Looking at Gren Lorien shrugs. "Well, if you can use the sword, I could take the mace. The Chainmail, well maybe Arianna can use it.
And yes we have to give it back when we leave!"
"I don't believe the sword is quite my size if you catch my meaning. I think I would prefer to stick with my rapier. Perhaps Arianna or Kesh would like it. As for the mace, of course you may have it. I had thought it may work for me in case we run across more skeletons..." With this Gren gives his best self depracating smile..."Might be a bit more effective than my rapier, eh? Anyway..."
Gren will fish the mace out of his pack and offer it to Lorien.
"Now that you've opened the North Wall, according to my notes, the note for the west wall was 'Call upon the power of our goddess to make your weapon as hers and speak the name of the virtue that is her sword' and that virtue should be 'Truth'."
And so you set out, Arianna and Keshokkar coorporating to follow the trail on this side of the river.
The tracks lead north-west, apparently heading for the treeline visible in the distance.
The open plains allow for a deceptively long view - the grasslands of the valley seem flat as a board when standing on them, but there's still enough shrubs and tallgrass to conceal things from view.
Which is probably how you didn't spot them until they were roughly five hundred feet in front of you. As make your way around a field of tallgrass, you see three men clad in black, walking in the opposite direction, directly towards you. It's difficult to tell detail with the distance, but they seem quite at ease in this environment, walking with the surity of people completely at home.
They pause as they spot you, unsure what to do. You're not quite within comfortable shouting distance yet.
Looking at the man in black Lorien simply smiles.
It does make a nice contrast to her pure white garb.
They waive back, but also fish out crossbows.
They walk closer, to within shouting distance (about a hundred feet), before calling out to you.
"Hail! Are you friends or enemies?"
"I don't like this. Kesh mutters, gripping his glaive tightly. "Are there any villages around here? Who would be so calm around here? Be ready for a fight to break out."
Kesh's foot grinds into the dirt, legs tensed to spring.
When they spot the strangers, Arianna dons her cloak and covers her hair, ears, and tail. She'd gotten enough funny looks to know that it was better to not stand out. When the crossbows come out, she feels herself tensing. She didn't want to fight, she only wanted to find her sister then go as far away from this vile place as she could.
It didn't look like what she wanted was going to matter much, so she does her best to make sure she's ready with her bow if needed while the others talked.
"Well, let me put it this way... if people aren't giving us trouble, we won't have to return the favor." Rhiannon said. Bandits usually preferred to outnumber their foes - given the prominence of weapons among their group, casual thugs were likely to steer clear. That usually left particularly confident folks... and those who weren't actually trouble in the first place. Stone pushed up from the ground next to her and she casually leaned against it, looking at the others. Little displays of magic tended to make people wary, too... you never knew what a caster was capable of. (Admittedly, her kinesis wasn't quite 'magic' as most knew it... but then, most people couldn't tell the difference anyway.)
Zatinya and Rhiannon both can tell that they're wearing armor and weaponry under their robes. Interestingly, they don't seem to carry much in the way of packs, as you'd expect from travelers. In addition to their crossbows, each of them has a shield, and a steel hafted weapon hooked in their belts.
"Explorers eh? Can't have that."
They raise their crossbows as if to fire at you.
"I KNEW IT!" Keshokkar springs into the air, his wings beating powerfully to gain altitude before carrying him forward. He eyes their crossbows warily, setting himself up for a charge but waiting to see how these strangers reacted.
"Slow down Kesh!"
Gren stalks up toward the crossbowmen, trying to keep as low of a profile as possible and drawing his rapier as he goes.
He then yells to the men, "Is this really necessary? Just because our 'Circus Act' tells you we are explorers you have to go and draw on us? How do you know that we aren't friends?"
He then turns back to the Ifrit and whispers, "No offense, Zatinya"
Arianna moves to the side a bit and a little closer to the men and readies her bow. She plants her feet as she takes aim and after a moment, one of her arrows flies from her bow aiming at the man closest to the road.
Earth erupted upwards around Rhiannon as she gathered power - and seconds later, a boulder shot through the air and crossed the distance between her and the targets, aimed towards the southeast one. Well, if they were stupid enough to do this, she'd be happy to oblige them...
for
Round 1
Rhiannon's boulder impacts heavily against the man's robes and armor, and the air is clearly blown out of him.
All three men open fire on the flying Keshokkar, before dropping their crossbows and moving closer, drawing shields and weapons - two of them have heavy maces, while the leader - or at least the one in the finest armor - hafts a morningstar.
,
Changing her last spell to summon monster 1 Lorien starts an incantation.
As the other group approached, Rhiannon changed targets. "Down in front." she noted. The others could probably take down the one she'd weakened, so this time she pointed at the other minion and launched a boulder at him instead. That... looked like a good shot. She had no problem killing them if she really had to - they had, after all, drawn weapons and attacked her group first - but maybe the prospect of boulders continuing to rain down on their heads would encourage them to see the error of their ways.
for
for
Round 2
Kesh twists in mid-air, avoiding the first two bolts--but the third catches him in the thigh and buries deep. Grimacing in pain, the wyvaran lets loose with a wordless scream of rage...and his scales begin to glow like hot metal even as his eyes darken into black pits filled with golden flames.
Wings beating, Keshokkar hurls himself through the air past the nearest of the black-clad foes, his glaive flashing with lethal intent.
The boulder impacts heavily, sending the man tumbling backwards with his robe billowing about him. He's still standing, if barely.
Keshokkar's foe manages to bring up his shield, an awkward angle at the last minute.
Gren continues his cautious approach, not wanting to draw too much attention too quickly. As he jogs, he grabs a slim vial from his pouch, popping the cork off with his thumb as he brings it to his mouth swallows it in one swig. He immediately grimaces and lets out an involuntary "Aug" followed by a coughing fit. By the time he puts the vial back in his pouch, his arms are already supernaturally (and disturbingly) long.
Arianna moves closer to the bandits, crossing the path as she nocks another arrow. She takes aim and sends an arrow streaking for the closest bandit.
"You! Spread out! And deal with the mage - I take the flier." The leader points vaguely at Rhiannon where she's been hurling boulders from the back line.
Both his minions start chanting. One manifests a shimmering mantle that settles over his upper arms. The other creates no visual effect, but Rhiannon feels heavy weights settle over her body, rendering her temporarily unable to move.
The one with the shimmering mantle closes in with Zatinya, his mace out and at the ready.
Meanwhile the leader, still bleeding from the wound the dragonman gave him, gets as close to the flying Keshokkar as he can, and with a flourish of some sort of symbol, creates a semisphere of dark energy spreading from him. It kills the grass as it spreads, and eventually reaches both the wyvarran, Zatinya and his minion. Where the energy would hit his servant, it seems to just disappear into thin air.
She'd tried to be prepared, but the spell managed to pin her in place for the moment, unable to even speak. On the bright side, the foes weren't too close, but... yeah, she did want to try and break out of this as fast as she could.
Arianna drops her bow in the grass and draws her sword. She undoes the clasp of her cloak, hoping to keep it from restricting her movements, as she charges. As the cloak falls from her shoulders, her silver hair and the silver fur of her tail shimmer in the sunlight. Her ears are flat against her skull as she tries to put the man down with a two-handed swing.
The tip of Arianna's sword finds a gap in the chainmail, and the man drops to the ground, bleeding out on his robes.
As the man falls, her eyes find the leader of this trio.
"You're next," she growls, her lips curling in a snarl to show her teeth.
Round 3
As the dark energy pulses through him Keshokkar writhes in pain, only barely remaining airborne as his vision swims. Fighting through the agony, the berserker gives the black-clad priest a fierce grin. "You wanted the flier? Well here he is!" As his glaive bites deep the wyvaran's wings propel him passed the man and back towards his allies, hoping that someone might be able to heal him.
Gren charges up next to Zatinya, raising his rapier the way his old fencing instructor taught him, albeit this time with strangely extended arms.
Zatinya Willpower:
Lorien calls upon her diety to summon an eagle, which swiftly flies towards the nearest enemy, trying to rake it with its claws.
,
Summoning complete, the priestess hurries forward, trying to make it to the badly wounded Keshokkar in time.
Zatinya meanwhile continues her tumbles, hitting the enemy in front of her over the head with two unlit torches.
,
,
,
Under the combined might of the called eagle and Zatinya's drumsticks, the man falls to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.
The leader shoots Arianna a grin. It's a fairly horrifying sight, with the way his helmet only partially blocked Keshokkar's last blow.
"Oh yeah?" He charges towards her, swinging his morningstar.
The eagle takes an opportunity to claw at him in passing.
,
He carreens towards Arianna, and his weapon comes down in a heavy arc.
,
Arianna gasps in pain as the cruelly spiked weapon slams into her side and causes her to stagger a step. She regains her footing, though, and counters with devastating slash from her sword.
Rhiannon continued throwing her will against the spell holding her... and this time, she managed to break free of it, though the effort required meant she wouldn't be able to do anything else for a few seconds as she caught her breath and collected her thoughts.
Moving forward Lorien raises her holy symbol high but she ist still to far away. With a some words like music she directs her eagle to attack the one who hurt Arianna.
Despite his wounds the wyvaran felt a fierce joy surging through his heart at the thrill of the fight. Most of his companions were battered and on their last legs, himself included--but that dark priest had taken a hell of a beating as well, and his minions were bleeding out into the dirt. It was do or die. "Hey ugly!" he taunts as he launches himself back into the air. "I thought it was the flier you wanted?"
The wyvarran's (desperate) gambit pays off, he spears the priest trough the throat, and he falls to the ground, dying or dead.
Wearily folding his wings and sinking to the ground, the molten glow fades from Keshokkar's scales and his eyes return to normal. "Guys, make sure they're dead. I think I'm gonna..." before completing the sentence he pitches forward to lie facefirst in the dirt, twitching.
Gren hurries over to Keshokkar, not quite arriving in time to catch the wyvaran. "Lorien?!" Not having any background in healing, Gren has no idea where to start to stop the bleeding. "Is he ok? Will he be alright?"
As the others take charge in caring for Kesh, Gren gets out his alchemy equipment to mix a quick replacement Extract for the one that was consumed.
"Here, let me see to him," Arianna says as she limps over to where Kesh fell. She favors her right side, the one that the evil priest's morningstar had slammed into. The ranger begins to work, starting with the most grievous of the wyvaran's wounds.
Shaken by the sudden fight and breathing raggedly from the pain in her side, Arianna isn't able to do much to help Kesh in the first few moments. Determined, though, she keeps trying to make sure he won't die.
After a few more moments of work, Arianna breaths a sigh of relief as she finishes properly binding Kesh's wounds.
"Carry them close to me!"
Lorien looks at her fallen comrades and starts to pray to her goddess asking to bath them in their golden healing light. With her holy symbol held in her hand she starts emitting waves of golden fire burning the wounds of her fallen comrades away.
Eyes blinking open, Kesh pushes himself to an upright sitting position with a groan. Gingerly poking at wounds that have receded to mere bruises, he climbs to his feet and extends a clawed hand to the priestess. "I thank you, Lorien." he says somberly.
That done, Kesh retrieves his glaive and grimly kills any of the humans who handn't already bled out before searching the corpses for anything valuable.
Gren joins Keshokkar in looting the bodies. "Do you know of anything else out in this direction? Any temples or settlements? Strange that they would attack us more or less on sight. Also, I hate to call them evil without more evidence but that channeling did not look in the least like Lorien's benevolent energy. It looked like it didn't feel like it either."
Between them, they have
8 vials of brackish water
6 flasks of oil
2 chainmail
masterwork chainmail
2 lights steel shield
heavy steel shield
2 heavy maces
masterwork morningstar
3 heavy crossbows
12 heavy crossbow bolts
2 flint and steel
pouch of powdered diamond
3 sets of black robes
3 red rods topped with skulls on necklaces. Clearly, these are wooden holy symbols of some deity.
"...Anyone mind if I smash the symbols?" Rhiannon asked. She hadn't been particularly hurt by that altercation, but she was still a bit miffed about the paralysis... and wrecking the foci that channeled evil power would definitely help her feel better.
Feeling better now that her wounds were healed, Arianna sadly looks on the corpses.
"What if they knew where my sister was," she asks a little more loudly than she had intended. She shakes her head and turns to Lorien.
"Thank you for that. I feel much better now."
Lorien looks at the unholy symbols with utter disgust.
"If you could be so kind, please. In any case either those was a patrol or a pilgrim troup of followers of Orcus, the demon prince of undead and the sworn foe of my goddess. May their souls rot in hell as reward for their unholy devotion! Well actually in the abbyss."