Breach bolts upright, grabbing his axe and shield. "What it is, lass?! Have they found us?!" He looks around, eventually taking in what it was she was saying. Raising an eyebrow, "Alright, let's go."
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OOC: Quick question: Denis (Hal) raises a good point, is Breach sleeping in his armor?
Karek gives a long look in the direction of his allies, and listens really hard for signs of company. Assuming he sees nothing suspicious, and he hears nothing out of the ordinary, he will head for the dune. Not directly for the orb, but he will skirt around it, and keep it in his line of sight. If it allows him, as he passes it, he will pick it up, and hurry back to his post.
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Karek does not hear or see anything, though he is clearly on the alert regardless.The young dwarf heads for the dune, at an off-angle. When he gets within 20 feet or so he has a better idea of what he's looking at. It appears to be a simple opaque glass bottle with a sphere-shaped body, possibly a flask, perhaps for a potion or a beverage. It is corked, but not sealed with wax.
The bottle is definitely not moving, so Karek can retrieve it.
Gandel awakens instantly at Lydia's alarm. Without a word, the halfling scholar quickly gathers his gear and follows the others out of the the extradimensional space.
Of course I was expecting an eye! :)
Yes! You are correct - it would be light armor then. Breach can sleep in it without becoming fatigued. I'm sure it's not comfortable, but perhaps a bit of discomfort is warranted given his present surroundings.
Karek does not see any signs of an ambush or other trap, but no doubt he remains wary. Karek shoulders his hammer and then clears the final 20 feet to the bottle, marching up the dune. Once he has it in his hand, the armored dwarf heads back to Moonpate and Hurgah, both of which remain in a deep sleep. As he makes the return trip, he notes the flask is lighter than he might have expected.
Once he returns, squinting in the moonlight, Karek can see that the green glass flask does not actually have any liquid inside, instead, he thinks he can make out that the stoppered flask appears to contain a short roll of thin parchment. Perhaps a note of some kind?
"With another weary, wary glance around, Karek removes the stopper to examine its contents."
Karek, again, still sees no sign of an ambush, but that does little to dampen his high level of alertness.
The cork stopper comes loose with but a simple tug of Karek’s powerful stubby fingers, making a soft popping noise. Inside the bottle is a piece of rolled parchment. There appears to be a message scrawled on both the front and back. It could take a little dexterity to pry the parchment out of the mouth of bottle to unfurl it, but it could be done with a little patience.
Sooron has sand between his toes.
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I can't help but notice those toes are rather large.
You know what they say about big sandy toes....
Hurgah stirs in his sleep, grumbles Zzzz...hrgm...dontreadexplosiveruneswhilestandingnexttohurgah....grmh....zz zz and settles back to his dreams about spoiler-buttons in the pale desert moonlight.
Gandel awakens instantly at Lydia's alarm. Without a word, the halfling scholar quickly gathers his gear and follows the others out of the extradimensional space.
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As soon as the trio scrambles out of the Scarab’s Bubble, she breathes a sigh of relief. A moment later the bubble collapses in on itself and implodes in a tiny pinhole of light. The rope anchoring the micro-dimension goes limp, slowly sliding down the tent pole where it was tethered.
“Damned durations,” she whispers, “Sorry about that. I’ll get another casting up momentarily.”
Lydia has been busy, you can see, in the corner of the tent is a pile of neatly folded Osirion garb. No doubt she plans to play dress up in the morning.
Hal whispers, "Holy, now I don't mind my breakfast being interrupted so much. We heading back in this space right now? If not we really need to coordinate a plan with our companions as soon as possible".
The Scarab smiles as she watches the dwarf shrug off his slumbering confusion – it’s not morning just yet there Hal– it will still be three, perhaps four, hours before dawn. But if you are ready to contact your companions, then let us proceed.”
She adds: “The good news is I have not seen any signs of sweeps through the slave camp. Perhaps they have not found the monk’s body yet.”
"Erm, no not yet. I will need a bit more rest before communing with Angradd. This is worse then tunnel training at least the lieutenants only got us up at 4 for those training sessions".
It is signed with a sygil which looks vaguely like a staff or wizard's wand.
A crimson flash erupts from the scroll followed by a tight column of smoke that cascades upwards into the night sky. The green flask shatters into a hundred pieces and explodes outwards with such force that Karek’s armor is completely pebbled with depression-like dents and embedded shards. Only a true dwarf could remain standing on his feet after such a concussive wave—Karek is such a dwarf.
[ooc]Status: 44/72 hp, 4 rounds of rage remaining, no spells left.
Initiative Rolls
Someone with a pretty decent initiative score:
Two guys with less impressive scores:
Other guys???
And on the back:
--is indeed explosive ruins.
6d6 ⇒ (2, 2, 5, 2, 5, 2) = 18 points of force damage.
"What the !$%@^&*!", exclaims the rudely awakened Potentate.
Reflex save:
Hit Points: 22/31
Initiative:
While Karek curses his education and refinement he is blasted a second time. From out of nowhere, a bolt strikes him and suddenly Kogan is enveloped in a scintillating sphere of radiating light. A moment later, the globe contracts and the dwarf’s universe contracts with it. The ever-tightening barrier of force constricts him on all sides, pressuring him to the point where he can no longer move.
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Karek pushes back against the enclosing field of magic but finds it impossible to resist. That is until he deduces that if he ignores it instead of fighting against it he can simply step right through it. The dwarf side-steps the effect and the field collapses in on itself into a tiny nimbus of light, growing ever smaller until it vanishes to the naked eye. Karek thanks his stars that his years of hunting witches has served him well – his mind is finely trained to spot such eldritch trickery.
Karek shrugs off the spell and dives for his pack, coming up with his smokestick. He drags the stick against Hurgah's tough hide and the stick goes, quite literally, up in smoke. Karek throws himself on the ground next to Hurgah and Moonpate, hoping for a brief reprieve in the ten-foot square of smoke.
Doldy aye'd wakey. We hab combany.
Karek shrugs off the spell and dives for his pack, coming up with his smokestick. He drags the stick against Hurgah's tough hide and the stick goes, quite literally, up in smoke. Karek throws himself on the ground next to Hurgah and Moonpate, hoping for a brief reprieve in the ten-foot square of smoke.
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Cool idea and nice tactic. That is quite an economically-compact standard action though.
Retrieving a stored item is a move action, then there’s the matter of lighting it. It sounds like Karek has combined a smokestick with a tindertwig, to create a self-lighting smoke stick. I don’t see why it couldn’t be done, but he might want to get the patent before others steal it. Dropping prone is a free action and probably a very nice call.
I guess where I am going is that to pull this off, Karek will need to drop his earthbreaker on the ground and at least have two hands to complete this. Karek will be holding the burning smoke stick in his hands until it is consumed at the start of his next turn.
- Round 1 -
Karek’s quick thinking produces a cloud-like column of inky-black smoke. While it is hard to breathe in, hopefully it will now prove much more difficult for the hidden assailant to see the Kurgentate. Certainly the prevailing darkness has not provided much of an obstacle to the assassin so far. At the moment you are feeling rather exposed in the wide open flat where you made camp, and the smoke provides an added layer of much needed concealment.
Suddenly the burning stick in Karek’s hands seems to re-ignite a second time. White-hot light sprays from the stick. The powerful flashes of light arc through the air as though they were from an exploding firework or a cache of retinal-burning magnesium. What has the dwarf done?!
Suddenly the burning stick in Karek’s hands seems to re-ignite a second time. White-hot light sprays from the stick. The powerful flashes of light arc through the air as though they were from an exploding firework or a cache of retinal-burning magnesium. What has the dwarf done?!
Moonpate is outraged with the turn of events that have roused him prematurely from his dreams of frolicking in gen beer gardens. Exploded, burned, blinded! Someone is going to pay! Ahh, but how best to extract these wages? His normally adroit mind stumbles through cobwebs as he searches for the right arcane patterns. Few choices surface to his consciousness.
Will Save:
Closing his eyes to the pyrotechnics around him, Moon holds tight to his club with one hand and, still lying prone, stirs the sand beside him with his other hand. In low, guttural Terran he calls once more upon the local earth elemental tribe, seeking aid from one of the smaller chaps that have previously answered his summons before.
Will cast his last Monster Summons II for an augmented small earth elemental.
Even as Hurgah slams his face down into the sand to protect his night-vision, his fingers close tight around the haft of his axe.
"These cowards should have run back to their camp when they had the chance. Karek, did you see where they are hiding? Their teeth will decorate my axe before the sun rises," he snarls, tense and ready to spring into action.
Cool idea and nice tactic. That is quite an economically-compact standard action though.Retrieving a stored item is a move action, then there’s the matter of lighting it. It sounds like Karek has combined a smokestick with a tindertwig, to create a self-lighting smoke stick. I don’t see why it couldn’t be done, but he might want to get the patent before others steal it. Dropping prone is a free action and probably a very nice call.
I guess where I am going is that to pull this off, Karek will need to drop his earthbreaker on the ground and at least have two hands to complete this. Karek will be holding the burning smoke stick in his hands until it is consumed at the start of his next turn.
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While Karek is still holding the burning smokestick, the sudden shower of white light creates huge purple spots in his eyes which quickly envelop his field of vision.
Closing his eyes to the pyrotechnics around him, Moon holds tight to his club with one hand and, still lying prone, stirs the sand beside him with his other hand. In low, guttural Terran he calls once more upon the local earth elemental tribe, seeking aid from one of the smaller chaps that have previously answered his summons before.
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While he is casting, through the smoke, Moonpate can see that a soft-glowing, ochre-colored light has appeared quite nearby him, perhaps ten feet away to the west, just outside the radius of Karek’s smokescreen. Whatever the light is, it is unmoving, resting on the sand. It is hard to see more with the plumes of smoke. There is a second identical light too, further away from Moonpate on his east side. With the thickness of the smoke, Hurgah has not noticed the lights and Karek appears to have been blinded by the untimely explosion of his smokestick.
Perception:
Spellcraft:
Knowledge Arcane:
You are correct – Moonpate can’t really say anything while casting, though he could alert them on the start of his next turn, as his summons will then be complete.
I already made Moonpate’s Perception check, which was actually even better than yours, so we are good there. I did not though try Spellcraft or Knowledge (Arcana). So let's now add that:
Hmmmm, Moonpate does not recognize these particular lights as any spell effect that he is aware of and with a Spellcraft bonus like that, there are not many low or even mid-level spells out there that he does know of. It’s either something new and dangerous or perhaps not a spell at all.
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I suspect you would be less pleased with me if you saw the penalties for distance and darkness (outside of Karek’s darkvision range).Nonetheless, the detective has had some success. I’ve withheld the sniper’s Stealth score and die roll as I don’t want anyone to reverse engineer the distance or other factors at this stage.
Before he was blinded, Karek saw that the collapsing force field attack that he evaded, came from the north. Further, it must have been initiated further afield than his sixty feet of darkvision, possibly substantially further.