Garfaulk curses in Dwarven as his vision goes black, being blinded by the eyes of the other creature. "heh, two can play at tha game" as he blindly tries to blind the other creature, aiming his hand like a gun, putting his thumb down as the beam fired
(Dex)
Zeke takes aim down the sight and pulls the handle to launch a bolt at the creature .
(BAB + DEX - no Precise Shot)
Grimacing as he sees he misses his mark, Zeke reloads .
These confounded wooden contraptions! he thinks. Firearms are so much more elegant, if I could just figure out how to link the trigger mechanism to the barrel. Ah, there, Mr. Torstein's joined the fray! That's showed it!
Charles sneaks around the corner, throwing his dagger and hiting the creature in the upper thigh. Garfaulk attempts a finger-laser-gun but his blindness prevents him from aiming well, and the beam of light goes well off-target. Zeke also shoots poorly, thanks to the confusion of people in front of him and people attacking the creature.
ROUND 2 continues...
1 Charles
2 Varrad
3 Ton'iel
4 Garfaulk
5 Zeke
6 Wulf
7 Creature (dazed.... loses its turn)
Go if you are bold!
Wulf stands toe to toe with the beast, lifting his hammer again he feels the pangs of guilt but knows it will only go one way. He brings the hammer down hard on the beast.
Though blind, Varrad steps forward slowly, going by sound alone, and attempts to swing his longsword at the creature.
Varrad smashes the creatures with a huge overhand blow, dealing 20 damage. The creature wobbles, but is not down. Not yet.
ROUND 3
1 Charles
2 Varrad
3 Ton'iel
4 Garfaulk
5 Zeke
6 Wulf
7 Creature (will it even attack?)
Go if you are bold!
Charles nimbly flips between the legs of his friends and past the creature, putting him on the opposite side of the beast from Varrad and stabs at a sensitive spot. (2 move actions)
(standard action)
The creatures was dazed and heavily injured, and with a final flourish, Charles stabs it and puts it down.
COMBAT OVER
As the party catches it breath, Garfaulk and Varrad slowly recover their sight. You look around the cavern. The water to the north is noticably deeper, pooling into about a three foot depth.
You see a passageway heading to the west that you have not explored yet, and to the south, a dark tunnel awaits.
Varrad's light spell wears off.
Zeke takes a look at the creature now that it's dead, curious about how it was producing such a powerful light. He suspects it's magic, and wants to confirm.
Garfaulk sighs with relief as his vision slowly came back to him, taking another swig of his brandy. "Sorry bout tha lads, couldn't see worth a damn, everyone alright?" With the creature dead now, Garfaulk goes over with Zeke to examine it, see if he can figure out what it was that had blinded him.
Charles collects his dagger from the creature's thigh, cleans it by wiping it on a nearby rock, and resheathes it.
Zeke asks, "Any signs that Mr. Khonnir came this way? I wonder what this creature does with its prey."
"Eats it." Charles says needlessly.
Garfaulk checks out the body; he noticed the shredded leather cap on its head was probably meant to cover its eyes at some point, when the cap was still intact. It is also wearing a collar, and there is a word etched into the leather.
Zeke nods to Charles, and spreads his hands to indicate the cavern. "So where are the bones? If this is its lair, maybe it ain't been here very long? I'm takin' this as a sign that Mr. Khonnir didn't get waylaid." Surreptitiously, he looks in the pool to see if there are any suspicious human-shaped shadows at the bottom.
Charles: +1 to locate traps
Zeke- you do in fact see a human shaped body at the bottom of pool! Several of the others notice it as well.
"Look it was obviously some weird, underground, blinding frog thing. Ton says suddenly badly needing a smoke. "I have no idea."
Damnation, thinks Zeke as he notices the body. Wordlessly he looks at the others and then pushes forward into the water to help bring it up to the surface.
"Someone's pet." Charles says, indicating the collar. "What's it say?"
Zeke, with the help of anyone who is willing to get wet again, pulls the body from the water. It is a halfling, though... clearly not Khonnir Baine. You recall that a party of halfling adventurers made up the first expedition to the caves.
Charles looks the halfling over to make sure he isn't family. Also rifles through his pockets and belongings.
Big bites are taken out of the halfling's torso, but Charles can clearly tell that this halfling isn't family. The halfling adventurer expedition was all made up of out-of-towners.
There is an intact belt pouch. Fishing through it, Charles finds 42 gold.
There are also two potions.
And of even greater interest... Some type of... device. None of you have ever seen its like before. It is a metal cylinder about 1 foot long, with one end of it slightly bulbous. On the bulbous end is a clear material, like glass but certainly not glass. There is also what looks to be a button on it, but clicking the button does nothing.
Garfaulk chuckles at the tag "Quite the original name. Weird creature. " heading into the washer with Zeke,he helps pull the halfling out,then looks to Charles with a worried look as his Halfling ally checked over the body.
"Got anything good on em?"
"Was loaded." Charles shows everyone the gold.
Garfaulk, upon closer examination, you remember hearing about this type of creature before. It is called a blindheim, and it is a magic beast. The light it creates is not from physical ability, but certainly arcane in its source.
They are from the Darklands, an immense series of caves below the surface of Golarion. Not much is known about the Darklands... few are brave enough to go down there, and hardly any return if they do.
Zeke is a very rare exception.
Garfaulk confidently identifies the two potions as cure light wounds potions.
The strange device though... Garfaulk knows his devices, knows his engineering. This is something that goes beyond his experience.
Charles tries to see if the blindheim's mouth would make the bite marks on the halfling.
The bites are certainly caused by the blindheims. Most likely, it was softening the corpse up by storing it in the water and slowly chewing it up over time.
Garfaulk frowned at the odd little device, shining the light coming from it into the glass-lIke end, just to see if it did anything,paying the button as he did so. "This thing sure is a bit odd, hope yall don't mind if I hold onto it fer further study." He pockets the device to look at later. "Ive got the wand, if someone else wants the potions"
Zeke is relieved to see it isn't Khonnir Baine, but still feels sympathy for the fallen adventure. He murmurs a quiet prayer to himself, more for his own comfort than for the halfling's soul, and then prepares to continue deeper into the caves once the items have been distributed.
"I'll assume everyone gets their fair share." He says as they start to search the bodies. "It was a shame to kill this thing. But it was pretty messed up." He moves it about with his hammer.
"One of the other groups, I'd expect we'll find a lot more."
The party proceeds south about 60 feet down the narrow tunnel, and eventually gets to a junction. A passageway proceeds to the southeast and to the southwest. To your northwest is a small cave off the tunnel.
A collection of crates, boxes, rubble, and scavenged metal lies heaped in this damp cave. Several strange chalk drawings of twisted, spiny plants, a strange three-legged creature, and emaciated four-armed humanoids mark the walls.
Zeke appears charmed by the drawings-- but is a bit puzzled by the three-legged creature. In his experience, that doesn't happen often in nature. Is it two people with one leg tied together? Or does it perhaps look like the robot they fought back at Khonnir Baine's house? He pauses to study it a bit more carefully. "Garfaulk, look at this," he suggests, smiling. "Remind you of anything?"
Charles begins to carefully look through the various debris.
Making his way to the cave drawing, the light coming from his body illuminating the area as he began examining the cave drawings. "Well how, tha's sumthin. Looks like there may be more robits around here after all-this is where the other one came from, aye? ... Well, looks like there may be some spiky plant robits and robits with multiple arms. Probably best to keep our guard up, eh?" He examined them further, focusing, just in case he was missing something.
Sure,knowledge local and knowledge nature might help
Wulf moves with the group keeping his hammer held up high, not wanting to be caught out again.
As they come to a damp cave he looks around spotting the drawing his face scrunching up. "That's some messed up drawings."
Hmmmmm. They're definitely drawings.
Wulf thinks that the spiny plant drawing sure look like cacti. A pretty strange place to see something like that.
The sharp eyed Charles does not see anything of interest in the rubble and old crates, but the others take a look too.
Varrad, however, turns over a box to see 7 round, silvery circles.
Zeke and Charles, as locals, recognize these as silverdisks. These highly collectible items have been given a worth of 10 gold, and are commonly used as a currency throughout Numeria.
"ya know, I get the sneaking suspicion I've heard o these guys" he looks over at the finally crafted disks and whistles a little bit. "now those look expensive. Fine craftsmanship."
Charles' eyes bulge. Already today he's seen more money than he did in all but his best heists.
Garfaulk, you pride yourself as a knowledgeable person whose been there and done that, but you have no idea what these four-armed humanoids are. You eventually throw up your hands in exasperation and conclude that either the artist of these pictures was incompetent, or a child, or that this is some unknown and undiscovered race.
Getting frustrated, the dwarf put his head in his hands, then suddenly looks up, as if inspired. "Of course! They're clearly the Boogeymen of Brindleburgh! They use their multiple arms to hold yeh down while the others tear into yeh... they eat cacti, so the spikey plants in the drawing make sense... and they live in lousy caves underwater where they draw pictures of themselves. Oh, and they're good at jugglin... Scary good... they say that's why they have those extra arms in teh first place"