Arsith goes toward the bow-goblin who attacked Ziomarra, and tries to hit it with her mace with full force. The attack connect, but once again the blow should have been more powerful
Arsith's mace nearly unseats the bow-wielding goblin...
As Briana moves to his defense, Teldon continues in her's stabbing once more at the goblin who attacked her...
,
Briana's weapon, chasing after the goblin, misses as the wretch ducks and weaves...
The goblin is equally alert to Briana's other magicks and keeps it's legs high as the vegetation attemps to grab it...
Meanwhile Teldon, in the first sign that the tide is turning, spears the badly injured goblin - it falls to the floor limply...much to the amusement of its compatriots...
,
Now face-to-face with the goblin on top of the wagon, she stabs forward with her trident.
With the goblin on the roof of the carriage distracted for a moment, Nalathi finds it an easy target… her trident piercing it’s ragged armour and nearly causing it to faint…
Joanna winces as the horsechopper bites into her shoulder. She's still able to fight, however, and stabs at the goblin after knocking his weapon out of her way.
Circling behind the mounted goblins, Zee raises a card from her spell deck, touching it against her forehead. It glows faintly, then she flings it at the goblin fighting Arsith.
After slicing the goblin rider, the card arcs back toward Zee, and she catches it out of the air.
Moving alongside Teldon, Joanna swings her sword in a wide, perfectly balanced arc...with a crunch it thuds into the riders ribcage...falling from its saddle, it flops to the floor, twitches twice and dies...
Ziomarra's card flies wide of the goblin...
Meanwhile, clambering across the top of the carriage, the goblin finally turns to attack Nalathi...it drops the flask, draws a clumsy looking sword and runs at the wayang...
The mounted goblin, confronted by Aristh, drives the hairless dog to snap at the warpriest whilst it swings its sword at her...
,
Nalathi dodges the blow easily and tries to skewer the creature again.
Joanna waits to see what the goblin dog does.
Zee steps forward and fans her Harrow deck as she casts a spell. Hurling her cards at the goblin and rider, they explode into a cone of flames, engulfing the creatures. Her cards then miraculously reappear in her hand.
Briana's ghostly warhammer floats to the top if the carriage before phasing out of existence - the sight of it is enough to distract the goblin at a crucial moment... Nalathi stepping in and getting an easy strike in; her trident piercing the scrawny neck of the melon-headed maniac. It becomes instantly floppy on the end of Nalathi's weapon before sliding off and tumbling off the side of the carriage...
Riderless, one of the goblin dogs flees... it's high-pitched barking echoing up and down the trail...
At the other end of the carriage, torrents of flame from Ziomarra's cards surround the last remaining goblin and its mount...
Standing clear of the flames, Arsith lunges forwards with her mace - putting her full strength behind it, she crushes the goblin's skull...
With no rider, the hairless dog creature follows the other...
...and then, after all falls quiet for a moment, the ceramic flask that was about to be thrown by the goblin on the roof of the carriage explodes with an ineffectual 'pop' and a wisp of green smoke...
"Is everyone okay," Joanna says as she looks around. The paladin checks on the two coachmen to see if they are still breathing as well.
It takes a minute or two but eventually your coachman calms the horses down...there was a moment there when it looked like they could have bolted but Robert has enough horsemanship to hold them...
"That was a close one!!! Little buggers get bolder every time we come out this way... I guess it's an occupational hazard... Say where's Graelish? Ah, there you are... You missed the fun", Robert teases the half-orc playfully as he reappears from where he fell from the carriage...
"None of you are too badly hurt? We should get going...I don't want another run in with the Licktoads on this journey"
...the rest of your journey goes without incident and soon enough the carriage turns a corner in the road and, just up the coast a mile or so, you can see the welcome lights and smoking chimneys of Sandpoint...
Teldon gently brushes an errant strand of hair out of Briana's face and musters a smile as he answers, "Ես կարող եմ պաշտպանել քեզ , եւ դեռ պետք է արդյունավետ."
Then he grits his teeth and tries to seem unaffected as he carefully pulls the goblin arrow from his arm. "Well, at least these ones weren't hurling fecal bombs..." he announces to nobody in particular.
Joanna walks up to Teldon and says, "Lemme take a look, boss. I can patch it up if it needs it."
She surreptitiously mutters a prayer to Iomedae as she runs her fingers over the cut from the arrow, the skin knitting together.
"Just a scratch. You'll be fine."
She pats Teldon's arm before looking over Briana's wounds, and repeating the prayer as bruises and cuts mend. After Briana is taken care of, she claps a hand to her shoulder and winces as the cut doesn't quite heal all the way.
If someone needs some more healing, I can tend to your wounds too, by calling on Pharasma's goodwill..
Now that the fight is over, Zee notices that she'd been hit. "Spiriduși blestemate! Chen sa întâmplat asta?" she mutters to herself as she pulls the arrow out of her side.
She lifts her blouse to take a look at the wound, and seeing that it's not terribly serious, she takes some bandages out of her satchel and holds them over the puncture to stanch the bleeding.
"That's goblins—bold, but not very smart."
Zee holds a card over one eye and utters some arcane words. Her uncovered eye and the card both glow faintly, as she scans the bodies of the fallen goblins.
"We might as well search them. They might have a few clues as to what they're up to, or maybe even something of value."
Teldon thanks Jo for her healing and answers Arsith- "We're ok, thank you." as Jo finishes healing Briana.
At Zee's suggestion he nods and gives each corpse a quick inspection...
After finishing that unsavory work he climbs back into the carriage for Sandpoint. As the small city draws near he tries to prepare himself for whatever kind of reception might await them.
Joanna walks up to Zee, seeing the wound in her side and takes a look. She mutters another prayer to Iomedae, and with that, her connection fades, her strength spent, but not before the flesh knits together.
"Not too deep, you should be fine," Joanna says after healing the wound. She stands up, and for a split-second, Ziomarra can see the young woman wince. Blood from a wound on her shoulder and her arm stains the white shirt under the leather vest she is wearing.
That done, she begins searching the goblins, moving her arm gingerly to avoid aggravating the wound.
"Thanks, Joanna. I'm..."
Spying that her friend is also injured, Zee remarks quietly, "As the adage goes, 'Cleric, heal thyself!'" The Varisian witch takes a new-looking wand out of her satchel. It is made of polished hardwood carved with a butterfly motif, and is tipped with a blue crystal. "I stopped by the temple of Desna before we left yesterday and spent some of our traveling funds on this wand of healing. Shall I use it to heal your wound? Of, if you would prefer, 'Ingrid' offered the blessings of the Mother of Souls to heal our wounds. But you shouldn't suffer in silence."
The goblins, somewhat predictably are carrying little of value, their weapons are crude and ill-sized for use by larger folk... and their armour, the less said the better...
However, in the bag that the roof-climbing goblinwas carrying, you do find a further two flasks. Turning it over in his hands, Teldon identifies it as Alchemist's Fire... and, with a quick sniff, confirms that it is a lot more potent than the misfiring one that the goblin dropped in its death throes.
"S-sorry, I just wanted to make sure everyone else was okay," Joanna replies, holding still so Zee can do her thing.
Zee speaks some arcane words and the wand glows with a pleasing bluish radiance. Tiny ghostly butterflies seem to flit from the crystal. Zee touches the wand on Joanna's wound, and the flesh begins to knit back together.
Joanna gives Ziomarra a weak smile before returning to the goblins. The spell healed some of her wounds, but not all of them.
As the sky turns golden, then red, the carriage crests a hill. Nestled between the Varisian Gulf and the Turandarok river sits the sleepy town of Sandpoint. On the cliff that looms over the harbor sits a broken tower built on a massive scale. On one of the buildings closer to the docks and river sits the rusted sculpture of a dragon. To the east of the tower stands a beautiful cathedral that gleams like a jewel in the setting sun.
A sign with a mirror attached invites visitors to seem themselves as the townsfolk see them just before the road levels out to meet the bridge across the river. The carriage comes to a stop as the guards ask the coachmen their business in bright and cheery voices, obviously glad for almost anything to break the monotony of standing guard.
The carriage pulls through the gates and comes to a stop by a stable that sports strings of preserved goblin ears hanging from the eaves. A sign with a horse trampling a yelping goblin proclaims this to be the Goblins Squash Stables. A grizzled man comes smiling from within, waving at the two coachmen.
"Normally you boys are faster than that. What happened," he asks.
"Goblins," the half-orc replies curtly as he busies himself with unloading the luggage from the top of the carriage.
"Yep, and lucky for us, we've got some real tough customers, if you catch my drift. Glad they went after the gobs and not us, that's for sure," Robert adds as he helps unload the carriage.
"Well, if they're staying, they might want to tell that tale to Ameiko. She's be belly-achin' about the lack of customers since that Chin Shatlist place was found," a meaty hand thumps the side of the coach twice, "Me, I'd like to see these goblin-slayers m'self. Why don't you come on out. These boys ain't going anywhere t'night anyway."
Arsith opens the carriage door and gets out, stretching a little. She holds the door for the other
Hello, good sir.We were slowed by a few goblins, but nothing too serious. I hope other travelers would be even more luckier than us.
"Remember," Teldon encourages in a hushed voice, "the carriage is hired to Pellius Crispin, so we can't leave our aliases behind us quite yet..."
He nods in acknowledgement to the stranger as he follows Briana out of the carriage and then replies, "yes, my entourage is quite capable- and it is a good thing we happened to be there..."
Joanna steps out of the carriage after Teldon, still sore from the fight.
"Forgive me if I don't care to repeat that experience," she says before grabbing her bag, "Do you want me to make the arrangements at the inn?"
Nalathi steps out of the carriage with the others. "Goblin-slayer here!" she says brightly. "And what were they doing on the road, anyway? Don't you have guards or something to take care of that sort of thing?"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The man, who looks like he owns the stables here, chuckles with little humor.
"You're lucky. Normally they hate gnomes almost as much as they hate dogs and horses. As for what they were doin' probably hopin' to make a meal off you lot," he tells Nalathi.
As Teldon passes the man, he puts a hand on the investigator's shoulder.
"Ah, pardon. Th'name's Daviren Hosk, would you mind me havin' a better look at ya," he asks politely.
Hosk's eyebrows almost disappear into his salt and pepper hair.
"Well, I'll be damned," he says with a grin, "You look so much like him, I bet you're his son. Umm, what was did he say your name? Ah, Teldon, Teldon Moore, right? He was a hell of a fighter when he came here about four or five years ago. Added plenty of ears to m'strings here," the stable master motions to the preserved ears hanging around.
The white haired woman seems both surprised and relieved
Well, at least we don't have to maintain this pretense, and use our real names. "Ingrit"... hah!
Her smile widens when she sees Teldon own surprise
sh!t... the very first person... this is going to be a long day... good thing I've considered this possibility...
"Yes." Teldon answers with much less surprise than might have been expected, "Though I don't remember giving my own name... my employer, Mr. Crispin, must have sent word of our coming?"
Zee also smiles mysteriously. "Well, it would appear that your reputation precedes you!"
Turning to the owner of the stable, she extends her hand. "Mr. Hosk, it is a pleasure to meet you. I haven't been to Sandpoint in... well, probably eight or nine years. Might I ask if you know whether Madame Mvashti is still with us? If so, I would love to see her again."
Nalathi is taken aback. How did he know? Someone must've told him who we are... Confused, she tugs on Ziomarra's loose-fitting clothing. "Does that mean we--" "--can use our real names?" she nearly asks aloud, before stopping herself. If he doesn't know who we are, maybe we're supposed to keep up the charade. "Uh, don't have to sleep in the wagon tonight?" she finishes, loud enough for the man to hear her.