"The plague didn't kill these people. Vampires did. But what are they doing here? Eyes open."
He will investigate the hole in the wall cautiously.
Oh joy. Nalun says, drawing his blade.
"Demitri, let me... help." Karri's eyes go green as she pulls back her sleeve and digs her fingers into her flesh; she pulls out an old friend, the brave rat from the warrens. "Find them or return to the pit a failure."
The rat scurries into the toy shop, squeaking and sniffing.
Karri drops her sleeve, but holds Legion close, her eyes reflecting their energy.
"Of course." Demitri just watches as Karri summons a rat waiting for it to come back.
"Vampires?", Ortik says incredulously. "The hell did we just get ourselves into?" He draws his warhammer, and casts about looking for something that could be used as a stake.
Lyla hangs in the back of the group, watching the action and covering her nose with her sleeve to counter the stench. "So we have pet sharks, infected foreign coins, and now, we get to throw in vampires in the mix. Sounds like some nutcase bard's cuckoo tale..."
She approaches the heap of bodies and examines one of the victims. "Well, just because they were killed by a vampire doesn't mean they weren't sick. Perhaps the killer got a nasty little infection from the blood it drank". Just as she is checking the bodies, she remembers a common story about vampires. "Wait... if people get bitten by a vampire, don't they become one themselves?" She takes out her traveler's any tool and produces a short stick with which she starts poking the pile to see if anything moves.
"Yes. We should burn these bodies or atleast get them to direct sunlight."
Karri's rat returns a minute later, its red eyes glowing. It scampers over to Karri and seemingly beckons her to listen...
The rat smiles and looks right into Karri's eyes.
In an oddly sweet, and terrifying gesture, Karri strokes the rats raw flesh neck and then snaps her fingers. The rat is gone in a foul smelling oily smoke. "There's broken toys, a corpse, or maybe a spawn. And a trapdoor that looked used."
In her mind, the rat returns to it's pit gleeful for it's service - many of the Legion look toward it, and she chides them, Leave him be, or I will call you just to excoriate you. Which of you is the first?
"Alright. Let's bring these bodies out into the sun first. No chances being taken here." Demitri will drink an anti-plague and start dragging a body.
Karri simply nods and steps clear. She watches, focusing on keeping Legion in check while she stands idle. Sweat beads on her brow, but she holds them in her grasp.
Nalun looks hesitant to touch the bodies, and will only do so if he has gloves or something else between his hands and the dead flesh.
Shying away from the bodies for now, Ortik digs through the detritus in the alley for a suitable stake. "Come on, there's got to be something here I can use."
Lyla moves to Demtiri and advises against his course of action. "Hey chief, these corpses were definitely infected. If I were you, I wouldn't drag them around... better to burn them where they stand. Not sure how the families are going to feel about it, though." Lyla leaves the decisions regarding the disposal of the bodies to Demitri as she ventures carefully inside the shop.
"They deserve better than that. But I suppose it can wait. I'll let the guard know about them when we're done here." Demitri says leaving the corpses where they are.
Lyla creeps in through the hole in the wall revealed by the bodies.
Dozens of crooked glass eyes—hollow and crazed—glare from the heads of malformed and half-carved dolls lining skewed workroom shelves. Rat-gnawed stuffed aurochs, disembodied
doll limbs, miniature rolling elephants, unseaworthy wooden ships, and crooked blocks illustrated with deformed or poorly painted animals fill bins and racks about the room. A cracked
wooden door leads to the north, while a rickety trap door breaks the sawdust-covered floor to the east. In one corner lies the drying corpse of an old bald man amid the wood chips, rusty tools, and oily rags of a scored workbench.
Upon closer inspection, Lyla discovers a ring of keys on the corpse's belt... and eight puncture marks along the corpse's neck.
Without getting to close to the corpse, Lyla sticks the pole made from her traveler's many tools in the keyring and retrieves the set of keys. Well, usually down is the way to go when things get weird. She walks up to the trapdoor and tries the keys, shouting back to her friends outside. "All clear! Come in!"
Then you hear the sounds of *creaking* and shuffling coming from under the floor.
Lyla removes the key from the jeyhole and walks slowly back towards the entrance. "Scratch that. There's something down here."
Demitri moves in front of Lyla, shield up. "Basement?"
Nalun decides to stow his blade and take out his bow, he backs up Demitri. Stay behind us short stuff..
Bruendor crawls through the hole as well, grimacing as he surveys the toy shop's interior. "If we're heading into a vampire's den, let's at least have the city watch over us." He says a quick prayer, and he feels the spirit of Korvosa wash over the group.
Karri follows into the shop, the broken toys look like fragments of Korvosa. Chipped and fading, with no one to care for them. That's not true; we are here."
As the party crawls through the hole in the wall into the toy shop's interior, there is a *POUNDING* from the trapdoor, causing it to fly open. Leaping up from the trapdoor is a pale, almost skeletal man, his long black hair stringy and coated in dust. The blood-soaked rags clinging to his body give him a semblance of modesty. The man looks up at the party and snarls, baring fangs dripping with blood.
An odd mist can be seen floating up from the floorboards in the southeastern corner of the room.
Demitri will activate Judgement of Justice and strikes the vampire with his blade.
Demitri's blade connects with the vampire spawn's hide before it has a chance to react, but unfortunately the sword isn't able to pierce its skin with this swing, even with Iomedae's guidance.
Karri sees Demitri's blade, usually so devastating deflect off of the vampire's bare skin like a wet noodle on a countertop. She mutters an incantation and draws forth a minor pair of souls from Legion and then crushes them down to their essential energy. The grinding scream grates the ears, but the effect is immediate and obvious. Two bolts of green energy whiz towards the vampire, impacting with palpable force.
The unholy spawn is sent reeling from the impact of Karri's bolts of magic, but it stands back up. Already its magic burns are beginning to fade.
Dropping his bow in favor of a better close combat weapon, Nalun draws his falchion and closes with the Vampire
"Lyla, get out of there!", Ortik cries, waving her back to safety. "Don't let it touch you!"
The vampire spawn shrieks in pain as Nalun's falchion bites deeply into its dead flesh. However, it doesn't cut as deeply as Nalun's swing should have. It retaliates, swinging its wounded arm at the bounty hunter!
Unfortunately for it, the spawn's arm nearly gets wrenched from its socket as it flails wildly, unable to strike Nalun.
The mist in the southeast corner coalesces into another spawn, this one with even stringier hair than the first. Its red eyes gleam with a malevolent intelligence.
"Ah... fresh meat." It growls as it advances on Nalun, ready to strike!
Two more clouds of mist seep up from the floorboards against the eastern wall!
Demitri will move around for the flank, and takes a swing.
Karri steps away from the vapors pouring up through the floor and begins chanting, focusing on pulling out something from her flesh.
Pulling a bomb out of her bag, Lyla steps sideways to get away from the first vampire spawn's reach and playfully throws the explosive against the creature in an upward arc, teasing the spawn to catch it. "Hey, buddy, hold this for me, will ya?"
As more mist rises from the floorboards, Ortik curses under his breath and quickly prays to the city. "Aid me in casting out these abominations, Korvosa!" His left hand begins to glow white with holy power, and he advances on the vampire in the southwest corner, attempting to grab the vampire spawn.
Casting cure moderate wounds and reaching out to grab the vampire spawn I'm adjacent to.
Lyla's bomb arcs through the air, crashing into the spawn before Nalun. The bomb explodes against the spawn's back, spilling its volatile contents all over it. It shrieks in surprise and pain as its flesh cracks and disintegrates, being consumed in a flash of fire!
The mist that remains begins to seep back down through the trapdoor.
As Demitri maneuvers into position, the spawn swings at him with a withered fist!
The beast's claw rakes across Demitri's face. It doesn't draw that much blood, but the pain that flashes across the inquisitor's body feels as if his soul is being flayed alive.
Not to be outdone, Demitri's sword finds its mark in the spawn's chest. It opens up a good-sized wound, but it doesn't seem to have cut as deep as he hoped.
Unfortunately for the spawn, the same can't be said for Ortik's healing touch.
The dwarf's hand connects with the vampire's back, and there's a *sizzling* noise as the positive energy discharges into the beast. The spawn howls in pain, its body convulsing as it turns its ire on the man of nature!
Nalun quickly studies the movements of the Vampire Spawn and determines to stab it just but his aim is spoiled.
As Nalun's attack barely misses, the newly-wounded spawn turns its ire on the one who just seared off half of its back. Its flesh is beginning to knit itself back together.
"BROTHERS! TO ME! SLAY THE DWARF FIRST!" It calls out as it swings its dead fist at Ortik!
The undead monster's fist collides with naught but air as Ortik dodges it!
The two clouds of mist against the east wall coalesce into humanoid shapes with fangs and blood-red eyes, and they leap at Ortik!
As the vampire spawns move in on Ortik, Lyla starts running with her head down, passing between their legs and trying to avoid their claws as she sprints to the other side of the room. By the time she gets there, she already has another bomb on her hand. After a quick examination of the combat setup, Lyla throws the explosive at the vampire spawn standing between its monstrous allies, hoping with her calculations she can hit all three of them with one strike.
Lyla manages to dance through the vampire spawn's reach without leaving herself open.
Her bomb's accuracy is even better.
Both of the spawns are immolated by the blast--the bottom one in particular is nearly seared down to its skeleton! Their cries of agony fill the air!
Demitri swings at the vampire in the flank!
Karri finishes her drawing forth and into this reality springs a burning, flaming thing - so much fire it's actual form is distorted into nothing more than a wick of tormented flesh.
The things immediately leaps, tendrils of physical fire whipping, into the fray.
for and
Karri herself steps back as she fights for control - the pain of drawing forth fire threatens to overwhelm her will!
Demitri's sword, even though it's weighed down by the taint of undeath on him, manages to shear through the beast's physical form. That last blow was enough to force the creature back into gaseous form!
The flaming creature Karri calls forth lashes out with fire and pain, but misses, being more of a threat to the building itself than the vampiric creature.
Nalun attacks the Vampire to the right of Ortik
Confound it all! he says
"Yes, fight me, you pallid monsters!", Ortik cries, his dwarven accent thick as he bellows. "There's more of that coming for you! You'll burn today in holy fire and dwarven steel!" Despite his clamoring, his strikes are guarded - he knows very well the threat vampires pose, and hopes to draw their ire while his friends set up to end their threat.
Fighting defensively, taking a 5' step to the NE. This will raise my AC to 19 for this round. I'll aim my attack at the one that will be directly south of me after I finish my move.
Ortik's swing, as cautious as it is, is unable to make a dent in the vampire spawns' hides.
The gaseous spawns escape below the floor as the two remaining ones keep swinging at Ortik...
...and neither of their fists connect.