There are plenty of coils of rope within these rooms...clearly, with their 'livelihood' as acrobatic burglars, the Tower Girls needed to maintain stores of good quality rope...
"Wow" Teldon whispers, "well done everyone!"
"That went far better than I had feared. Good use of your new magic, Nalathi!"
"Here, Briana. Let me assist you."
Zee also helps tend the dying by casting stabilize as needed. She also ties up the Tower Girls and drags one back into the room where they had been playing cards.
In that room, Zee examines the cards they were using.
Were more people abusing a Harrow deck? If so, no wonder we defeated them so easily!
She also looks around the room to see if they had anything of historical value, treasure, or anything else of interest.
Her chest swells a little at Zee's praise. "Now we just need to deal with the others over there." She points to the other room. "Fraid I can only do that once, I think it needs time to recharge. So if we want to lure them out we'll have to try something else."
"Nalathi, I know you only got a quick peek but if you were to guess do you think the rats would fight for or against those girls in the event of chaos erupting?" Teldon asks pensively.
Examining the room that the Tower Girls chased you from, there are two tattered harrow decks that were being used to create pyramids...several of the illustrations on the cards have been crudely defaced.
The room itself is fairly devoid of interest although the ranseur wielding statue looming over the tables is somewhat imposing.
- the rats that the Tower Girls were 'playing' with looked relatively tame...although it would be impossible to tell whether they are trained to fight or are merely pets.
She shrugs. "Not sure. They didn't look like they were in the best shape, but I don't know much about them. Maybe that's how they always look. And I don't know how loyal they'd be."
Hmm... Perhaps I was mistaken... It may be the wrath shard rather than the lust shard hidden in here...
"I'm not typically one to suggest rushing headlong into a fight, but they're at a dead-end and distracted enough that we could probably get the drop on them..."
Gazing at the ranseur-wielding statue, Zee remarks, "That figure looks vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place her. I think she was someone of importance in Thassilon."
Gathering the Harrow cards, she looks with disgust at the irreverence a to which they had been treated. "As I suspected, those who do not respect the Harrow will find the forces of fate working against them!" She gathered the cards and ticks them into one of her pockets.
Zee also rifles through the prisoners' pockets, looking for clues and/or valuables
"She's Alaznist, the last Runelord of Wrath,' Teldon offhandedly remarks, "I may have been misguided in my initial estimation of which shard we're pursuing here..."
Without any pause he turns his attention to Briana, "My thinking exactly... although the hallway may be too long to effectively charge down, so we may need to sneak into and across the first large chamber north of the hallway to get with striking distance before charging."
"Good idea." Peeking around the corner, she notices that the three other Girls are still well distracted by the rat-dogs. Quietly she slips across the hallway into the first room to the north. "All clear," she whispers into the air, trusting her magic to carry her words to Teldon. "They're not paying any attention."
"On our way..." Teldon whispers in reply.
Then, in a hushed voice, he remarks to the rest of the group, "Nalathi says that they remain distracted, move swiftly but as quietly as you can into postition.
Then he attempts to do so himself...
Zee nods and also closes, moving slowly and as quietly as she can.
Unfortunately, in her attempt to creep across the floor, she accidentally kicks a ceramic bottle one of the room's inhabitants had left lying on the floor. The bottle rolls loudly across the tiled floor and smacks into the stone wall, making a loud shattering sound.
"Rahat!" she whispers louder than she intended.
As one, the three Tower Girls look up, "Is that you Cassa? Is any of that Whiskey left?". The rats seem totally uninterested in Ziomarra, they carry on snuffling around the other girls...looking for food and treats.
"None left. Damn bottle's empty!"
”Hey!!! You ain’t Cassa!!! How'd you get past the guards? Someone get Karisa!!!”
As one, crossbows are raised towards Ziomarra...
Drawing a Harrow card from the deck she'd recovered from Nataly's lair, she hold it to her temple, causing it to glow slightly. She then hurls the card at the nearest enemy (a donkey rat). The card spins through the air, trailing white magical sparks. She then ducks behind the wall for cover.
The rat yelps pathetically as the card cuts a deep rend across it's flank...
Moving with grace and assuredness, the Tower Girls move to take cover...one tosses a glass cylinder along the corridor where it shatters and fills the corridor with a thick grey smoke...before your vision is totally obscured by the forming cloud, you see the rats and one of the girls moving along the corridor... and the other girls moving to the south.
Moments later you hear a rapping on wood, "Karisa! Karisa! You'd better come..."
Teldon takes a deep breath to stay himself against the jolt of adrenaline and tries to think logically about the situation... "they've only seen one of us," he whispers to those who have gathered in the alcove, "they think Zee snuck in here... they're going to approach that differently than coming out to confront a group that fought their way in..."
He pauses for a moment, his eyes closed in concentration, before continuing, "If we hide our selves in the passageway just south of here, Zee should easily be able to lead them into the chamber where we just left their disabled companions... they'll think they have her cornered until we block the doorway behind them... when they realized they've been trapped, and see what's happened to their companions, Zee may be able to coerce them to surrender... and if not, at least we will have cut off the route to call reinforcements."
Teldon waits only a moment for consent and then takes off for the passageway, signaling Jo to follow him along the way.
Joanna grudgingly follows Teldon to his proposed hiding spot...
"Cornering them in that big room might be impossible. There are other ways out of it, you know. But yeah, Zee, try to lure them out here if you can."
Zee mutters, "Grande. Me encanta ser el anzuelo!"
Zee moves back into the larger room, ready to duck behind the corner when the smoke cloud dissipates and the Tower Girls can see her again.
She also draws a Harrow card, and gets ready to fling it if a target comes through the smoke.
As the mist gradually dissipates, Ziomarra can start to pick out shapes and figures... two of the tower girls have their hand crossbows trained towards the end of the corridor where Ziomarra waits...
She also picks out the cause of the increasing noise...the sound of rats screeching has been amplified with a second pair of rats being held on a tight leash... ..and on the other end of the leash, waits a second lycanthrope... in semi-bestial form...beady eyes and slavering jaws, it screeches, "Get Her!!!
The leash is dropped and, as a grotesque pack, the rats bound along the corridor towards Ziomarra...who dips behind the corner as the crossbow bolts start to fly...
Teldon puts out his head lamp and waits quietly for the enemies to run by so he can spring his trap.
She scurries toward where the others are hiding, not entirely sure how they're supposed to ambush the Girls from all the way back here. "What if they run the other way?" she whispers to Briana anxiously.
Ducking beneath the bolts that zip up the corridor, Ziomarra runs...the rats are fast and she knows they must catch her...the only hope being that she gets as far as the corridor where her friends lie in wait...
...the rats screeching behind her...Ziomarra runs...
The rats are fast, they make up ground on Ziomarra quickly...and are soon snapping at her heels...
...and behind those rats, the Tower Girls call out, "Surrender now...it will go better for you...you can't possibly escape...you are all alone here..."
S#!t, those rats are faster than anticipated... I hope she can enchant them like she did the gremlins...
Realizing that his plan is not developing as well as he'd hoped, Teldon tries to quickly mime to Briana- making a pillow of his hands and falling asleep against it, then making a floor with one hand and a two legged creature running on it with the other and pointing vaguely in the direction of the coming attackers while nodding... then he leans silently against the wall and waits...
Zee turns, facing the angrily squeaking donkey rats, taking a defensive stance. Holding a deck of Harrow cards in her left hand, she casts a spell, chanting an a monotonic unintelligble drone. Ghostly glowing Harrow cards appear in the air amidst the donkey rats. The cards spin and rotate in a compled patterns that momentarily distract the rats.
Zee then turns and rushes down the corridor to the right.
Two of the rats stop in their tracks as Harrow Cards circle them...they sniff the air and try to pounce upon them...looking, if you can see past their disease ridden pelts, like playful puppies chasing butterflies...
As Ziomarra turns into the corridor with Teldon, etc waiting...she realises how close she came to being savaged by the obscenely sized rodents...the two who weren't affected by the hypnotic patterns follow her towards the corridor...and seeing more prey, leap in attack...
...curiously, although Nalathi is alongside Teldon, the rats ignore her...their vicious biting and scratching focused entirely upon Teldon...
From the north, you can hear the voices of the Tower Girls, "Hey, what's wrong with those two?"
"Dunno...they're crazier than goblins...don't worry about it...what's going on there? Is there another person there?"
"Can't quite see...be careful..."
You can hear the unmissable clanking of bolts being loaded into crossbows...
,
,
Teldon holds his spear in his left hand and draws his shortsword, swinging it at the injured rat...
,
Teldon manages to slay the injured rat before it can close on him but the second one ducks past his thrusting spear and sink it's teeth into his thigh. It doesn't manage to get a second bite in though, Teldon's sword plunging deep into it's flanks...it screeches and flops sideways...dead.
- you can hear something scrabbling around in the room to the east of you...
Joanna whispers that she will protect the frontline if the Tower Girls move in to attack.
There is a moment of quiet and then a high-pitched voice screeches, "Cover Us...we'll see what got my rats spooked"...and then a padding down the hall as someone moves towards you...
As the shadows of the approaching start to play on the walls, Briana waits...and then unleashes a soporific vapour from the very rock that the walls and floors are made of.
As the Wererat suddenly falls to the floor, the Tower Girl who was with her grips her sword tightly... Not a moment too soon, as Joanna charges from the shadows...
As Joanna breaks cover, there are two 'thunks' as bolts are fired at her from the Tower Girls hiding in cover to the north...
"Everyone watch your backs! There's something behind us too!"
Stepping into the line of fire, Zee holds up a Harrow card toward the Tower Girl in melee with Joanna. She also fixes her with a baleful glare.