Round 1
Istiel braces herself against the wall and pulls the heavy door open in a mighty swinging motion. Despite the resistance of the water, the slab of metal still crashes against the adjacent wall with a muffled bang.
A second passes between her and the array of fish-people gathered in the room, sizing them up.
She was not impressed.
Though she could not swim as well as they, the monk still springs from the floor to launch herself towards the wounded warrior. Her fist is the first part of her body to make contact with the warrior's toothy face, and even with her diluted strength it should still be enough to collapse the fish-man's head into a pile of floating gore.
Immediately she spins in place, feet lashing out at the next target; her limbs creating a whirlpool of death.
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Round 1
The wounded warrior, and then another fall before Istiel's wrath, and the leg of another shatters, though he still breathes, his gills undulating in pain and adrenaline.
Oios wills himself behind the enemy line, but the scarred one drifts easily out of the way of the Shadow's attack.
Round 1 continued
Still enraged, Drazan follows behind Istiel, his watery form flowing into the room. The last two Ulat-Kini warriors fall to the Baneaxe, and the leader, its jaw dropping in shock, falls into supplication before you, its low-timbered voice echoing through the water, its words unknown.
Drazan rage: 4 rounds left
Istiel is about to kick off one of the corpses of the floating guards to smash in the leader's face when they fall to the floor before them.
Muscles relaxing, Istiel casually floats to the floor, her bare feet touching the cold stone. She pauses for a moment, watching the figure, before kicking off into motion once more.
Sailing over the three-eyed eel, Istiel stops at the enclave's priest, grabbing onto the seaweed bindings with one hand. She deftly draws a flint knife from her belt with the other hand and starts to cut away the bonds in precise slashes.
Imix starts to talk to the Ulat-kini. Words, grunts, hand symbols. No rhyme, no rhythym. Meaningless glossolia with the occasional real word mixed in.
Trying Beastling, Aquan, Tkoyah, Wo'Tah, Ignan, Terran and Abyssal. Might get lucky "do you speak X?" basically.
If not, try to knock up a simplistic language.
The Ulat-Kini ignores Imix, until the Suriname speaks in Aquan. Looking to Imix, the fish-man blinks his eyes and speaks back. It is obvious that Aquan isn't his first language, and the dialect is very different, but it is Aquan none-the-less.
Istiel cuts the bindings on the enclave's priestess, and blinking again, the beastling rubs her hands and points upwards, towards the surface.
Imix waves to the others and opens a dialogue.
"Not know yet. Tell more. Why you here? Why keep woman? Work for who?"
Istiel slides her flint knife back into her belt after cutting the three-eyed eel free. When the enclave priestess points upward towards the surface, the monk holds up a flat-palmed hand, signaling she wait.
While the others are engaged in dialogue with the fish-person, Istiel curiously pokes around the room. The strange instruments and bits of bizzarely smooth glass are foreign to her as she opens cabinets and peers inside.
While the instruments are foreign to Istiel, the monk knows one thing: they are likely exactly the type of things that the Stormreaders are looking for, in terms of tribute.
Realizing the value the instrumentation must have to the Stormreaders, the monk starts to shovel as much equipment as she can into her jute sack without any prompting.
In a voice distorted by the water Imix explained the conversation "He wants to know what we will do with him. I asked for more information - who employs them, and why keep the priest. The answer was, as I translate it, 'One day, great master come back. Keep priest for master until ritual is done.'"
Imix looked to Oios. "Will we negotiate terms for more information? Is letting one of the Ulat-Kini eventually go free a possibility?"
Istiel, who was busy stuffing items into a sack, briefly glances at Imix. She had dected a pattern in everything else they had done so far, so she naturally asks: "Is their master Harambe?"
Her distorted and barely audible words are accompanied by a a few bubbles escaping from the nose hole of her mask. "We are here to retrieve the priest. Collect tribute. Do as you will with the fish-man. Tell me if you want its death to be quick."
"Perhaps, but the Ulat Kini were created. He may be referring to their creator." Imix started, then paused and burbled at the creature.
"Let you live maybe. Who is great master?"
"Yes. Sounds like the creator. Sadly uneducated for an immortal." Imix allows bubbles to rise from his nose in an underwater sigh.
Istiel ties off the buldging jute sack, throwing it over her shoulder in slow motion. "I am done. We should return to the canoe for now. Does the fish-man live or die?"
The Ulat-Kini bristles, and then deflates.
Ask him how many of his fellow Ulat-Kini there are in these waters. And if they take prisoners of the beastlings often. Oios say to Imix. If they are not much of a threat then Damballah would frown on killing a defanged prisoner.
The fishman looks to Oios and then to Imix, a mixture of shame and anger crossing the creature's face.
Drazan's swirling form points at the fish-man before pointing to one side below where his ought to be, then he makes a slow horizontal movement drawing a line across the length of what is probably meant to be his neck. Seal his fate here, and spare him the humiliation of defeat, and the Flight the pain he will inevitably seek out of vengeance if we leave him alive. He will be dangerous with nothing to lose. Unless someone can manage to find some other purpose for him.
Imix repeats the fishman's speech, then turns to Oios. "Better to ask their prisoner how often they conflict."
We can take it prisoner and head to the surface. Gain more knowledge before we decide. Oios suggests.
The prisoner avoids the question, clumsily.
With Oios's words, Drazan moves toward the creature and offers it a non-subtle choice in his own common tongue, Comply willingly, or I will be forced to compel you.
Someone lend me a rope to bind him.
Imix points to the eel-headed Beastling. "Do your people conflict often?"
Istiel easily upplies Drazan with a length of silk rope from her jute sack, glad to reduce its bulding contents.
She eyes the captive warily, staying on guard for any attempts at escape.
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The beastling rubs her wrists, deep cuts there where she'd been bound by the rope. She eyes each of you, a confused look on her face, before she points to herself and says simply, "Mparu."
Northern tower, bottom floor
Marble stairs lead down from the flooded observatory. Etchings of constellations once decorated this chamber's walls, but someone more recently scratched a complex series of runes into the walls, defacing the original decor. The runes are in an unknown language.
Istiel notices a stone in the southeast corner of the room that sits a little higher than the rest of the flagstone floor. Pulling it reveals a stash of treasure: 148 elegant gold discs, a small stoppered choral vial, and a coral kukri with a blade honed to deadly sharpness.
A door from the room lets back out into the main hall of the planetarium, the corpse of the lizard fish having drifted to the floor since you were last here.
Southwest tower
Piles of broken masonry covered with seaweed and barnacles make up half this cramped room's walls. A large catfish ignores you, content to suck on the barnacle covered masonry. A stone staircase in the northwest corner leads up to nowhere, its destination lost among the rubble filling the southern half of this room. A crack in the room allows access to the waters beyond.
Southeastern tower, bottom floor
Worn placards hang from the walls in this stone stairwell, each bearing a list of names elegantly engraved in a metal that looks like copper, but carries a slightly deeper hue. Filthy bedrolls and rotten furniture clutter the darkened space beneath the stairs, which lead up to a room above.
Southeastern tower, top floor
Four-foot-high stone walls give way to massive glass panels that form the ceiling and walls, tapering to apoint above the room's center. The room would make an excellent watchtower looking north beyond the city, were it not underwater.
Shells, seaweed, coral, and barnacles cover most of the glass walls and all of the floors, as well as the furniture that remains; a rotted, shell-encrusted mahogany desk and three cabinets against the north and west walls.
As you approach the desk, the mass of sealife shifts. Thick spines like the flanges of a royal crown bristle all across the surface of a human-sized golden-spined creature, while from the south end of the room, a wave of swift-moving spines rushes forward — a roiling tide of deceptively fast creatures, all-spines and colored blacks, browns, and purples.
One of the golden spines punches into Oios's stomach, while the darkly colored spiny creatures blanket Istiel and Imix, bring pain by a thousand cuts.
PCs are up! Then bad guys, then NPCs.
Ah, Oois would have healed himself at least a bit after the last fight before exploring. Is it okay if I do one now? It would have been
Either way
Spells 4/9 left. or 3/9 left
Health: 9/39. or 14/39
Unable to maneuever, or retreat Oios drops into a fully defensive stance, trying to keep from getting hit again.
Total Defense (2 Acts): You concentrate on defense rather than attacking. Until the start of your next turn, you can’t take actions with the attack subtype, and you gain a +4 dodge bonus to AC. If you already took an attack action earlier in the turn, you gain only a +2 dodge bonus to AC. If you have at least 3 ranks in Acrobatics, these bonuses increase to +6 and +3, respectively.
Underwater swarms are pretty evil, I admit.
Oios has his spear out with reach, does that mean he can take an AOO underwater? If so here's the roll
Edit: Disregard. Oios is flat footed :(
"I'm making an offer." he announces, then turns to the Ulat-Kini.
While he waits for answer, Imix calls upon his power to heal once more. Not worried now that the healing energy might save the Ulat Kini he sees no reason to hold back.
Southeastern Tower, Top Floor
Imix flicks back through the water, naturalist lessons flooding his mind as the fish fly on the flooded floor.
[spoiler=mechanics]
Round 1
Swimming up the stairs into the domed watchtower, Istiel marvels at what the view must have been like before the very earth sunk many years ago. She recalls her dream with Domhnall, and the towering buildings on the canals... did he give her a vision of this very place without her even realizing it?
Even with her incredible reflexes, the sudden explosion of aggression from the strange spikey mass in the room catches Istiel off guard. In the haze of pain from thousands of pricking needles, she can only desperately swing at the huge mass of spines covering the desk, hoping that the large one was somehow directing the smaller ones like the puppet tree.
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Northern Tower, top floor
The scarred Ulat-Kini grunts, seemingly a sign of acceptance.
Round 1
Perhaps it was your Suriname nature, but you found lessons on riparian biology to be particularly interesting. Recalling a clear day down by the Father of Waters near to Suriname Home, a teacher - who's name you've long forgotten, even her face blurred to the fog of time - stood knee deep in the ghats, pointing to the passing reed ships. Though the teacher was forgettable, her lesson was not.
"Note: the undersides of the boats that pass, if they haven't been cleaned in awhile, pick up the life in the Father. That one - see the barnacles? They must be cleaned at least every other season. And here, this old copper sign, abandoned off the edge of the ghats? There's a whole world on that sign, as far as its inhabitants are concerned. There, the spiny things atop the sign? Those are urchins..."
The large golden spiny creature is a diadem urchin, a particularly nasty creature with razor-like, poisonous spines that will hurt any that attack it. It is best approached from a distance, or a large weapon. The little swarm also consists of urchins, a surprisingly fast moving school of the creatures, that propel themselves in a manner similar to the squids of the great glacier lake. They are also toxic to people, their poison making one sluggish and easily subjected to the fast-moving swarm.
"Urchins" Imix burbles as he flees the swarm, lashing out with shield and pick. "Poison!"
5ft enough to reach the edge? if not, then move instead. Either way, 1 action. I think distraction ends when he gets out?
Get away from those things! Drazan's watery voice carries through the distorting underwater waves, I can deal with the spine mass, but not with regard to your safety if you remain all caught up in them. Drazan reaches to pull his allies caught up in the swarm to safety behind him, so that he can ready and execute his vortex.
Would like to pull Oios, and Istiel from the swarm and shield them with Drazan shape shifted meat until he can become a vortex and his them with his area damage. Drazan will Rage to increase his odds of warding off the distraction poison.
Round 2
Diadem: 20
Swarm: 9
The Ulat-Kini barks an order at Imix, his voice carrying through the water and chaos.
Mparu, the priestess, pulls her sleeve up, revealing a tatoo in the shape of Damballah's holy symbol. It glows briefly with a blue-yellow light, and Oios feels his wounds close.
Imix lashes out at the swarm, his pick taking down scores of the urchins that surround him, before making his retreat, and being assisted by Drazan.
Istiel, perhaps against her will, is pulled from the swarm as well, but not before she pummels the golden flanged creature, her fists tearing the flanges from the beast's body. Reflexively, it shifts when she comes into contact with it, and Istiel's fists and feet are shredded by the creature's remaining spines.
The large urchin, not a creature of tactics, lashes out at the closest foes, sinking more spines into both Drazan and Oios.
Oios tries to get away from the fish and leave Drazan to it. Then he takes out his wand and waves it at the swarm.
Sorry, lost a post.
Act 1: Get away from fish, avoid AOO if possible, otherwise eat it.
Act 2: Take out wand
Act 3: Use two spell points to make 3d6 fire sphere blast
Status:
Spells 1/9 left
Health: 18/39
Round 2
Istiel seems to care little as her hands and feet are pierced by the creature's spines, her blood dispering into the tainted waters as slowly fading red ribbons.
She relunctantly is pulled from the swarm of smaller creatures, but the moment Drazan lets go of her robes the monk kicks off from the ground, ricochets off a wall, and starts to pummel the large spikey creature once more. Her overwhelming desire to claim the beast's kill as her own seems within her grasp, and she will not stop until it is dead.
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Imix lashed out at the nearby opponent, then dashed through the water to cut the ties on the Ulat-Kini, the adamantine pick slicing through the ropes with about the same effort it took to slice through water.
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diadem: 41
swarm: dead
Istiel: 1 con damage, stunned
The diadem urchin lashes out at Oios as he flees, spearing the Shadow in the thigh. As Imix swings his pick through the swarm, the Shadow conjures a ball of flame, and between the heroes' onslaught, the swarm disperses, hundreds of blackened urchins floating harmlessly in the water.
Istiel lays into the large urchin, her hands shredding it (and herself, in the process), and then, towards the end of her attacks, her body goes rigid, the urchin's poison having taken hold!
Mparu again calls on her magic, and Istiel's wounds close, even if her body remains frozen. The Ulat-Kini yells in Aquan,
And then swims out of harms way... and keeps swimming, right out of the room...
Round 3
Istiel rears back her fist for another strike, bloody and pierced knuckles leaving crimson ribbons through the water.
....
Seemingly frozen in place, the monk begins to drift slowly and gently dowanward in the water, arm pulled back, sinking as if she were made of stone.
Inwardly, Istiel fumes. She tries everything; every concentration technique has mastered over the years, pushing her ki through every gate that she has known.
Yet it is futile, and as she connects with the floor, landing on her back, she wonders what went wrong. She had trained so hard, had even been visited by her master in her dreams.... and now, when she seemed to be on the cusp of claiming ever more glory today, she falls to some mysterious force.
Helpless and angry, her eyes burn with the glistening fire of the noon-day sun, staring up at the ceiling.
Round 3
The churning fury that is Drazan's shifted form reshapes into the familiar large amorphous water elemental as the swarm's threat is reduced to nothing, and then Drazan shoots through the water next to Istiel and brings Bane to harvest the urchin's meat, and maybe a bit of the glory.
Status
DR 3/silver
Large Elemental Transformation Water
30 ft swim speed
+2 CON
Resistance to cold 3
Aegis (+2) armor bonus
Rage +4 str; +4 con; +2 Wil vs mind; +20thp
Str +4 enhancement
Pwr Atk -2,+6
(CMD @ 30)
One act move to Isitel
Two acts channel Restore from staff at Isitel from Life Sphere.
I think the option he wants is to restore points of ability damage of some sort?
Status
Status:
Spells Self 1/9 left Staff 4/5 left
Health: 10/39
Oios winces as the pain from the attack makes itself felt, robbing him of some of the satisfaction of seeing the swarm scatter.
He pushes off to swim to the monk. The eyes behind the mark aren't dull and lifeless as he had feared but full of Isitel's trademark rage. Relieved he touches Telowo's staff to her and tries to bring life back to her limbs.
Round 3
swarm: dead
Istiel: 1 con damage, stunned
Oios: onset 1 round
Perhaps it is the water, but Drazan's attacks go wide, a rarity, and unfortunate in their timing. The urchin's spines stick into the paralyzed monk, as well as into the Man From Fire Peaks, spilling yet more blood into the water.
A few seconds later, after Oios uses the staff, the old Shadow finds his joints stiffening, the creature's poison coming on strong...
Round 4
The protean trait of Drazan's shifter magic draws some of the sting's pain away, but Drazan's determination doesn't let up. This urchin stood in his way and it was going to pay one way or another.
[spoiler=Mechanics]
Status
DR 3/silver
Large Elemental Transformation Water
30 ft swim speed
+2 CON
Resistance to cold 3
Aegis (+2) armor bonus
Rage +4 str; +4 con; +2 Wil vs mind; +20thp
Str +4 enhancement
Pwr Atk -2,+6
(CMD @ 30)