Hrut wages a relentless war against the hundreds of rats in the pantry as they gradually wear him down to his last breath. But finally he lands a pair of devastating hits against the swarm, annihilating the majority of their number in two fell blows. The rest of the rats disperse into the walls - leaving a mound of rat corpses all over the ground, as well as inside of his armor. Hrut is covered in tiny scratches and bites, and is in need of a good bath.
Combat ends
Hrut takes a few moments to recover, and Markus arrives in the pantry to check in on him, accompanied by Fenna.
"Oh gods, how disgusting..." Fenna crinkles her nose.
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Covered in what appears to be vomit and rat guts, Hrut is unsteady on his feet, and if one did not know better he would appear to have drank himself to excess and is showing the effects of it,
"Just had to stick with it! Rats couldn't get the best of me!" Hrut pants out wobbling back and forth.
Taking off his helmet Hrut notices all the dead rats on and inside his armor, and the remainder of the last few meals, looking around,
"I need to clean up I think, can you show me where? I would not stand too close if I were you..."
I must look like a drunken hobo, penance paid I would say!
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The pain fades from Li'an's mind, and with Ehren's help she's able to see through the darkness. "Thanks," she says as she stands back up. Aiming the wand at the Mandragora, she tries to draw forth its magic to summon a spiritual weapon.
Li'an sits there expectantly as she waits for the magic to take effect. After a few moments she realizes nothing's happening and sighs, finally deciding to move forward to engage the creature.
The mandragora lashes out its vined arms once more against Ary, both vines spinning in the air and slamming against her with a thunderous bang - in the dark, she is helpless to defend herself. The barbs catch her along her exposed skin, administering more and more poison.
The creature then wheels against Valaria, diving onto her neck and latching itself around her collarbone. It starts to greedily lap up her blood and envelop its vines around her body.
Despite the poison, and her many wounds, Ary manages to snap out of confusion.
Ary is up.
"I... I still can't see. Who moved beside me Val? Is there more than one?" Ary says, beginning to panic as the fatigue and curse and poison and sickness and blindness all begin to take its toll on the crusading ranger.
Ary moves away from the creature, bumping into Ehren as she holds her shield and sword between the creature and herself.
Valaria is up.
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Val turns toward Ary for a moment. "It's Li'an, you're fine. Don't panic, there's just one of these things. We can take it, then we can get out of here in one piece."
In her moment of distraction, the damned plant latches onto her leg and she yelps in pain as it drains the blood from her limb. "Arg, son of a b*tch. Get off!" She tries to slip her leg clear of the things grasping maw.
Valaria manages to squirm free of the three-foot-tall plant monster.
Meanwhile, the poison running through Hosilla's veins leads to her slow, but mercifully painless, death.
Round 4
Ehren is up.
"It's going to be okay, Ary," Ehren says softly, raising a hand to her eyes as he had done to Li'an's and his own. He looks down at her wounds and frowns. "You are not well. You should take this."
He retrieves one of Riftwarden potions from his belt pouch and offers it to her.
Markus approaches Hrut - alright bud, go take a bath. And take this: he offers up his one potion of cure serious wounds. "I can't use it anyway, and we need you at a good amount of strength if we get attacked. And for tomorrow."
The poison courses through Ehren's veins. In some places his skin turns bright red and inflamed, as if he had been in the sun too long.
Li'an is up.
Hrut drinks Markus' potion, and many of his tiny little wounds heal up, though he is still wounded.
Fenna keeps her distance from the vomit-and-rats-guts-covered man, smiling sheepishly. "O-okay! I think Ary drew some baths earlier - I can show you where. Ugh, it's going to take forever to clean up in here!"
Li'an begins to feel the poison affecting her finally. Fighting the effects, she moves forward to attack, stepping up and thrusting Lleuad into the horrible little plant creature.
"Ugh, we've got to do something about this poison." she thinks. "We may want to get out of this basement and try to fight it upstairs before this poison wears us down." she says to the others.
Li'an finally succumbs to the poisonous vapors around her. Her lungs start to burn, as if they were on fire... but she fights through the pain and lunges at the plant monster. It attempts to ward off her blade with its thorny, vined fingers but Li'an dashes its guard aside and hews into it violently.
The mandragora leaps at Valaria once more, latching itself onto her exposed skin and draining her of her blood.
"Thank you, Ehren." Ary smiles as she drinks down the potion, her wounds healing, as she slips back towards the creature, enabling her to strike at it soon.
Valaria is up.
Val curses as the creature bites her again, but starts to feel light-headed as more blood is drained from her body. "Get off!"
Ability Damage: Damage to your Constitution score causes you to take penalties on your Fortitude saving throws. In addition, multiply your total Hit Dice by the Ability Damage penalty and subtract that amount from your current and total hit points. Lost hit points are restored when the damage to your Constitution is healed.
Valaria inhales a deep breath of the poison - it burns her lungs and makes it difficult for her to breathe.
Round 5
In any case, Ehren is up.
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"We need to get out of here," Ehren remarks in agreement with Li'an, as he tries in vain to wipe the blood away from his mouth and nose. Even if the mandragora continued to ignore him, the poison would likely kill him at this rate. Already, he could feel his body further succumbing to its hold.
Valaria squirms free of the Mandragora, though it takes nearly all the effort she has left in her.
The poison has an odd effect on the druid - Ehren starts trembling all over from adrenaline.
Hosilla continues to slowly die on the floor to the poison in the room.
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"Thank you very much, I promise I am not some kind of hobo! I usually do not look like this and I like to think I am intelligent... Anyway I just want all of this off of me." Gesturing to himself at the end and following Fenna to where ever she takes him.
I had better make this quick!
Ehren starts to tremble all over, his heart pounding in his chest. The worst of it is in his hands, which he can barely keep still. He purposefully moves toward Valaria and the stairway, digging in his belt pouch for his own healing potion, just in case. The druid eyes the mandragora warily, hoping he was not wrong about its instincts.
The mandragora doesn't seem to even notice Ehren moving past its area of reach. It turns to face Ary instead, blood dribbling down from its malformed little face.
Li'an is up.
Seeing the Mandragora has turned its attention away from Valaria, she hesitates, waiting to see what Ary's going to do. "Ary, if you want I can move with you into flanking against it. We can try to buy time for Ehren and Val to get healed up."
The mandragora lashes its vines out against Ary, but the reinvigorated crusader woman raises Faith and holds the lashes at bay. It then takes a step towards her before screeching and lunging at her wildly, but Ary effortlessly dodges the attack.
Ary is up.
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Ary slips forward quietly in the dark, looking towards the ram head, and promising to herself that she'd return to remove it from the wall forcibly.
She moves forward past the creature with impunity, before lashing out with Radiance.
"Stupid stargoats... stupid rotting plants. Wonder if they'll let me keep the snake lady... it's pretty." Ary says, distractedly as she tries to focus her attention on the cabbage patch kid.
Like a spring rain Ary's downward stroke falls unavoidable upon the demonic plant monster, nearly hewing one of its arms clear off. Ary's blade returns, bloodless, to her side.
Li'an is up.
Despite being overwhelmed by the poison earlier, Li'an manages to fight off the effects again for a moment.
"Come on Lleuad, lets finish this," she thinks as Ary steps up and strikes at the angry vegetable absent-mindedly. Li'an slashes at the Mandragora's head, closing following up the attack from her spaced-out companion.
Li'an finishes her spin with a blow that slices completely through the mandragora's lower half, chopping it in two like a mere root vegetable. The fight is finally over.
Combat ends.
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"Good job, Fen'wen." Ary says, still completely unphased by the poison despite the fact that she's on the verge of falling apart. She distractedly looks back at the unholy symbol. "Now it's your turn, Stargoat." she says as she moves over to it... and then looks down at the Maralith statue again. "Is it weird that I like Maraliths? I like ladies... I don't like snakes. And I don't like demons. Maybe if they weren't demons I'd like them more?"
Ehren's eyes widen when the mandragora is slain - evidently, the fight had been going better than he thought it was. Coughing on the fumes one last time as they dissipate, he gathers his wits and hurries to Hosilla's side, checking on whether she was alive or dead. Uziel on the other hand, is dead and forgotten.
Li'an breathes a sigh of relief as the ill-tempered sprout collapses to the ground. Shaking off the effects of the few remaining vapors, she walks up to Ary and looks her in the eyes. "Ary, you're hardly making sense. Maybe you should go rest at the stairs for a bit. We can take care of the altar and everything else."
Turning to Val and Ehren, she calls out "Are you two ok? Lets see if Hosilla is still alive. Afterwards lets destroy this altar and see if there's anything valuable here."
Just as Ehren reaches Hosilla, she breathes her last breath on this world, and passes on to the next.
Val sways slightly on her feet, still feeling the effects of the blood drain and the poison. "If I pass out, someone pour this down my throat, then find one of the other ones in my belt pouch and pour that down my throat too. Please and thank you." She looks at Ary and chuckles. "I'm more partial to succubi, but I think I'm biased in that regard."
And with that, Valaria suddenly feels an ice-cold chill running through her veins, and she passes out in a heap on the floor.
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As Val finishes joking about Succubi, Li'an notices her start to faint. "No! Val!" she calls out and rushes over, dismissing her gnomish form and managing to catch her before she crumples completely to the ground. She holds Val in her arms and takes the potion, carefully administering it to her. "Wake up, come on!" she says, her concern clear in her voice.
Fenna nods and smiles, leading Hrut upstairs to one of the guest bathrooms that Ary had prepared earlier. She gives him privacy, quickly dashing off afterwards.
Afterwards, she seeks out Markus. "What are you going to do now, sir?" she asks, biting her lip.
"Dead," Ehren declares joylessly, standing from Hosilla's side just in time to see Valaria drop. He is quick to rush to her side, but Li'an gets to her first.
Val groans as Li'an quickly administers the potion. Her eyes open and she looks up at her. "Hey, you're not short any more." She giggles. "Waking up in your arms is kind of nice." She manages to right herself, but still feels a little woozie. She digs around and finds another potions in her pouch and drinks it too.
"Mm... I said I'm fine. I think." she shrugs. "More important to deface the stargoat. Ha. Deface." she says as she lashes out with Radiance against the unholy symbol.
She looks back to Fen'wen and Butterfly, head tilted. "Awww... now we'll never know if they matched. Good riddance." she says as she looks towards Hosilla.
Val grins as the potion heals her, feeling better now that she's not missing a significant amount of her blood. "Ary, are you okay? You definitely don't sound like yourself." She looks at what she assumes in a symbol of Baphomet. "If you really want to deface it, we could use Ehren's soft earth spell, but we might want to wait until we're ready to leave, just in case it damages the building too."
In a definitely uncharacteristic fashion, Li'an hugs Val when she sees her wake up. "Well if you'd like that more often then start by not scaring me like that!" she says in response, quite relieved and still managing a healthy blush at the compliment.
"What matched?" Li'an says quizzically, turning her head back to Ary.
Ary walks up to the unholy symbol and slashes at it. She doesn't actually do any damage to the wall, but she scratches through the star symbol, breaking its integrity. The symbol stops glowing bright red, and becomes inert, just paint on a wall.