With a nod to his companions Ashak disappears into the trees. They can here his voice whisper in their ears though.
"If you can draw the woman by the carts to you we should have a clear shot from the east side."
Nathaniel nodded his understanding to Ashak, his heart starting to pump as the adrenaline kicked in. He understood it was a tag-based endeavor, but one 'tag' from some of these carnies would pack a wallop! He skirted the treeline to the east, trying to get north so that when he provided the hobgoblin with a distraction the woman there would be pulled north so he could approach from the southeasterly direction.
Semsephiel whispers to Reynor, "I'll try and sneak past the guard, likely be seen, if I'm not, I'll reveal myself. I'll lead her away, and then you can follow."
Semsephiel moves briskly but silently, not yet breaking cover.
He'll wait for Erin to tell him she's ready before moving closer to the light.
Meanwhile, Evalee is heading for the front entrance. She's keeping a healthy distance, especially since she knows the tiefling probably has darkvision, but in case anyone has line of sight she'll try and keep her head down and feet quiet.
As the others move into position, Erin scoops up the squirrel from the ground and sets him on her shoulder. She waits a few seconds after Semsephiel makes his move, then takes several quick steps forward, silently ducking into the shadows between the wagons.
"Ready," she whispers to the group.
Pogug whispers "Can you hears Pogug?" as if not trusting his own magic. He points to Nathaniel before whispering again. "Pogug will try going under big tent. Pogug thinks he cans slide under."
Pogug swiftly moves from the treeline to behind a nearby cart, attempting to avoid any light he can.
The young man nodded at Pogug, thinking that if Semsephiel's distraction doesn't work the knife-thrower can come forward quickly and perhaps help keep eyes off the goblin and Erin. Nathaniel will wait behind the tree line for now, thinking that causing a new distraction as a former distraction is tagged will allow for more time for his 'sneaky' companions than everyone just popping out at once. With how dangerous they had found the members of the carnival, he didn't like the odds of staying running for long before being 'tagged'.
Ashak scurries from the tree line and under one of the carts, hoping to get as close to the entrance as possible before the commotion starts.
A young halfling woman sits on the edge of one of the wagons. Her legs swing lightheartedly as they dangle over the side. The large green and red apple on the end of the dagger she holds crunches loudly as she takes a huge bite. A bit of juice dribbles down her chin as she chews the overly-large mouthful, and drips onto her rumpled white shirt. As she dabs at it with a gloved hand, Erin and Semsephiel converge on the far edge of the wagon. To the north, Pogug quietly slips between two of the other wagons, while Ashak less quietly crawls beneath the one to the south.
Suddenly, four shimmering luminescent orbs wink into existence above Erin and Semsephiel. They are high enough to be seen over all but the largest tent, and clearly reveal their presence. Thus ends the sneaking portion of tonights encounter, at least for those two.
Momentarily distracted, they don't even notice the halfling hopping down from the cart until they see the light of a cool yellow flame over her shoulder, flickering between the long strands of her fiery-red hair. A long, narrow blade glints in the light for only half a moment as it comes up to tap Semsephiel under the chin.
Oy! Yi'll have to do better than that! She doesn't shout, but speaks in a strong voice that carries across the grounds. Her accent is hard to place , and might be difficult to understand if she didn't have the type of crisp diction that is drilled into high-born ladies from the moment they speak their first words. The idea of a high-born halfling strikes you as even more absurd than the juxtaposition of that perfect diction with the common street slang she employs.
As this is happening, a knee-high humanoid figure runs out from behind the treeline toward Ashak. Shorty doesn't even have to crouch to follow him under the wagon, as he stands over the prone hobgoblin and jabs him with a sword barely large enough to be considered a dagger in the hands of a human.
Hi. Shorty says, through a huge, friendly smile that is rendered even more disturbing by the fact that he is standing over Ashak with a bloody knife.
Ashak sheepishly crawls out from beneath the wagon. Rubbing the small cut from shorty he lets out a short laugh. "Maybe not my best work eh?"
He he turns on his heel and walks back to the camp.
"good luck folks, watch for the munchkin by the carts."
At the halfling's sudden appearance, Erin hesitates for a fraction of a second, then turns on her heels and runs. She dashes into the band of trees, diving behind the undergrowth.
The moment she seems to be out of sight of the wagons, Erin reaches up and grabs the lowest branch of the tree next to her, still with the squirrel perched on her shoulder. She quickly and silently scrambles up, hiding in the branches of the tree.
Hearing the talking and seeing the lights appear in the general direction of his companions, Nathaniel cursed under his breath. At least Pogug seemed to be hidden, for the moment. As Erin streaked across his field of vision back to the outskirts of the treeline, Nathaniel moved south and into the clear cut portion around the carnival, attempting to draw heat away from both of his shorter companions.
"Hey! Over here! Ya missed me!" The young man prepared to move, hoping he wasn't swarmed before he had the chance.
Semsephiel thinks he can still make himself useful, even if disqualified. Talking is a free action, after all, and will hardly delay his leaving the grounds "immediately". Besides, causing panic and worry is one of the few pastimes he has left, walking the material plane as he is.
The skeletal devil recoils from the halfling. The terror is evident on his ancient face as he stares, incomprehendingly, over her head. He stammers out the words in his inhuman voice, holding all four arms in front of him as if to protect his face. "Oh god. It followed me." He snaps out of his apparent reverie. He continues to speak, still staring vacantly into the air above the halfling's head, while quickstepping backwards. "You need to leave this circus. Everyone who's spoken to me, seen me. Get to the city. Hide in the crowd." Semsephiel turns tail and runs. He sprints like a devil possessed, but takes the time to scream over his shoulder,
"Not you, though," he whispers to the group, "You stay here and get that flag."
To further add to the confusion, he's going to blow past the halfling and run for the main road. Might as well give them as little reason to go into the trees as possible.
Evalee, meanwhile, makes a spellcraft check to see what the glowing orbs are, how they were activated, and how they can be gotten rid of.
If Ashak isn't in the game anymore, then Evalee really has no reason to be on this side of the map . . . she'll make tracks for the treeline and hope to distract for Erin or Pogug later.
Hearing Semsephiel's shouts Ashak figures he might as well play into it. Not he's doing anything else useful. He breaks into sprint towards camp. Turning to shout at Semsephiel as he runs.
The halfling seems unconvinced.
Hoping to abuse Nathaniel's taunt, Pogug moves across the next gap. Hearing the commotion made by Semsephiel, Pogug kneels close to the dirt.
The halfling moves north, again missing Pogug's movement, ending just west of Nathaniel. She carries a rapier in one hand and a dagger with a half-eaten apple on the end in the other. She swings the dagger up with enough force to make the apple slip free and fly straight up as she continues the motion, swinging it down behind her and then forward in an under-hand throw. With the light at her back, Nathaniel barely spots the dagger flying at him.
Nathaniel spots the glint of the dagger just in time to sidestep it.
Shorty watches Erin retreat to the treeline and climb a tree. The glowing orbs move to follow her. As Erin peers out into the dark she spots the tiny fey creature just as he disappears. He immediately reappears, grasping the tree just inches from her face. Found you!
The two-headed, baboon-like beast stalks forward in the direction of the commotion. He passes between the same two tents that Pogug is hiding between, but fails to spot the well-hidden goblin behind a rack of equipment.
When the minuscule creature pops back into being just inches from her face, Erin wastes no time in taking action. She lets go of the branch nearest to him with one hand, swinging away with the other around the trunk of the tree. Pushing off the branch below her with her feet, she scrambles upward, careful to keep the trunk between her and her pursuer.
As she vaults upward from branch to branch, her movements grow swifter, more fluid, and with a powerful force behind them. All thoughts of stealth are gone - distance is the only thing that matters now.
Meanwhile, Chi spins in place on her shoulder, flicking his tail in the creature's face to distract him from the halfling's desperate bid for escape.
In her hurry to swing out of the Brownie's reach, Erin shifts her weight a little too quickly to a branch that, if she had time to test its strength, she would have wisely avoided. The branch is home to a colony of boring beetles, and is riddled with tunnels where the beetles have eaten their way through the wood.
With a sharp crack, the wood comes away in her hand. She slides a few inches down the tree before her outstretched foot strikes a lower branch. She tosses away the useless, dead piece of wood and flails to grasp one with more life left in it as she begins to fall backwards.
Her fingers swat at the leaves, but fail to find purchase. For a moment, gravity is gone, replaced by the wind at her back as the magical lights and the tiny, grinning fey recede into the distance.
The sensation lasts almost exactly one second before gravity returns with a vengeance, driving her back into the cold, hard ground.
Points of light dance in Erin's vision as a wave of pain surgest from the back of her head out through the rest of her body.
Pogug peeks out from the weapon rack, seeing the strange beast eerily close to his position. Stopping his breath, he slowly creeps back, moving around the tent.
The goblin excellently knocks over the weapon rack along the way.
The equipment (which does include a few weapons) clatters to the ground, making a terrible racket. Both of Simeons heads turn to spot Pogug as he scampers around the corner.
Evalee listens to Pogug over their message with some consternation. She dismisses Semsephiel as a standard action, planning to summon an elemental to help distract for him if she can get the words out in time.
Evalee listens to Pogug over their message with some consternation. She dismisses Semsephiel as a standard action, planning to summon an elemental to help distract for him if she can get the words out in time.
Nathaniel continued to curse, hearing the commotion near where Pogug had been. He scooted that way, pulling a dagger with each hand, as he saw the terrifying two-headed Simeon trying to get a bead on his goblin companion. The young man flipped a knife at the creature, tossing the other knife to his good hand as the weapon spun through the air.
Nathaniel's blade flies wide of its mark. The halfling moves fleetly around the corner of the wagon, following his retreat. Her rapier is held in a defensive position as she moves, but as she stops just short of knife thrower, she flicks her wrist, thrusting the point into his armor.
Simeon bounds after Pogug, knocking over even more equipment as he gives chase. Pogug can hear the beast's paws beating the ground behind him, drawing ever closer, until one comes down on top of him, knocking him to the ground.
Shorty drops from the tree, nearly landing on Erin.
He lands softly, absorbing the impact with his tiny knees, slightly bent. He leans down, but not very far, and touches Erin on the shoulder. You ok?
Nathaniel attempted to swipe away the rapier strike of the Halfling, but is unprepared and takes a 'tag' against his armor. The young man snapped the dagger back into his belt, storming off before he let his irritation overcome him.
Evalee doesn't see herself getting past all the guards alone, and the rules say elementals can't retrieve the flag, so that's pretty much her whole kit. She'll just walk away, and leave the guards to wonder where the last one is for the rest of the night.
"Next time,", Evalee says over their message, "I'll summon a riding mount for Nathan, and then he can run around putting out the lights. The torches make pretty good targets, and he's a pretty good shot. Then Pogug and Ashak can sneak by in the dark, and Erin can come in from wherever he isn't, and hopefully they'll be distracted."
"Ouch," Erin says, as she shakes her head to clear her vision through the throbbing pain. It takes her a second to realize Shorty is talking to her. "Mostly just a bruised ego. This falling thing is beginning to grow into a concerning pattern." She slowly pushes herself to her feet and trudges off after the others.
Pogug gets up from the ground, dirt covering his face. He walks off in a huff, going back to the treeline. "Stupid monkey. Pogug could haves snuck past dumb halflings."
Evalee doesn't see herself getting past all the guards alone, and the rules say elementals can't retrieve the flag, so that's pretty much her whole kit. She'll just walk away, and leave the guards to wonder where the last one is for the rest of the night.
Evalee performs oratory. She gives a long and rambling speech about the importance of cultivating cabbage in building civilization and how traditions that were convenient to ancient civilizations are often unthinkingly imitated in modern society, despite the function behind the tradition no longer being useful. At least that was the plan, but halfway through she goes off on a tangent about the respective merits of dogs against horses for a nomadic people. She never does get back on topic, and mostly just confuses people.
It seems the crowd is more interested in animal husbandry then they are in learning how to make their lives more efficient with leafy plants as a framing device.
Not really feeling in the mood for it after the disaster of the previous evening, the young man forced himself to go out and practice with the full-time entertainers in the carnival. Even though he is already well-practiced, he managed to pick up a couple tips from some of the other agile performers and put on a pretty amazing display!
Afterwords, as the group gathered together to go back into town for the remaining ingredients, the sullen Nathaniel spoke. "So that went pretty poorly. Perhaps the sneaky folks can wrap cloth around their feet or wear all black or something. I don't believe that big Halador fellow has a ranged weapon of any sort...maybe we can draw him away from the front if he's there again by flipping some knives at him. Didn't someone say something about a horse?"
"Right!" Evalee puts on her best evil mastermind face. "Come, Whitecloak, Reynor, Ashak, Pogug, Sephy. Let us speak of tactics."
"Our apparent goal is a simple one: retrieve the flag atop yonder tent. Our true goal is more open ended: get hired by this wandering carnival and discover why they employ not only performers and mock combatants, but exclusively employ employees en...joying?egress and undetected ingress. Malefect claims this is to see if we can "work as a team", a most curious requirement. To this end, however, I believe it best we play their game, if not by their rules. I can think of no way to cut the proverbial Gordon's knot, and gain employment without the flag."
"We have, as Sephy would say, scouted out their abilities. We've learned a bit about what this job will take. I would like to succeed tonight, though it may not prove possible. In any case, we have resources we did not have last night. I can summon mounts for those running as diversions, we could outpace the guards. I think we could also meet some success targeting torches, we seem to mostly have superior night vision. Perhaps an air elemental could put the torches out? I also thought that maybe Nathan could put them out with his daggers, he's a pretty good aim."
"Anyone else have any ideas?"
Nathaniel thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Maybe we can just simply bribe some of them to look the other way. Or to take a bathroom break." He chuckled, then shook his head. "All those sound like good additions to a plan, Evalee. I can possibly hit them, but I'm not sure it would put them out. Might set the whole place on fire, actually."
Erin keeps her dance today rooted firmly on the ground - unfortunate pattern aside, she can't let the squirrel-riding thing get totally overplayed. Nonetheless, she is always on the move, spinning and twisting through the carnival in a blur of motion that rides the thin line between elegant and unhinged. Her eyes seem to be moving as well, almost as though she's scanning the tents and wagons, scoping them out.
When they meet up, Erin listens in quiet contemplation for a moment before chiming in with an idea of her own. "What if I came in from above?" She shrugs and glances at the others hesitantly. "I mean, climbing that tree got me thinking. The flag is what, thirty feet up? And the torchlight can't extend much farther. What if I climbed up a nearby tree, then glid over the carnival on Chi's back? We might be able to swoop down and snatch the flag before they know what hit them."
"I mean, climbing that tree got me thinking. The flag is what, thirty feet up? And the torchlight can't extend much farther. What if I climbed up a nearby tree, then glid over the carnival on Chi's back? We might be able to swoop down and snatch the flag before they know what hit them."[/b]
Evalee steeples her hands. "I don't think Chi can glide that far, the trees are too far away ..."
Semsephiel breaks in. "But the idea is sound. If we can't get past the guards, we avoid them altogether."
Evalee is confused, so Semsephiel decides to spell it out. "The tent has no floor," he says slowly, leaving Evalee to realize the implications.
His summoner slowly breaks into a smile. "We'd have to start the tunnel far enough away that they don't realize what's going on, and we'd need to put the dirt somewhere. Earth elementals can earthglide, but they couldn't take anyone with them. I don't think we can dig the thing in a day, but perhaps we can have it done by the time the carnival leaves. Uh, I'll have to see how fast the elementals can move dirt, before I can give a time estimate. In the meantime, we can make nightly assaults on the tent, hopefully succeeding long before the tunnel's complete."
I don't think we can dig the thing in a day, but perhaps we can have it done by the time the carnival leaves. Uh, I'll have to see how fast the elementals can move dirt, before I can give a time estimate. In the meantime, we can make nightly assaults on the tent, hopefully succeeding long before the tunnel's complete."
Ashak, slightly disheartened by his display of buffoonery last night decides to go back to something he's good at. With less gusto then usual he puts on an adequate performance but it feels stiff. Thanks to long hours of practice he performs the moves to the letter, but that's all he does. He lacks the usual spring to his step, there is no enthusiasm. The truth behind Ashak's performances is laid bare. The unpredictable and charming acrobatics display he usually puts on is rehearsed to the letter, there is no spontaneity. Only memorization.
"Evalee, is there anything you can summon that could get Erin to the top of the tent, something that could launch her perhaps?" He gestures to his boots, soft black leather that seems to have a strange arch to the sole. He turns to Erin "If we strap these on you'd be able to stick a landing from anywhere."
Pogug is pleased with playing in the morning, finding it a good distraction from the nightly run. The only negative part of his performance is the fact that he curses quite a bit, mostly in Goblin, along with something along the lines of "monkey."
Pogug stands with the others with their plans, but Pogug decides he has best one. "Pogug needs to be more sneaky. Well, Pogug is already most sneakies, but Pogug want to be more most sneakies."
"Maybe we build giant ramp that goes to flag?"