Arsith cast an healing spell, and put her hand on Jo, sending some curative energy to her wounded body
It's not much... would it be enough?
Joanna, her wounds staunched by Arsith almost as quickly as they were rent upon her, steps forwards with righteous indignation... and her blade, singing in the dismal light, slices twice through the apparition. Somewhat diminished it wavers...
...and barely slips the bonds that Briana would have placed upon her.
Shadlah staggers away from the creature, squashing the fear starting to rise in her throat. Once she feels the oppressive aura dissipate, she takes a deep breath and lets off a quick blast, just to stay focused.
Shadlah's blast rips stone from somewhere deep below the vessel and tears it upwards... and through the gore soaked apparition!!! Even more diminished now , it moans a silent refrain towards its attackers and, once more slashes at the Iomedean...
Hopeful eyes, sunken into the darkness at the rear of the hold where the sailors had retreated to, watch on as the heroes turn the battle in their favour...
The burst of energy, pulsating in the darkness as Briana calls to the primal spirits, washes over Joanna... bolstering her even as the monstrous creature looms over her...
Arsith joins in the fight, striking the undead creature with all her might-and providing another target for the unholy creature's touch, so Jo can live
Arsith's weapon, wielded with a cold passion, strikes its target true.... smashing into, and through, the apparition - an arc of gore splashing outwards as the warpriest's weapon arm swings around...
Joanna tries to press the attack, but she could feel herself getting a little light-headed even with the magical aid from Arsith and Briana. After missing with her strike, she pulls back just enough to call on her goddess' aid to keep her on her feet just a little longer.
"Joanna!" Shadlah grinds her teeth, a sound like gravel being crunched underfoot. A low thrumming fills the air and the deck beneath her feet rumbles as she opens her body to the plane of earth again, calling on the deepest vaults - not calling on sod or stone, this time, but drawing ore from rock, shaping it with her mind, and sending spikes of metal flying at the foe.
[ooc]*1.5 = 48, divided by half (incorporeal) = 24 damage
The creature, face now contorted with a long forgotten agony, is more mist than anything semi-corporeal now... the continued assault from the group rendering it perilously close to a second death. Turning upwards, as it moves backwards from Joanna, the thing 'passes' through the timbers of the low ceiling - leaving a slow 'drip, drip, drip' of blood as it does so...
Joanna need not be told twice. She rushes past Briana, Arsith, and Shadlah and back up the steps, leaving a trail of small blood droplets as she goes.
Clambering up the ladder, maybe not quite as quickly or as freely as when she had first descended below decks, Joanna is the first to see the mist - barely visible in the darkness of the night - collect behind a pair of barrels. And, as she draws closer with dripping sword still drawn, she watches it dissipate... until all that is left is a puddle of blood and a barnacle encrusted bottle...
Joanna, not trusting that this fight was over, asks Iomedae to guide her. Her eyes blink and glow silver-white as she looks around. The gleaming runes on her fade some, but do not gutter out as she seeks the target of her ire.
Joanna's eyes go wide as Ziomarra kisses her and cuts off any protest. For a stunned moment, she doesn't know what to do. Carefully, she grabs the taller woman's shoulders and pushed her away, gasping for air as their lips part, though Ziomarra's arms are still around her.
"Zee! What are you doing?!"
Breathing heavily, Zee replies, "Something I've wanted to do for a long time!" and leans in again.
* * Fade to black * *
- - - -
- - - -
- - - -
Previous round...
Zee draws a Harrow card and casts a spell. The card glows with a benevolent blue glow. "Joanna, this is for you!" She then throws the card across the room at her friend.
- - - -
Now...
Zee rushes back up the stairs, hot on Jo's heels. Thinking over the legends of her people, she tries to remember any stories about nautical ghosts such as this one.
While straining her memory, she scans the deck, looking for where it might be hiding.
- the bottle, and the smear of blood across the deck, is darkly radiating a malevolent evil...
- the creature, as Arsith had previously deduced but not been able to say much about, is almost certainly a polong...
Polongs are the spirits of murderers who have been magically bound to a bottle. Whoever possesses a polong’s bottle can command the creature to carry out murderous acts. Necromancers, cultists, and assassins sometimes use polongs to perform assassinations from afar. Commanding polongs is dangerous, however, as their desire to kill makes them turn on their own masters if given the chance.
When a polong’s bottle is opened, the creature manifests as a blood-drenched spirit with hands transformed into long claws. Its thirst for violence and murder twists its distorted features into a hateful visage. Polongs remember little of their past lives, their own thoughts turned to committing the heinous acts commanded by their masters.
"Desigur! That creature is an evil spirit, like a genie, bound to a bottle..."
Zee then sees the barnacle-encrusted bottle. She draws a Harrow card and taps it to her forehead. It glows faintly, and then she throws it at the bottle.
After striking the bottle, the card flutters back into her hand.
...and with Ziomarra acting quickly, her card slicing through the air with a pulsating radiance, the bottle shatters into thousands of shards... and the aura, so strong moments ago, evaporates to nothing.
Joanna's protests are once again cut off as Zee kisses her full on the lips. Zee's newfound height gives her an advantage and soon she's guided Joanna to the grass and kisses her again, deeply and passionately. Joanna manages to get her hands on Zee's shoulders and pushes the woman off of her as gently as she could.
"ZEE! What is wrong with you," Joanna doesn't quite scream into the other woman's face. She slides away from Zee and towards Halli. Tears well up in her gray eyes as the wolf, now feeling Joanna's distress, curls up protectively around her.
"I... I love you Zee, but not like that," Joanna half-sobs, "P-please, just go. Go before you do something we'll both regret."
Joanna flinches as the bottle shatters. The aura fades and she heaves a sigh of relief.
"Okay, now we need to go help the crew and see if we can find who sent this thing after us. Arsith said something about it being controlled, right?"
As the white haired priestess joins Jo, she says, panting a little
Yes, these creatures are usually controlled, they don't have their free will. So someone got it out of the bottle, and I don't think it was an accident.
Emerging from the depths of the boat, each of them battered and traumatised from events since the boat moored, the crew are grateful for the protection and for the healing that they receive... barely noting the flying cat - for maybe he has seen far more bizarre things in his time, the captain explains that the bottle from which the spectre had emerged had been pulled from a net. It was a moment of incaution that had led to one of the crew members opening the bottle... and the rest, the terror of the creature, the group well know...
Careful examinations and explorations around the boat confirm that, if there was ever anyone controlling the polong, there is no-one within any distance of the vessel... and so, with a watch set for the night, the crew - and the friends - finally rest.
The next morning brings a gentle wind accompanied by a grey drizzle - and, with a final eye to the radiance still burning from the Lady's Light, the Wanton Ways raises anchor and fills it sails... visibility, as the boat skirts along the coast, is poor and with such morose weather, there is little to raise the spirits until nightfall approaches... the group hear it a long time before they see it, the sound of other shipping, the occasional tolling of bells, and - in time - other voices calling to each other... and, as the indistinct shadows of the Irespan loom above them, the friends are finally back in Magnimar.
The sight of Magnimar just ahead is a hopeful one for Joanna. It meant she could finally get some help for Halli, and maybe Zee would be back to normal. She'd been avoiding being alone with her since that night, and she'd felt guilty about it. Zee was her friend, her sister. She should be trying to help her, but how could she? The Shard's power was beyond her and she didn't want to embarrass Zee by airing out her concerns in front of others who'd know nothing about how she'd felt.
In the end, she decided, she could only hope that Lady Heidmarch would have the right stone and that Zee could be returned to normal.
===
Before disembarking the ship, Joanna takes the chance to change out of her normal adventuring outfit and into the red and black one she'd taken to wearing after hearing of her step-mother's attempts to find her. She does her best to disguise her sword and armor, but she just doesn't have the skills and finally asks for some help from Teldon. Once she was sure that anything linking her back to what her mother knew of her was safely hidden away, she steps out onto the deck and sees the holy symbol hanging from her neck.
She prays for some leniency from her goddess as she hides it down the neck of her shirt. Seeing that everything is in order, or as in order as they can get, she leads Halli onto the docks and starts making her way with the others back up to the Alabaster district and Heidmarch Manor, all while warily keeping an eye out.
"A bath! A bath would be glorious right now," Joanna exclaims with a laugh as Halli whines in protest. "Oh shush. Just because you don't like getting wet doesn't mean that I can't enjoy a good soak."
Arsith smiles.
We could do with some rest, and a warm bath.. and some new clothes, maybe. I think I stink. And to get out of the armor, not carrying weapons, enjoy the life instead of fighting to survive… It would soothe our souls, mine at least. And I guess
her smiles widens as she is about to poke some fun
A few meals for Jo.. poor lil"thing must be starving.
"Oh yes! Paaaaaancaaakes! How I long for your decadent butteriness," she agrees with overblown melodramatics.
"I think we have other things to care of first, though," she says after a moment, her tone much more serious. "Both Zee and Halli need some help, and I'm hoping that Lady Heidmarch can help us with that."
Shadlah steps onto solid ground firmer than is strictly necessary and, after a moment's thought, tugs off her shoes. Hooking her fingers through the straps, she lets them sit over her shoulder, her other hand on her hip as she surveys the group. "We have much to do, then, so let us get started," she says, her tone typically gruff, but her expression softening as her broad feet flex against the familiar ground of home.
It has been, by reckoning of the season's passage and the transit of the moon, no more than a month since the group left Magnimar on their adventure... and, to the untrained eye, little has changed in the great city - the docks still ring out with the noises of unloading cargoes, the markets that stretch away from the quayside still ply a wild range of colourful goods, and the climb towards the upper class mansions where the Heidmarches reside is still a mixture of tedious queues and vertiginous views. But, to those who know the City of Monuments, the tell tale signs are there... the fruit and vegetables being sold tell of an approaching autumn, the notices and banners tell of fayres anticipated in the latter half of the year - and the puddles (and, in places, streams along the roadways) suggest that the rains have truly arrived.
...and finally, after their time away - after the horrors of what lurked beneath the Lady's Light, the defeat of one who would call herself Sorshen and the ultimate redemption of some of Queen Ileosa's guard - the group arrive at the porchway of the Heidmarch manor. Some more changed than others...
What follows, amid a flurry of surprise, welcomes and re-introductions, eventually arrives at the group seated - as they had been not so very long ago - around the table in the Pathfinder Lodge... and Lady Heidmarch quizzing them about their adventure, what they had learned and, eventually, what they plan next.
"...and that is about all there is," Joanna finishes after relating their tale to Lady Heidmarch. "Other than whatever has gotten into Zee because of the shard and Halli because of that worm-thing, we're pretty much alright."
The young paladin squeezes her eyes shut and takes in a deep breath as the fatigue truly hits.
"If I am honest, I think we all need some time to recover from this adventure. I've tried, but Halli seems to be beyond what help I can give, and... And I'm worried about my sisters. I feel guilty for leaving them behind with my step-mother. I have an idea for getting them out from under Mother Dearest's thumb, but it's going to take time. That and I was hoping that Arsith could take care of crafting me some armor that lets me move more quickly. I know I'm asking a lot, but..."
She shrugs, not sure what else to say.