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The thugs who move forward to attack Paige hold their clubs aloft, but find themselves curiously unable to strike. They strain against their own instincts...
Anguela is stunned at Atticus's admission. "Wait, you truly are a friend of the commander as well?" She looks at him appraisingly, considering the new idea that he might be more than he seems.
Startled by the shouts, Anguela runs off after the other guards, trying to match their pace. Was that a cry for help, a child? She quickly looks around the alley entrance as she follows, wary for a trap, and sensing that there may be combat she makes sure to cast mage armor and remove sickness on herself if there is time.
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The old man speaks.
"Fine, we'll do this the hard way."
Mackeson remembers that voice.
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A younger Mackeson looks at the stack of silver coins on the table in front of him. This didn't seem right, he thought. It was a simple delivery - the first job that he had been given by his new employer. This seemed like an exorbitant wage for such a simple job.
"You look confused, Mack," the old man grinned.
"It's Mackeson," he replied.
The old man waved his hand as if to ward off the correction. "It's no matter. But you see, I reward those for good work, and I reward those for loyalty. You're a loyal one, aren't you?" The old man lithely placed a square leather case on the tabletop beside the silver coins. Mackeson shifted uncomfortably on his feet in front of the seated old man. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes - a nervous habit, and a pointless one given the damage the midnight's milk had done to him before he had finally kicked it.
Gaedren Lamm smiled. "Yes, loyal to the proper master, eh?" He pointed at Mackeson. "Midnight milk. I've seen what it can do. Horrible stuff; it'll scramble your brain. Not like this." And with that, Lamm unbuttoned the leather case, revealing three glass vials of a white crystalline powder. With deft fingers, the old man pulled one of the vials free from its molded resting place within the case and held it up. "Now this won't touch your mind - no, unless fearlessness is something to be frowned upon. Is it?"
"I'm done with stuff like that," Mackeson heard himself saying dully, lacking conviction in his own words.
"I just knew you would say that!" Lamm said with a flash of a smile. The smile vanished in an instant. "Fine, we'll do this the hard way." The old man gave an imperceptibly small nod and without warning, a pair of muscular green arms pinned Mackeson's behind his back. The dwarf fought, but the pesh had wrecked his physical strength long before the midnight milk wreaked havoc with his mind. Mackeson grunted and snorted to no avail apart from a strange high-pitched giggle from his unseen assailant.
Mackeson watched in horror as his new employer sprinkled a thimbleful of the crystalline powder into a cup of water, then drew it up into what appeared to be a stylus fit with a needle at the tip. Lamm noticed the dwarf watching. "Do you like it? It's my own design. Readily re-usable!" In a casual tone and with a well-practiced manner, Mackeson's new employer pierced the dwarf's upper arm with the needle, injecting the substance that was to become Mackeson's new master into his vein.
Lamm strode back to the table and swept the sack of silver coins back into a small iron box. "Now. I think you've already spent your wages from the first job that I've given you and then some. Shiver is expensive, Mackeson. I trust you'll be back when the tickle gets to you - and I'll have more jobs for you. Until then, get out of my sight. Giggles?"
And with that, Mackeson was hustled roughly out of Lamm's office, body-slammed to the ground in the alley, and kicked until he passed out. And what Lamm said came to pass: within three days, the twitchy and pleading dwarf came back, looking for work and a fix to his ache. It continued like that for too long, thought Mackeson.
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Too long...
Mackeson didn't recognise the half-orc in front of him as he pulled back instinctively from its clumsy flail swing. He was fixated on the old man.
What kind of luck would bring Lamm ba---
A sap slammed into Mackeson's brow, momentarily stopping that thought. With a growl, the dwarf responded to the half-orc menace (wielding the lethal weapon) savagely.
Mackeson digs in deep, cutting a rent right into Giggles' belly, spilling blood onto the orphanage stairs. The half-orc growls before erupting into a roaring rage. Meanwhile, Gaedren, grinning a sadistic grin, moves around Paige and into combat with her, slipping a dagger out of a sleeve and towards her midsection.
Gaedren's knife finds a weakness in Paige's leather armor, slipping in and stabbing deeply into her belly. Giggles slams his flail into Mackeson's side, drawing a wicked bruise accented by several pinprick wounds from the spikes.
One of the thugs fighting Portia grabs his wounded belly and just runs away. The money that Gaedren was offering is clearly not worth his death.
At this point, Atticus, Anguela, Darius and Grau arrive on-scene to find a veritable battle between a pack of criminals and what appear to be guards for the Sarenrite Church's Dawnflower House.
The Silver Ghost pales when she sees Paige get stabbed by the old man. Gritting her teeth, she swipes at the fleeing thug's back with her rapier, but she doesn't want to kill the guy - she aims for his shoulder, not his kidney.
Round 1
It takes Atticus only a second to size up the situation and come up with a course of action. Without breaking stride he draws his sword, the blade glinting momentarily in the daylight. He pushes his way to the front of the other guards and quickly crosses the street. He stops with a stomp and slaps the flat of his sword across his breastplate:
"Hear me!" he shouts in a bellowing voice. "Bear witness as the consequences of your actions spill our before you! This is not a warning!"
True to his word, there is no warning. His replica sword lashes out in a flash of steel and cuts across the two thugs standing within arms reach.
With a quick advance and a brutal slash, Atticus fells two of the thugs like they are nothing. They fall to the ground with a pair of cries, hitting the cobblestones in a rapidly spreading pool of blood.
Anguela casts mage armor on herself and then moves up next to Atticus, perhaps unwilling to allow him to face the thugs alone.
Paige's priorities immediately shift right away from Giggles as her eyes set themselves onto Gaedran, hissing and shrieking from the pain of the dagger sinking into her body. Everything in his twisted grin evokes memories she has tried her best to bury, and barely repressed fury whhips up into a firm swing of her blade, mingled in with a scream of fury as she slashes at him. His voice and his presence ignite all of her traumas, but her determination to see Gaedran Lamm finally killed so he can no longer blight these streets guides her hand with a confidence she hadn't had a few years earlier.
"Even if it takes my dying breath to do it, Lamm, you're going to die here tonight, and this world will be a better place because of it." She pants heavy, grinning through the pain, knowing that a blade to her gut is something that can be fixed, but the agony that she has lived with since she was six years old will never truly fade and can never be healed, but which the death of the man in front of her will make a considerably easier burden to bear.
Moving with a determined pace, Darius closes the distance between him and the half-orc at the door of the orphanage. His armor clanks slightly faster with each step on the cobblestones, announcing his impending arrival. At the last second his scimitar leaps out of its scabbard haphazardly, his crude swing seemingly unlikely to hit. At the last second Darius shifts his weight slightly, lunging forward to smack the half-orc on the back of his head with the flat of the blade. "Hey tusks-for-brains, surrender now! You're outnumbered and overwhelmed. You're better off giving up, unless you prefer death to incarceration, that is," Darius says earnestly. At the rate things were going, there'd be no one left alive to take back to the guards.
With a furious cry and a slash of her scimitar that leaves a fiery afterimage, Paige cuts a deep rent down Gaedren's front, literally searing it with the strength of her belief.
Grau moves into combat as well, drawing his rapier and entering battle with the thug that's attacking Paige. With practiced grace, he thrusts inwards.
Grau is just a little too overeager to show off to his underlings, and attacks too early. Fortunately, these poorly-armored goons are easy to strike and his blow grazes the man deeply along the side.
Anguela moves into combat as well, warding herself with a magical protective spell which conjures a shield of force around her body.
Staggering from the blow, one of the thieves steps out from in between Grau and Paige. He doesn't have a good chance to escape right this moment, so he tries to club Paige and send her to the ground. Meanwhile, the other thug continues to try and send the Silver Ghost into the ground, even after the cowardly actions of his ally.
Both thugs fail to meet their mark, their blows simply passing through thin air due to various distractions, or simply a lack of skill.
The Silver Ghost ducks and tumbles away from the guy trying to hurt her, moving away from the thug's clumsy swipe and pulling her hood down with her other hand as she does. She glances up at Atticus' sudden outburst. The guards, actually showing up on time, for a change? That was new. Regardless of them being there, someone needed to help the Sarenrite girl, pronto. Once she's out of the thug's reach, she moves straight for his back.
She grins. "Hey, Mr. Pedobear. The old man's right, there's nowhere to run, and you're outnumbered. Stand down or face The Silver Ghost!" She thrusts, but is caught off-guard when her opponent easily slides out of the way. Damn. Maybe she shouldn't announce to people when she's planning to try and stab them in the back. Peering over his shoulder, she finally recognizes the other girl. Her eyes widen, just for a moment, before re-focusing on the task at hand.
The Silver Ghost disengages from her opponent and moves into combat against the old man Gaedren, attacking him with her rapier. Unfortunately she's not prepared for the man's tactics. He moves out of the way and pulls her arm towards Paige, forcing her to jerk out of the way and abandon the attack. Despite the pain of the wounds inflicted by Paige, the old man cackles.
Mackeson engages Giggles with a splash of ale and a swing of his kukri, but neither attack manages to get through the orc's defenses. The ale simply splashes off of the raging warrior's chest without getting into his eyes, and Giggles slaps the kukri away with the handle of his flail.
Gaedren realizes that he's in a tight spot. Concentrating, he takes a single step towards the Silver Ghost... and then disappears completely, re-appearing behind her and a little bit down the alleyway. Pulling a vial from a pocket of his filthy robes, he cackles before tossing it in through one of the orphanage windows. "You gonna chase me or help them?" he calls, as the vial smashes through the glass and splatters a strange liquid all over the carpet on the inside of the orphanage's front room. In moments, the liquid ignites on exposure to air. The inside of the orphanage is on fire!
Gaedren wipes the smirk off of the Silver Ghost's face in an instant. She swipes at him a second time, seizing the opportunity when he reaches into his clothes for the vial, but her movements are still just a moment too slow. She turns to Paige. "We don't have time for this. Quick. Is there a back entrance to the orphanage?"
With the order of battle shifting quicker than anticipated, Darius changes his plans. Moving up alongside Anguela, he points his scimitar at the half-orc he'd intended to attack. "Atticus, press your attack! Keep him off balance!" he calls out to the knight.
Continuing to follow the orders of his degenerate leader, Giggles continues to try to crush Mackeson into a fine paste of dwarven meat on the floor.
He smashes into the dwarven fighter again, nearly driving Mackeson to his knees. The stubborn Caydenite keeps his feet, though, and stands his ground against the assault.
Atticus watches the fire blooming in the orphanage and shakes his head. "No, this is enough."
He drives the point of his sword into the ground and raises his other hand into the air, pointing to the two thugs that still have their feet. "Both of you, fate has twisted this situation and now you have a precious choice to make. Stop now and salvage your humanity. Fetch water and heavy cloth 'fore the fire gains footing. You need not walk any farther on the path you started on."
Silver Tongued allows him to improve a creature's attitude by two steps after a successful check.
Atticus watches as the half-orc bears down on the dwarf. He new neither of them, not even by name, yet he trusted his instincts when they said that the latter was in the right of things. With a savage blow incoming Atticus pushes that belief forward so that it blooms from his spirit in a magnificent act of actualization. A physical manifestation of ideology stands ready to cushion the raging force of the attack.
Anguela steps forward over the fallen body of one of the thugs and lunges at the raging half-orc, attempting to bite him with her unusually sharp teeth. Her eyes light up as her nails magically lengthen, and she follows up with a double slash at his belly.
With Lamm's blood dripping now from her blade, Paige realizes she's slipping into a bit too deep and overwhelming a sense of vengeance. She tries to shake it off, shivering and tense as she grips her scimitar firmer. She needs to stay focused, lest she lose her principles and give in to revelrous violence. To help steady her mind, her body begins to move and twist, letting some unheard rhythm begin to pump through her as she accepts it into her body, letting the music guide her so that her fury does not.
It only takes a few seconds for her body to find its rhythm, and then, with a seamless swing of her arm, the dance turns deadly as she makes her swing at Giggles. If there is a fire, the way needs to be cleared for the children to get out, and she can only image one reason Lamm would come to attack this orphanage, one that makes her stomach churn. she needs them gone immediately.
The Silver Ghost winces as the lady guard in front of her literally bites the orc ahead of her - ugh, gross. When Paige doesn't answer her in favor of focusing on the half-orc behind her, she waves up at the second story window where the kid was previously. "Hey! Kids! We're going to get you out of there! It's gonna be alright!" she calls out.
She then looks around for her options to enter the building.
Anguela takes a moment in the heat of battle to look around her, noting the faces of the heroes fighting against Giggles and the other bandits. She sees The Silver Ghost recoil slightly, and she fastidiously wipes a fleck of blood from off of her cheek while keeping her focus on the raging half-orc.
Out of nowhere, a manifestation of Atticus appears and defends Mackeson from Giggles' assault.
The orphanage is a medium-size two story building with few frills or decorations, and chipped, old paint along most of its walls. One wall has Sarenrite murals painted by the resident orphans. Once a restaurant, the building fell into escrow after its owners were convicted of sex crimes and the building was bought for cheap from the government by the Church and converted into a small living area.
There are two entrances. The front entrance is along a small street, and that is the entrance which you are fighting in front of. The other entrance is to the north, and is simply a small side door previously used as a trash-storage area.
"Uh, yeah! Water! Right!" says one of the hired thugs before the pair of thugs break out into a run and flee southwards.
Meanwhile, Paige and Anguela tear into Giggles with tooth and sword. The raging warrior seems not to feel it too much, and with a roar turns away from Mackeson and towards Paige, swinging his flail in her direction.
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The flail came straight down at Mackeson's inked head, but a transparent, foppishly-dressed, sword-wielding human appeared, deflected the blow, then winked out of existence.
Mackeson blinked, not sure if he had been hit or not.
"Fetch water and heavy cloth 'fore the fire gains footing. You need not walk any farther on the path you started on."
The foppish human appeared at Mackeson's left side, transparent no more. Mackeson noted a few of the thugs seeming to acquiesce to his order...
...but only seemed to do so, running off to save their skins.
A guard advanced on the half-orc's flank with no weapon drawn. Suddenly, the female guard BIT the half-orc and slashed at him with claws!
"What in Shelyn's Itch is that?" Mackeson swore.
"Right, this keeps getting stranger by the minute. Time to say good night," Mackeson grunted at the raging half-orc as it turned to assail Paige.
The Silver Ghost tumbles past Giggles and darts through the open door. Gathering her cloak around her, she first assesses the situation. She looks for the way to the other door.
"Hey, kids! Can you hear me? Where are you?" If she hears them, and the way is clear, she will move towards them.
The inside of the orphanage is basically just a large front room, about 800 square feet. Two bathrooms lie behind sliding doors on the north face of the building. Folding tables with the remnants of the day's food drive fill up most of the room. The place's side door is in the building's northwest corner. The stairwell to the second floor is in the southwest corner.
One window to the Ghost's left (on the south-facing wall) is broken, and in front of it is a fire about five feet across. The carpet in front of the window, the drapes in front of the window, and some of the wall are on fire. It is swiftly spreading through the dry old wooden building.
Upstairs, the Ghost hears shouts, "We're up here!" shouts one child's voice. An adult voice adds, "What do we do?"
Outside, Mackeson tries to call on his god to ignite the half-orc's clothes, but finds the power not forthcoming. Instead, he just barrels into Giggles' legs and topples the half-orc to the ground.
Without anyone to stop him, Gaedren flees the scene. He stops laughing, smartly deducing that cackles can be audibly tracked.
"Hey, kids? I'm here to help, the guards are outside making sure that bad man can't hurt you," she tries calling again, heading for the stairs. "I gotta get you outta here, though, it isn't safe. Come downstairs, quick!"
Darius runs past the fight against Giggles, without hesitating. With a fire starting upstairs, there was little time to waste, and with the half-orc on the ground, there was not enough danger here to justify doing anything else. "Atticus, Anguela, I'm heading in to get the children!" he calls as he runs past the half-orc and through the others into the building.
Darius runs into the building, stopping next to the Silver Ghost and standing ready to shepherd children and clerics out of there. As the pair hear stuff being moved out of the way and a door above opening, the fire begins to spread across the floor of the orphanage.
From the ground, Giggles breaks out into a insane bout of laughter, picking himself off of the ground to continue wailing on the others. Turning, he decides to smash into Paige.
Darius continues on up the stairs. There was little choice if children were in danger. At least with his armor he'd be less likely to be burned outright, though he suspected it would soon be getting hot if the flames had spread much at all. Once up the stairs, he surveys the situation and calls out to the children. "If you can get to me safely, come quickly! If you can't, call out so I know where to go!"
Anguela eagerly lunges forward as her prey stands up.
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”Stupid orc,” Mackeson growls as he slashes at the rising half-orc.
The dwarf is genuinely stunned as the giggling half-orc gets up, missing an obvious attack point. He yells out as the half-orc pummels Paige with his flail.
”Last mistake you’ll ever make, filthy greenskin,” Mackeson yells, swinging at him with both his kukri and then his tankard.
While Paige and Anguela punish the standing half-orc for leaving himself open, he manages to get to his feet and slam a heavy flail attack into Paige. She is sent to the ground, bleeding out and unconscious.
Mackeson follows it up, punishing the half-orc for his move. A kukri and a tankard attack sends the warrior to the ground at last. If he's not dead, then he's very close.
Darius dashes up the stairs, just ahead of the smoke from the fire. When he reaches the top, he finds a handful of orphans squeezing out of a half-open door. They appear to have barricaded up the inside and are struggling to get the pathway to freedom clear again. One small boy darts past Darius and down the stairs.
Anguela cocks an admiring eyebrow at Mackeson, and is about to compliment him on his unusual fighting style when she notices Paige slump to the ground. She quickly steps over the fallen half-orc and bends to tend to the exotic-looking woman's wounds. She gasps and her brow knits when she sees her exposed arms are covered with scars, but leaving that aside she gestures and speaks a few words in a strange language, and her hands glow faintly with a greenish light as divine magic takes effect.
The Silver Ghost follows Darius up the stairs. She frowns when she sees that the orphans and clerics have effectively barricaded themselves into the room. She glances at Darius. "Hey. C'mon. We need to clear this." She starts trying to push the door open, but her first attempt is lacking. She grits her teeth with frustration.