Eostre, still backing away, flails with her glaive at the wolf, more out of bluster and fear than out of any real attempt at fighting.
Conner screams, trying to calm himself, but all he can think about is slaughter. He scrambles to his feet, eager to kill.
The summoned wolf barely even notices Eostre's flailing glaive as it *swishes* over its head, barely missing it.
The wolf and wrathspawn both bite at Conner as he rises...
...and their teeth both GRIND against his armour as he stands, unable to inflict any damage!
Presented with two targets that have hurt him, Conner does his job, and attacks the wolf because it is close to Eostre.
[dice=Crit Damage]2d8+4[dice]
Conner's wild swing misses the wolf even worse than Eostre's did.
Ekan nods at the priestess, looking at the summoned wolf as it is menaced by both Conner & Eostre. Twirling his kama, he moves up behind the wolf while Eostre distracts it and swings...
...and manages to slice a wound into its flank!
The quasit glares at Nicat. "Хеле хандовар, яке аз ғуломии. Вале шумо метавонед ба ман барои дароз нарасонанд." She turns to Conner and casts another spell...
Though the enlarged warrior feels magic settle on his limbs, the RAGE overwhelming him causes it to fail utterly. The quasit's eyes widen in surprise, even as the bruise on its forehead heals.
The wolf howls and turns to face Ekan, biting at him...
Though the bite manages to nick Ekan's leg, the monk barely manages to stay on his feet!
"'Xere xakopat bare wymo sapon' to you too, or whatever you said," Nicat replies to the quasit before sticking his tongue out at the strange creature.
He then drops his sling to the ground. Taking a quick step to Ekan's side and drawing his sword as he moves, Nicat swings at the wolf.
Nicat's blade manages to scar the beast's muzzle, provoking a pitched whine from the wolf!
The newborn wrathspawn attacks Conner again, biting and clawing!
The monster's teeth and claws rake along gaps in Conner's armour, wounding him greatly!
Sylvia clutches her holy symbol and moves closer to Conner. "Eternal Rose, aid us!"
Shelyn's grace heals some of the party's wounds...
Eostre, having regained her composure, thrusts her glaive forward and into the wolf's flank while Nicat's distracted it.
Conner keeps on the wolf, trying to keep from snarling back at it as he stabs down with his now-massive blade.
Eostre's glaive spears the wolf through its back, bringing it down. Having lost his original target, Conner whirls about in his rage and takes a chunk out of the newborn wrathspawn with his blade.
Ekan sees the wolf go down and twists to position himself to attack the newborn wraith spawn alongside Conner
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Ekan's kama slices into the wrathspawn's back, drawing a streak of black blood. The monster howls in pain!
The quasit pinches the bridge of its nose and sighs. "Он қадар мушкил аст пайдо кӯмаки арзанда дар ин рӯз ..." The bruise on its forehead fully heals.
The quasit begins casting another spell, stretching out a finger and pointing at the enlarged Conner. "Хоби!"
Again, the RAGE engulfing Conner is too much for her spell. The quasit turns a paler shade of grey. "Чаро шумо дар хоб ҳастанд не ?!"
Eostre notices the demon's frustration and smiles, raising her glaive and pointing it at the pipsqueak.
"Хотир ӯ қавитар аз он аст, ки дев ! Ман ба шумо чӣ ҷодуе ҳақиқӣ монанд нишон !"
With the wolf on the ground, Nicat steps back to where he dropped his sling, sheathing his sword as he moves. Considering the sling on the ground a moment, he thinks, Even my best shot didn't seem to hurt the thing much. Maybe I need a different approach.
"Come on guys, we're too dang pretty and lucky to not be able to put that little guy and his ugly friend down!" he cries out. He then collects a pinch of fine sand in his hand and blows it at the quasit, imbuing it with some of his own magical energy.
The quasit is shocked to hear Eostre's Thassilonian speech, and it is distracted long enough that Nicat's spell takes hold.
"Он аст, ки ... не ... имконпазир..." The quasit's eyes droop and it falls to the floor.
It falls on the floor and starts snoring.
The wrathspawn, confused and annoyed from its injuries, claws at Conner in another mad frenzy!
The monster's teeth and claws finally bring the armoured warrior down!
But the rage is unending. You see visions. The beast that brought you low is before you. It taunts you. A mistake it will not live to make again.
You seize it by the neck and begin to REND RIP TEAR SHRED
Sylvia channels energy again!
Conner feels his wounds close as Shelyn's grace awakens him! The RAGE is so palpable, combined with his pain, that he feels utterly winded.
Conner takes a few shuddering breaths, then heaves to his feet, his eyes locked on the quasit.
The wrathspawn, bleeding heavily, tries to bite Conner again. It ends up with a mouthful of armour for its trouble.
Hoping to finish their foe off, or at least keep some pressure off Conner, Ekan increases the speed of his blows turning into a flurry of action.
Ekan's first blow is deflected by the creature's flailing arms...
...but the second one sneaks past its guard and slices its belly open.
It stands there in surprise for all of three seconds before collapsing.
The quasit continues to snore, blissfully oblivious to everything happening around her.
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Eostre walks over to the quasit and whips her glaive upside down, before thrusting it into the floor, planting the blade firmly in the demon's belly.
"Бидеҳ нисбати ман ба модари худ дар варта , ба шумо кирми ," she says, hoping to sound menacing to the creature as it dies.
She looks over at the others.
"Nicat! You and Sylvia tend to Conner. I'm going to investigate this pool."
The glaive spears the quasit through the belly with a loud *SCHKK*. She's well and truly dead and gone.
The pool is triangular in shape, and its orange contents bubble and churn. It appears to be 3 feet deep.
Nicat looks wide-eyed at his outstretched palm, which previously held a small pile of sand. "It worked!" he cries out, "It worked!"
He hears Eostre's words and steps to Conner's side, looking down at the huge, unconscious man. "Sylvia, can you fix him up?"
Conner grunts in relief, and settles his rapidly shrinking form against the wall. He closes his eyes, trying to remember he wasn't really angry.
"That was a hard fought fight," Ekan says after a moment, "And what was that...tiny creature?"
Eostre looks up from the pool.
"A quasit. The weakest type of demon to emerge from the Abyss. They generally begin existence as a familiar to a spellcaster of less-than-upstanding moral character, and seek to steal the souls of their masters when they die, gaining larvae they can use to "purchase" power, influence, or even transformation into a greater demon. A rare few, however, ignore their master's soul when they die, looking to remain here on the Material to torment people, probably like that little blighter we just slew. Judging by its ranting about mothers and such, and the presence of the waters of Lamashtu in that basin back there, I think we can surmise it venerated Lamashtu, Queen of Demons and Mother of Monsters, like some kind of priestess. I say priestess because it's generally women that hold positions of power in her cults due to their obsession with pregnancy and corrupting it."
"Well, I am now revolted on multiple levels," Ekan says after digesting all that, "But thank you for the information."
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"S'why I chose to gut it rather than squeeze information out of it. Though the fact that it spoke fluent Thassilonian is cause for curiosity...and concern. That tongue died with its empire in Earthfall. These ruins are that old, survived what was practically the end of the world. And that would mean that demon'd been stuck down here for thousands of years, five whole AGES. That demon was likely older than Sandpoint itself!"
Eostre's attention returns to the pool.
"This thing's magic was evident in the fight. Now to just see what it truly is."
Unfortunately, all Eostre knows is that this particular pool seems to be able to create more of those wrathspawn. The pool isn't glowing as brightly as it was when the quasit first bled into it.
Sylvia starts channeling again.
"I'm afraid that's all the power Shelyn has granted me today..." She says once she's finished. "I have no more to offer..." She nervously looks around the room.
--Obsidian unholy symbol of Lamashtu (10 gp)
--A small tiara (50 gp)
--A tiny black silk gown (25 gp)
--A Tiny-sized masterwork cold iron dagger
Admiring the tiny items the quasit carried - except for the symbol of her disgusting god - Nicat waves a hand over them to see if any of them appear to be magic, focusing more closely on anything that radiates magic.
"Eostre, like me, you know a bit about the mysteries of magic. Can you help me figure out the magic on these things?"
"A demon. Well, that's not disturbing at all. Friends, our healer says she is tapped out, we'd be putting our lives in great risk if we continued like this. Perhaps we should withdraw for now, or make camp here. This room only has one way in or out, it would be easy to keep watch."
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Eostre wipes the quasit blood off her glaive, careful to avoid any spilling into the pool. She didn't want to accidentally summon something herself.
"As much as I'd like to study the inscriptions here through the night, I think we'd best return to the surface. We need to alert Brodert as to what we've found down here, he'll want to examine it too. This pool may very well be the runewell he spoke of in Paulinus' notes. Plus, I left my bedroll back at the Dragon. Besides, we've still got that ghost floating around down here. Sylvia'll probably want to get the priest down here to help exorcise it. Even if it's not interested in hurting us it'd probably annoy us all night whispering for help."
"Can we make tracings of the inscriptions perhaps? To show to other experts? And.. yes, by all means, let's try to get this purified, somehow."
"I'm okay with getting out of here," Nicat replies, "and we might as well sleep in a comfy bed, since we're right here in town. But we should come back down here and finish checking the whole place out, don't you think?"
Holding up the treasures of the quasit, he asks Eostre again, "Can you figure out what we've got here? I know some of it's magical. Or would you rather do it back at the inn?"
Eostre takes a look.
Sylvia leans on her glaive before turning and beginning to leave the room. "Please, let us be away from this place."
"I think that would be wise," Ekan says, agreeing with Sylvia
"That...knife...is magical, Nicat. For what it's worth, it returns to your hand when thrown. But unless we can magically enlarge it, it'll be more effective as a sewing needle than as a weapon."
Nicat's eyes widen, "It comes back when you throw it? That's amazing!" He holds it between two small fingers and throws it, laughing gleefully as it returns to him.
He then holds it in his hand, wishing and willing for it to grow to a usable size.
Despite Nicat's fervent wishes and hopes, the dagger remains the size of a toothpick.
"Well, you could use it to cheat at darts, I guess."
Nicat continues to flick the knife into the air and catch it, offering a different suggestion, "I could do some pretty amazing juggling routines with this thing!" He throws it down and is delighted when it comes back up, flicks it out in a hard flat shot and snags it as it zooms back!
"But it's a pretty spendy little thing to use like a juggling pin, I bet," he adds, a touch of disappointment in his voice, "I'll have to think about it. Shall we head back to town?"
Conner gets to his feet, feeling much better. "Well, no use sitting around talking about it, let's get going."
Eostre nods and picks up her glaive heading over to Conner and the others.
"This is more than I could have hoped for! Thank you all for being here. I...I couldn't have fought all these things alone."
Eostre casts her eyes downward, trying hard not to look ashamed and failing.
As the party departs the catacombs (stepping over the corpses of demon and wrath-crafted monster alike), the smell of blood and death follows them all the way back to the spiral stairs. Glancing back, one can see the phantom Jervis Stoot, lingering at the mouth of the entrance cavern with a despairing look in his eye. A single blood-red tear runs down his filthy cheek.
The workshop is just the way the party left it--the wooden birdman idol is still as blood-caked and battered as ever. The weather outside has settled somewhat--the rain has tapered off to a light drizzle, and a thick fog blankets the isle and town.
"None of us could..." Ekan points out.
He looks to the phantom, and bows, "We'll do what we can to clear this place, to make it clean again."