While the noxious sludge in the cistern keeps T'chazzar and Davina at bay (at least temporarily), Dom leaps next to the worm demon and hacks at it, but his blow is turned aside by the Queensman's armor the thing still wears. Kiri, however, finds the range with her air blast, buffeting the demon with powerful winds.
The vermlek grunts in pain before wading a short ways through the sludge .
Dom's stab misses the retreating figure, who stops and concentrates. Its wounds heal slightly, and at the same time Dom and Kiri feel negative energy tearing through their flesh .
FAIL: Take 5 hp negative energy damage.
SUCCEED: Take 2 points negative energy damage.
Dukkan grimaces as he feels the creature's foul necromancy tear at something deep inside him. Hurt, but undeterred, he rushes to pursue the vermlek. "That trick won't save you, fiend!"
Seeing the difficulty the demon bile is causing her friends, Leora is glad she doesn't have to step into it and glad she has a remedy for at least some of it. She takes a step so she's standing right at the edge of the pool to get rid of as much of the gloop as possible. Wrinkling her nose at the stench, she shouts "Cayden Cailean, turning all this demon bile into wine would be asking a lot, but could you at least get rid of it?"
Davina uses her reach from her Longarm extract, and attacks the demon from the edge of the pool.
Pleased with the effectiveness of her strike the birdwoman gave a cry of delight wich turned to a squawk of pain as the wave of black foulness swept over her. She managed to shrug off the worst of it but began to angrily gather up another burst of air. She focused and with a swirl of her hands sent the blast soaring across the surface of the water at the demon leaving a trail of displaced water as it went. Her haste and anger made her aim shaky with her need to avoid her allies.
Leora's healing channel heals those it touches, undoing the damage of the demon's spell while cleansing a bit more demon's bile from the pit. While T'chazzar struggles to overcome his nausea at the stench of the sludge in the cistern, Jessibel keeps inspiring courage while the others press the attack. "Nice trick," the demon compliments the long-armed but suddenly nauseated Davina, even as it dodges the incoming air blast from Kiri. It can't dodge Dom's cold iron gladius, however, which opens a deep wound in the thing's shoulder.
The demon decides the half-orc is his greatest threat and concentrates its efforts on him. The thing against feints before driving the tip of its rapier deep into Dom's chest, narrowly missing his heart .
I repositioned your token inside the cistern; due to being nauseated, you wouldn't be able to attack...but you could use your allowed move action and a Climb check to get back out of the pit to attack at a distance, though you'd provoke an AoO from Firefly Man in doing so.
Let me know what you'd like to do ASAP. Remember, each round in the stinky pit requires a new Fort save.
for
for
Undaunted by neither piercing blade nor awful gunk, Dukkan rears back with his sword and slashes across the worm/man/demon-thing...
Desiring to see the demon man go down Kiri focused and moved her position slightly. With that she sent another blast of wind at him, determined to smack the bastard down. Unfortunately she failed to hit yet again and cursed in aggravation.
Davina climbs out of the pool.
Unable to make any progress, T'chazzar simply stands at the edge of the pool, gagging, and slowly sheathes his shortsword.
Seeing the worm-demon-man (is he half man, half worm-demon, or half demon, half worm-man, Leora wonders) nearly run Dom through with his rapier, Leora jumps into the pit. The time spent near the edge paid off as she is able to make it to Dom without losing her lunch.
"Be healed," she prays quickly, trying to hold her breath and not breathe in the nasty air.
Davina escapes from the sludge pit, but the stench still affects her, and that's all she can do for the moment. Again, the Firefly Man dodges an attack from Kiri but Dom seems to have his number, opening a grievous wound in the demon's stomach.
"If I'm to be sent back to the Abyss...I'll take you with me!" he snarls at Dom. Again he attempts his tricky feint-here-and-stab-there maneuver. The wound he inflicts on the half-orc would've been enough to perhaps drop Dom...were it not for the timely healing spell Leora cast on him seconds earlier. Sensing that his demise may be at hand, the demon hisses at the warrior and cleric.
for
T'chazzar staggers out of the muck.
"If I'm to be sent back to the Abyss...I'll take you with me!"
Still smiling a mirthless smile, Dukkan takes what the demon dishes out, using the opportunity to get himself into a more advantageous position.
"Poydem, ublyudok," he sneers as he again rips into the demon with his sword.
EDIT: can someone please 5-foot-step Dom one square to the north?
As much as Leora wants to stab this worm-demon-man, she decides to play it safe and make sure it doesn't have the satisfaction of taking anyone with him. "Gonna have to try harder than that!"
She draws the wand of cure light wounds that they'd bought so long ago and prods Dom in the back with it, mending some of his wounds. Her eyes are watering from the stench, but she manages to keep it together for now.
Davina with her Longarm extract still in effect stabs at the demon.
Davina's long arm snakes in and she stabs the demon in the neck. As it gasps its last conscious breath, it falls toward Dom, who eviscerates it with his cold iron gladius. The demon shudders and begins to melt away, leaving behind the Queensman armor, rapier, and other worldly gear.
There are still large swaths of demon's bile floating atop the other brown swill inside the cistern, but it's nothing Leora can't clean up with another positive energy channel or two. It appears you folks have rid Kintargo of a rare demonic presence in its midst.
"Is it over?" Jessibel asks. "If so, I can clean you folks off...once I'm freed from all these restraints."
Wearily, Domitius boosts Leora out of the pit, then climbs out himself. He grimaces with a bit of pain as he leans down next to Jess, and starts cutting her bonds. "If the Firefly Man had no more accomplices besides the fool Brassvane boy, then yes, I think this is over."
As he helps Jess out of her restraints, Dom manages a small smile. "He forgot to dress you up like Queen Abby first. Honestly, how many times am I going to cut you out of stuff like this?"
"I'm hoping this is the last time," Jessibel replies. "At least this time it wasn't self-inflicted."
'Thanks for the rescue," the teenaged noblewoman continues. "I guess I owe you all an explanation. After visiting Lydia at Songbird Hall, I decided to give this place a quick check, since I was sort of in the neighborhood. Although Sabrina didn't come with us when we first explored this place, I told her about it and figured there was a chance she might have decided to hide out here."
"I thought I might have to deal with a stray grimple, but now that I have coin shot in my magical arsenal, I figured I could handle myself. I should have bailed when I saw that the secret door had been repaired--Sabrina could never have done that on her own--but she could've hired someone to fix it for her, right? Anyhow, I came below and ran afoul of several grimples, including a big one. I tried to slip through the gate and come down here to regroup, but...instead I kind of blundered into a giant spider web. The spider managed to bite me before I could pull free of its web and, well...I kind of walked right into a grease patch created by one of those little freaks. Before I could get back on my feet, I heard the gate creak and found a Queensman standing over me with a rapier pointed at my neck. I figured maybe I could talk my way out of the mess but he had the grimples fetch all these straps and harnesses. I hoped I'd be able to slip free at some point, but the bastard knows his knots and trussed me up good."
"He asked if, like most good Kintargans, I could speak Infernal, insinuating that if he didn't find a use for me he'd kill me, so I played along. He'd found those strange scribblings on the walls in here and knew they were some sort of attempt at opening up a portal to the lower planes. He said that if I could faithfully translate from Infernal, perhaps he could get the portal functional again, though rerouted to the Abyss. Over the days I was his prisoner, he told me that he planned on bringing an army of demons through to destroy Kintargo from within."
"I translated just enough of the Infernal scribblings to be useful but not too useful; I'm pretty sure he wasn't very close to getting the portal functional again."
To Dom she asks, "So what happened to you?" With a head nod toward T'chazzar she adds, "And who's your new friend?"
"So what happened to you?"
Domitius sighs, and tries to explain. "After Sabrina ran off, I thought I’d try my hand at tracking her down. I figured I’d sneak by the Sarini estate and see if I saw anything."
"It turns out, the Old Man had gotten the idea to assemble a goon squad and start looking for his daughter. That day, I learned I cannot yet fight off seven armed men. Yet," he qualifies that statement rather insistently.
"For several days he had me chained down, while his men questioned me rather vigorously as to Sabrina’s whereabouts. He didn’t like it when I told him I didn’t know. He also didn’t like it when I tried inventing answers for him. Personally, I thought ‘She ran off to be a warrior-bride of Grask Uldeth’ sounded kinda cool. Sharkey, wow, he really didn’t." Dom unconsciously rubs a spot on his left shoulder where a newly-forming scar is hidden by his tunic.
"Before he could figure out what to do with me, fate smiled on me. Word must have spread among the household about what had befallen me. Miss Marghery, the cook, always was nice to me. One day, when the Old Man was away, Marghery comes down to the cellars, with big plate of lamb, ostensibly for me. She gives it to guards to give to me, and leaves."
"Being greedy mudaks, they eat my food. Being stupid to boot, they don’t realize Marghery drugged the meat. While they snoozed, I freed myself." At this point, Dom’s face lights up as if remembering something. Turning to Davina, he says, "I hadn’t counted that lock before; you’re only up one on me, after all." Turning back to Jessibel, he continues. "I then thanked my captors for their hospitality..." - Dom’s voice gets that hard quality it sometimes gets when he talks about violence - "Gathered my things, and escaped as quickly as I could. I chased around trying to catch up with everyone for a while, eventually meeting up with them at the Silver Stein.”
After a moment, Dom again has a flash of recognition across his face, but this time he looks mad at himself. "Chyort poberi! If I'd have had five more minutes, that would've been the perfect time to grab that genealogy book we'd wanted to nick. The one that belonged to Sabrina's mother...!"
"Only one? I'm going to get working on that." Davina looks at the gunk that's all over her clothes. "We smell terrible."
Eyeing Jess for injuries she gives her a quick hug. "You went missing, and I wasn't about to let your Grandmother know. So we went looking. We found our new friend T'chazzar. Then found some missing teenagers who thought Demon Bile was a fun new toy. After that we found a house with a homicidal homunculous. Which led us to tooth faries, and then back here to you."
She glares at Jess. "Don't scare me like that again please. Notes. Send notes by small children or birds next time."
"Oh dear--does Grandmother know I was missing? I can con my mother easily enough, but the Archbaroness is pretty sharp. Did someone send one of the silver raven figurines asking my whereabouts?"
It appears Leora's positive energy channels have healed any lingering wounds on Jessibel. The bard sings a prestidigitation spellsong and cleans the filth off of everyone who ventured into the cistern to kill the demon.
"Um, no, we kind of avoided talking to her. If we hadn't found you here, my next plan involved smuggling myself out of Kintargo by ship, and hiding out in the Shackles." He looks at the others. "You'd have all been welcome to come with, of course."
T'chazzar says, "I was doing a... parallel investigation and happened to be in the right place at the right time to cross paths with these folks, and I decided to try to help. Pleased to meet you at last."
Leora high-fives Dom after he boosts her out of the pit. "Mission accomplished! Jessi saved and the demon-summoner thing killed. And yeah, hopefully none of us will be killed by the Archbaroness."
After hugging Jessi, Leora takes her time cleaning up her friends wounds and the remaining demon bile to make sure it's all gone.
"Jessi, was this demon-guy doing anything else in here? Did he have any friends or anything? Other demon-summoning supplies?" Leora takes a few minutes to hunt around the room for any other signs of the demon or other friends that he might have summoned.
"Maybe we can get some paint and paint over these Infernal symbols or something so nobody else gets any bad ideas."
It takes one final positive energy channel for Leora to cleanse the cistern (and her pool-hopping friends) of the last of the demon's bile, and Jessibel uses her prestidigitation spell to clean away the other glop from the pit. Jessi answers the concerns of Dom and Leora about the Firefly Man having any allies: "None that I saw during my three days down here...he just sort of had a general agreement with the grimples to watch out for intruders."
Leora's search of the area reveals a pile of Jessibel's confiscated equipment to the north, not far from the well-preserved corpse of a second Queensman; it seems you've discovered the fate the pair that disappeared a week or so back. He wears the red-and-black studded leather armor, Thrune pendant, and Chelish Citizens Group armband most of you have come to expect, along with carrying a light mace, a dagger, and a pair of manacles.
"I think my captor was keeping that corpse in reserve in case he succeeded in summoning more of his kind or needed a back-up corpse to inhabit," Jessibel comments as she slips back into her armor and other gear.
As she walks back to the main chamber, Jessibel picks up the jar of fireflies and ends any lingering speculation on that matter: "Anyone else need any fireflies for light spells?"
Dom vigorously returns Leora's high-five, wincing in a bit of pain as he does it despite his wounds. "Thanks, Leroa, you really saved my butt in there!"
"Anyone else need any fireflies for light spells?"
He is his usual understated self upon seeing the jar. He breaks into a brief sing-song, "You owe me a saiiiii-illllll..." before wincing and taking it back down a notch on account of hurting himself with the remnants of his wounds from the fight. "Okay, I'm good now."
Kiri saw the demon go down finally and gave a resigned sigh. This was getting to be too much for her to want to bother with. It was a relief to have her apprentice returned to them relatively unharmed but the story she gave them went to show just how foolish the young woman had been. Wind ruffled her feathers as the strix's irritation grew and she buried her face in her hands when she realized just how foolish this young woman had been. "Foolish apprentice, you should have known better. It's no wonder you got captured. Have you heard nothing I've tried to teach you, be silent, be smart, retreat if trouble shows. Instead you show only that you have failed to learn anything." The bird-like woman was aggravated and it showed in her tone as she spoke. She was so aggravated it was all she could do not to discipline apprentice like she would a hatchling and it showed as the winds intensified around her.
Domitius was musing to himself about Leora redirecting any portals down here to someplace like an Elemental Plane of Mead when he suddenly noticed that Kiri was getting fairly agitated.
"Kiri, please calm down. Jessibel and I have both learned some humbling - and painful - lessons about not running off half-assed like we did. All we have to do now is find Sabrina, and then we can get back to business figuring out how to get rid of Mayor Barry."
Leora sighs, pulling Dom's winnings out of her coin purse. "Yeah yeah. I would've never in a million years guessed we'd be up against some weird demon worm that was wandering around Kintargo buying fireflies! But I was right about that wasp thing we bet on last time. Want to try and go two for three?"
Leora isn't really sure what they'll bet on next but knowing how life has been going for the new Silver Ravens, it won't be long before something weird happens again.
"Want to try and go two for three?"
Domitius chuckles, flips the coin in the air once, then sticks it into his belt pouch. "Hah, I wouldn't have it any other way, Leora!" I look forward to seeing what screwed-up circumstances make the next time happen...
"I tried to be silent," Jessibel starts to reply to Kiri. The girl decides to skip the 'smart' part because she's got no defense for that. "And I tried to retreat...but I never saw the spider web until I was caught in it. And I tried to keep my balance in the grimples' grease spell.... Oh, you're right--I'm a failure!"
Once she's armed and amored, the despondent girl asks, "Where are we going now? I suppose I ought to go home before my grandmother sends out a search party for me. Thank you all for coming after me, and I'm sorry that sometimes I'm a royal pain."
"You're still alive, so no failure there," says T'chazzar flatly.
Domitius points and nods in agreement with T'chazzar's comment. "Yeah, just don't make the same mistakes twice, and we oughta be okay, Jess."
"Jessi, would it be helpful if any of us went with you to see your grandma? Would that help back up whatever you tell her you were up to the past few days?" Leora isn't eager to meet the Archbaroness, but would do it if it helped her friend out.
"Yeah, other than you going home, I think we've wrapped up the other loose ends here, right? I think we've checked out the whole livery. Did we miss any secret doors where some more grimples might be hiding?"
"I'm glad everyone survived, and we got rid of the demon bile and we have a new ally. Now we just have to survive the Archbaroness. I'm not sure she knows you were missing, but just wanted you to contact her. Do that soon alright?" Davina cleans off her weapon and puts it away ready to head out of the Livery and back to the Coffeehouse for a break.
Jessibel opts to face the music alone for being missing for the past few days. The young noblewoman accompanies your group north, turning east to pass through the Whitegate to the noble villas of the Greens beyond. The rest of you curl west and head to the Long Roads Coffeehouse.
As you enter the place, you're greeted in person by the blonde-haired owner, the halfling Laria Longroad herself. She quirks an eyebrow when she spies a drow in your midst, but comments with a smirk, "Amazing the number and types of enemies a jackass like our new Lord-Mayor can make in such a short amount of time, wouldn't you say?" She leads your party to a back table, takes your order, and whispers that the heat the dottari was putting on her establishment has cooled considerably. They didn't discover the secret staircase leading below, and Laria whispers that your group is free to again use the Nest as your base of operations.
As you're finishing up your meal, Laria returns to drop off a note that she says was delivered by the Aulamaxa silver raven wondrous figurine. It reads:
I've been grounded for a week, probably two! My grandmother sniffed out my lies and is having me help my brother organize and rework some business contracts. I'll be back in touch as soon as I'm able. - Smoke -
T'chazzar takes a seat somewhat awkwardly in the coffee house, and noticeably keeps his sword handy. "It seems our agendas move in similar directions," he says to the team. "We've been pushing hard so we haven't had a chance to get properly familiar. Now that we've managed to rescue your friend, why don't you tell me how you all got into this whole mess and what you're planning to do next."
"Let's have this conversation somewhere else. It does no good to have extra ears listening. To the Nest. Let's hope the rat thing in a box has left the area for a while." Davina nods in the direction of the backroom of the shop.