.
Ehren is up.
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Ehren emerges from the zone of darkness, again finding relief in his return to the light... as well as their apparent enemy. It was not exactly hard to identify him.
"I'll be right back," he says, echoing Ary. Moving past Horgus and Aravashnial, he aims a finger at Millorn and fires a dart of acid at him.
Ehren fires a blob of acid straight into Millorn's face, blinding him. He screams in agony.
The darkmantle maintains its grip on Hrut despite Ary's attempts to pry it off of his face. It slowly chokes Hrut to death, who is just barely maintaining consciousness.
Markus is up.
Markus grumbles, taking a earlier grip on his quarterstaff and taking a few steps forward. He sees the blinded Millorn and he swings hard at the dwarf with his quarterstaff, hoping to incapacitate him.
"No!!!! Millorn is blind!" Millorn screams as he hops around randomly, dodging Markus' strike purely on accident.
Anevia frowns, noticing that Ary was not back yet. "Uh, is the big guy alright?" She lines up a quick pair of shots at Millorn, but is distracted by the noises coming from the dark behind her.
Li'an is up.
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"No! He most definitely isn't!" Ary called out of the darkness. Not that Anevia could do much for it.
"We need to kill this thing and get it off of him, now!"
Li'an starts to head around to finish off Millorn when she hear's Ary call out that Hrut is in trouble. "Lleuad, I thought he'd be alright back there. I should've used the scale on him too! I've got to help him." She turned and ran for him, hoping she'd be able to wound the creature enough to get it to let go. "Hang on Hrut!"
As she neared she jabbed quickly with Lleuad at the creature's bulbous head, hoping it would be unable to dodge her haphazard attack. "Let go of Hrut you nasty little thing!" she cried out as she struck at it.
The darkmantle is so preoccupied with maintaining its hold on Hrut that it cannot move out of the way from Li'an's attack. She carves into it before it even realizes she is there.
Valaria is up.
With the rest of the group distracted by the darkmantles, Valaria refuses to withdraw and risk the dwarf escaping. Despite her injuries, she lashes out again, doing her best to ignore the pain and creeping numbness from his electric shock.
Her muscles refuse to respond properly after the shock and both strikes go wide, missing by a great deal.
Actually, Millorn is blind, and as such cannot see Valaria coming. Despite her pain, she manages to score a small wound on the insane dwarf. Millorn staggers backwards, blindly grasping at the cave wall behind of him.
Round 7
Millorn blindly rummages around inside of a small satchel on his waist. Markus and Valaria seize the opportunity to strike at him as he pauses to stand still. Markus misjudges his reach, but Valaria manages to move in on him and engraves a deep wound on his stomach.
He pulls out a small vial, and drinks it. The dwarf vanishes from sight.
If you can beat a DC13 perception check you could follow him with reasonable accuracy, though you cannot see him. If you do not seize your chance now, though, he will be too far to find with hearing alone.
"You'll never catch Millorn! Hehehehe!"
The unwounded darkmantle still on the ceiling charges at Ary, seizing the chance for new prey. It passes above her to do this, and Ary seizes the chance to swipe at it as it flies by. With finesse, she steps around the darkmantle's charge and delivers a precise incision, swiping off several of its tentacles in one swipe. Unfortunately, it still makes its target, wrapping itself around the ranger's face.
Hrut is up.
"Why do wizards always have the fun tricks?" Valaria groans as the mad dwarf vanishes into thin air despite her fortunate strike. She can hear him escaping, but can't give chase with her allies still in danger.
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"Hurk..." Ary falls to her knees as the Darkmantle squeezes.
Edit: Falling limp in the grasp of the tentacled creature, hitting the ground with a heavy thud, gasping for air after having been crushed and unable to move.
*bleed*
A character with a Constitution score of 12 or higher who is at or below 0 hit points is disabled until she falls below a number of hit points equal to the negative of her Constitution modifier.
A character with 0 hit points, or one who has negative hit points but has become stable and conscious, is disabled. A disabled character may take a single move action or standard action each round (but not both, nor can he take full-round actions, but he can still take swift, immediate, and free actions). He moves at half speed. Taking move actions doesn't risk further injury, but performing any standard action (or any other action the GM deems strenuous, including some free actions such as casting a Quicken Spell spell) deals 1 point of damage after the completion of the act.
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Hrut struggles against the darkmantle's grip in vain and slumps to the ground, unconscious.
Horgus panics when Markus moves forward with the light. "W-wait for me!" he exclaims, leaving Aravashnial behind.
Ary is up.
As the thing draws Ary into its deathgrip, and everything begins to go dark in a way that the transformative magic can't aid her against.
'All of these people are so important, and have done so many great things, and will do more great things...' she thinks as she closes her eyes, then opens them, focusing her attention on her ally's troubles.
'Lady, guide my blade..' she prays, as she arcs the sword, deprived of its light, towards the Darkmantle that has wrapped itself around Hrut and is strangling the life out of him.
Ary swings true at the darkmantle suffocating Hrut, stabbing it clean through. The little monster squeals and relaxes its grip on Hrut. It falls to the ground, dying.
Ehren is up
Ehren glances at Horgus exasperatedly as the man passes by, but says nothing, instead moving back to Aravashnial's side as he said he would.
"Forget the dwarf for now - we need to get the others out of there," he says to the others with urgency, only able to hear the struggle going on within the dark.
Aravashnial adjusts his grip on his quarterstaff and turns towards Ehren as he hears him approach.
Markus is up.
"F%~~, f$*~ f~+~!" screams Markus, frustrated by the escape of the dwarf and by the fact that his allies are falling one by one. He can save them from death, for sure, but this trip underground was far too taxing. Perhaps it was too taxing.
He turns and shouts just one word at the remaining darkmantle grappling Ary - "FLEE." raising a hand and shunting magic at it.
Markus moves towards his unconscious allies, dropping his quarterstaff once he gets to the edge of the dark cloud.
The darkmantle's grip around Ary's neck slackens, and she is suddenly able to breathe, though she can not move.
"Calistria's f&~+ing t@*!!! I f$!%ing hate wizards and their twiddly finger b!+!#@@!!" Anevia agrees with Markus. She puts her shortbow away, and trudges closer to Aravashnial and Ehren.
Once she's cooled off for a moment she adds, "Ugh. No offense to any twiddly finger b*+$*&*$ters present, naturally," glancing between Markus, Aravashnial and Ehren.
Li'an is up.
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Li'an steps around Hrut and attempts to get an attack in on the darkmantle that had just released Ary. Unfortunately the burst of expletives coming from the other end of the room distracted her, turning her carefully planned strike into a wild swing.
Looking quickly down at the far end of the room, she saw Millorn had vanished. "Calm down! We need to get Hrut to safety first and handle these two darkmantles." she called back to the others.
"If we can get things sorted out quickly, we should be able to find him. I think I can use the scale to give one of us the ability to track by scent," she said confidently.
Valaria is up.
"Kûl," Valaria mutters again as she turns back to the group. She looks into the darkness, seeing the mess with the darkmantles, then hurries passed the group to try and help. However, she can't do much more than get close with her body still not moving properly.
Round 8
The heroes hear the sound of Millorn's maniacal giggling off in the distance in the tunnels...
The darkmantle wrapped around Ary releases her from its grip and flees for the ceiling. Li'an reacts swiftly, lodging Lleuad deep inside the small creature briefly as it makes for the ceiling.
Combat Ends
All the fight has been sapped from those darkmantles. They huddle warily on the ceiling together, aiming to blend into the stone around them.
Hrut is still breathing, though he has gone unconscious from the lack of air.
"Li'an? Are you alright?" calls out Aravashnial.
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Ignoring her own wounds, Ary takes a swipe at the creature as it runs for the ceiling... more important to make the things dead that were killing them.
"One more on the ceiling." Ary says a little dazed, and thoroughly tired. "Need to get Hrut out of dark."
Edit:
Ary slashes the darkmantle clean in two as it attempts to feebly flutter over her.
Valaria groans. "If anyone has healing spells or potions, I think we could use a few of them over here. Preferably before that son of a b*tch gets away."
Ary pushes herself up, and heads towards Avi and the others, stumbling steadily. "Yeah, patching up sounds good." she said, dizzily.
"Wonder why all the crusaders are so sad."
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Markus rushes into the darkness, leaving his lit quarterstaff outside of the area of the darkness. His hands begin to glow yellow with positive energy, and he grits his teeth through the pain.
He kneels at the side of Ary first. "You're gonna be fine. Hang on, gotta tend to Hrut."
Then he moves to Hrut's side and touches Hrut as well, though his eyes have begun to water.
"You alright, big lug? Hey, can we get someone to go after that f@&+er? He's a threat and he's gotta go."
"I... thank you. Didn't know you could do that, Mage. Already surprising me in the best ways... was that you yoyo-ing them?" she asked, as she moved into the light near Ehren and Horgus.
She slumps down once she gets there, and looks up at the statues around them. "What do you think they're for... and who would build them down here? Do you think Millorn really found a palace..?"
Valaria waits for Markus and maybe Ehren or Aravashnial to help treat their wounded. She notices the look of discomfort on Markus' face as he treats the two's wounds. "Nice work gloomy. You doing alright?"
Ary's question surprises her and she finds her eyes wandering over the somber crusader statues. She wonders if there's some story connected to these carvings as she tries to recall any local tales or legends she's heard.
Markus looks around at the cavern's walls as well, thinking about his religious training at university while he answers Valaria and Ary's questions.
"Positive energy causes me some pain, due to my heritage." he says, looking at Valaria. "I have the ability to bring people back from the brink, but it causes discomfort."
He answers Ary next, "I have the ability to inspire fear in others, but I expended most of my reserves in this battle. I was worried that we'd be f&+&ed, honestly."
Aravashnial rummages around in his robes, producing three potions. "I have one potion of cure moderate wounds and two potions of cure light wounds," he responds to Valaria.
He turns towards Ary's voice, quizzical. "Crusaders? What are you talking about?"
Valaria nods. "I could use a cure light, but the others are in a bad way as well."
She frowns, unable to recall anything speaking of a place such as this. "The walls have statues along them," she explains to the blind wizard. "They look like ancient crusaders, and Kenabres is old enough to have taken place is every crusade..." She pauses, deep in thought. "Millorn said this was his palace, but the statues look... sad, maybe somber is a better word. It feels like a place of sorrow or regret. Or maybe mourning." Her eyes suddenly flick up, staring into the nearest statue's eyes. "I'd say this place is more like a tomb than a palace."
Aravashnial holds out his potions into the air at no one in particular. "If you believe that you need them, take them. I am not in an adequate state to perform triage," he says, bitterly. "The black vial is the stronger mix."
Hrut glances around at the cavern walls, but is too out of it to really comprehend what he is seeing.
Aravashnial falls silent for a moment after listening to Valaria's explanation. Finally, he breaks into a huge smile, the largest you've seen since this all began. "You know, I have a theory," he begins.
"Oh, no, damn it, stop it. No one wants to listen to your crackpot conspiracy theories," Horgus groans.
Aravashnial ignores him and continues, "There's a very old legend...you see, when the crusades first began, they were ill equipped to deal with the Abyssal energies that constantly pour from the Worldwound, and corruption and illness were common. Many children were born hideously deformed... not necessarily tieflings but just mutated, or mal-formed in some way. There is an old legend that at some point between the First and Second Crusades, a group of crusaders who had become infected with Abyssal taint fled into the sewers to raise their deformed children in peace, and that their descendants live on today in the tunnels below the city. It was a tale commonly told to Sarkorian children fifty years ago, to keep them well-behaved - 'Eat your dinner, or I'll give you to the Mongrels!'" He sounds excited, talking fast. "The presence of these carvings certainly gives significant credence to the old tale, to be sure! Does anyone have any charcoal and parchment to make a copy?"
Horgus snorts. "Molepeople? Are you serious? You're insane. Positively batty."
"I'm alright," she responds to Aravashnial. Not wasting any further time, she asks "Anyone able to track relatively well? With the keen sense of smell of a Bugbear we should be able to track down Millorn. I'm guessing he's exhausted his spells if he's running, so it might only take 2-3 of us to subdue him."
Taking note of Aravashnial's more relaxed explanation of the legend of the crusaders below, she smiled to herself. "It's good he's starting to get back to normal..."
Li'an nods at Ehren. "This will probably feel a lit.. err probably quite strange actually," she says with a grin before touching the scale to Ehren and activating it. Even Li'an is a bit taken aback as the formerly young human assumes the shape of a bugbear.
Valaria carefully takes one of the weaker potions and pops the cork, then downs the mixture in one long gulp.
"Thank you," she says. One eyebrow rises at the story. "I've heard weirder legends I admit, but... you called them Mongrels... That's a bit wild." She looks up at the statues again. "Still, we don't have another explanation for how statues of crusaders from one of the earliest crusades appeared in caves under the city. If you're actually right, I hope these mongrels aren't also on the list of things that are trying to kill us."
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"That was careless of me... I hadn't anticipated that those creatures had a master," Ehren says as he administers aid to Ary, in reference to his initial appraisal of the battle. Using the last of his healing spells, he lightly taps the crusader once more. He also offers up the potion of cure light wounds that he was given to hold earlier.
He listens intently to Aravashnial's theory, somehow more surprised by his sudden change in demeanor than in the apparent existence of molepeople. In spite of the rough time they just had, it was enough to put a smile on his face.
"I have some experience with tracking," he says when Li'an asks, ever eager to make up for his shortcomings, "Not quite familiar with this terrain, but it should not be too difficult." He pauses for a moment, wrinkling his brow. "But what was that you said about a bugb-"
In a blink of an eye the scrawny young man changes form, growing taller, more muscular, and more... ugly. The load he had been hauling around for the past few days suddenly didn't seem so heavy anymore, and a myriad of strange new smells filled his nostrils. Things he could not (and probably did not want to) smell before.
"Oh. Right," he says, his voice slightly deeper. "Strange."
Aravashnial smiles, undaunted by the lukewarm welcome his theory had - it was a reaction he was used to. He moves over towards the cavern walls, running his hand over the carvings.
"I don't know. They would have retreated underground a little bit less than a century ago. I admit I have difficulty judging how many generations that would be for humans, though. Your people seem to just come and go," he says, cheerfully. Slowly, his smile vanishes. "Li'an, once we have a moment to spare, please sketch what you see. Proper documentation is important."
Anevia and Horgus watch Ehren's transformation, startled.
Horgus sighs. "Why must you people always transform into monsters? People could have the wrong idea."
"Monsters are good at what they do," Ehren remarks distractedly, looking around the chamber. Again he was having trouble telling the mundane darkness from the magical, but this time it was because he could see right through it all. I could get used to this. That thought would have to remain private. He instead segues right to the matter at hand.
"Well, I've never tracked by scent before, so I am afraid I can't make any promises," he says, moving over to where they last saw the crazed dwarf. He first searched for any visual traces of Millorn, sniffing every now and then just in case the dwarf was standing nearby.
After a satisfied stretch, Ary speaks up. "If you're going... you're gonna need light." She rolls her shoulder, which makes her sword dance in its own light.
"Very nice, by the way, Mage. I didn't know you could do that. I'm sorry it hurt you to do it. Excellent patch job, as well, Doctor Rocky." Then she feels her cheek, where of all things, the gash still had not closed. "This is never gonna get better, is it?"
"Wait. We can train those things? I don't know whether that's more scary or neat.."
She looks over to Avi, head tilted. "So... they fled underground to avoid persecution? Don't you think that's a little... messed up?"
When Avi brings up sketching and the like, "Actually, Avi... there's a lot of it. And I mean a lot. Several large statues, and symbols and stuff."
"Monster refers to actions, not to appearance." Ary said with a shrug. "An Aasimar can be a thief, and a half-orc can be a paladin, and a tiefling can become a cleric, you know? It's just a bigger deal that they manage things like that." she suggests to Horgus. "People are people."
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Valaria shrugs. "You're not the only one Aravashnial. If my parents ever had more kids, they'd probably have grandchildren by now. Well, if there's more places like this down here, we can try to figure out the full story. If this was the home of ancient crusaders, there must be some amazing bits of history down here, untouched by anyone from above." She feels a bit of excitement growing at the idea of exploring ruins entirely unseen by outsiders in generations.
She looks over at Ehren, then Ary. "Well put." She gives Ary a grateful smile. Despite still being a bit injured, she follows Ehren, wanting to give him some back-up and her night vision makes keeping an eye on him easier, though his new form certainly seems able to defend itself.