I never knew there were words for all those different kinds of people. Before she can commit them to memory, the others see movement. She draws her trident. "I'll scout ahead." She heads toward the stairs, keeping to the shadows.
Following whatever fled up the steps, you start what turns out to be a strenuous climb... Whatever ran from the hall must be moving faster than you as there is no sign of it along your long and arduous climb. The staircase turns around on itself many times during the ascent and, with no windows or other visual reference, it is almost impossible to feel how high you have climbed.
Long after the chase slows down to a methodical climb, you notice a glimmer of light ahead of you... Reaching the final flight of steps, the staircase arrives at a landing where a torch burns steadily... And, to the south, the landing leads to another room - there is a vague smell of burning meat coming from somewhere.
Scouting ahead of the rest of the group toiling up the staircase, Nalathi silently slips along the landing and, looking around the corner, sees an overturned table with two silhouetted figures crouched behind it...the light coming from a burning campfire behind them make it difficult to see what / who they are...but a good guess would be humans...
"Ok," she whispers to the others, rejoining them. "There are two big-- er, humans-- hiding on the landing above. There's a campfire behind them. I'm not sure who they are or what they want, but I don't see any other way forward. I don't think they saw me."
"Agreed-- they must know we are here or else they would not be hiding. Perhaps we should announce our presence, and let them know that we mean them no harm."
Upon hearing about the waiting ambush Teldon lowers his voice... "I've had an unsettling thought... how did the tower girls find the shard we've already recovered? We assumed they happened on it and it was the first one recovered... but what if that isn't the case? What if when they were forced out of their previous base of operations they came here looking for a new base and happened upon the shard that is here? It might have led them back to the pride shard..." he pauses for a moment as if considering his own words and then continues, "this is, of course, largely speculative but if it is the case then the ambushers could well be more tower girls, and their leader may well be in the grips of a madness akin to what we observed in Natalya... If we're going to make an effort at resolving this without bloodshed, perhaps we should attempt to play to that madness..."
From the room beyond the stairs, you can hear hushed voices...it seems to be two, possibly three, distinct voices...all female.
She shrugs. "Well maybe," she whispers, "but I'm not sure how we could find that out. If you think announcing ourselves is best, then I guess we should."
She rounds the corner again, making no attempt to be quiet. "Hi," she calls out brightly. "We're looking for a metal shard hidden around here somewhere. Have you seen it?"
Once again Teldon seems lost in thought, until he's startled out of it by Nalathi's departure... "Lust!" he calls after her in something between a forced whisper and a hoarse shout, "if you see the shard, lust after the wearer... or at least be jealous of how worthy of lust she is..."
Then, readying himself, he adds more quietly to those still downstairs, "that goes for all of us..." before following her to the upper chamber.
Jauntily strolling around the corner, Nalathi takes the two women lying in wait by complete surprise...two slightly nervous looking faces peer put from over the tipped over table that sits in the middle of the room...
"Wait...what? But you're just a girl? Are you lost? Huh? A shard?"
The second of the women, slightly less jittery, calls out, "You should go back the way you came little girl...you could get hurt here...this is no place for children..."
"Hey!!! Who's there with you? Come out!!! Hands over your head where we can see them", the women duck back behind the table, crossbows trained upon Nalathi...
"Sorry," Teldon calls out in response, "I'm coming, there are really rather a lot of stairs to get up here..."
"And who are you? You're not this one's father...we're giving you one last..."
"Nayven!!! There's more of them"
Whatever the first woman was going to say is left unsaid as the more nervous of the two panics and fires her crossbow...ducking behind the table, they shout for you to leave...
"Don't shoot!" Teldon cries out moving forward towards the table, "we're not here to fight- there's no need to shed blood... especially not the blood of such beautiful, desirable women." As he moves he draws his shortsword and when he reaches the table he crouches behind it himself to be protected from the other crossbow.
"Oy, de zei..."
Teldon approaches and crouches behind the table, his honeyed words attempting to appeal to the ladies hiding beyond it. Setting himself to attack if needed, he looks behind him and is taken by surprise by a figure lurking behind the corner... Illuminated by Teldon's head lamp, the hunched creature looks like a human in leather armour, but dark fur covers the entirety of its body. It's face is rat-like and, trailing for four or five feet behind it, there is a scabrous naked tail.
As it moves in to attack Teldon, inexpertly swinging a rusty sword at him whilst it's jaws snap at the beleaguered Cheliaxian, one of the women panics and runs further into the complex of rooms...the other, cursing violently, stands and stabs at Teldon with a short blade.
Peeking around the corner, Ziomarra is shocked to spy a humanoid rat.
"Vârcolac!"
Note: While the word literally means 'werewolf,' it's used for any lycanthrope.
Zee moves into the room, drawing the battered Harrow deck recovered from Natalya's goons. She fixes the wererat with a baleful gaze.
Wow. That thing is sneaky. Raised in a dark cave, and having learned long ago how to use darkness as an ally, she appreciates the skill at work. But now you've attacked one of us, so that means you have to die. She steps up behind the ratlike creature and draws her scimitar. She wonders briefly whether her newfound magic might augment her weapon somehow-- and no sooner had the thought crossed her mind when her trident suddenly shimmers with arcane power. Whoa. She stabs forward.
Nalathi's trident plunges deep into the rat creature's stomach yet when she withdraws it, the wound closes almost instantaneously...indeed, the creature appeared to feel no pain from what was surely a grievous blow.
"That thing is a vârcolac! The stories say that only silver weapons can affect them!"
I am very glad we recovered this Thassilonian dagger! The blade is silver!
It takes Teldon a moment to recover from the surprise of not only missing out on any chance of disarming one of the women, but of actually having been bit by a wererat! As blood and hexes fly he regains his wits and stabs back at the creature with the shortsword in his hand.
Without a silver weapon to use, Joanna rushes forward to support Teldon...moving past the lycanthrope, she is open for attack but the wererat fails to land a substantial blow.
Captivated by Briana's words, the wererat stops it's assault upon Teldon and stares at the shaman...it's beady eyes darting back and forth as it tries to determine whether she is friend or foe.
With Joanna charging down upon her, the woman behind the table clearly considers running but, somewhat bravely, she holds fast, she slashes at the paladin. Her sword rings sonorously as it clashes and chimes on Joanna's sturdy armour...
Whilst, from the room beyond this one, the other woman fires her crossbow into the melee....high and wide
"Fall back!!! We need to tell Ayala!!!"
"I don't think I can get there faster enough," Teldon calls back to Briana, "plus my shortsword is one of the rare weapons that truly harms lycanthropes..."
As he speaks he shifts to his left, to a flanking position with Nalathi, and attempts to stab the wererat again...
Well, it worked for Brianna...
Ziomarra speaks arcane words and gestures with her free hand, and appears to throw a card at the wererat. A ghostly image of the card flies at the wererat, seemingly disappearing into its head.
Well great. She doesn't have a silver weapon, so all she can do is try and distract the rat-creature so Teldon can hit it with his.
Moving around the table, Joanna finds herself in a position where she is able to use her longsword, but her foul-mouthed opponent is too agile and dodges the stabbing blade.
The wererat, still fascinated by the curious displays from Briana and Ziomarra, doesn't attack Teldon even as he stabs wildly at it. The woman attacked by Joanna does however shake off Briana's incantations and once more stabs at the paladin.
Meanwhile, the other woman, shouts that she is going to get help and darts from view...
Teldon sees an opening as Nalathi's trident knocks the wererat off balance and he attempts to take advantage...
As the Wererat slowly regains it's senses, Teldon gets a second effective slash through it's defenses. Blood matts it's fur where the blade cut across it's abdomen...
Briana tries, for a second time to catch the woman's attention...this time she is far more successful and her swipes at Joanna slow to a halt...
"We can't let her sound the alarm"
Zee chases the fleeing woman into the next room. As she moves past the melee, she draws her Thassilonian silver dagger, holding it by the crossguard. As she passes Joanna, she holds it out to her friend.
"Take this! It's silver!"
Two of the floating, glowing cards follow her, while two more remain in the other chamber.
With the rat creature seeming severely wounded and Joanna receiving a silver weapon as well, Nalathi trusts the others will be able to finish it off. She bolts around the creature and follows Ziomarra, not wanting the woman to face whatever might be in the next room alone.
Encouraging Nalathi and Ziomarra to stop the woman who has run, Joanna swings her sword at her opponent. Her blade cuts a wide arc before striking the befuddled woman across her waist...she groans in agony as the blade cuts deep...
The Wererat finally comes to it's senses and, shaking the enchantments from it's fogged head, wildly attacks Teldon with slavering teeth and it's rusty blade...
Teldon frowns as Nalathi runs off and he feels his odds of success slipping away with her, then he audibly sighs with relief as Briana moves up and expertly knocks the creature off balance again. Attempting to make her effort worthwhile, he stabs once more at the persistent beast...
The Wererat, starting to fade under the repeated blows from Teldon (who is apparently an erstwhile Lycanthrope hunter), has scarlet blooms running from three separate deep wounds all due to the mithril blade...
Running alongside Nalathi, Zee doesn't take the time to thoroughly examine the room. Finding themselves in a large open room, Zee quickly scans the room, and seeing movement out the open window, heads in that direction. As she moves, she fishes out the battered Harrow deck again, drawing one card.
As the dazed woman starts to regain her senses, Joanna drives her blade into her shoulder…the force of the blow leaves the woman staggering, her resolve wavering…
The Wererat, also badly injured, steps to the side and attempts to stab Teldon with it’s blade. Teldon, having overcommitted with his last lunge of sword, leaves a flank exposed and feels a searing pain as the lycanthrope’s blade pierces his flesh. In an almost comical ‘Ratty’ voice, the Lycanthrope warns you that this is Tower Girl territory and that you don’t know who you are dealing with.
Joanna’s foe, bleeding heavily, drops her sword and pulls a hessian pouch from her belt…stepping backwards, she throws it towards Joanna’s feet where it spews out a small puddle of tar and resin. She turns to run, but the effort of throwing the bag at Joanna proves to have been too much, and she collapses.
Meanwhile, standing out on the platform in the exposed shaft, the fleeing woman is pulling a rope, attached to the ceiling above her, down towards herself….seeing Ziomarra and Nalathi running after her, she starts to hurry…
I don't know what she's doing, but I don't like it. Sounding an alarm, maybe? Nalathi drops her trident, draws her bow and takes a few steps south to get a clear shot. She nocks an arrow to the bowstring and aims it at the woman. She wonders briefly whether her magic might imbue her arrow the way it did her trident earlier-- and as soon as the thought forms in her mind, the arrow between her fingers gleams with magical power. She smiles. Excellent.