Tyrus looks up with fever-bright eyes when Dante reports. He rises with a groan from his makeshift desk, littered with pages and surrounded by chalk and charcoal notes.
He states the obvious "They're getting bolder." He frowns angrily "But we need time."
At Tyrus spoke, Luca looked at him for a few moments... then swallowed nervously. "Some types of knowledge shouldn't be pursued." she said quietly. Heresy to a wizard, of course, but... the more she understood about the Void, the worse it got. Ignorance really was bliss.
"Knowledge itself is not evil." Tyrus assures Luca with the arrogance of a wizard "It is what one does with that knowledge. And this knowledge... I could walk the fine line between anchoring a soul to a live body and leaving it tethered to a corpse. Necromancy in the service of life rather than death."
"Hmmm." Tyrus pauses "After our last expedition into orc-lands I spent a little time trying to pick up some basics. I could try to negotiate with them. We've worked with orcs before to neutralise a Makon ruin."
He pauses
"Or we could follow the plan, take those things most easily acquired, and run for home."
He looks to the others "Does anyone have a preference?"
Luca blinked. "I... um... I feel like it would be hard to trust Orcs near a place like this..." she said quietly, having all too many memories of large, strong creatures hurting people she cared about. "We might be able to frighten them, but I don't think they'd negotiate out of the kindness of their hearts."
"What was it Forgelight said? Something about you might be able to convince them they can die more heroically?" Tyrus sighs "I tend to agree though."
"No negotiations. It would be death if we failed."
"Then we gather what we can, and we run. No point in trying to escape Orcs at night. We might as well leave at dawn, to prolong the amount of time the light is with us." Tyrus sighed. "I'm so close."
Early in the morning, before the sun's light actually manages to pierce the surrounding mountains and jungle, you wake and pack away the treasures you have found, bundling them as securely as you can. Kien, mountain of a man that he is, carries the majority of it.
Looking out the doorway of the temple, Kien is able to make out orcs still watching, and Fluffy can smell them. You wait until a breeze rustles the leaves in the jungle, giving you the best chance of leaving unnoticed - even if it isn't much chance.
You do your best to sneak out of the temple, going through the rent wall in the east rather than use the gate. It offers a great deal of rubble to hide amongst, and tall grasses nearby to use for cover until you make it to the jungle line. None of you are able to notice any kind of immediate pursuit.
You make it to the jungle head a ways within. Now you must make a choice, as there are a few paths you might take.
1 (3+2+t): Obscuring Mist, Mage Armor, Mage Armor, blank, blank, blank, blank, Enlarge person(T)
2 (2+1+t): Boneshaker, False Life, blank, blank(T)
3 (1+1+t): Clay Skin, blank, Extended Levitate(T)
"The river is too dangerous" Tyrus says in a half-whisper, half-pant. "Too much of what we carry could be damaged. The jungle is unmapped. I say we head back the way we came. The levitation spell I memorised should make getting even my bulk up that terrible hill easier."
"I highly doubt we will lose the orcs with our group. I agree, let's take back the same route." These guys leave a twenty foot wide trail behind them.
Unanimously you opt to return to Keldradt the same way you came before.
Tyrus takes you in the direction of the ancient road, which you then follow to the point at which you originally found it. As you leave the road once more, he casts a spell on himself and lets Kien set the pace, which the burly half-elf does, at a ground-eating rate that forces both Luca and Tyrus to work hard to keep up.
The first day ends with you having covered a fairly impressive amount of ground. The next day you will need to worry about finding a way up and down cliffs and hills.
Luca was very slightly trained in the arts of moving through the wilderness - and was sweating pretty hard by the end of the day despite consuming water on a regular basis. She had the resilience of youth, and the group's travels were helping... but she wasn't used to all-day marches, and she flopped straight onto her half-rolled-out bedroll as soon as she could.
As they set off Tyrus mixes dried leaves into his waterskin. His eyes sparkle. His skin flushes red. There is a jaunty spring in his step that breaks into a jog.
Magic lets Tyrus push himself harder than he normally would. Harder than he normally could. Possibly too far. Red flush fades to grey pallor. His jogging pace keeps up like a machine, but the steps become ragged and unsteady. The sparkle in his eyes dims, then fades altogether. His clothes are torn, and though the skin underneath holds together it is a mass of the white substance left behind by necromancy.
Kien frowns at Tyrus. "I appreciate the enthusiasm but you need to pace yourself. This is a marathon, not a race."
Tyrus looks up, and blinks a few times. He stops moving, swaying gently on the spot. "Today. Today. Is. A race..." he trails off, and somewhere deep in his mind amazement awakes at just how far he has been able to push his body. 'I... should be... dead.' A moment more and the theory he has been pondering pops into his slowly recovering mind. 'Much more... might cross into undeath... without dying. Not sure... come back'
"Easier. Tomorrow." Tyrus agrees.
Luca looked down at her hands, then up at Tyrus, wondering if he needed the sort of help her hands could provide... but no. The side-effects probably weren't going to be that tolerable in his current state. The Void could do things, but it was rarely nice about them. Luca wasn't sure if that was malevolence, incompetence, or just not caring... but in the end, it was what it was.
You continue on the next day with the same verve as before, Tyrus casting his magic that seems to give him strange amounts of endurance, even though it makes him deathly pale.
Tyrus remembers the route nearly perfectly, and guides you through the thick jungle quickly and unerringly. You come to the point where rather than a gentle descent towards the coast the land begins to fold and undulate beneath the canopy, with many places where the ground can suddenly give way to loose sandy scree.
Kien is unfortunate enough to fall prey to the shifting ground as he attempts to come down a low cliff. The rock he's been supporting himself on gives away and he skids the rest of the way in an uncontrolled fall accompanied by a shower of sand and dead vegetation. He lands heavily on his shoulder, hard enough to bruise.
Kien's injury is annoying, but not debilitating, until you come to the larger cliff you can to scale coming this way. This time you'll be going down, but the climb may still prove troublesome.
"Lets attach some rope and throw it down. Much safer that way." If Kien is bothered by his injury, he doesn't show it as he begins to secure some rope.
"Certainly. I'll go last - I should be able to levitate myself down." Tyrus smiles pleasantly - but something is off. A certain emotionless rictus to his smile. A glaze to his eyes.
Luca raised a hand. "I have no confidence in my ability to climb. I think my minions can carry me down." she said, looking to examine the actual structure of the cliff. If it was basically rock, the Vilstraks ought to be able to slide through it and carry her. Failing that, a pair of Sagari could lift and carry her - without much strength to spare, true, but they were stronger than they looked.
"Very well. It seems we have a plan. Let's start now." Tyrus agreed.
You secure a rope to a tree trunk and Kien descends without trouble. Luca, finding that the cliff face is not solid enough to support the vilstraks movement, summons four of the Sagari who wrap their tentacle-like lower bodies around her upper arms and lift her wholly off the ground, then slowly and securely begin to bring her down the cliff.
AS Luca hangs suspended in mid-air, Tyrus's eye is drawn to a rustle in the undergrowth along the opposite end of the ravine, near where the cliff wall is sheer and nearly unscaleable. A cadre of orcs have crept forward and several of them are drawing bowstrings...
Combat: Surprise Round
Orc Caster
Orc Stalker
Spear Orc 1
Spear Orc 2
Spear Orc 3
Bow Orc 1
Bow Orc 2
Bow Orc 3
Bow Orc 4
Luca
Sagari 1
Sagari 2
Sagari 3
Sagari 4
Dante
Kien
Tyrus
Several of the orcs are armed with bows, and they send a shower of arrows at the most exposed target - Luca, hanging by the Sagari appendages and floating through the air. The range is long, but with enough arrows eventually some find their mark...
The flurry of arrows strike the poorly protected girl, one burying itself deep into her stomach. She feels a tightening in her muscles around one of the wounds, but the sudden rush of terror and adrenaline she feels overcomes whatever effects it might have had.
Kien shouts a colorful curse in elven then looks up. "Drop, I have you!"
Luca let out a scream of pain as the arrows buried themselves in her body - and halfway through, her voice changed. The four Sagari dropped Luca, then shot low to the ground as they began to rapidly close in on the orcs. They'd need a few moments to arrive, of course, but the tiny creatures were pretty good at hiding as they zoomed along the ground.
That wasn't all, though. The Void had opinions about Luca being hurt, and before she even fell into Dante's arms...
...a strange spherical creature with a long, sinewy tail burst into the air 35 feet away from Luca and darted towards the orcs. That made five guardians heading their foes - all of which happened to have flight, it turned out. Tumbling out of Dante's arms as he caught her (safely, one hoped), Luca staggered behind a tree and fumbled at the arrow stuck in her abdomen.
With a muttered curse Tyrus lets loose with his latest spell. While not the one he had been formulating in his head, the new spell was still effective.
"Go!" He told Dante. "I will buy time."
'Now we'll see if Forgelight was right.' He turned to the orcs and shouted to them in his loudest child-caught-peeing-on-the-wall voice, drawing on the orcish lexicon he'd studied, and the phrases he'd learned from his patients.
"Let us go. I tell you how to win great victory!"
Kien catches Luca and throws her over his shoulder. He glares at Tyrus. "That's suicide. You won't last two minutes with them."
Dante looks torn, but in the end does as Tyrus recommends, moving quickly down the rope.
At Tyrus's words, one of the orcs - looking older than the rest - laughs, turning to his fellows and speaking in a mocking tone.
"The fat one thinks it can impress us with our own tongue!"
The rest of the orcs laugh even as they continue their attacks.
End Surprise Round
Begin Combat Round 1
Orc Caster
Orc Stalker
Spear Orc 1
Spear Orc 2
Spear Orc 3
Bow Orc 1
Bow Orc 2
Bow Orc 3
Bow Orc 4
Luca (23 Damage)
Sagari 1
Sagari 2
Sagari 3
Sagari 4
Volt
Dante
Kien
Tyrus
The elder orc seems not to be doing much, though the group can see the variety of pouches, trinkets, and paraphernalia that tend to mark a spellcaster. The rest of them continue their attacks.
Their second volley, aimed at Dante as he reaches the botto of the cliff, is nowhere near as effective as their first. Only one arrow manages to clip Dante in the side, drawing blood from an otherwise trivial wound.
F!&~. Kien thinks back to his days fighting in the circle. What could help, what could help, what had he learned. Wasn't there a time when he and his allies were getting pinned down by arrows? The nobles thought it was very funny to watch them hiding behind cover, just waiting to die...
"We don't leave people!" Kien shouts. He puts Luca down and darts over to the next tree, getting closer to the enemy.
Breath. You know how to do this.
As Luca hid behind the tree, two of the Sagari swooped up close to the enemies - then let out monstrous shrieks right in the middle of their formation.
She poked her head out a moment later, focusing on the orc closest to the group - and the power of the Void surged through her eyes as she focused on it. Luca was no warrior, able to launch deathly attacks through the air - but she could curse things. As the first curse settled over it, she gestured sharply, and a second curse from the Void reached out to take hold. It wasn't quite as certain as the first, but Luca had every intention of disrupting as many as she could when her friends got close to them so they'd be that much easier to get rid of. And if it worked, the first one was going to be a doozy... she pulled her head back a moment later, though, having no intention of leaving herself exposed.
Her everything hurt, after all. She couldn't take anything but the weakest strikes after being pincushioned.
Tyrus sneers as he unloops the rope.
"Dante! Missiles! Luca! Monsters! Kien! Get ready to pull!" He announces, and in Orcish he replies
Dante responds again to Tyrus's tactical acumen, loosing his most reliable destructive magic, as Kien dashes through the underbrush towards the cliff where the orcs perch.
Tyrus unleashes magic of his own, tinged with a distinct, dark note of malice.
The orcish shaman shrieks as his bones begin to grind and creak, sending him shuffling grotesquely towards the cliff. Unable to stop himself, he tumbles over.
End Combat Round 1
Combat Round 2
Orc Caster (23 damage)
Orc Stalker (Sickened 1/1 round)
Spear Orc 1 (7 damage, AC -2 1/7 rounds, nauseated 1/7 rounds )
Spear Orc 2 (Sickened 1/1)
Spear Orc 3 (Sickened 1/1)
Bow Orc 1
Bow Orc 2
Bow Orc 3 (Sickened 1/1)
Luca (23 Damage)
Sagari 1
Sagari 2
Sagari 3
Sagari 4
Volt
Dante
Kien
Tyrus
The orcish shaman sits groaning at the base of the cliff, bones poking from skin in several places. It painfully raises a hand to its own chest and many of its wounds knit. Otherwise it remains still.
The other prominent orc shouts at its fellows.
Fight through, curs! Ignore their weak magics! Kill the fat one!
More arrows, fly, the bowmen attempting to put down Tyrus this time.
Only the single heavy arrow of the leader manages the shot, sinking into Tyrus's magically-innervated bulk. He, too, feels the effects of some sort of poison attempt to lock up his muscles, but the dose is too weak for someone of his prodigious girth. He shakes it off.
The other orcs continue to make for the opposite cliff edge, despite one of their number being heavily damage and debilitated by multiple magical assauts.
Kien takes a deep breath. Open palm, strike downwards. He breaks from cover, sprinting towards the orcs on the cliff out in the open. "Tul bo cin calen uglui im'll belth cín naneth!" He spits at them in elvish. Although they're unlikely to share the same language, the intent is clear enough.
Luca's summoned Volt was finally in range, and it burst out of the undergrowth to strike at the westernmost orc on the north cliff face.
for
As the creature latched on, it quickly began feasting on the orc's blood. It probably wasn't enough to drop the beast, but it would definitely weaken him.
The four Sagari swarmed the closest orc a moment later - the Shaman? - attacking it from all sides.
for
for
For her part, Luca glanced out to glare at the orc who seemed to be shouting at the others - and the Void pulsed again.
It is Tyrus' turn to laugh as the arrow that find his neck draws but a tiny patch of white fluid, his clay-like skin barely scratched by what should have been a fatal blow.
Tyrus looks around. The shaman seems doomed, but those archers could cause much damage as they fire down on those below from the precipice. "Dante! Luca! Help Kien - grease the edge!"
He turns, still dragging the rope, and lumbers towards the orcs. As he does he mutters words that were old when the stones were still young, and air turns to mist.
Luca's minions swarm their targets as she calls upon the mind-bending power of the distant Void.
IT'S power proves irresistible, and the other orc leader turns and flees into the jungle.
Even without their leader, the nearby orcs fight on.
Dante dashes to keep up with Kien.
End Round 2
Begin Combat Round 3
Orc Caster (17 damage)
Spear Orc 2
Spear Orc 3
Bow Orc 1
Bow Orc 2
Bow Orc 3
Luca (23 Damage)
Sagari 1
Sagari 2
Sagari 3
Sagari 4
Volt
Dante
Kien
Tyrus (2 damage)
The orc attacked by the flesh-burrowing Volt stumbles weakly into the jungle away from the battle, swatting at the pest feeding upon its blood and slavering thin streams of vomit.
The orc hunters switch to the most obvious target, Kien - but their hasty and nervous shots barely come close, and the only one that does it easily deflected by the half-elf's lightning reflexes.
One orc makes it to Tyrus on a charge, with the other following close behind.
It's attack is pitiful, and misses the bulky wizard by a comfortable distance.
The shaman has cast the spell Fly, but with some strange peculiarities you cannot identify right away.
The shaman weaves words and gestures of power, and then rises rapidly into the air. The Sagari snap at him once more as he leaves them behind, ascending to the clifftop once more.
The Shaman's voice rings out clearly through the valley, though tinged with pain.
Retreat!
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Luca looked north as a bank of fog enveloped things. Unable to see through it, however there was really nothing she could do to those inside.
Even as she checked, the Volt continued to hold on to the orc it had attached to - and slapped out with its tail even as it continued to feast on the blood of its host.
for
Meanwhile, the Sagari flew upwards to snap at the Shaman, clearly unwilling to let him go so easily. Two of them snapped out at him, while the other two - who hadn't yet screeched - let out their baleful calls.
for
Luca herself turned as the Sagari attacked, then glared at the southernmost orc on the eastern cliff and sent a curse its way. She might only be able to affect them one by one, but when you harried people enough, well.......
...
Well, you were probably a monster. But that, it seemed, was the only way to survive.