As soon as the man begins to utter his spell Nesipho throws himself against the side of the hallway. The bolt of lightning causes the hair of his neck and arms to stand on end, but he otherwise suffers no effect, unlike his companions.
He whirls back to face the soon to be unfortunate Lankesh, his reactions only a little slower than their attacker.
Breccia is hit squarely by the lightning. He remains mute, bearing the pain as electricity arcs across his stone.
Lankesh sneers at Tania, then takes a step backward (out the door, onto the doorstep) and casts a spell.
"He's setting up defenses! Ashaka! Don't let him get away!!!"
"I've got his escape." Nesipho yells out, his rapier seeming to leap into his hand of its own accord. With a single word of magic a blurred and multi-hued image of Nesipho streams down the hallway and the mwangi appears behind Lankesh, rapier lashing out at him as the spell comes to an end.
If he's going to keep casting at us, we could use some help.
Markis chants, gestures, and clutches at his shoulder in pain. Suddenly a burst of energy favoring the party and hindering Lankesh surrounds everyone within 40 feet.
_____________
Smoke issues off of Breccia's armor from blackened spots where he was struck by lightning. Letting out a rumbling groan, the Oread warrior reaches down to his waist and draws out his punching daggers as he begins to move with gradually building speed towards the assassin like a boulder tumbling downhill. Wordlessly, Breccia moves past his allies and to the doorway, winding up with his right hand as he approaches, lunging forward with his punching dagger towards the ruthless spellcaster in a sudden burst of speed and overwhelming strength.
______________
Breccia lurches forward and Nesipho suddenly blurs into a multi-hued rainbow carrying a blade. Both stab in almost perfect unison, trying to have their blades meet in the middle of the sneering Vudrani's chest. With a speed and grace far out of proportion with his appearance, Lankesh tries to twist away, but even his magical protections cannot keep the rapier and punching dagger away. Both points make contact.
The blades skip off of flesh as hard as mithral.
Nesipho is shocked to see only a single, tiny cut left behind by his rapier, and even Breccia's much heavier blow leaves a barely-noticeable slash in the Vudrani's arm. "விவசாயிகள் பரிதாப!" Lankesh snarls. "Fine! We'll do it that way then." The merchant draws a kukri from one of his sleeves and readies it.
Tania smiles in wonder at Nesipho's amazing show of prowess,
How does he do that?!
only to frown as it seems to do very little...
Again, she tries to incapacitate the creature, doing her best to push aside the doubts. But first, she calls her companions to attack.
Ashaka growls and lowers to the floor at her mistress' command. He lunges forward at the man, all claws and teeth.
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
Raising her arms as if expecting applauds, she says: "Kitty likes you!" as a focus to her spell.
Ashaka, lying on the path leading up to the door, rises to his feet and loops around Nesipho to attack Lankesh at his mistress' command. His massive claw swipes toward the Vudrani, but skids aside on some magical protection, leaving the man unharmed.
Likewise, Tania's spell once again dissipates without effect.
"You've deceived us," Prashant says, gathering his holy symbol. "But this mistake will be your last." He raises his symbol of Irori above his head, and soft blue light bathes over the chamber, bending around the other Vudrani man. As it does, his allies' wounds begin to heal.
Channeling, using True Healer to roll 4d5+4 for healing, which is mechanically equivalent to rerolling all 1s on a channel.
Lankesh sneers as Prashant undoes much of his work with the lightning bolt, but his focus is very much on Breccia for the most part. "You should have stayed in your cave, half-breed," he snarls, and the kukri flashes.
The attacks are more bluster than dangerous, though, and they skid off of the oread's massive stone plating.
Markis chants again, and winces as his shoulder again burns. He then moves forward and attempts to touch Lankesh with a hand of crackling energy.
Letting out a rumbling growl of earthen tones as his sole response, Breccia presses forward with his attacks against their enemy, each swing of his armor-plated limbs brings those adamantine blades forward with tremendous strength and deadly precision. The oread is relentless, stepping in with each strike to ensure his distance remains as intimately direct as possible.
__________
>
>> points of damage
> (critical threat)
>>
>>> points of damage
>>>> (IF CRIT, Damage): points of damage
> (critical threat)
>>
>>> points of damage
>>>> (IF CRIT, Damage): points of damage
Tania crouches to cover herself, moving her fingers swiftly, she extends her arms as she intones: "Celericio!"
Time seems to slow around her companions as they get infused with arcane celerity.
Ashaka presses on its attacks.
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
Scowling at the ineffectiveness of his rapier Nesipho continues to harass Lankesh if only to aid his companions.
"Vezměte ho naživu, ale v bezvědomí, pokud můžeme." he calls out to Breccia.
"Take him alive but unconscious if we can."
Markis' spell is swallowed by the same mystical resistance that absorbed Tania's magic before. Breccia, forgoing such niceties, maintains his direct approach; although his blades fall upon Lankesh with the force of an avalanche, the magical protections shielding the Vudrani merchant's body deflect almost all of them. Only one gets through, and Breccia is frustrated again as most of the strike's force is simply negated by the man's metal-hard skin.
Ashaka has even less luck, despite Tania's speed-enhancing spell - none of the mighty tiger's claws or bites pierces Lankesh's defenses.
Nesipho, still taking advantage of Lankesh's focus on Breccia, stabs the man twice, and his rapier makes contact both times; only once does he even manage to scratch the Vudrani, though, and Lankesh does little more than grimace at the effect.
"Tania, can you remove his magical protections?"
"Tania, can you remove his magical protections?"
"We're thinking the same thing!"
"An idea so nice, it was thought thrice!", Prashant quips, praying to Irori to unravel the man's mystical protections.
Casting dispel magic on Lankesh.
Hopefully, we're not up against a 17th level caster.
Under the force of Prashant's incantation, the mystical barrier surrounding Lankesh flickers and vanishes. The man again swears in Infernal, sending a vicious glare at the Iroran priest.
Abruptly, Lankesh's face begins to twist and shift as if he were somehow trying to make that glare inhumanly intimidating. It is more than his face, though - his whole body warps and changes, until the middle-aged Vudrani man is gone, replaced by a strongly-muscled figure with a bat's head and vicious-looking, backward-facing claws for feet.
We're fighting a rakshasa! Markis shouts while thinking of how to change their tactics to best fight it.
Tania follows up Prashant's incantation with her own, making a crushing gesture towards the Rakshasa.
Breccia! Any chance you can get your daggers blessed? Or Nesipho? Your rapier? That will bypass his defense!
Prashant gasps as Markis puts a name to the beast before him, remembering the worst depravities the rakshasa are capable of. "I have a few tricks as well," he says, pulling his own spear. "Give me a moment."
Tendrils of fear gripped Nesipho's heart as the creature changed before him, but the fear is quickly smothered by a simmering anger at memories past and friends lost. "હું તમને આવ્યાં ગમે નરકમાં તમને પાછા આપશે." He didn't feel much better prepared than the last time he'd faced otherworldly creatures though.
"I will send you back to whatever hells you came from."
"Blessed? That is Prashant's bailiwick, not mine. But how will it deal with flame and lightning?"
Although the shield that protects Lankesh wavers under the assault from Tania's spell, it weathers the attack without collapsing. Prashant's efforts are enough to leave Lankesh open to Nesipho's attack. While the point of his blade still can't penetrate Lankesh's supernaturally hard skin, the lightning and fire arcing around the magus' rapier sear the outsider as easily as they would anyone else. Lankesh snarls inhumanly, clearly pained.
Tania's eyes open wide as she takes the full measure of the threat.
A Rakshasa!! Hidden in the heart of the city! This is no small threat. No wonder we've been unable to harm it. This might be the end for us... Come now! Like I always say, just keep at it. goes through Tania's head as she prepares to cast more incantations.
"Blessed? That is Prashant's bailiwick, not mine. But how will it deal with flame and lightning?"
** spoiler omitted **
Quite nicely, apparently! Markis responded, noting how the energy caused the creature damage.
Let's try this again, Markis mutters, and again conjures up foul energies to do harm.
The spell is once again absorbed without effect.
Ashaka keeps pressuring the rakshasa and providing distraction.
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
, grab if hit ;
The tiger's claws and bite are fast and vicious, but Ashaka's mighty jaws are not enough to drive through the rakshasa's flesh. He does, however, catch hold of the outsider's arm in vise-like jaws, from which Lankesh cannot immediately tear himself free.
Breccia's response to the realization that the creature is some sort of supernatural threat is to throw himself at the creature that Ashaka has managed to climb atop in a whirling frenzy of claws and teeth. Instead of a death by a thousand papercuts, Breccia drops to one knee and dropping his adamantine blades quickly snatches one of the rakshasa's arms with both of his, twisting it into a vice-like grip and using his weight and size to aid the tiger in keeping the creature down.
The mighty oread's only vocalization is a rumbling roar of effort as he wrestles with the supernatural creature, his greaves scraping across the ground as the infernal beast wrestles with both he and his feline ally. There is desperation in the oread's expression, looking to Prashant with an urgent glare in the hopes that the priest knows of something useful.
_____________
Breccia grabs hold of the rakshasa as well, trying to keep the writhing, struggling fiend in check.
Prashant raises his holy symbol into the air, and he begins to glow a soft blue. He closes his eyes, and a glowing blue duplicate of himself leaps forward and closes on the rakshasa. With a silent warcry, the psychic warrior launches into a flurry of blows on the demon.
Cast spiritual weapon. There's a LOT of dice in the way of this one, but let's start with the important one.
Assuming that makes it, here's the attack.
The manifested warrior swings at the rakshasa, but flickers into nonexistence when his fist attempts to make contact with Lankesh's jaw.
The rakshasa snarls angrily, but makes no move toward breaking free from the tiger's jaws. Instead, he turns his kukri, claws and teeth on the animal, clearly intent on getting out of the grapple by going through Ashaka.
Taking advantage of the creatures distraction Nesipho continues the attack.
Even grappled as it is, the rakshasa manages to twist away from the magus' blade.
Tania repeats the same maneuvers with her hands, shouting syllables of power as she focuses her spirit, trying to break the defenses woven by the rakshasa.
Meanwhile, Ashaka tries to maintain and improve its hold on the rakshasa, slashing at it with its rear claws.
Tania feels the spell's arcane structure tremble, right on the edge of collapse - but it once again holds up, leaving the creature's shield intact. Ashaka has no difficulty holding onto the bat-headed fiend, but its supernaturally resilient skin continues to deflect the tiger's claws.