Since aleon has his axe out right now, he will move so he is one block northeast of the thing. and ready an attack. As soon as the thing steps through the doorway he will swing. I don't want block anyone's path, but, if someone gets on the other side of that doorway we can set up flanking.
Niveus spies the creature from the back and fires at it with his crossbow.
Saif takes the other side of the door and attacks the Ratling as it moves through as well.
[dice=Attack]1d20 + 4
[dice=Damage]1d6 + 4
"Niveus, you might want give this thing a colorful surprise. This creature has inherent magical properties to disappear. It is even more dangerous when we don't know where it is. Also, Aleon! It understands what we are saying."
Kairi moves quickly behind Aleon. Kairi mutters a few words in Samsaran and presses her hands on Aleon's rat bite wound.
"This creature can summon a rat swarm. Be careful!"
thanks Kairi
The ratling looks up as Kairi explains its capabilities, and proves her right by backing into a corner and disappearing, rather than dashing forward to meet your swings. Shalelu mutters "This is why I usually just stick to goblins and the occasional ogre. They rarely get clever on you." She then charges through, hoping to at least get a hit in before it scampers through a hole in a wall to cause more grief.
As she leans into the blow, the decaying floorboards crack under Shalelu's feet, but a quick squeal indicates her aim is true. "Don't suppose anyone has a way to pin it down?"
As you press further into the shack, you find more fungus and mold growing on the sagging benches, broken table, and narrow cupboards. An old brick stove sits against the west wall.
Niveus curses and rushes forward making sure no one is in his line of fire. He did not need more then it's general location so he summoned the spell, magical energy rushing from his blood and into existence.
Kairi looks for anything in the current room that could help reveal the invisible foe.
Intelligent rat, that is a new one, guess we gotta be careful.
Aleon moves to where it is suppose to be and tries to hit it with the axe even if he has to chop through the wood.
Niveus quickly dashes to a safe corner from which to fill the room with a dazzling display of lights without harming any of the rest of you.
[ooc]OK seriously Niveus, whatever horrible slight against this dicebot you have made, it's time to apologize and beg forgiveness.
Aleon lands what feels like a fairly solid hit on the beast, but Saif hits only flooring as it dodges about invisibly.
Kairi is able to tear down enough of the strange decorations from the ceiling to shower a small area in debris and reveal anything hiding within, but Shalelu quickly notes a disturbance in the dust on the floor, and the creatures tiny yet strangely human handprints suddenly headed through a small hole in the wall, in the northeast corner of the room.
The whole building shakes and groans from the stress as Shalelu quickly hacks at the door, so that you all might quickly pursue and relocate the creature, revealing a decidedly unsettling sight.
In what may once have been an alchemical laboratory, the equipment has fallen into decay. Ancient chemical spills create weird stains and colorful crystalline growths amid the partially collapsed workbenches. An old skeleton, still dressed in tattered clothes, also lies among the workbenches, and a cursory examination of the remains quickly reveals that some hideous transformation or deformity has disfigured the skeleton—the skull seems half melted and weirdly elongated in the face, one arm looks more like a bird’s talon, and the ribs have grown long spurs of bone that protrude both into and out of the rib cage.
Assuming Kairi spends this round tossing her improvised bundle of debris inside (ranged attack against a DC of 5, or even miss and then get a 1-3 on a d8 for scatter), the creature should be coated in enough bits of old string and chips of bone and fungus to no longer be effectively invisible. If that doesn't work out, a DC20 perception check or lucky guess will reveal which corner it snuck off to.
Free action Is this thing really worth it? We can just live and let live.
Aleon, not sure how to be on the defensive continues fighting and if he can't find it, he will pick a spot randomly
as he uses his two-handed axe.
Now that the creature is no longer as hard to find as before he cast a different spell. Sending a glowing miniature fox after it.
Yup. The odd little rat beast is indeed revealed, for the sake of anyone delaying, in the northeastern corner of the room.
While Kairi's improvisation reveals the location of the ratling, it still makes for a rather irritatingly small target. It once again begins chittering some sort of magical incantation as Shalelu leaps into the room to aid in cornering it...
... and scoring a solid blow. Unfortunately, this is not enough to distract the beast from its strange chittering.
Niveus recast the spell sending another tiny glowing fox at the thing.
with my axe this thing will go down.
Finally, you manage to get enough of a bead on the nasty little creature to put it down, just before it finishes calling forth a swarm of rats to make life that much more difficult for you.
The corner in which it was hiding has a loose floorboard (not that the rest of the shack doesn't) under which are concealed a number of notable things:
A small threadbare cloth bag containing 33 GP.
A masterwork dagger, housed in a fancy steel scabbard.
And a scroll tube, which in addition to some magical scrolls contains a map of the marsh nearly as detailed as Kairi's recollections.
As it seems the owner of this shack has long since died as a result of some strange magical experiment gone awry, it is safe to assume they won't be particularly upset should you make off with their rowboat, which should make it much easier to continue your exploration from here out.
Additionally, that frantic little dust-up earned you another 150 XP, which is just enough to bring you all to level 2 by my math.
Where to next? Are you still continuing along to investigate this second shipwreck as planned?
sure, Aleon will investigate the second shipwreck and the rest of the area, then probably return to town to find another person.
Aleon leads the way with his axe ready.
With a nice little rowboat and some fancy papers for your troubles, you depart from the shack, continuing along to the west. After a bit of rowing, what appears at first to be a strange tangle of branches is in fact the moss-covered ribs of the second wrecked ship. The ruined ship lies on its side, split down the middle and mostly sunken into the mud and murky water.
Hopping out of the rowboat and trudging over, you find a rusty metal placard identifying the ship as Kaijitsu’s Blossom. It's a bit larger than the first wreck you discovered, but in far worse shape. From the look of it, it must have somehow run aground here, many years ago, in what would have to have been a major storm for it to be so far from the shore. There's a cave marked on your maps a bit upriver, which would be a likely place for any survivors to have fled to, but as you return to relatively dry land after poking about, a trio of skeletal warriors, dripping with muck and holding rusty short swords of clearly foreign make slowly emerge from the murky depths between you and the cave.
Initiative: Shalelu, Skeleton 2 (S), Niveus, Skeleton 3 (NE), Aleon, Skeleton 1 (NW), Saif, Kairi
Shalelu, seeing danger in the situation, quickly draws her bow and fires at the nearest skeleton as they begin to advance, weapons held high.
Her aim is a bit off, but it attracts the dead man's attention well enough for it to shamble towards her.
Notes:
Having just leveled up, but not settled in for a nap, feel free to run with level 2 stats/HP/etc. Any spell slots or X use/day abilities gained are inaccessible though.
Kairi is still around, in NPC mode, with 2 first level spells unused. As she has CLW on her list, if anyone wants to retroactively pester her to cast that before jumping in here, have 1d8+2 HP.
Light blue=Difficult terrain, Dark blue=DC10 swim.
Niveus see's the nearest undead and a deep sense of revulsion comes over him. He lashes out with a word and hand sending a ray of white light at it.
Niveus quite handily disposes of the nearest skeleton, causing it to crumble away with a single spell, but the others continue advancing.
Aleon moves one square left and attacks with his axe but swings at the earth dirt floor instead.
slashing damage.
Aleon and Saif move up to meet the skeletons as they advance, the latter scoring a blow which would easily fell a living man, but which barely scratches the animated pile of bones.
Kairi hangs back, ready to lend emergency aid should anyone need it, while Shalelu does her best, firing off two more arrows...
... which don't seem to have any effect. "This works a lot better against people who have hearts to aim for..." she mutters.
Niveus recast his spell letting the energy of creation fly at the undead again.
Is that at the one that's in melee with the other two, or the one that isn't?
Niveus zaps another skeleton to dust as the final one lifts up its old rusty blade...
... slicing only the air between Saif and Aleon.
aleon moves to the closest skeleton if he isn't already and chops it at the neck with his axe.
slashing.
And Saif's blade handily comes down at a sufficient angle to smash the skull of the final walking pile of bones.
None seem to be carrying anything of particular value beyond their torn mail shirts, and rusty blades of strange foreign make, and it's entirely possible there may be more in the cave to the south.
100 XP by the way.
Aleon switches to his gun and makes sure it is preloaded with pellets and heads into the cave taking the front.
A fifty-foot-high cliff rises along the marsh’s southern border, its face a thick tangle of jutting rocks and bright green vines and nettles. A curtain of these thick nettle vines partially conceals a cave opening at the base of the cliff.
As you cut away the nettles, Shalelu asks, "I don't suppose anyone happens to have some handy little magical lightsource on them? Looks too twisty in there to rely on sunlight, not that there's much left." It quickly becomes apparent that between the five of you, the only sources of illumination are a pair of torches carried by Saif, and some sunrods on Shalelu, one of which she lights and passes off to Kairi. "You have a hand free more often than not, right?" She smirks.
Aleon will go down the turn instead of straight which he thinks might lead to a dead end. Explore dead ends first, so we have less options later on to deal with.
Niveus remains prepared for more undead as he remains towards the back.
Pressing along through the narrower tunnel single file, you shortly come across a wide chamber, serving as the nest to a rather oversized wolf spider, currently dining on the corpse of a similarly sizable gecko. While you might be able to back away and leave it be, it seems unlikely that it will ignore you should you make your way past.
Surprisingly Alphabetical Initiative Order: Aleon Kairi Niveus Saif Shalelu Spider
Aleon puts his gun away while getting out his axe as part of a move action and moves to the spider to swing at it
Niveus brings forth a ball of acid in his hand and hurls it at the spider.