Pems steps back into the room and groans. Undead AND daemons? Not two tastes that go great together, in his book.
He casts Fortune on Tsin, granting her the right to roll twice and take the better roll once per round for TWO rounds!
Quinn curses with holy fury at the daemon and all those near it, including Tsin and Hektir. "Damn you, teetotalers and tea partiers, damn all your foolishness!"
QUINN, YOU PIECE OF S!&&, CAN YOU NOT SEE US STANDING RIGHT HERE?! THE HELLS WERE YOU THINKING, YOU DRUNKEN MONKEY MAN OF THE CLOTH?! JUST WAIT UNTIL THE DUST SETTLES, AND WE SETTLE OUR BALANCE!!
"Uh, Quinn, I do hope you mean to heal us quickly for that casting. That stings."
Will
Zephtyr takes the spiritual donkey rabbit punch and only loses a bit of air in the process. He offers a spit.
Malavarius: 4
Hektir: 6
Pemsworth: 22
Tsin: 16
Quinn: 14
Antagonist: 11
Hektir batters at the daemon, though its like pummeling rock, and his blows do as much damage to his own fists as they do to it. Tsin -- bolstered by Pems' magics -- has more luck, her blade cutting slicing repeatedly over the thing. It gawks at her, unable to counter her blows and finally overextends, letting her land a killing strike. She severs its head and it begins melting away, back to its lower plane.
Quinn blasts the area with his own magic, trying to end the threat of the risen soldiers, blinding them in the process.
One of the blinded creatures howls , but the second fires wildly, leaving itself open for a counterstroke from Tsin . Somehow it hits her nonetheless, grazing her head.
The remaining dead soldier fires more carefully, hitting Quinn , Tsin , and Hektir .
B2: 23
B3: 23
AoO
Round 3, Init 16
AC = 25
HP = 128/162
Weapon Equipped = +1 Flaming Burst Falchion
Condition(s) = Shaken
Holding onto her blade, and blocking the creature's scream from her mind, Tsin maneuvers to strike it down, and end its miserable existence, which should help them lessen their own miserable experience at the start of their infiltration.
Round 3, Init 6
Will
Fort
Zephtyr spins, 5' flapping to the right, and begins to pummel the nearest undead.
to hit; (-PA)
magic damage.
to hit; (-PA)
magic damage.
AC: 7 armor+2 dex+3 dex(form)+1 ring+5 barkskin+3 NA(form)= 31AC DR 5 bludgeoning
HP 123/143
Speed: Fly (120') perfect + 10' (Gr. Longstrider) = 130' fly perfect
to hit; (-PA)
magic damage.
+10 BAB +8 Str +1 amulet = +19 to hit
1d8 + 8 str damage +1 amulet = 1d8+8
Barkskin (extended-280 minutes)
Resinous Skin (extended-280 minutes)
Gr. Longstrider (14 hours)
Resist Cold (30) - 0 minutes
Elemental Body 1 (druid lvl 6): Air elemental: If the form you take is that of a Small air elemental, you gain a +2 size bonus to your Dexterity and a +2 natural armor bonus. You also gain fly 60 feet (perfect), darkvision 60 feet, and the ability to create a whirlwind.
Elemental Body 2 (druid lvl 8):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +4 size bonus to your Dexterity and a +3 natural armor bonus.
Elemental Body 3 (druid lvl 10):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +2 size bonus to your Strength, +4 size bonus to your Dexterity, and a +4 natural armor bonus.
Elemental Body 4 (druid lvl 12):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +4 size bonus to your Strength, +6 size bonus to your Dexterity, and a +4 natural armor
AC: 7 armor + 3 shield + 2 dex + 1 ring +3 barkskin =26
HP 143/143 - DR5 piercing
[ dice]1d20+16+1[/dice] to hit; (bless)
[ dice]1d6+6+2[/dice] magic damage.
+9 BAB +6 Str + 1 Mwk +1 magic = +16 to hit
[ dice]1d6+6+2[/dice] damage;
Endure Elements (24 hours)
Barkskin (extended-280 minutes)
Resinous Skin (extended-280 minutes)
Gr. Longstrider (14 hours)
Resist Cold (0 minutes)
Resist Fire (0 minutes) -Mal
Stoneskin (0) Mal
Mage Armor (+4)
Endure Elements
Druid Spells Prepared (CL 14th; concentration +18)
. . 7th—animal shapes[D], fire storm (DC 21), heal
. . 6th—fire seeds, mass fly[D,APG] (DC 20), quickened resist energy, wall of stone
. . 5th—beast shape III (animals only)[D], fire snake[APG] (2, DC 19), wall of fire
. . 4th—air walk, echolocation[UM], flame strike (DC 18), freedom of movement, slowing mud[ACG] (DC 18), summon nature's ally IV (animals only)[D]
. . 3rd—fly[D], greater longstrider*[ACG], resinous skin* (x2)[UC], sleet storm, spike growth (DC 17), wind wall
. . 2nd—barkskin* (2), feather fall[D], fog cloud (2), resist energy
. . 1st—calm animals[D] (DC 15), liberating command[UC] (2), obscuring mist, produce flame (2)
Pems looks at the remaining undead. He gives his evilest eye to the nearest one!
Malavarius remains paralyzed, though he would widen his eyes at Tsin's display of swordswomanship if he could.
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"Did you guys see that! I called for Cayden's holy smite, then Tsin smote everything! Praise be, our swordswoman is the blessed of Cayden!" Sure that their elite companion will dispatch the remaining threats, Quinn nonetheless draws his crossbow and loads it as he watches for reinforcements to arrive.
Malavarius: 4
Hektir: 6
Pemsworth: 22
Tsin: 16
Quinn: 14
Antagonist: 11
Tsin and Hektir smash down the nearest two undead, drawing more fire from the remaining soldier, though your armor mostly protects you.
Perhaps oddly, Quinn doesn't notice any increased activity in the camp.
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Round 4, Init 16
AC = 25
HP = 115/162
Weapon Equipped = +1 Flaming Burst Falchion
Condition(s) = Shaken
Tsin takes advantage of efficient distances to cover the floor from one undead to the other, and still bring her blade to bear upon it.
Round 5, Init 6
Zephtyr moves to the remaining foe and smashes.
to hit; (-PA)
magic damage.
AC: 7 armor+2 dex+3 dex(form)+1 ring+5 barkskin+3 NA(form)= 31AC DR 5 bludgeoning
HP 123/143
Speed: Fly (120') perfect + 10' (Gr. Longstrider) = 130' fly perfect
to hit; (-PA)
magic damage.
+10 BAB +8 Str +1 amulet = +19 to hit
1d8 + 8 str damage +1 amulet = 1d8+8
Barkskin (extended-280 minutes)
Resinous Skin (extended-280 minutes)
Gr. Longstrider (14 hours)
Resist Cold (30) - 0 minutes
Elemental Body 1 (druid lvl 6): Air elemental: If the form you take is that of a Small air elemental, you gain a +2 size bonus to your Dexterity and a +2 natural armor bonus. You also gain fly 60 feet (perfect), darkvision 60 feet, and the ability to create a whirlwind.
Elemental Body 2 (druid lvl 8):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +4 size bonus to your Dexterity and a +3 natural armor bonus.
Elemental Body 3 (druid lvl 10):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +2 size bonus to your Strength, +4 size bonus to your Dexterity, and a +4 natural armor bonus.
Elemental Body 4 (druid lvl 12):Air elemental: As elemental body I except that you gain a +4 size bonus to your Strength, +6 size bonus to your Dexterity, and a +4 natural armor
AC: 7 armor + 3 shield + 2 dex + 1 ring +3 barkskin =26
HP 143/143 - DR5 piercing
[ dice]1d20+16+1[/dice] to hit; (bless)
[ dice]1d6+6+2[/dice] magic damage.
+9 BAB +6 Str + 1 Mwk +1 magic = +16 to hit
[ dice]1d6+6+2[/dice] damage;
Endure Elements (24 hours)
Barkskin (extended-280 minutes)
Resinous Skin (extended-280 minutes)
Gr. Longstrider (14 hours)
Resist Cold (0 minutes)
Resist Fire (0 minutes) -Mal
Stoneskin (0) Mal
Mage Armor (+4)
Endure Elements
Druid Spells Prepared (CL 14th; concentration +18)
. . 7th—animal shapes[D], fire storm (DC 21), heal
. . 6th—fire seeds, mass fly[D,APG] (DC 20), quickened resist energy, wall of stone
. . 5th—beast shape III (animals only)[D], fire snake[APG] (2, DC 19), wall of fire
. . 4th—air walk, echolocation[UM], flame strike (DC 18), freedom of movement, slowing mud[ACG] (DC 18), summon nature's ally IV (animals only)[D]
. . 3rd—fly[D], greater longstrider*[ACG], resinous skin* (x2)[UC], sleet storm, spike growth (DC 17), wind wall
. . 2nd—barkskin* (2), feather fall[D], fog cloud (2), resist energy
. . 1st—calm animals[D] (DC 15), liberating command[UC] (2), obscuring mist, produce flame (2)
Hektir and Tsin quickly dispatch the last of the undead here, leaving the barracks now empty of anything but bodies.
"Ah! Splendid!" Malavarius wiggles his fingers and bounces his eyebrows as the rest of the group stands over the fallen forms of the undead soldiers. "I can move again! What luck! You all handled yourselves quite well with that daemon, you know. Nicely done. I don't suppose anyone saw my good hat in this mess while I was frozen? No? Blast."
Zeno then pipes up from a perch on a broken bit of exterior wall,
Zephtyr floats around a bit, trying to recover from the blasts he received from both friend and foe in the fight.
"What the piddlespot, Quinn!?" Zephtyr blusters. "I've seen you aim poorly before...what with your aim with your whizzy stick, but man...you really missed there. And you just didn't pee on your boots, either!"
* * *
Eventually, he'll calm down enough to want to get healed.
CLW
CLW
CLW
CLW
Tsin walks up behind Hektir, quietly seething, and waits for her turn at being healed, before turning her attention on the rest of the building, and examining it for useful items and the like. She allows the time to resteady herself, as she feels each bullet like it just struck her.
"Is this our new ploy then, Quinn? Let the enemy surround Hektir and myself, and level the field, with the promise that you'll have survived to restore us?"
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Tsin's search of the rubble seems distracted by her usual seething anger, and she doesn't find anything other than the three guns dropped by the dead soldiers and the prosthetic leg of the corpse the daemon was getting ready to eat when Mal interrupted it.
Tsin looks over the rest of the barracks. "So, we've cleared this building. If we get separated, or have to pull back, this is the place. Unless that daemon is visited regularly, we might be able to assume that its reputation will shoo away lesser creatures."
The swordswoman waits for the others to ready themselves, then heads towards the next building in need of purging. Due north, next long building.
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Quinn looks hurt at the harsh words from his companions. "But I called down the smiting and everything got smote. And I always dribble a little on my boots, Hektir, you know it's homage to Cayden." Then he sees his companions in a new light. "If you didn't have such questionable morals Cayden would never had smited you along with the demon. Instead of getting angry with me, maybe you should turn your judgement inward." Pleased with his verbal smite, Quinn keeps looking for other soldiers or foes as the party follows Tsin to the next building.
"Now that you understand us better, the next time you allow your god to smite me, do not be surprised if I pay you back in kind for the pain rendered, good judgment or no."
Zephtyr's seething soon turns to roiling as the healing hits his body, new and whole and then he's ready to follow the butcher to the next building. He is pleased that the party has a place in which to escape.
Zeph gives Quinn an airy pat on the back as he floats on by to the door.
"Aren't any of you at all curious why those troops we saw didn't come rushing over at that noise? What's going on here?"
As the wizard trundles along behind the others asking his questions about the strangeness of the soldiers' behavior, he weaves a quick protection around himself. "No, but I'm serious. This is all very strange. Maladaemons and dullahans are wandering about, undead spring up from festering corpse piles, and the soldiers just mind their own? Something fishy's going on here."
HP: 68/77
AC: 15 (11 T / 14 FF)
Fort: +4 // Ref: +5 // Will: +11 (+1 vs spells, SLAs, & Su abilities of evil arcane spellcasters)
Resist 10: Cold
Energy Absorption: 1/42 absorbed
Pearl of Power I: 1/1 used
Pearl of Power III: 0/1 used
wand of scorching ray: 14/50 charges used
Cantrips Prepared (4): detect magic, open/close, prestidigitation, read magic
Level 1 Prepared (4+2+1): comprehend languages [ ] [ ], endure elements [X], feather fall [ ], protection from evil* [ ], mage armor [X], shield [ ]
Level 2 Prepared (4+2+1): create pit [X], glitterdust [ ] [ ], protection from arrows [X] [ ], resist energy* [X], spontaneous immolation [ ]
Level 3 Prepared (4+2+1): dispel magic* [X], fireball [ ] [ ] [ ], haste [ ] [ ], magic weapon (greater) [X]
Level 4 Prepared (4+2+1): dimension door [X] [ ], remove curse [ ], secure shelter [ ], stoneskin* [X]
Level 5 Prepared (3+1+1): break enchantment* [X], dismissal [X], passwall [ ], teleport [ ] [ ]
Level 6 Prepared (2+1+1): disintegrate [ ], flesh to stone [ ], greater dispel magic* [ ], veil [X]
Level 7 Prepared (1+1+1): resonating word [X] [ ], spell turning* [ ]
Protective Ward used: 0/10
Ongoing Effects:
mage armor (Pemsworth)
mage armor (self)
greater magic weapon (Hektir)
veil (14 hours)
protection from arrows (DR 10/magic vs ranged): 0/100
"A couple of gunshots within the perimeter? I hardly think that merits attention. I think we all agree this camp is blasphemous. The quickness of our strike should have lessened the risk of detection. Why? Did you worry about that before you tried to banish the daemon?"
"Of course I did! That's why I tried to banish it and told you all to be ready if it didn't work! Good thing for us you at least listened to me, Tsin. Who knows how much more ruckus that would have caused if you hadn't cut that daemon down as quickly as you did."
"I'm not arguing. If you're concerned about the troops, we should study them, and evaluate a strategy for neutralizing them, before we continue gutting this place. Otherwise, let them continue looking outwards, while we work inwards."
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Zephtyr spits, knowing how little tired, hungry soldiers care about things that they aren't being paid or told to care about...like hygiene or civilian life.
"I was a soldier once. Sucked. Nothing but people telling you what to do," Zephtyr remembers his brief stint in the military. "Now I go my own path...as dictated by a f&#~ing magical hut that I have no control over. See? Completely different."
A thick padlocked chain secures the stout wooden door of the next barracks.
Pems hustles forward to examine the alien lock.
Pems, hears some faint moaning from inside, as he examines the lock, which he's pretty sure he can open -- the basic mechanism doesn't seem too dissimilar from ones back home, strangely.
"Um guys? I hear moaning behind this door..." He raises his voice. "Hello! Hello in there! Are you still alive or are you very undead?"
"Keep your voice down, Pems. Get us inside, so we can evaluate the building's inhabitants in privacy."
"Is it locked to keep people out or to keep the source of those moans in? Hmmm. Maybe my good hat's inside."
"Maybe Cayden can heal the wounded, it would be a chance to make a friend that could tell us more about this camp."
"Moaning, huh? Maybe someone is in there doing the deed? Does it sound male or female? Maybe there is a lass inside who needs my assistance," Zephtyr puts his ear to the door and listens as well to try to determine the type and gender of the moaning.
Perception
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The moaning sounds more pained than pleasured ... so, yeah, sort of like some lass who's spent time with Hektir.
"Really?!" Quinn, interest peaked, presses a hand against the door and looks through to the other side.
Inside, Weak bulbs provide dim light in the area. Quinn sees two rows of bunk beds -- with more than two dozen humans strapped to bunks -- and eight cast-iron stoves, cold and unlit.
"Strapped? Pems, crack the lock already. There might be ones still alive and still sane enough to answer questions. That sounds like a meat locker."
Tsin waits until they're inside the building to move among the beds, seeking the living. When she finds one, she points her boys to speak to him or her, the language barrier a constant nuisance left to others to overcome.
Pems opens the door and you slip in, Tsin looking around.
Almost everyone in here is alive, but Tsin suspects her thoughts of a meat locker may not be far from the truth: She spots distinctive punctures in the neck of almost all the men here, evidence that ... something ... is feeding on them.
Most of the men don't seem lucid enough to recognize your presence, but one flinches away from you, straining at his bonds. Realizing after a few moments that you're not planning to dine on him, he croaks weakly: Помогите мне!
"Help me!"
Heal check (untrained)
"Probably have gout," Zephtyr says with a spit. "Probably just need to walk it off, rub some grass or dirt on the wounds." Zephtyr spits again as he floats to an fro above the men, looking for trouble, loot, and booze.
Perception
"Yeah, these men just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Quit complaining." Zephtyr says, forgetting that he was complaining about being injured (and lining up for healing) a few posts ago.
"He asks for help." Pems translated.
"Keep the conversation going, Pems. We'll be here forever if you translate word-for-word. Ask him how we might help, why he's strapped to a bed, why the fire isn't lit, why there are puncture marks on their necks, how many fanged fiends there are who pay them visits to feast, how they even became blood bottles, when Rasputin came to town, and our likely chance of success if we strike successively at their stronger and stronger legions."
Tsin's tone of voice suggests that she's not all that interested in seeing the imprisoned man freed or healed, just that their questions are answered before the man dies of shock.
What the blazes..." Malavarius goes silent in shock and confusion for a few moments. He then nods at Tsin's words and pats Pemsworth encouragingly on the shoulder, "Go on lad, as Tsin suggests."
Under Pems' questioning, the man, Dmitri, explains in Russian:
He and the others were brought here, where they are fed on by the three horrid chaplains of the camp's commander, the mad monk, Rasputin. Why the fire isn't lit, he cannot say, but he adds bitterly that he suspects it is because they do not care to keep their food warm.
He isn't sure how long ago Rasputin came to camp: Time seems to play tricks here -- he remembers seeing the monastery burn days ago in strange purple flames, “bathed in heavenly light" issuing forth from the watchtowers at each corner of the camp but sometimes he sees it restored as if it were new, in all its grandeur. But he knows why Rasputin came: he and a man named Viktor Miloslav -- a genius engineer with a hunched back, bushy mustache, and prosthetic leg -- built something called a World Engine and its World Anchors.
He can't tell you anymore about the World Engine or Anchors, saying only Miloslav could control the devices. But that's no good, he says with a caustic laugh, as Miloslav hasn't been seen since he was dragged before Rasputin and his chaplains by two Cossacks with a strange goat in one of the barracks in the inner courtyard. The scientist did not exit the building, which burned down shortly thereafter.
While Pems translates the man's words, Quinn check their wounds and vital conditions.
"Prosthetic leg? Wasn't the daemon chewing on a body with a fake leg? Do you think it's the same fellow?"