Ivan slings his shield onto his back and draws his crossbow before moving out onto the walkway.
Daseem frowns at the various traps. He recognized the tactical advantage they offered but such a fight was dishonorable. Whispering, "Gorum." a thin layer of warm air surrounded him and he advanced forwards.
The woman shoots again, this time at Menrozzar. He is lucky, that the second shot is stopped by his armor.
Ivan fires back this time, raising his crossbow and firing off a shot when the assailant pokes out for their's. Then continues moving forward, as any good dwarf does.
Bupkis moves up and heals Menrozzar.
"Why you do this?", he calls out to the figure in the door.
Menrozzar struggles, attempting to escape the trap, to no avail.
"You killed my spouse. Now I'm killing you." the woman answers.
"Who was your spouse?" Menrozzar asks, rather confused by her motivation.
Ivan misses the archer and puts the bolt into the door.
"Skreed Gorewillow." comes the answer while staring daggers at you.
Actually lassie, it was not us what killed that bastard. Twas the law of the land, he knew he was breakin' it when he tried ta' kill all the people O' that town, an his punishment was handed out by the law!
The woman doesn't deem the explanation worth a response.
Daseem shot Raag a suspicious look, "S-she one of your's?" he demanded.
Turning his attention back to the woman, Daseem spans his crossbow and takes a pot shot!
"I got no clue who that is! I only have half orcs and Halrex." Raag answers.
Daseemm shoots at the woman but misses.
Scrabbler briefly inverted himself over the doorway then swung down, using the door frame like a trapeze. His feet drove toward the woman with the bow, the force of all forty pounds of him behind his clawed feet.
Now that he was hanging onto the archer like an angry backpack, he spat a giant stinging loogie right in her face.
Scrabbler finds a cool way to avoid all traps an go directly into melee with the archer. He doesn't manage to hit her though. What he finds also is that he suddenly has a constrictor snake on his ass. But he is lucky to evade it in that high position. The archer fumes as she can't see anymore because of goblin goo in her face.
She draws her shortsword and stabs at the menace on her back, but she misses as she can't see him.
Scrabbler yelped, climbing higher on the archer. "Big snake. "
Bupkis tries to free Menrozzar by punching the trap mechanism.
He remembers the letter they found in the Ramblehouse, "Melira?"
Bupkis destroys the trap.
Ivan double moves and draws his hammer and shield to wind up right in-front of the the woman.
That orc was a bastard, an' ifn' ye cryin' over that worthless a%#@!+%%, I'd wager ye are B*&^& yerself.
Ivan angrily storms towards Melina but is stopped halfway by another trap.
Ivan lashes out with his gauntlet at the trap, trying to tear it apart.
Mission accomplished. Trap destroyed.
Freed from the trap, Menrozzar drops his falchion and moves up into melee range with the archer, drawing his lucerne hammer as he does so and saying, "Thanks," to Bupkis for freeing him from the trap. Once in range, he lets out a roar and swings horizontally at the blinded archer as he goes into a rage.
Daseem cursed silently when his bolt missed, he'd thought it had been a good shot but clearly it wasn't enough, he had to get in close. He dropped the crossbow and growled, "GORUM AID ME!" A discarded bone in the murk suddenly stated to glow a ghastly shade of purple and it whipped towards him and started circling around him in an orbit. Grinning he surged forwards, hoping to push past the woman.
Scrabbler frantically clawed at the crazy longshank lady's eyes and throat.
Menrozzar gets into melee range, but fighting through a door with a reach weapon is no easy task. Which is now very painful for Raag, as the door frame gets badly hurt. Daseem tries to get past the archer but is blocked by the whirling mass that the archer and Scrabbler are.
Scrabbler stabs the archer once, as it still is prett yhard to do even though she is blinded.
Ivan frees himself, but he needs to draw a number to get into melee with the Melina. Melina keeps stabbing at Scrabbler, to get him off her, but to no avail. The snake also gets no hold of Scrabbler.
Menrozzar swings the hammer again, this time to much greater effect as he wordlessly roars.
Bupkis can't see any way of getting into the melee, and doesn't want to fire high velocity projectiles into the rumble, for fear of hitting his friends. So he just moves a little closer and watches the action.
Daseem wanted to brush past the woman so Ivan could engage, but the fact was he was stuck. The only way through was to cut a path, so that's what he set out to do!
The doorframe made combat awkward, particularly with a six-foot sword, but Daseem had trained to deal with situations like this. The technique was called half swording, you had one hand on the pommel and the other on your blade. This gave superior control over the pointy end of the sword and Daseem used it to jab at vulnerable points in Melina's armor.
With a small yelp as he dodged the massive snake, Scrabbler continued clawing and pummeling with his tiny hands.
Menrozzar brings his hammer down on the woman, breaking some bones, Daseem adds an ugly stab wound and Scrabbler finds a way to put a knife in her kidneys. That is too much for her to take and she collapses.
Scrabbler is riding a dead horse again, but now he is much closer to an angry snake.
With no real way to get into the action, Ivan merely leans on his hammer and watches on amused as his allies overwhelm the enemy.
chokehold takes another try at Scrabbler and winds itself around him.
Bupkis sees a chance to get closer to the action. He moves up and tumbles to the side of the fallen archer.
The snake is too busy to attack Bupkis, who elegantly passes it.
Continuing to half-sword his ridiculously long sword, Daseem thinks he sees an opening vs the snake and tries to ram the tip of his blade deep into it's flesh.
Ivan cheers the group on. Aye! Good job, ye got it now scrabbler! Right were ye want it! He pauses a moment before muttering. Least I think ye do.
"No wanna be snake food!" Scrabbler shouted, trying to get free of the coils.
Mernozzar swings the hammer, trying to squish the snake and let Scrabbler escape.
Daseem wounds the snake, but it doesn't give up. Even though Scrabbler wrests himself out of the snakes grip it continues to go after him.
Menrozzar damages the door frame again.
Menrozzar needs to be more careful in his swings! In the grips of bloodrage, though, he didn't quite notice as he swiped at the python again.
*splat*
Scrabbler wriggled himself out of the snake's coils again and is half way to climbing up Menrozzzozzzzzr before realizing the snake was dead.
The little goblin heaved a bunch of panicked breaths and coughed as his fear subsided.
He muttered "Don't like big snakes," before trudging up the stairs to check the door for traps and locks.
This oft-neglected compartment holds the pump that drains the brackish water that accumulates in the bilges. Besides the stowaway and her now dead pet nothing else is found here.
Daseem stared at the corpses, they looked smaller and pathetic now. This wasn't the glorious combat he was searching for, no this was something gritty and unpleasant.
Glancing around, he inquired, "A-anyone hurt?"
nary a scratch on me. Couldn't rightly get to a spot what to be scratched bwahaha. Ivan retrieves his crossbow before looking to Raag.
well. There ye go. Seems questions be answered
Crouching over the fallen woman, Bupkis looks to the others and asks, "We want to question? Bupkis could heal."