Lily slowly moves up around the thorny entanglement. "Im not entirely sure what to do. Im effective against things with a mind and those two golems and cloud of gas probably don't have a mind," she yells out to her allies.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Lily hears a breathless voice from air elemental/Daria, ”Shoot the hobgoblin alchemists, then…”
The bomb draws a pained cry from Thorek, and sends up gasped thanks to Angradd and Daria when the walls of thorns hems in the two golems. Spying the floating cloud-creatures flying past, the dwarf turns and runs after it, swinging his dorn-dergar through its gaseous form.
Lily blinks away from sight and begins to hone in one the alchemists, whose vulnerable minds she can exploit.
The alchemist still inside the burned-out church manages to just barely roll out of the way of Daria's flaming sphere. However, the flames radiating out from the sphere ignite the fumes from a nearby set of alchemical tools - triggering an explosion that burns the hobgoblin and showers him with glass and metal shrapnel.
Thorek's swing breaks past the strong wind currents roiling around the gaseous creature, and he makes contact with something semi-solid at the heart of the thing. Although hard to distinguish anything resembling anatomy on the creature, Thorek is certain that he's wounded it...and angered it.
Esperanza slides forth upon the air and swings her glaive around, slicing into one of the glass vats incorporated into the golem's body. This damages it and sends up a shower of sizzling, caustic fluids - which Esperanza is thankfully out of reach of.
The gaseous creature turns its attention upon Thorek and reaches out with a quartet of semi-solid tentacles. They do not exert much strength, but Thorek finds that they attempt to wrap around him like serpents. He brushes away three of them, but the fourth gaseous tentacle wraps around his legs.
"Esperanza! I'm not saying I need rescuing, but I'm also not not saying that, y'ken?" Thorek yells over his should before a whispered prayer balms some of the injuries inflicted by the golem's bomb.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As an immediate action when Thorek gets grappled, Daria casts Liberating Command on him (make an escape artist check with an added +14 bonus).
The alchemist inside the church finds the doors blocked by the thick wall of thorns. Using his hasted speed, he turns around and - dodging around Daria's flaming sphere - attempts to escape through a hole in the wall at the rear of the church.
The other alchemist and his golem assistants, trapped within the wall of thorns, throw another volley of bombs in overhead arcs - lobbing the projectiles over the impediment. Esperanza finds the the bombs falling around her, crashing and detonating upon the bridge below in bursts of fire, acid, and electricity. She, herself, remains unharmed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Letting the flaming sphere do its work burning steadily up against the alchemical equipment, Daria uses her blindingly fast movement as an air elemental to swoop carefully behind and above Thorek. As she moves towards him, she casts a spell, carefully reaching out and touching him once he is close enough for her to make contact with her wispy appendage.
Freedom of Movement on Thorek.
"Hah!" Thorek roars as he suddenly and effortlessly slips free of the cloud-creature's grasp. "You're in for it now, mist monster!"
Wary of the alchemical golems' bomb-throwing, Esperana delivers another sweeping slashing to the complicating mess of tubes and tanks attached to the golem before falling back.
Thorek's first swing manages to connect with the gaseous foe, further destabilizing the creature's body.
Esperanza's strike upon the golem sends a small plume of acid showering out upon the wall of thorns, but she remains unharmed by the splash back.
Lily quietly moves behind the weird gaseous cloud preparing an ambush against the weird creature.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The gaseous elemental creature turns its attention to Daria, perhaps aiming to establish elemental dominance. It lashes out at her with its ephemeral tentacles and tries to grab hold of her.
The golems continue to mechanically chuck their bombs without seeing their target. Esperanza watches as they strike the ground in front of her harmlessly.
Frustrated by the constructs' ineptitude, the hobgoblin alchemist trapped inside the wall of thorns casts a spell upon himself - and he quickly flies straight up, suffering numerous scrapes and cuts as he goes. Once he is thirty feet in the air, he then moves westward.
Unbeknownst to the party, the hobgoblin alchemist inside the ruined church takes a page from Lily's playbook and casts his own invisibility. Thus hidden, he slips out through a hole in the wall of the church.
"Hey! You let her go, I'm the one you're fighting!" Thorek's outraged bellow is followed swiftly by bone-shattering swings of his dorn-dergar--if only mist monsters had bones!
Whatever heart or "core" this elemental creature may possess, Thorek's dorn-dergar finds it. What can best be likened to a whispering hiss raised to the volume of a shriek escapes the creature as it is dispatched by Thorek's second swing.
”Thank you, Thorek,” says Daria as the cloud’s tentacles released her in death. Flying back behind the outer wall to get cover from the alchemist’s bombs, Daria calls down a streak of lightning on the red alchemist using the spell she cast just before the beginning of the battle. The flaming sphere burns, unmoving, in the heart of the alchemist’s makeshift lab.
Unshackled from gravity, the alchemist manages to evade the brunt of the bolt streaking down from the overcast sky. Nevertheless, the crackling energy does singe his backside.
ESPERANZA bursts from the fog-bank with mist streaming behind her, rapidly climbing towards the flying alchemist. "You should have kept your head down," she admonishes before trying to removing said appendage entirely.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lily quietly moves up to Thorek and puts her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, this should help protect you from the attacks. Stay safe...," she whispers to Thorek.
Esperanza finds that the flying alchemist's enhanced speed gives him just enough reaction time to lean back, allowing his armor to deflect the edge of the glaive.
Whilst he defends against Esperanza, the alchemist shouts orders at the golems, trying to direct their artillery-like attacks against Thorek. He then withdraws from Esperanza's reach, flying higher into the air.
= Cold
The bomb hurled by one of the golems manages to strike Thorek upon the breastplate of his Kraggodan steel, exploding into a burst of freezing cold that manages to even leave wisps of frost forming on Lily's hair and clothing behind him.
The other alchemist emerges from his own invisibility as he casts a flight spell, then takes off westward with great speed.
Daria flies back over to the injured warpriest and lightly touches him with a spell. She says, "I could fly after the retreating alchemist, but I think we still have our hands full here."
"Leave him to me," Esperanza says grimly, before charging after the bomber trying to escape her reach.
Lily cautiously moves back and fires an arrow at the hobgoblin harassing Esperanza. "Im just going to stay back here a bit to stay safe.," she says while firing an arrow.
Esperanza delivers a deep cut to her target, who is further wounded by Lily's arrow, whistling out of nothingness as her invisibility fades.
With another battle cry, Thorek charges after the alchemist fighting with Esperanza, hoping to crush the hobgoblin's torso with his dorn-dergar.
Perhaps stunned by Lily's arrow out of nowhere, the alchemist is a prime target as Thorek sails forth and smashes his rib cage with his dorn-dergar. The hobgoblin plummets down, his body falling broken upon the ruined smithy below.
The remaining hobgoblin flies due westward in a beeline, perhaps trying to alert whatever Ironfang forces await in the pit mine.
The golems, without direction, attempt to force their way through the wall of thorns with their mechanical strength, but they make no progress.
However, their enchanted metal bodies resist the damage inflicted by the enchanted thorns.
Calling down a bolt of lightning at the fleeing hobgoblin alchemist, Daria rolls the flaming sphere out the front door of the church into the back of the wall of thorns and one of the golems. Shrugging, she says, ”Thorns don’t scratch them—let’s see if fire burns them.”
"Esperanza has already damaged one, so our weapons should be up to the task. Focus on burning down that alchemy lab!"
Thorek marches towards the damaged golem until he's directly above it, swinging a crushing blow at one of the tanks on the construct's back.
For a moment, Esperanza moves as if to chase after the remaining alchemist, but turns back after realizing she won't be able to catch up with them in time. Instead, she stands next to Thorek, where she, too, can carve up the golems with relative impunity.
""
= Fire
A bolt of lightning streaks down from the sky and electrifies the flying alchemist. He spasms in pain but soon collects himself enough to continue flying towards the pit mine, looking for either reinforcements or sanctuary.
Daria's ball of flames begins to set the wall of thorns alight, but the magical plant life is slow to burn. Meanwhile, the golem's body seems utterly resistant to the flaming sphere.
However, Esperanza and Thorek's attacks cleave the limbs from the one golem's mechanical body, rendering it naught but a heap of glass and metal, soaked with caustic fluids, simmering at the foot of the mass of thorns.
Now that Esperanza and Thorek hover above the wall of thorns, the remaining golem hurls another bomb at them. The capsule strikes Esperanza and erupts into a conflagration of fire, spilling over and burning Thorek.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"My magic is all but spent. Let's demolish this golem, burn the depot, and regroup."
Daria stays where she is and wills the flaming sphere to bounce around in the alchemist’s shop like a pinball, trying to ignite any of the Hobgoblin’s supplies beyond usefulness and explode any lurking foes.
If the hobgoblin alchemist is still within 170 feet of Daria, it is the proud recipient of another lightning strike. Otherwise, Daria dismisses the Thorny Entanglement since it seems to be more of a risk to the party than a benefit at the moment.
With a quiet prayer of thanks to Shelyn and Angradd, Esperanza creates some space between her and Thorek before swinging her glaive at the last golem.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Ironfang alchemist is forced to make a landing to avoid the latest arcing bolt of lightning. Still hasted by magic, he sprints on foot to the edge of the pit mine and out of the range of Daria's magic, for now.
The interior of the burned-out church becomes a symphony of crackles, sizzles, pops, bangs, and other violent sounds as the flaming sphere runs roughshod over the alchemists' work.
Thorek's swing leaves a sizeable, jagged dent in the golem's chassis, but the construct manages to stumble and avoid Esperanza's swing.
Lily looking at the wall of thorns sighs.... "Well Im going to try help you but I can't get through the fence. Watch out for any stray arrows. Im not entirely sure where Im aiming," she yells out.
Lily's arrows leave cracks upon the glass tanks of fluid incorporated into the golem's body as it winds up and hurls another bomb in the direction of her and Esperanza.
= Fire
The bomb explodes in a plume of flame against the haft of Esperanza's glaive, but thanks to the magic protection granted by Thorek, she barely even feels the heat - and Lily is entirely protected.
From her vantage point, Daria can see the reinforcements climbing up out of the pit mine. Two of them are clearly Ironfang overseers, looking like engineers of some kind. The other four are pale, hunched humanoid creatures with gangly limbs. They wear goggles with smokey lenses over their eyes.
"Reinforcements incoming," says Daria, "I'll slow them down."
Casting her second Thorny Entanglement at the oncoming reinforcements, Daria continues to jitter the flaming sphere around in the alchemist lab.
(Hurled Thorns for those within 15' are +12 to hit, 2d6 damage.
Automatic damage for entering the spell's area or ending your turn in the spell's area is 2d6.)
Landing another shattering blow against the battered golem, Thorek disengages and moves towards the alchemical laboratory. "We've got them on the ropes! Let's finish up here, loot the place, and burn it to the ground!"
Lily quickly presses her hand on Esperanza and says,"Hopefully we're almost done with everything. I've implanted some magic into you to help in case you are attacked."
Esperanza punishes the golem's stubbornness, her glaive leaving jagged gashes in its chassis. A shout of frustration and anger punctuates each swing.
Thorek and Esperanza's assault thoroughly disassembles the remaining golem, leaving just heaps of broken metal and glass at the foot of the thorny wall, sizzling with acids and other ichor.
Daria's latest spell unleashes long coils of thorny vines upon the edges and walls of the pit mine. You can hear the miners still toiling away below begin to howl and shriek with fright as they find themselves in the grips of such magic.
= Entangled
= Entangled
One hobgoblin and one miner end up ensnared by the grasping vines. While the others remain yet mobile, the innumerable thorns begin to rip and tear at them terribly. Of the pale miners, the one who is gripped by the magical plant life calls out a pitiful plea to the sky.
With a satisfied grunt as the second golem is smashed to scrap, Thorek turns and flies swiftly towards the entangled would-be reinforcements.
"I am sorry you got yourself mixed up in this, stranger. As you can see, your fellow defenders have all fallen to us. Will you surrender, or demand the same fate for yourselves?"
Letting the others do the speaking, Daria starts dismissing the original thorny entangle and the wall of thorns. If the others surrender, she will dismiss her latest Thorny Entangle as well. She also checks on those injured in the fight, passing out emergency poultices for those badly hurt, but waiting for an opportunity to do more mundane healing for those lightly wounded.