As Estria darted to the side, she reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle. Uncorking it, she let loose a bolt of lightning that shot through the air and past one of them to hit the other.
...Oooooor so she'd intended. She uncorked it too early, though, and the lightning shot into the sky instead. Frick.
Nerak flinches as the bottled lightning shoots off. He glances off to the side to see the approaching group, obviously intent on helping. Oh boy, the cavalry arrives... "Oy, watch it with that, girly! 'Bout singed my dangly bits off!" He laughs heartily, obviously enjoying himself thoroughly.
The half-orc comes onto the scene like a wrecking ball. A big one.
He rushes in, his movement ending with him next to the creatures as well as the guard holding the mace (the other holds a longsword). His mighty great axe descends upon the first of the tittering creatures right between its ears and doesn't stop until it reaches the cobblestones and the now silent creature is rent in two.
The cackling of the other two quickly silences as well. But when Nerak reaches with his head to bite the next creature, there is a glint in its glowing eyes, and suddenly Nerak's open maw is descending upon the mace-wielding guard next to him!
It's a wild motion, though, and the guard dodges easily.
"Hey! What's the idea?!"
Then Estria opens up her bottled lightning, intent on hitting the third creature. As she does, she notices that it seems blurry and hard to pinpoint from this range. Its eyes flash, and suddenly you all realize that Estria's lightning is headed for the half-orc!
The lightning strikes with a boom, and Nerak's words catch in his mouth as he realizes that the "girly" did, in fact, singe him.
Dusk pauses and watches with great admiration as the ginormous man wreaks havoc with a great...axe. The scion of battle moves forward and with a fell yell attempts to spit one of the remaining creatures...
[+2 Str, +1 weapon focus, -2 impale]
When making a melee attack with the attack action that deals lethal damage, you can take a -2 penalty on the attack roll; if the attack is successful, your weapon impales the creature, forcing it into a square within your reach if it was not already. An impaled creature cannot move and is battered for as long as it remains impaled. An impaled creature who attempts to cast a spell or use a spell-like ability must make a concentration check (DC 10 + your CMB + spell level), or lose the spell. Weapons used to impale a creature cannot be used for attacks except for those against the impaled creature (you cannot impale more than a single creature with your unarmed strikes), ignoring armor, natural armor, and shield bonuses to AC. A creature can only be impaled by a single weapon; attempting to impale an already impaled creature automatically fails. Controlling an impaling weapon requires the same amount of hands as wielding the weapon does.
This impalement may be broken when you lose control of the weapon used for the attack (such as by being disarmed), or by the impaled creature making a combat maneuver check as a standard action with a DC equal to your CMD. If you control the weapon being used to impale a creature, you may choose to automatically remove the weapon as a move action. When the impaled creature loses the impaled condition, they take bleed damage equal to the damage dice of the weapon used to impale the creature. If a creature is impaled by a weapon that is not controlled by another creature, they are able to move, but all movement speeds they possess are reduced by 1/2 (minimum 5 ft.).
You must make an opposed Strength check against the impaled creature to move as a part of the move action (this Strength check is made by your mount if you are mounted), moving up to half of your base speed while the impaled creature is dragged along with you (this movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity).
If you are impaling two or more creatures, you must make an opposed Strength check against all currently impaled creatures in order to move, and if you are subjected to forced movement, you must make an opposed Strength check against all impaled creature; failing this check against any impaled creature forces you to release any weapons you’re using to impale a creature (or to end impaling a creature with your unarmed strikes or natural attacks) immediately, while success drags any impaled creatures with you during this forced movement.
You can also choose to release the weapon as a free action without dealing damage (although you cannot release natural weapons). A creature may attempt a grapple check against an impaled creature’s CMD to assume control of the weapon impaling that creature as long as another creature is not controlling it. If so, the creature making the attempt receives a +4 bonus on the grapple check.
Talents with the (impale) tag can only be used against creatures who are impaled by this ability when you are controlling the impaling weapon.
"Artillery incoming!"
Rick adopts am attack stance and shoots his chi at one of the creatures.
Dusk steps up and stabs into one of the creatures with her glaive. Its wound seems less severe than you might have expected, but still, you have the thing right where you want it, stuck on your blade.
As Rick fires off his two blasts of ki at the other creature, he has an experience similar to Estria's--for some reason, he just can't seem to focus on it properly when attacking from a distance. The creature's eyes glint, and one blast hurtles toward Nerak while the other barrels down on Dusk!
Nerak is hit by the blast, taking 1 point of bludgeoning and piercing damage. Dusk dodges the other blast deftly.
Nerak
Estria
Rick
Dusk
Brommyl
Kpu'Unde
Enemies
Cursing his short legs, Brommyl huffs his way toward the shouting and arrives just in time to see everyone attacking a giant of a half-orc. He's about to join in the fight when he notices the gremlins. "Hoi! Those buggers are -"
As the dwarf speaks, his tattoos glow brightly and his hammer materializes in front of one of the creatures.
"Aw! Sorry about it!"
The grin gets wiped off Nerak's face as the lighting finds purchase in the small of his back, and the two ki strikes come flying in, one giving him an annoying little tap. Seriously? He gives an annoyed glance over his shoulder at the approaching group. "I'm awful big an' all, I know, but could we focus? Jus' a little?"
Grinning at the glaive wielder, he says "Nice hit!" Tipping his head toward the others, he says "friends of yours?"
"Ah, not sure anymore, right?"
Seeing the danger these creatures possess, Kpu'Unde chooses to use his magic to help the guards withdraw from combat. He moves closer than targets the worse injured of the two guards, saying "We will deal with these creatures. Please go help others in need!"
Calling down his magic, the man appears on the far side of Kpu'Unde.
Holding the spitted beastie, Dusk manages a grin and nods by way of acknowledging Nerak.
"Thanks. Umm. Those guys? I think? Somehow I don't think they think you are an enemy. [here grunts with exertion] Despite what you might be feeling."
The guard that Kpu'Unde teleported looks around in surprise from his new location, but quickly regains his bearings. "Come on, Marv, let's find some more of those plant things to put down!"
The second guard, Marv, withdraws carefully from the gremlins and follows after his brother-in-arms.
Suddenly not so confident, the two remaining gremlins attempt to retreat from before you.
One of the gremlin begins moving away, but the other only squirms, trying to pull itself off of Dusk Bloom's glaive, to no avail. The fleeing gremlin leaves his companion to his fate as he flees around the corner of a building.
"Sorry! I can patch that up later!" Estria called as her bottled lightning went the wrong way. She was going to need a better way of controlling those, wasn't she? Maybe something a little better at guiding them... hm.
Instead, she darted after the beast running away, hurriedly tossing a few chemicals together. "Stay out of this cloud!" she called out as she hurled the concoction and watched the chemicals react to explode into a bank of smoke.
As the gremlin turned to flee, the floating hammer took a swipe at its head.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brommyl calmly begins to walk closer to the melee, making sure to stay out of reach of the big half-orc. The pinned gremlin should be relatively harmless, but there was no sense in getting his head taken off by an errant swipe.
The retreating gremlin is hit by the hammer, but seems no worse for wear.
As Estria's vial shatters and releases a cloud around the fleeing gremlin, it coughs a little but resists the poison's effects.
Estria
Nerak
Rick
Dusk
Brommyl
Kpu'Unde
Enemies
Nerak's face falls as the last baddie makes for a hasty retreat. "No ya don't, filthy coward..." he mutters. Turning to Kpu'Unde, he grins, nods his head in the motion of the fleeing gremlin, and says "Mind givin' me a boost, mageling? Can't be lettin' one get away to harm others, now!"
"Of course." says Kpu'Unde to the request, flinging Nerak through space/time to land in position.
"So...
Rick runs as fast as he can, pursuing the gremlin until he's just beside him.
Seing her ardent allies taking care of the fleeing gremlin, Dusk decides to bring this one closer to death, twisting the blade in the pinned creature. Perhaps the efforts if her companions distracts her, or the fates - whatever it is the gremlin is lucky this time, though still pinned...
[this ignores armor, natural armor or shield bonuses]
...An impaled creature cannot move and is battered for as long as it remains impaled.
Nerak gives a manic grin as Kpu flings him through space, laughing wildly and raising his axe in thanks. His gaze lands on the fleeing gremlin, and his eyes narrow to slits, his grin not reduced in the least. "I've got you now, coward..." His large legs start churning underneath him as he builds up speed, raising his axe above his head as he goes. When he gets close enough, he brings the axe down in a wicked overhead chop, while also reaching out with his toothy maw to bite the little bugger.
The gremlin squeals as it dodges that giant greataxe, and it turns into a screech as it feels that nasty bite. But it is still up and fleeing.
End of Round 2
The gremlin impaled on Dusk Bloom's weapon again tries to extricate himself, to no avail. The look of fear in his eyes increases to a level of panic.
The other gremlin, under close pursuit, does his best to get away--but he can't evade the long reach of the giant half-orc entirely as he continues to flee.
Estria
Nerak
Rick
Dusk
Brommyl
Kpu'Unde
Enemies
Nerak's eyes squint as the cowardly beastie tries to withdraw again, but they open wider again when his large stature lets him glimpse a barely-there opening. His axe goes swinging in before the gremlin can get very far.
Unfortunately, the axe swing just barely misses, and the simpering little creature slips further away. Not far enough away, though, as the growling half-orc gamely takes up the chase, rushing up to the gremlin from behind and taking shots with his axe and his bite.
The axe just barely misses the ducking mongrel, but the swing distracts him enough that Nerak's grasping jaws clamp down on the gremlin's shoulder. He gives a couple of solid jerks for good measure before dropping the cowardly creature to the ground.
Nerak
Estria
Rick
Dusk
Brommyl
Kpu'Unde
Enemies
"Are you alright?" Esria called as she moved over towards the one she'd accidentally hit with bottled lightning. She was definitely going to have to rethink her aiming on those. As for the impaled creature, she figured that was under control...
Rick turns back to where he started. "woooops!"
Nerak gives a big grin and wipes a bit of blood off his jaw. At Estria's question, he looks up and says 'Bit banged up, lass, but nothin' I can't handle. That was a nice bit of flashery back there, if a bit misaimed!" He gives her a big smile, which comes off a bit more grisly than expected, what with gremlin-bits still hanging from his sharp teeth. "You know what's goin' on here? I love a good fight, but wasn't expectin' any trouble around in here. Commotion interrupted a perfectly good dinner, and let me tell you, them things don't make a good substitute." He makes a face of disgust. "Need a strong drink after that..."
As Brommyl walked closer, the hammer slammed down on the impaled gremlin.
"Monsters invading the town, it seems - this is the second batch we've seen." Estria explained, bending down to poke at one of the bodies a bit. "Don't let your guard down just yet. There may be more of them around."
"We should also look for a leader, perhaps a Druid of some stripe; Plants do not tend to attack settlements out of the blue...unless this settlement has done something untowards to the wrong tree, that is."
Dusk fights the urge to whip the creature about in an excruciatingly painful frenzy. Instead she glares at it.
"Yuir friend be dead. Wanta follow? No? Talk. Who do you serve? Who sent you?"
Dusk winces a smile as she shakes the thing off her glaive, stepping on an arm with a sickening crunch to prise the corpse free. She pushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear and again, breathes hard.
"Whew! That was some good fighting!"
Brommyl's floating lucerne hammer swings down and brings an end to the gremlin's struggling.
As Estria pokes at the dead gremlin, she notices a symbol in a couple places among its raggedy clothes--an old tree circled by interwoven lines (link to image).
Kpu'Unde doesn't know the meaning of the symbol, but Dusk Bloom and Estria both recognize it--this is the token of the Tickwood Hag. You have never actually seen the symbol before, but you've heard it described. You certainly have never heard tell of creatures ranging outside the bounds of the Tickwood bearing the hag's token. In fact, your impression has always been that the Tickwood Hag is likely only a myth.
"Huh." Estria mused as she looked at once of the many symbols she'd learned about during her studies in this town. "Well, anything with a mark like this probably isn't a random attack - more likely they had some sort of objective here and more will come if you don't cut it off at the source." She was fairly confident that was how it worked, anyway. It was looking more and more like she ought to finish the staff she'd been tinkering with since all the way back in Taldor...
Nerak walks back to the rest of the group with Estria, his bloodied axe resting on one shoulder. He smiles in satisfaction on seeing the third gremlin successfully downed by the others. "Good bit of fightin', for sure, but who the 'ell are you lot?" He rolls his shoulders, rubbing at the spot that Estria's errant lightning bolt had hit, before adding, "And do any of you have a touch of healin'? That bolt of yers stung, no doubt."
While talking, he bends down to look at the fallen gremlins and the surrounding area, looking for any signs of where they might have come from.
"Give me fifteen minutes of quiet time and I will." Estria answered promptly, opening her pack and getting a few supplies of her mobile lab out. It had taken some smart packing to get it all arranged in a way that made it easy to move, but at least she could carry the darn thing with her now. And if someone had a magic cure, well, some salves would still be handy to have around just in case.
Nerak chuckles and shakes his head. "Quiet time may be in short supply tonight, darlin', but good luck with that."
Turning back to the gremlins, Nerak's Large form slowly melts away, and he shrinks smaller and smaller, his axe and all his equipment disappear, and his form slowly changes into that of a Small wild dog, and a rather ugly one at that. His tongue hangs out the side of his mouth for just a second, a big doggie grin on his face, before he turns his nose to the area of the battle.
"Is any of you a native, here?" Rick shrugs. "Would it be good to know where we are or where we're going."
The lucerne hammer fades back into Brommyl's tattoos as he joins the group. He gave the skinwalker an odd look before shaking his head and chuckling grimly. "I'd assume they're from whatever wood's closest to here. That's typically where you'd find plants and fey, after all." Looking over everyone, he grins. "Whoever's responsible, I doubt they expected to face more than some humble country folk - certainly not a pair of mages, a skinwalker, an alchemist, and a warrior maiden. Let's show them the error of their ways."
"I am not from here." said the Mwangi man.
In response to Nerak's question, Kpu'Unde says "My name is Kpu'Unde, student of the Master of Time and Space."
"i can provide the succour you require while...our friend creates the..things she...creates." Dusk finishes, giving Estria a bright open faced smile.
Holding her glaive tightly, Dusk closes her eyes momentarily, and you see her face contort, as it washes back and forth between three states - her young countenance, an older woman and finally a wizened crone, alternating between the three states faster and faster. Her eyes open, and are blank as she leans forward and touches Nerak-the-dog.
Her face returning to normal, Dusk frowns as the reult is obviously less than she hoped for.
"Ach - mother, crone - aid me further you dull trollopes!"
Again, holding the glaive, and face contorting she channels her magic.
"There you go pup, " she smiles
"Well, I'm Dusk. Dusk Bloom. I would be the....warrior maiden I expect. [here favors Brommyl with a grin.] " Well met K'pu! And nice mystic arts you have there. In fact, we all did very well. Quite the assortment."
Normally quite shy, Dusk seems elevated by the victory, and despite herself finds that she looks to each of the group to learn their names.