Team Xantrius

Game Master JasonX

As Xantrius uses his Deathwatch ability, the figure stands and turns to face you, years of dust cascading off of his cloak. This rotting and decaying humanoid is dressed in defiled and tattered priestly vestments. Worms crawl and slither into and out of its eye sockets, rib cage, and other decaying areas of its rotting form.

7d20 ⇒ (13, 14, 7, 20, 8, 19, 1) = 82

I'm at work so the map is substandard (no tokens) will fix that tonight.

Temple

Rd 1
Aleziella
Tanya
Undead
Xantrius
Kothar and Xill
Korak
Bakji

So, Tanya and Aleziella are up first, then undead guy, then everyone else.

Not like it matters due to the short distance, but how is Aleziella outside still when she was the first to enter? Also, shouldn't that be 8d20 since Aleziella rolls initiative twice? I hope the zombie is the 1 :). I guess I'll wait with posting action until I see initiative order as it'll determine if she uses roar or gambit. I guess I should have picked up more varied weapons in order to bypass DR...

You aren't outside, you are by the basin of holy water. Your first roll was a 20, so I didn't bother with the second roll. Also, the second door is open, so you can just walk through if you want.

1d20 ⇒ 16

"Die foul undead!" Aleziella roars and storms forward. Rushing past Korak and Xantarius in her haste to get to the creature. She doesn't stop when coming to the front of the creature but keeps on moving until she gets to the back of the creature where she strikes a crushing blow with her rapier.

Swift Action: Encouraging Roar, grants all allies +2 moral bonus to hit and damage.
Move Action: Move to the square NW of the creature so that anyone standing SE of it would get flanking. If it got combat reflexes she provokes AoO.
Standard Action: Crushing blow (I assume that even if it hits the fortitude save is ignored since it is undead, thankfully the extra damage happens anyway): hit, encouraging roar: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (15) + 9 = 24 damage: 3d6 + 7 ⇒ (5, 6, 3) + 7 = 21

Aleziella get off a devastating hit, but the creature does not go down. However, it focuses its attention on this new threat.

I am not intimately familiar with PoW and the maneuvers, so please add in your actions what the Fort save is for and the DCs.

Fort save DC 16 or be flat-footed until it's next turn (which it will get before anyone can take advantage off it, besides it's already flat-footed). Did she notice anything about her attack not having full effect?

Yes, Aleziella, you felt that your damage was inhibited, it was like hitting a solid piece of oak.

Kothar step behind xantrius places a hand on him and his unseen skin thickens "I gift thee with the skin of a dragon fight well"

+1 na to you for one minute

I was still waiting for Tanya to post her actions. The creature goes before everyone else.

If Tanya does anything that prevents its attacks I will retcon, but looking at her character sheet I don't see anything so I am moving along.

The creature turns to Aleziella, perceiving her as its most dire threat after the substantial blow she delivered, and attacks her.

2d20 ⇒ (13, 9) = 22

Both claws glance harmlessly off of her shield and armor and the creature hisses in frustration.

Ok everyone else can act. Also, please remember to put your status spoiler in your combat posts so I know the exact state of your AC and hp, plus any conditions currently affecting you.

Temple

Wow, Tanya didn't get near as far around the building as I expected.

Tanya hearing what sounded like a shout, moved quickly for the door to look inside, seeing that it must of come from the next room, she moves inside to the interior door to look, and sees a strange creature being attacked by her fellows. She creates a small glob of goo and tosses over her companion's heads at the creature.

Orb of Acid, Atk n Dmg: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (19) + 3 = 221d3 + 2 ⇒ (1) + 2 = 3

added in the plus two mentioned below

And another +2 damage due to encouraging roar

Dropping his sword and whipping out his dagger, Xantrius' deep voice rings out in an almost scholarly lecture about the creature as he steps forward to flank their enemy.

"This looks to be a Huecuva! According to Matheus' Compendium of the Unliving these creatures are best defeated using enchanted or silver weapons. They are foul creatures, who use their ability to appear as one of living to spread disease to those they ambush, and cloak their evil in a shroud of necromatic energy that resists the efforts of good priests to turn them!"

Start Bardic Performance: Naturalist; +1 insight to AC, Attacks and saves vs. abilities of the creature.

AC: 23, +3 to att, +2 to damage, +1 to saves

Korak moves forward until he's just out of reach and swings his (reach) Kama hooking it behind the skeletal beings ankles and pulls (trip) the chain back towards him.

Trip Attack: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (1) + 3 = 4

Aleziella and Tanya can go again

Tanya's spell hits its target and bits of rotted flesh and bone dissolve in the acid. Korak's chain catches on a pew stopping short of the Huecuva.

The +2 was only for 1 round, correct Aleziella?

Yeah only for one round, kinda sad that people mostly didn't take advantage of it. I believe Bakji and Xill have yet to act though. Korak wasn't tripped in return? That'll give me an interesting option. Will post shortly

Bakji moves in the building quickly and slips through the doors as he puts his back up against the walls. Hearing the words that Xantrius said, Bakji yells at the monster "May Iomedae curse your undead soul" and carefully begins to fire through Xantrius movements to hit the creature.

Attack: 1d20 + 6 + 1 ⇒ (13) + 6 + 1 = 20

Damage: 1d8 + 1 + 1 + 2 ⇒ (1) + 1 + 1 + 2 = 5

Move action to get to the corner diagonally from Xantrius's location as of Temple 3. Swift to cast Judgement of Sacred Smiting making my weapon/ammo count as magical and of course standard action for fire an arrow. +1 for point blank to hit and damage and +2 for encouraging Roar.

Aleziella is a bit disappointed that no one took the opportunity to flank with her and shouts out. "If we attack from opposite sides it'll have a harder time fending off blows and it'll be easier for us to take it down. You don't even have to attack, just sand there armed and it'll have to account for you and be easier to hit." She then tumbles sideways, hoping to dodge any swipes from those nasty claws. Dust puffs up momentarily obscuring what she is doing. She comes up and stabs at the creature. "Korak, on my mark, strike it down!"

Move action acrobatics to tumble 2 S, provoking AoO if unsuccessful: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (13) + 8 = 21
Swift action to initiate victory gambit, but with neither rake not reward
Standard action use maneuver hunting party, if it hits, in addition to damage Korak also gets an AoO, which can be used just as any AoO: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (5) + 12 = 17 damage: 2d6 + 5 ⇒ (4, 4) + 5 = 13
AC:21, fort save will likely use gambit with risk/reward so +11. If successful on the forgave she regains 15 HP

Edit: oups, should be +1 to hit so 18 due to Naturalist.

Kothar orders his dragon as it move so dose he and they attack in tandem

if we can Xill will move to left side of the room and Kothar will move to the right so we can flank form both sides i would be staying in the 10ft reach

Kothar
AC:19
No status
Xill
AC:18
No status

I'm assuming you don't move and instead just do the attack with flank from Xantrius. Also, wouldn't it be Xantrius that gets the AoO as he is next to the creature? Korak is 10' away.

Bakji's arrow slams into the creature, breaking a few ribs. Aleziella delivers another solid blow, but the creature continues to fight.

Tanya is up, then creature. All future combats will have a better map and tracking of movements.

Temple

Actually the maneuver requires an adjacent ally, so unless you waive that requirement I cant really grant it to Xantrius. If you do allow me to do it with my flanking buddy I'll just stay in place and grant it to him instead. I assume your post was a cross post with Kothar? Maybe edit to include the result of his action. @Kothar: Did you include Encouraging Roar and Naturalist?

Beset on all sides, the creature does not react in time to either Kothar's or Xill's movements. The two of them then combine to finish off the undead monstrosity.

Yeah, no diseases :)

This shrine was always humble, and little treasure can be found within save for that on the huecuva’s body. A pouch on its belt contains two potions, and on one withered hand it wears a knotted gold ring. The priest’s masterwork warhammer lies dusty on the ground, long forgotten.

Xantrius is able to fill you in on the nature of this creature. Huecuva are the undead spirits of good clerics who were unfaithful to their god and turned to the path of evil before death. As punishment for their transgression, their god condemned them to roam the earth as the one creature all good-aligned clerics despise — undead. As such, this shrine is probably considered to be desecrated.
Knowledge (religion) checks for anyone with that skill.

K{Religion}: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (15) + 5 = 20

Aleziella wipes sweat and brow and grime from her blow and the gauntlet she used to block the blows of the creature. She wrinkles her nose from the smell of the creature. "Whew, that was intense. Such a foul creature down here, how disgusting. Though at least it wasn't overrun by demons like we feared." She studies the creature and the various items they find, she detects magic to see if any of the potions, the ring, the warhammer or even the brooch she found earlier are magic, though she doesn't have a way to identify them. She picks up the golden ring though. "Hopefully these things are something nice again. Sadly I can't identify them like you Tanya, I should learn that as well, it's useful. It would be nice to have some varied weaponry in case we face enemies resistant to stabbing, but that would make me encumbered and severely limit my effectiveness in combat, so it's better if someone else picks it up for now. If none of us can use it, at least we can sell it later."

The potions are magical, the ring is not.
6d20 ⇒ (7, 2, 7, 16, 7, 16) = 55
You all appraise the value of the ring at 190 gp value.

I'll carry it if none want it, though it be almost useless to me.

Aleziella smiles as she remembers what was in the outer room. "Don't forget to fill up a flask or two of the holy water. That reminds me, I have a couple flasks of acid, heard they are nice for dealing with things weapons aren't so effective against, my mother told me that you can use it to empower acid spells like the one you used Tanya. It works just like the way you focus healing spells through your holy symbol. Do you want to borrow it?"

Korak goes and fills up the flasks with holy water before heading out and motioning the rest of the party to come in. By no means be it clean, but it is safe enough to rest.

Bakji thought for a bit about what all they found. A failed priest who was cursed for his turning from his faith.

Knowledge Religion: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (13) + 5 = 18 +5 if this about the monster

He listened to Korak and looked at the others, mostly the commoners. They were injured and this was in fact a safe location for the time. He looked back at the group. "It wouldn't be a terrible idea to have them rest here. We could station up a guard and have a few of us scout ahead and make sure that the place is safe. Send a runner back, have the rest move up to the new location....keep that up till we get back to the surface." he started.

"If we encounter an enemy we carefully fall back and get the rest of the group and take it out. It will keep our charges safe and keep us moving, while giving them a chance to rest." he offered.

Aleziella shakes her head with a frown at Korak's suggestion. "I don't like the idea of resting down here. Who knows what the demons are doing on the surface? No, we found some potions and holy water, now let's continue on to the surface. Unless someone sees something we could do here."

Kaval and bakji reveal that this shrine can be consecrated—either to Torag or to a new deity—with 8 hours of work cleaning and praying. it has been about an hour and a half since the you fell down here. That makes it about 1:30-2:00 in the afternoon. However, If you spend the 8 hours, you can rest in shifts and start with your daily uses replenished.

"thats true i would rather continue, as defensible as this area my seem if a large group of demons gather before us we wont have a path to escape "

And I don't like the idea of taking them on a forced march when we have no idea how long it will take to get out of here.

And spellcasters could memorize different and perhaps more useful spells.

Kothar takes a second look at the shrine
"This shrine can be consecrated to Aspu if we take the time to clean it pray here and then we could have a safe area to rest for a bit"

If you wish to consencrate it, I would prefer we return it to the god it belonged to, I may follow Cayden Cailean, but this is the god of my people, I would prefer not to offend him.

This would have been so much easier if the hierophant wannabes followed the same deity as suggested in the players guide. Too bad it wasn't possible to do it that way. This place is also another place where me as a player draw in a different direction than the character. The character is probably more worried about helping out up above, while me as a player is considering if this offer experience. If it does, we should just do it. We aren't that much in a hurry. As for preparing better spells... We are all spontaneous spellcasters so it would be purely for refreshing them and we've hardly used any.
"I think it's best to consecrate it to Desna if anything. We freed it from the unholy grasp of undead and Desna is the God of freedom. Though I still think moving on might be better. We should probably vote it. If you are all in favor of staying and turning it back to Torag I'll help as much as I can."

Bakji looked around the room and raised his eyebrows. It was certainly designed with the dwarven god in mind. It honestly made him wonder if it would be viewed as a slap in the face of both Torag and another god if they were to consecrate it and revere it to another god.

He stood there in deep comtemplation for a while, his eyebrows furrowed as he thought before speaking up finally. "If, we were to stay and rest I would think the gods would prefer this shrine be left to who it was intended. Few I would think find this an acceptable shrine to them being underground and locked away in stone." he said as he thought about it.

"As far as for a vote, I still believe allowing some to stay behind and clean the shrine and rest while the rest move forward and scout would be a reasonable idea." he said as he looked about at the group.

Any who agree to scout should be well experienced in stealth and number no less than three, any less than that and I fear they may not be able to return alive.

"I agree with them, if we stay and reconsencrate this ground, it should remain to Torag. I don't think taking the time is a good idea right now though. The longer we wait, the more intrenched the enemy gets. Then again, we are few and unlikely to prevent the enemy from getting entrenched on our own, unless we come up into the city and can break out. I think now is a good time to decide whether we should try to get topside quickly to join the battle, or to take our time to be careful and hope to join the retaking of the city later. If the latter, we should cleanse this place before moving on."

Tanya says her piece then goes to the shrine and prays for a sign from Torag on whether to consecrate the temple.

Korak holds still. I know not what you be knowing, but I was knocked out pretty good. I know not how long we rested, we may have been down here many hours before we awoke, without the sun I cannot tell.

"I wasn't knocked out at all at least. I was falling slowly through the rift in the earth, then landed softly on the ground before we started working on getting out. I remember you falling like that with me. You were still unharmed right? Up until you mentioned it Tanya, I had thought we could have made a difference up top or that there at least would be something left to fight for. You might be right though. If the might dragon could not stand against the Balor Lord, then what hope do we have. Let's stay, rest up and heal everyone up full then." Upon her realization Aleziella turns quite sad, but as she continues to speak her mood brightens slightly again. Not back to her previous cheerfulness, but probably more optimistic than pessimistic.

Xantrius stays in silent contemplation as he retrieves and sheathes his weapon while listening to the discussion about what to do about the Shrine. He is offering a prayer for a sign as to the best course of action when his gaze falls upon the font where Aleziella is filling up the flasks.

"I, too, would be in favor of reconsecrating this place to its intended god. Torag must still be watching out for the Shrine for the font and water to remain pure even after the priest's fall, after all this time."

He turns to the injured (and Horgus) and gestures to the benches. "Why do you not take a rest and eat while we are on this holy errand." he requests as he offers them some of the rations from the backpack they discovered.

Aleziella is a bit upset at Tanya ignoring her offer of aid with not even giving a no thanks. Still, that doesn't stop her from asking the woman further questions. "Tanya, could you figure out what these potions are like with the previous one?"
If we do rest I believe you get a new attempt at spellcraft for item that hasn't been identified already.

Actually everyone was unconscious. Remember you "woke to darkness". Yes, if you stay here the eight hours and rest, you will get a new attempt to identify the potion that you missed.

Alez, sorry for ignoring you earlier, I got interrupted and forgot that I had earlier posts that needed a response. A little late now though, so I'll just say that Tanya missed the offer.

JasonX, That is an odd houserule, though I didn't realize before that PF moved potion identification to perception for some odd reason. Still, I'm curious about your reasoning for allowing retries. (In general I'm always curious why GMs change things. Particularly since I'm making my own system, and I find it is good to know in developing rules.

"Take heart Alez, we have hope, we just can't expect every battle to be victory. We just need to prepare a counterattack."

Tanya accepts the potions from Alez, "I'll see what I can determine."
spellcraft: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (12) + 7 = 191d20 + 7 ⇒ (2) + 7 = 9

It's not a houserule, it's in the rules under spellcraft. Anyway, let's move on. Aleziella is going to make the offer again during rest if you want the flask after all.

Korak begins to help picking up what's left of the temple. As the time passes he begins singing a sailing song he picked up in a bar.

[Chorus]
Sailing around the Inner Sea,
A girl in every port for me.
Slip the lines, unfurl the sail,
What is the next stop in our tale?

[Chorus] Sailing around... etc.