Bathilda readies her weapon, this time taking the form of a greatsword, before opening the door.
Lyntel looks to Emma and reaches out her hand. I would be happy to inspect these for you, once mother is safe.
Lyntel stands behind Bathilda and off to the side, waiting to see what awaits them.
Grigor is right next to Bathilda, ready to Defend.
The door would be pushed open, but it appears to be barred from the other side. It jostles and shakes when you try to open it, but won't budge...
Lyntel, you know that the pigeon statuette can be used to deliver messages easily over any distance, given time. You'd need to fiddle with it to discover how to make it activate.
The fey-stone is known to you from legends. Placing your lips and blowing gently on the opening will cause one of the faeries to fly out, and something good will happen.
It's getting harder and harder to keep tabs on Archepex as he learns exactly the speed he must move to remain mostly invisible. He's definately across the rope and you caught glimpses of him gathering and cleaning his arrows and the bolts for the auto-crossbows, but unless he forgets himself Archepex has become the party ghost.
The door would be pushed open, but it appears to be barred from the other side. It jostles and shakes when you try to open it, but won't budge...
Can Dhice turn the stone around the door to putty so we can just pull the door down?
Why are you asking me? :)
Can't you just bust the door down Grigor?
I'm quoting you, and asking Dhice, and walking on sunshine, and tripping the light-fantastic, and walking like an egyptian, and tuning in, and turning on, and dropping out, and dropping it like it's hot, and runnin', and tellin' dat, and crossing the rubicon, etc.
Great way to pull a hammy. By the bye: You may want to refresh your Magic Weapon and Bless spells.
Gotcha'
Dhice sees Grigor rattling the barred door. The big warrior gives him a look that says, "Looks like your area of expertise"
"Let's see what we can do about this" He rolls up his sleeves and presses his hand against the stone wall next to the door, judging the likely location of the bar and its catch on the other side. His hand slips into the stone up to his elbow, at which point he has to bend over and push his sleeve up to the shoulder. "Thick walls..." mutters the channeler. "I can't reach it." A worried look comes across his face. "It's too much. I could feel the tips of the iron bolts of the catch though. If you bash at it I bet the catch will break free of the stone, now that I've left a big hole behind it."[/b] He withdraws his arm and, sure enough, there's an arm-sized hole leading into the wall.
Unfortunately for Dhice, a Rat-Ogre had been left behind by the Queen to wait for anyone to try and get past the door. The channeler's wiggling fingers had emerged from the stone on the other side of the door, and the quick-acting Ogre grabbed your wrist!
The stone pulled away somewhat from the door, meaning you can bash it down relatively easily now (take +2 on anyone's next roll to break down the door) but in the meantime, the Rat-Ogre is trying to shorten Dhice's fingers with his oversized rodent teeth! You feel the sharpness of the Rat-Ogre's vicious biting on your fingers as he tries to bite down hard enough to sever your fingers, Dhice, take 1d6 damage! Your arm is stuck inside the arm-sized hole you left, held on the other side by the Rat-Ogre!
Bathilda sees Dhice struggling to get his arm free, but instead of pulling him loose, she figured she could get to whoever was holding him and free him more quickly that way. taking a step back, she bounces on the balls of her feet a second before rushing the door and slamming her shoulder into it, knocking it open with all of the grace and subtlety of a bull in a china cabinet.
She doesn't stop at the door, however, and continues her charge, aiming for the rat-ogres gut and hoping the blow will help free Dhice.
Bathilda rams into the rat-ogre, causing him to spit out Dhice's fingers and sending the two of them tumbling down the corridor. In the impact, Bathilda loses her grip on her weapon, causing it to clatter to the floor.
As they come to a stop, Bathilda realizes that she's in serious trouble. Not only is she unarmed, but her arms are pinned to her sides by the enormous limbs of the rat-ogre. All it had to do was squeeze and she'd be out of the fight. Worse, it could go running after its fat rat master and deliver her as a prisoner to replace Lyntel.
Why do I always seem to get myself into these messes?
Grigor then charges the rat-ogre.
Hack and Slash , hitting with a complication for point of damage (+2 piercing, messy, forceful).
I choose to re-roll damage for this attack, in this combat.
damage (+2 piercing, messy, forceful)
"Yowww!" screams the channeler as he starts twitching and writhing in pain.
The door is shoulder-checked off its hinges by the wild charge of Bathilda the barbarian. She successfully saves Dhice from needing to buy fingerless gloves by tackling the Rat-Ogre in time, but the ensuing tussle doesn't exactly go her way! She sustains some minor injuries in the thrashing - take 1d6 damage - and winds up in a full body lock by the Rat-Ogre. What's worse is that your weapon, which reverted to its pocket-sized shape when you dropped it...got swallowed by the Rat-Ogre itself in the fight! As he holds you as still as he can, trying to lift you off the ground so you have nothing to push off against, you can feel the gulp as he swallows your weapon!
Grigor is immediately on her heels, his longsword stabbing and slashing as he hacks and chops with it against the huge Skaven. You injure it terribly, Grigor, piercing its thick hide and causing its blood to flow freely onto the floor. It endures your assault stoically, keeping a tight grip on Bathilda with her arms locked to her sides, and drawing the fighter deeper into the room.
Into a trap. In order to focus on hitting the Rat-Ogre and not injuring Bathilda, the fighter lost some of his awareness of his surroundings, to his peril. A Skaven servant that had been hiding inside the room leaps onto your shoulders, Grigor, and shoves a black hood over your head!
Grigor, you fall slack to the ground and cannot rise again as long as you wear the hood. Roll to Defy Danger with Constitution - no full success possible. You may only get a partial success result on a 10+, 7-9 is still a fail for this roll because of the handicap of wearing the hood.
Dhice, your fingers are a bit bloody, but the wounds are superficial and you're able to pull your arms free of the stone. What do you do?
Bathilda wriggles in the brutes arms until she can start pushing back with her own strength. Amazingly, the lanky mercenary overpowers the brute and drops to the floor. She lands on her feet and pulls her dagger free of her belt and turns to face her overgrown foe.
"GIMME BACK MY SWE--" she begins to bellow when a hammer blow lands in her belly, lifting her off the ground and to the side. Her dagger falls uselessly to the floor as she crumples against the wall.
She looks up at the brute's eyes, hers beginning to show fear. Not of dying, but of what is going to happen if this brute decides to take her to the Witchmother.
Moving silently and unseen, Archepex enters the room and shakes his head. It seemd his destiny of late was coming to the rescue of the melee line.
He sights on the shoulder of bathilda's captor.
"I ain't dead yet, a&+&#$%s!"
Grigor attempts to shred the bag on his head.
Bend Bars, Lift Gates
"F*!# yo couch, Charlie Murphy!" comes screaming out of Grigor's mouth as he: does it without losing a round (It doesn’t take a very long time), and maintains enough of the sacks possible magic for it to be repairable (Nothing of value is damaged AND You can fix the thing again without a lot of effort).
Grigor immediately guts the rat-ogre, before he tries to take out the f+!$er who tried to bag him.
Hack and Slash , risking a complication for extra bloody enthusiasm and points of damage (+2 piercing, messy, forceful.)
Lyntel follows after the melee line, eager to uncover her mother's fate. She stops short when she sees Grigor fighting with the hood, clearly under some sort of magic. She sings a silly mnemonic song taught at the elven wizard school to force students to remember the basics of disenchanting.
"Albus thought that he was wise, to call upon the fire, but Baleth knew to call the flames would result in something dire. Caylen sought to project his will and force the spell to flee, but Delpine knew her lessons well, and embraced the magics chi."
As she sings, she attempts to draw the enchantment towards her, spreading it out, and dissipating its effect.
Displaying coordination and teamwork now that they all had a limited number of targets to focus on, the mercenaries - and the new elf civilian they've picked up - quickly dismantle the Queen's rear guard.
The Rat-Ogre lands a dire hit on Bathilda - retribution is sometimes the price for recklessness. Blood is in her eyes from a heavily bleeding cut on her forehead, at least two of her ribs are broken - one on each side, one high, one low - and her arm feels like it weighs 300 pounds. The Rat-Ogre stoops to grab her in one motion, before throwing the barbarian over his shoulder and squeezing through a crack in the far side of the wall. Despite his bulk, the Rat-Ogre is still a skaven, and adept at wiggling through spaces that would be impossible for a regular creature that size. It's not comfortable for his "passenger," though. Bathilda takes an additional 4 damage from the rough treatment, and you pass out. Roll Defy Danger: Con to see how bad the long-term impact of your concussion is going to be. Head injuries are no joke, and you're too cool for a helmet.
All this happens in a moment, in the time it took for Grigor to shake off the hood's effects. In this brief time, the Skaven ambusher that covered Grigor's head in the black hood is making to flee also. With the help of Lyntel's mnemonic song, Grigor is not only able to escape the hood, but turn it inside out. The energy within the sack hood - which isn't designed to be able to turn inside out originally, but now can - fires sapping energy at the fleeing rat. Your ambusher, that had been slowed by Archepex's volley of arrows long enough for you to aim the sack-cannon, is drained of all his energy, sinking to his knees before a small crack in the wall, staring at it. He's helpless, you can kill him, restrain him for questioning or search him without any resistance if you choose. You also have a sack-cannon that can drain the energy of anything you point it at, assuming the hood can fit over its head. You can also turn the hood inside out and use it like it was used on Grigor, as a (usually) effective restraining tool.
Those of you who are still uncaptured take quick stock of the room. The doorway you came through is warped, the door broken beyond repair. The far side of the room has an open archway, and a crack in the wall with a blood smear on it, where the Rat-Ogre fled.
This was the backstage area for the Witchmother band. There are couches on either side of the room, with a table in the middle that has some Skaven snacks on it - or that were on it, most of the snacks were scattered to the floor during the fight. Aside from the small crack in the left side of the room that the ambusher was trying to flee toward, there's no other exits. What do you do?
Dice! Archepex the Invisible barks from thin air right next to the channeler, Get that crack open. We can't lose Bathilda in here. We already lost Morley, I refuse to lose anyone else.
Bathilda tries to move out of reach, but it seems her luck has finally run out. The big brute grabs her before she can even move an inch and on the way through the crack, after being flung over its shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her head cracks against the stone. Her visions swims and fades. She fights to hang on to consciousness, but she'd taken too much of a beating. There weren't going to be any escapes this time, she thinks bitterly as she passes out and goes limp.
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Dhice, Archepex's shouting and the fact that he can't spell your name properly stresses you out. Take -1 Forward to your next roll due to your shattered concentration.
Yeah, that's pretty bad, Bathilda. Mark XP, you haven't died, you're just unconscious, but the longer you're unconscious from a head injury the worse the damage gets. After a few actions from the others I'll be checking you again with another Defy Danger: Con to see if you wake up. That'll further narrow down what happens to you.
"My guess," grunts Emma, "It'll be taking her to the Witchmother. I say we catch that rat, then do an 'exchange' of hostages."
While speaking in a conversational tone, Emma is actually carefully making her way towards the open archway. Without exposing herself too much, what can she see on the other side?
When you sidle up alongside the open archway, you see a hallway wider than the archway is that leads about 25 feet away from you. On the right hand side near the far end is a door that might lead to the same room that the crack leads to. On the left side of the hallway, taking up almost the entire left hand side of the hallway wall, is an archway with a heavy cloth curtain draped across it.
Dhice runs into the room just in time to see the rat ogre haul Bathilda into the crack. While Grigor takes care of the other skaven threat, and Archepex unleashes a stream of garbled "encouragement" that sets the channeler's teeth on edge, the flame-haired young man simply stares at the blood stain left by Bathilda and shakes his head. "I don't think so, rat."
His arms come up and he slowly moves his hands together, like he's forcing something closed. . Inside the crack the rat ogre lets out a sound of frustration as a portion of the wall ahead of him presses in, cutting off the escape.
"I don't know how long I can hold it, the channel was not perfect. Go! If he can get in there so can you!"
Emma peers down the hallway, suspicious as ever.
- What should I be on the lookout for?
- What is about to happen?
- What here is useful or valuable to me?
Rage building at the sight of a filthy Skaven making off with her savior, Lyntel charges towards the crack.
Lyntel wriggles through the crack, singing a healin song her mother taught her decades before.
Lyntel, give me one detail you remember about the room beyond the crack, within reason, and it's true. I'll be describing the rest.
- What should I be on the lookout for?
Emma, you are well familiar with the sounds of lust, as it was one of the ways you experimented with filling the gaping void in your soul after the loss of your parents. You hear multiple partners going at it in the room coming from beyond the curtain...some kind of harem?
- What is about to happen?
The Queen is nearby, awaiting word from the Rat-Ogre she left behind before making her magical escape from this place. When the Rat-Ogre makes it past Dhice's stone obstacle, he'll bring Bathilda to her as her new plaything.
- What here is useful or valuable to me?
The door on the right hand side of the hallway will lead in the same direction the Rat-Ogre was fleeing with the barbarian, just not using the shortcut of the hole in the wall.
Dhice, you can't close off the crack in the wall enough to stop the Rat-Ogre, but it closes tighter around his bulky form and slows him down. Even as he shoves violently against it, the caved-in stone begins to give way.
Right behind the Rat-Ogre is Lyntel. Unfortunately, she gets too close as the Rat-Ogre's clawing its way through the flexing stone, and gets a faceful of dirt and rocks for her trouble as it tries to scrabble through. Take 1d4 damage that ignores armor and you can't see anything momentarily, not the Rat-Ogre nor Bathilda.
As the stone gives way, Dhice recognizes the futility of trying to slow it further within the crack, so instead he re-focuses and spreads his hands, this time in a parting gesture. "We've got you now, filthy animal." he mutters to himself.
First, the narrowest section of the crack opens up a shade to allow Lyntel to wriggle through as quickly as possible.
Second, he gestures forcefully, palm outwards, and causes one of the larger stones on the floor of the crack to shoot forwards towards the rat-ogre's feet.
Third, this stone hits the ogre Forcefully, in the hope that it will knock him down or at least throw him off stride.
Bathilda unconsciously whimpers in pain as the rat-ogre continues to jostle her while worming his way through.
Lyntel vaguely recalls watching her mother swing in a cage hanging high above the Queen's makeshift throne. As she bursts through the crack that Dhice widens, she fully expects to see the Queen cackling beneath the cage.
Once through the crack, Lyntel cries out in pain and rubs at her eyes, hoping to restore her vision.
Emma wrinkles her nose at the sound of the Skaven. Filthy creatures, breeding like... rats. She has to hurry, but not so much that she can't spare a moment to set the curtain alight at a point about 10 feet away from the entrance. As soon as it catches, she's off towards the far door, slamming it open as fast as she can.
Archepex, invisible and silent, stalks into the room with arrow on the string.
Dhice follows Lyntel through the crack as well.
Through the channeler's magic, the stone crack in the wall shifts suddenly and violently strikes at the Rat-Ogre's back. Bathilda tumbles to the ground from the Rat-Ogre's shoulder as it falls - unconscious - to the ground. Bathilda lies at the feet of the Witch Queen. Lyntel wipes the dust from her eyes (no XP, no failed roll because no roll needed to wipe your eyes). She sees before her the throne room that she was forced to perform in, many times. Her mother looks on helplessly from the cage dangling above the Witch-Queen's throne.
"Ruin my concert, will you?" the deceptively soft voice of the Witch Queen greets the bard as she stumbles through the crack. An instant later, after having set fire to the entrance of the rat's nest, Emma throws open the door to see the same scene.
You both arrive just in time to see the Witch Queen's gnarled and knobby fingers reach into a candy box on her throne and select a truffle out of it. With a hideously evil grin, she pushes the truffle into Bathilda's unconscious mouth. The barbarian immediately begins to convulse and clutch at her chest. As she seizes uncontrollably, two Rat-Ogres in full heavy armor, wielding tower shields and lances, emerge from where they were flanking the queen's throne and forcefully set Bathilda to her feet. The barbarian's eyes are all white, no traces of her iris or pupils. With shaking limbs, she accepts a two-handed Battleaxe from the Rat-Ogre adjacent to her (+1 damage), and stands ready to defend her Mistress. The truffle sits in her mouth, being broken down by her saliva and transmitting the spell into her body.
Bathilda, heal to full. For every action you take to obey the Queen's will, roll 2d6-2 to break her control over you. Every subsequent attempt to break her will will increase the modifier's chance of success by 1 - so your second attempt to break free will be at 2d6-1, and so on.
The Queen points at Lyntel. "Your purpose has been served and I'm done with you. Kill her, thralls!" she orders imperiously - and the two Rat-Ogre Knights - and Bathilda - immediately move to obey! Meanwhile, the Queen herself pulls on a lever that lowers Lyntel's mother to within reach of the Queen herself. Your mother shrinks against the bars of the cage, Lyntel, and screams in terror as the giant rat leers at her.
Bathilda, since you're a DM plaything now, you don't need to roll to attack - monsters never do. Instead you declare who you will be attacking and how, and if your target fails their defy danger roll, you deal your damage +1 to them and repeat until they're dead.
Archepex slides into the room unseen thanks to his mask. He assesses the situation and decides that it was best for everyone if Bathilda didn't use that crazy huge ax she was holding. He draws and aims for the barbarian's hands. Hopefully she will forgive him later...
Bathilda looks at where the axe had fallen before shrugging and charging Lyntel, a fist aimed at her and coming in fast.
A fist of iron slams into the side of Lyntel's face, bruising her cheek open and cutting the inside of her mouth open on her teeth. As Bathilda draws her fist back, her other hand is racing for the elven bard's belly.
Bathilda looks surprised as her fist hits nothing but air.
Bathilda watches from inside her own head as she struggles against the chains that hold her in place. To the side, what she can only assume is the Witchmother in her younger days stands giggling with malicious glee.
"Oh this is too perfect! I knew you were a strong and reckless one, but I had no idea," she titters.
"Lemme go and I'll show you how strong I am," Bathilda growls.
"Mmmm, no. I would like to know what would happen if everyone found out that you like black lacy things under your clothes, instead. That would be fun!"
"Do it and I'll make sure your death is slow and painful."
"Oh relax, I'm not going to strip you until after I've had you kill your friends."
Somehow, that failed to make Bathilda relax.