"Waldsby, who cares for Waldsby?! Trust me, I shall take care of it. I will order the guards to burn the village to the ground with all of the worthless peasants within. Then this blight will spread no further. Come, ravens, let us purge this blight!"
At that, she moves toward the ice teleporter.
"Ah, no! Fire actually excites and spreads the problem. Best just to leave the village alone, allow no contact from here and it will die out on its own in a month or two."
"I start feeling the urge to put a bullet in this idiotic priest's face. Just so you know."
"The village is irrelevant. The integrity of the Tower must be maintained. From here, Radosek must maintain the portals to the Otherwhere. Failure here would make the Witch Nazhena would be most...unhappy." The last of this is freighted with fear and import. Clearly, it will not do to make Nazhena unhappy.
Tallak moves between the priest and the teleporter, holding up his free hand in the universal (and, as the others see, Multiversal) sign for "stop". "My friend has just told you fire makes the problem more severe. Leave the village be, madam."
In his defense regarding the ongoing attempts at diplomacy, this is about as nice as Ulfen raiders get: that is to say, implied threats of violence spoken in a soft voice, rather than explicit promises of violence shouted across the tundra, possibly while mounted upon a bear.
Walter looked over at William. "Dare I ask, old boy?"
"Fire makes this strain worse. Leave the village to their own devices and most will die, but the infection will be stopped. If you got somethin to guard here, just do that. You can't risk fires bringing it to it's most easily spread phase."
Naajy whispers (in English)
"I think we need to kill her. But preferably AWAY from the ravens""
Walter glanced over towards the swarm of birds. It didn't take much imagination to a imagine what a few dozen angry beaks could do to a man's eyes after what he'd seen. And Walter had a very good imagination. He nodded his agreement.
"I have very little patience for idiocy and malice, and this woman seems to be rich in both. If this thing about the fire doesn't work, we should lure her to the floor we were in earlier."
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"Well enough, then. We will barricade the village and keep them all inside, and I will keep my birds away from them lest they inadvertently spread the disease. Disease and hunger should do them in quickly enough. What is more important is maintaining the integrity of the Tower."
"This is useless. If we use her to leave without bloodshed, then others will be murdered. She has to die."
"That's quite extreme, but certainly effective. Before we leave, though, could you escort us to the library in the lower floor? There is some vital technical information I need to retrieve."
"Yes, that seems best. And how should we dispose of this contaminated foodstuffs."
She gathers herself for the ice teleporter.
William follows after the repulsive woman, ready to draw his revolver.
She moves to the icy floor and intones, "Down a level, to the halls, leave this cage without walls"
You find yourselves back on the level below, "Let us attend quickly to these matters. Radosek is expecting me to report in soon. He is quite taxed in maintaining the Portals."
As soon as the cleric moves towards the library, William falls back one step, then draws his revolver and shoots her in the back.
Taking the lead from William, Walter moved up and smacked her in the back of the head.
Naajy shoots her and Haamd attempts to bite her
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Not one to be left out, Tallak swipes his axe at the woman!
Digger IS one to be left out and is a little queasy at the gang-up. He doesn't protest.
Surprised by the sudden assault by these strange factors of a secretive and violent government, the blue skinned woman falls to the assault before she can even realize exactly what is happening. By the time the first gunshot finishes echoing through the icy halls, she lies in a spreading pool of her own blood, quickly cooling.
"Very well done. Now, Captain Orlov is likely to be on the other side of this floor, possibly unconscious. In light of the behaviour that this priestess showed, I believe that leaving her alive is posing a threat to the surrounding area. Including a quaint little village with some quite hospitable fellows. I believe we should make sure she's not going anywhere."
William's stomach churns at the thought of killing someone already defeated, and his face shows unwillingness.
"Then we may go face this Radosek, or possibly just set fire to the whole Tower. Although I'd be willing to bet that our foes might have magical countermeasures to arson."
"Magic to stop fire? I wonder if we could find out how to do that. Asbestos works, of course, but I don't have any." He looked at the others. "This captain someone from the old world?"
"I agree that we have no choice but to kill her"
He looks around hoping that somebody else will volunteer. If nobody does, he signals to Haamid to finish her off. That isn't QUITE as bad as doing it himself.
"I think we have to go through that other magic gate and see where it leads us. I can't believe that I said that"
It is a simple, if gruesome, matter to finish off Captain Orlov.
Walter covers his dirty and tattered Earth suit with some furs (not the white coat that was recovered from the chest). "Now that the unpleasantness is behind us, let's prepare to face that Radosek. Hopefully, we will be able to draw him out with some farfetched tale, but let's get ready if not. When we get into a fight, I, Mister Brautigan and Mister Singh use firearms, so Mister Galeas and Haamid should be our frontline, as well as - Sir Aringham, I've been meaning to ask, what exactly are those things? Shovel blades?"
"Something akin, yes. Good eye, old chap. They were once sniper shovels. The idea was that they were both tools and shields for a sniper once he'd dug out a position with it, but they turned out to be less effective that one might think. It takes a fair amount of steel to stop a rifle round. I liberated a few to test out for more close combat situations. Not much use as shovels without ruining the edge, but in a trench they're nice and close and offer a way to block the other chap's knife, or sword, or axe, or spear." Walter shrugged a 'you know what the trenches are like' shrug.
Naajy shudders at the description
"I'll take your word for it. I was lucky that my regiment never made it to France"
"Or into the war at all, thanks be to the many gods"
Walter nodded. "Well, you ended up here, but it's still better than that bloody stupid war, wot?"
"And I'm glad I retired after the Boer Wars. I've had enough of nations squabbling over some strip of land or deluded sense of national pride. We have invented and discovered more in the last two centuries than in the rest of our history, we should be building rather than razing. Anyway, no time for philosophy. Let's go."
When they return to the teleporter, William improvises some verses. "So, iambic tetrameter... ta-tan ta-tan... Up to the commander's hall, take us one, take us all."
Your preparations complete, you move beyond the aerie filled with crows to the ultimate level of the tower, nearly 100 feet above the snowy ground.
You find yourself in a broad circular unpartitioned room, nearly 40 feet in diameter.
A translucent image of a globe hangs suspended in midair, slowly rotating in place, above a summoning circle in the blue-tiled floor of this large chamber. Lines of arcane energy glow across the globe’s surface, faintly humming with power as they connect multiple endpoints in a radiant glow bright enough to illuminate the domed ceiling overhead. Many tables and shelves covered in books, maps, and large scrolls line the room’s circular walls, and a large ornate mirror hangs between two open windows to the west. Twin ice sculptures of demonic fiends flank a bubbling cauldron in an archway leading into a deep alcove in the southern wall.
As you arrive, A tall, imposing, beared man seems to finish an incantation of some sort. Nearby sits a large iron cauldron that bubbles under the head of a small fire.
The icy floor of the tower bursts into sharp icicles that form themselves into vaguely human shapes.
"What ho!" Walter strode fowards, heading straight for the fron of the ice men formation, attempting to dice his shield into one of the frosty warriors.
"I guess we're not trying the bluff route, then"
"Haamid, get them"
Naajy moves to where he has a clear shot at Radosek and shoots him while Haamid attacks one of the ice creatures
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"No subtlety, then!"
The revolver barks again in William's hand. As his fellow Englishman and the tiger lunge forward, he instinctively calculates the sorcerer's instinctive recoil, and shoots not where he is, but where he will be. One moment later, a spray of blood confirms that the calculation was indeed correct.
Tallak steps forward, swinging his axe at one of the creatures before following up with a shield bash. "The time for subtlety is past!" He exclaims.
Sir Walter slams his shield into one of the ice creatures, but the ice is harder than expected, turning his blow aside.
Naajy fires upon the warlock, striking him in the leg. A flesh wound, but a wound nevertheless. Haamid snaps at one of the ice creatures, but his teeth clamp on empty air.
William's revolver sends a bullet to strike Rodosek, catching him in the shoulder.
Tallak strides forward, his axe and shield catching it from opposite sides. The ice creature shatters into shards of ice the begin to melt away, no longer held together by elemental energy.
The ice creatures seem like strange mockeries of humanity to most of you, gothic ice sculptures come to life.
Miraculously, the man who you assume to Radosek, floats into the air, unsupported, like some sort of Yogi or magician. Nothing seems to support him, but he clearly floats twenty feet into the air, head near the ceiling, out of reach of sword and axe and claw, though clearly in reach of your firearms.
He speaks a foreign series of words and lashes his hand at William.
One of the ice men is crushed in the barrage from Tallak and Haamid.
Haamid advances on the next ice creature while Naajy shoots at the floating Yogi
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"Chap was summoning soldiers of Ice," Walter explained as he swung some more. "Didn't seem like the time to have tea and crumpets in case he called more of these sods to have some. There's only so much room at the table, wot?"
Tallak wades further into the melee, aiming to thin out the ice creatures with shield and axe both.
Digger tries shooting the floating weirdo.
William's hand darts to the pocket where he kept a bottle of silver nitrate against infections.
If Radosek's magic is electromagnetically-based, the conductor may have held a charge. And if it's somehow similar to the old practice of alchemy, perhaps the purifying power of the noble metal is enough to do it.
A dark cloud sweeps over Williams's vision, momentarily blotting out sight. Whether William is lucky or his hypothesis is correct, the magic passes over him without further effect.
Impacting the blocky ice creatures is easy enough, but their composition is tough and turns aside your blows.