Jym scurries out and attacks with his whip; sadly, he fails to entangle the monster.
Because he's so, um, "heroic," Jym does an extra good job, maybe, at helping Gwlybwyr bind the zombie.
Korynne reloads and moves closer so she can get a clear shot once (or if) Wil can keep the undead priest busy. "Hold it still! I've almost got the shot!"
"Hurry up here and fire. He's s-s-s-lipping![/ooc]"
Korynne stands adjacent to the struggling priest, a fresh bolt pointed at its rotting skull. She makes a disgusted and scared face, but holds her aim steady. When the creature is pinned, she aims directly at its face and fires.
The bolt whaps dead-on into the creature's head -- and barely penetrates the skin before stopping, rather than destroying the skull. Maybe this is the kind of undead that it takes a silver bullet to kill?
With that, the creature wrests free of the two holding it.
"Uh oh." Korynne decides to see what she's up against, so at least she knows what got her in the end. She reaches out a hand and tries to touch the creature on one of its less gross bits.
Korynne:
"It's a huecuva! We need something silver! Let's try to tie it up with Jym's whip before it rots our flesh with its nasty touch." Korynne whispers/hisses.
Jym tries to trip the heck-of-a huecuva, staying just out of reach of any swinging arms.
"I don't have anything silver. If neither of you do, maybe we can throw him into the water. He wanted to avoid that, earlier."
Whip
Spoiler:The whip is treated as a melee weapon with 15-foot reach, though you don't threaten the area into which you can make an attack. Using a whip provokes an attack of opportunity, just as if you had used a ranged weapon, unless you have Exotic proficiency with it (Exotic whip proficiency supersedes the Whip Mastery feat from Ultimate Combat).Simple: One handed melee with -4 competence penalty to attacks, 1d3 nonlethal, finesse, reach.
Martial: One handed melee with -4 competence penalty to attacks, 1d3 nonlethal, finesse, reach.
Exotic: One handed melee, 1d3 lethal or nonlethal (your choice each attack), disarm, finesse, reach, trip. Synergy: If you also have the Ranged Maneuvers feat (q.v.), you can use a whip to grasp an unattended Small or Tiny object within 15 ft. and pull that object into your square. To do so, you must hit AC 10 with a melee touch attack. Further, you can use the whip to grasp onto an object within 10 ft., using 5 feet of your whip as if it were a grappling hook, allowing you to use the rest of your whip to swing on like a rope. As a free action, you can release the object your whip is grasping, but you cannot use the whip to attack while the whip is grasping an object.
If you also have the Improved Grapple feat (q.v.), you gain the ability to grapple using your whip. To do so, use the normal grapple rules with the following changes:
Attack: You cannot use your whip to attack while you are using it to grapple an opponent.
Damage: When dealing damage to your grappled opponent, you deal your whip’s weapon damage rather than your unarmed strike damage.
Free Hands: You take no penalty on your combat maneuver check for having fewer than two hands free when you use your whip to grapple.
These synergy effects supersede the Whip Mastery and Greater Whip Mastery feats from Ultimate Combat.
The body itself is pretty much devoid of useful loot, but you catch a glint of reflected light in the shallow water near one of his hands, and come up with a silver dagger.
Gwl instinctively pockets the dagger, then pauses and draws it back out, showing it to the others.
"Wil! The dagger you found on the body! Get it quick!"
Gwl whips out the dagger he took off the drowned man - the one that isn't trying to eat them - and slices at the hecuva.
The dagger snags on his robe, just for a moment, but enough to put the tempo of his attacks all wrong. The first slice clinks against the hecuva's armor, and the second simply stabs into open air.
"I don't want him to rot my fles-sh! I was going to hold him again s-so you could tie him up, but no way."
...Whip
** spoiler omitted **
Jym scurries in on his short legs, trying to get underfoot. The huecuva swings a clublike arm at him:
...but it misses badly; the arm whooshes empty air a foot over Jym's head. As the halfling comes sliding in, the undead monster is knocked off its feet and ends up prone on the damp stone floor.
Jym ... comes sliding in, the undead monster is knocked off its feet and ends up prone on the damp stone floor.
Gwl's silver dagger slashes the huecuva despite its mail, and cuts into the sodden flesh. Sea water, rather than blood, oozes from the shallow wound.
Korynne kicks at the prone creature, trying to distract it enough that Gwlybwr can destroy it with the dagger.
With the hecuva on the ground and Korynne kicking it, Gwl continues to stab furiously at it, taking advantage of his opponent's prone position.
"Nice s-shot, Jym. Got this-s bas-stard right where we want him. Keep kicking him, Korynne. I'll gut him like a fis-s-s-h."
Another gash opens another flap of skin, but the thing is still thrashing. Prone, but not grappled, and surrounded by antagonists, it elects to channel again :
Korynne breathes in hard through her teeth at the pain of the creature's channel. Even as tears form in the corners of her eyes, though, she keeps running interference for Wil with some vicious kicks.
"You are so gross!"
So long as the undead is prone, Jym will also Aid Another to assist with Gwl's attacks.
Gwl is reminded of a scene from his youth, when one unfortunate orphan was surrounded by a gang of other street children, who beat him viciously. This is similar, but the victim is no innocent.
"Die, you s-sack of filth, die!"
Gwl, in a frenzy of stabbing, extinguishes whatever vestiges of life were left in the sodden corpse of the priest.
"We did it! Korynne, you were right - attacking now was to our benefit. Alas-s, I left Uro on the beach half-drowned. I'd like to heal him, and get the trap door cleared s-so you both can get out of here. Can you and Jym see what valuables this priest had while I go handle that?"
Gwl drags the corpse over near the closet that Korynne hid in previously.
"I'll jus-st put him here so you can hide quickly if the other drowned men come back."
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Before Gwlybwr leaves, Jym casts message on him, so they might be able to communicate silently if needed, later.
"Yes, Gwlybwr, that's a good plan! And I want you to tell Uro that nobody faults for him leaving us behind with this gross heck-thing. I imagine he feels pretty guilty about having to do that. Or he will once he finds out. If it helps, you can tell him about my cousin from back in Greenfields. His name was Scrotus Kegelbraider, and he was in charge of the town cheese shed, except for every odd Tuesday, when he was supposed to be--
"Korynne, he just swam away! I didn't get to the metaphor, yet! I don't know about this fish guy. That was pretty rude."
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Korynne quickly rifles through the huecuva's things, trying to be quiet and quick. She examines its holy symbol as well, to see if she recognizes it. "Yes, Jym, it was quite rude. Wil's lack of manners is definitely the thing we should be worried about here, and not the rest of the shambling horde that we're stuck here with alone, save for each other, brave warriors that we are. And just so there's no misunderstanding, I'm being extremely sarcastic right now, but it doesn't come through well when I'm whispering!" Korynne snaps.
"If we live through this, you can tell me all the metaphors you want. Er, and that's not a metaphor, or innuendo. But for now let's concentrate on staying alive."
"Ok!"
While Korynne steals from the dead man, Jym silently pads over to the double doors that they entered (which I'm assuming are now broken down), and peers through to see if he can spot the other zombies.
Gwl surfaces and returns to the spot he left Uro at. Discovering the orc gone, he searches around and eventually finds him at the top of the hill. He passes on the healing potion from Korynne and helps clear the boulders from the door.
"Killed another of the drowned men. Only a handful left, now. They left the room, though, s-so we might have to fight them to get the others out."
Jym, crouched down low and peeking around the door, tries to spot zombies. Unfortunately, Korynne's light is good enough to illuminate the room, and leave the main corridor in dim light, but everything past that is pitch-black. You hear moans and stuff from the remaining zombies, but it's very echo-y in these tunnels and it's hard to tell where they're coming from.
Jym goes back to Korynne.
"It's too dark to see the zombies, but I can hear them. I don't think it will be that hard to get back to the first room in the dark if we move slowly and stay along the wall. We should hear them if we start to move towards them."
The huecuva was wearing rusty chainmail under his robes. He had a gold holy symbol -- Korynne identifies it as that of Olidammara, but she's pretty sure that, as an undead, his powers were being granted by some other entity, probably Nerull.
Korynne shudders at the corrupted corpse, and the glimpse into her possible future if they didn't get out of here. She says a snappy prayer over the body, which amounts to some muttering in thieves' cant to the effects of "Sorry, you poor bastard," before snatching up the golden holy symbol.
Korynne nods to Jym. "Good thinking. Give me one end of your whip to hold so we don't get separated. When you're ready." Once they're in position, Korynne puts out her light and makes her way through the double doors, feeling along the wall for the passageway back to the trapdoor and the surface while keeping an ear out for zombies.
Jym does as instructed and follows Korynne.
Jym in the lead is moving pretty stealthily, so when he rounds final corner to the entry/trapdoor room, he's not surprised to see a trio of zombies milling around in there. They'd been staying more or less under the trapdoor, from above which comes sounds including shifting, levering, grinding of stones together, grunting, and cursing is coming. However, upon seeing Korynne's light approaching, they stop paying attention to the trapdoor and start waiting for you.
Korynne puts out her light
Jym... follows Korynne.
Gwl surfaces and ... searches .. and eventually ... passes on the ... potion ... and helps clear ... the door.
Korynne puts out her light
Wait -- you're groping around in the dark, just hoping not to walk into any pillars or zombies, or trip on the uneven floor, etc.?
You make it sound like a bad idea!
We're going really slowly. Like, take 20 slowly. And we're hugging the wall, trying to remember the rooms we passed through (which I think was just one room before the first hallway we encountered, which leads back to the entrance). And if we detect zombies in our path, we... well, we haven't worked that part out, yet.
OK, so you stumble ahead, and hope you make the correct turns back to the entrance, and you hear zombies somewhere up ahead, but you're not sure how far, or where they are, or what they're doing.