Sss....
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With the others having moved up, Kūtayak and his storykin eidolon creep up on the battle being waged in the alley. Hunched over, the black-feathered tengu steeples his talons and watches the rats and humanoid figures with bird-like curiosity, while Shūkantayāk follows close behind, watching from around the summoner's silhouette.
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Initiative Order - Round 1
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Selter and Sithiss - stabs with spear for 5 damage, climbs
Maedhros - aids Selter's attack
Kurse - strikes with death hand for 4 damage
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk - single move
Enemy:
Druid 1
Druid 2 - casts
DRC Red -
DRC Green -
DR Yellow
DR Blue
Ka
-------------------------------------Round 2
Selter and Sithiss
Maedhros
Kurse
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk
Enemy
Ka
The first druid raised his club and swings at Selter, but the club rebounds off his armor.
With a guttural command, the rats climb the walls of the buildings beside them, moving toward you. Two manage to bite Kurse with their yellow teeth.
The second druid druid begins casting and a moment later the grass and weeds spring to life and begin to coil around your ankles to hold you in place. Even the tree branches reach down to wrap around you. Shūkantayāk manages to jerk aside before caught up, but the others struggle against their verdant bonds.
Sss...
Sithiss climbs down behind the rearmost figure and strikes.
.
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, if that hits and
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Maedhros casts a spell, conjuring a layer of grease on the ground under the feet of their assailants.
Maedhros tries to free himself from the vines, but the scholar's muscles aren't up to the task.
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As the vines erupt from the ground, Kūtayak lets out an avian cry and throws his hands into the air. "The Tangled Briar is upon us!" As the vines lash around Kūtayak's wrists and legs, he looks back to Shūkantayāk who furrows his brows and lets out a feral snarl. Struggling against the vines, Kūtayak begins chanting arcane verses with sibilant tone, eldritch runes blossoming to life in hues of blue and purple around his taloned hands.
Reaching out with a shout, Kūtayak lays one hand on Shūkantayāk's back and channels the energy of his spell into the storykin. With a howl, Shūkantayāk begins to grow exponentially in size, feathers bristling, antlers growing and teeth extending outward until he has doubled in size, now six feet tall at the shoulder.
"Go!" Kūtayak doesn't need to give the order, as his eidolon is already bounding through the vines and roots, skidding to a halt behind Maedhros. Now eye level with the nearest rat, Shūkantayāk lashes out with fanged maw as a surge of arcane energy rolls down his shoulders and throat, turning his teeth a gleaming shade of violet.
______________________
> (failure)
Initiative Order - Round 1
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Selter and Sithiss - stabs with spear for 5 damage, climbs
Maedhros - aids Selter's attack
Kurse - strikes with death hand for 4 damage
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk - single move
Enemy: Attacked and cast Entangle
Ka - shot and killed red rat
-------------------------------------Round 2
Selter and Sithiss - misses / Sithiss hits for 7 damage and grabs
Maedhros - casts grease
Kurse - death hand for 2 damage on blue
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk - Struggles, cast enlarge / finishes off blue
Enemy
Druid 1 - slips down in grease and stands up from prone, incurring AOO's
Druid 2 -
DRC Green -
DR Yellow
Ka
-------------------------------------Round 3
Selter and Sithiss
Maedhros
Kurse
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk
Enemy
Ka
Selter misses his spear thrust, but Sithiss strikes true and coils around the weakened druid. Maedhros' grease spell causes the first druid to slip down, but the rat and the grappled druid amazingly keep their feet.
Kurse harms one of his rat attackers and Shūkantayāk finishes the job.
The first druid starts to get to his feet, but draws attacks from all who threaten him.
The grappled druid struggled to free himself from Sithiss' coils, but the constrictor is far too strong. The rats snap their yellow teeth, but make no contact with flesh.
Sss...
Sithiss begins squeezing the life out of the figure caught in her coils.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 4
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Seeing the druid getting to his feet, Kūtayak swiftly lunges forward around the corner of the building. Jabbing out with his sharp beak to gouge at the off-balance enemy's eyes as he leaves himself open, Kūtayak is quick to break into a feral flurry of claw and bite attacks.
Meanwhile, Shūkantayāk hunches down and begins growling as he watches the remaining rats and druids beyond the barrier of his allies. With quarters too crowded to wade into battle, the Storykin instead waits for the enemies to make the mistake of coming to him.
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Ka moves into the fray, ignoring the impediment caused by the entanglement, through the blessing of the Lady Luck (Using Agile Feet). He summons an immediate aid to Selter, helping him to escape. "Liberating Command!"
Then he touches Kurse, granting him a Bit of Luck!
.
.
, if succeeds +5 bite damage from above = 11 total damage.
Enemy :
DRC Green -
Ka
-------------------------------------Round 4
Selter and Sithiss
Maedhros
Kurse
Kūtayak and Shūkantayāk
Enemy
Ka
A flurry of attacks plague the greasy druid as he tries to regain his feet and Selter's spear thrust sends him right back down into the puddle. Sithiss similarly crushes the remaining life of her prey.
The Nagaji then turns to the larger rat and strikes, badly wounding the beast.
Kurse touches a rat with his skeletal death hand and the creature seizes up, falling to the street, dead. Leaving only one wounded rat left on the field of battle. He snaps his teeth at open air and gives a frightened squeak as it stands alone.
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"Sso thiss iss one of the ratss that bit me right Sslipss?" Kurse draws his sickle and strikes at the rat.
Kurse flinches at the size of the rats teeth. "Did you ssee that? It tried to bite me again. Otherwisse I would have got it."
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Ka's bolt hits the rat, but only scores a minor wound. Sithiss relinquishes her hold on her prey once she feels him struggle no more and lunges for the last remaining rat. Unfortunately, even the constrictor fails to find purchase on the super-slick surface, her coils writhing and roiling in the slippery mess as she tries to gain traction.
Selter strikes with his spear and neatly spits the last dire rat, killing the creature instantly.
By the time last rat falls silent the constabulary has secured the southern end of the prison and and you see them rounding up men to the south. Nearby, a handful of ragged and injured cultists are in manacles and seated against the wall.
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Trilling loudly, Kūtayak ruffles his feathers and wipes his beak off with the sleeve of his robe. "Nnhh, danger abounds at all corners. Not as dangerous as expected, though." Looking over at Shūkantayāk, the tengu holds out his hand and closes his taloned fingers into a fist, then nods once slowly in some sort of gesture of appreciation. Shortly thereafter, Shūkantayāk shrinks back down to his normal size and approaches his master, brushing his antlers against his shoulder.
"We should continue, before z'others realize that we ar't approachin'k." Clicking his beak open and closed, Kūtayak looks at the others and wonders aloud as an afterthought. "Is't anyone bleedin'k?"
I also have a wand if anyone else is still injured.
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Yesss, let usss enter thisss sssilly prissson and finisssh thisss.
Two features dominate Swift Prison’s interior: the Greedy Narses and the prison’s main keep. The Greedy Narses is a large wooden building on the southern border of Swift Prison through which all prisoners or visitors must pass to reach the keep. The many cells lining this building’s southern facade serve as “beggar’s boxes” that provide a chance for the Swift’s unskilled residents to earn some coin. Other than the decorated front, and the gilded statue in the square, this building is quite plain.
The keep is three stories tall and once contained several holding cells, but as you pass through the entryway you see that the cell’s iron bars have all been removed somehow with reddish orange flakes and powder everywhere they should be. The keep’s ceilings are all 9 feet tall and the entire structure is littered with broken furniture and shattered storage containers. Having seen the place neat and orderly and bustling with activity, the sight of it all a sundered, chaotic mess and deathly silent is something of a shock.
B1: Indoor Market
Many market stalls lie shattered across the paved floor.
Wood splinters and papers litter the room.
B2: Mess Hall
This 30-foot-by-35-foot room houses the prison’s mess hall.
It contains several enormous wooden tables, stained by
years of use and abuse. The room smells musty and rotten.
B3: Kitchen
This large kitchen holds culinary equipment needed to serve
a large number of prisoners. Several dead prison cooks lie
here, their bodies slashed and stabbed repeatedly.
B4: Beggar’s Boxes
These twin corridors hold many small rooms that look
out through rusted bars out onto the small square in
front of the prison. At the base of each set of exterior bars,
a box with a slot for coins sits on the ground. There are 12
small rooms in total. Each wooden box has been smashed
to bits and most of the coins are gone.
B5: Swift Chapel
This 50-foot-by-35 foot room contains the recognizable
trappings of a chapel. An altar dedicated to Abadar rests
upon a raised section near the northern wall.
The chapel holds the supposed bell of obedience.
Selter does a quick survey of the rooms. He finds little to interest him in the indoor market, though he does notice that many of the loose papers look to be pages from a ledger of some sort. Ka looks over the same papers and concludes they are a financial summary for the prison.
Selter notices something odd in the kitchen though, among the bodies of the cooks he finds that the wooden handles scattered about the floor are knife handles devoid of blades.
Kurse contents himself with gathering up the loose coppers from the Beggar's Boxes as the others proceed to the chapel. Turning one over in his fingers, he notices the face is marred by the initials M.A.J.
This 50-foot-by-35 foot room contains the recognizable trappings of a chapel. An altar dedicated to Abadar rests upon a raised section near the northern wall. The chapel holds the bell of obedience and as you lay eyes on it, you suspect that the finely crafted bell is the genuine artifact.
Selter determines the bell is indeed magical, but cannot get a good read on the item. Maedhros notices an inscription on the chapel’s yoke located in the bell tower here that looks to be in Azlanti.
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"Ha I found it Sslipss! You didn't think I could do it, IN YOUR FACE! Oooh a copper piece."
Kurse will eventually find his way to the chappel. "Issn't this bell ssuposst to be magic or ssomething?"
Kurse will use detect magic on the bell. "Doess anyone sspeak what ever that language iss? I have a few sscroll but I wass ssaving them for the blue man group."
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Can one of you determine more of the nature of the Bell?
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Curiousss. One would have expected sssuch asss thossse to sssteal the Bell asss well asss taking the inmatesss for ssslaves. One wondersss if posssibly they did not realize the nature of the Bell. That isss good for usss. It meansss we will not have to haul it back up from the cavesss.
.
Well, let usss be after them. One would presssume we mussst continue the pursssuit behind thisss large door.
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Quiet since the group entered the prison, Kūtayak stalks from room to room, not so much searching for anything but seeming genuinely inquisitive about the nature of the structure. While his eidolon follows behind quietly, the tengu comes to stop in the doorway of the chapel, head tilting from one side to the next. He looks back to Kurse and Selter, then makes his way over to the pair. "Artifice is't not my strong suit," Kūtayak quietly explains as he walks past the two. "Language is, though Ka knows the words well." Looking to the double doors at the end of the market, Kūtayak clicks his beak.
"A moment," Kūtayak offers, reaching down to his side to draw a single Harrow card from his deck. Inspecting it, the birdlike creature offers a shrill sound of displeasure, then tucks it back into the deck box on his belt. "Danger afoot," he intones, "the beating warns us of our weakness." With that, Kūtayak moves to the door with his eidolon swiftly following at his heels.
"Ahead," Kūtayak urges, "lives hang in the balance."
You complete your cataloging of the bell and move onward, Kūtayak's warning still fresh in your minds.
B6: Prison Yard
The prison yard ahead is littered with several dead bodies. Rusted, iron flakes dust the ground around a series of thick gates. Within the keep’s yard, four derro corpses surround an insectile quadruped. Countless barbed crossbow bolts penetrate the strange beast’s hide, and where its head should be, thick ichors moisten the ground around two separated feathered antennae. Dozens of mundane rats feed on the dead and scurry about the yard, they part like a living sea as you approach and flee for cover.
Known for their voracious appetites, it looks as if the Derro brought this 'pet' with them to devour the bars and barriers, but once the rust monster ran out of food, it hungrily turned on its derro handlers.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 4
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As the rats scurry out of the way, Kūtayak is quick to amble into the room with one taloned hand stroking the feathers beneath his beak. As he reaches the middle of the room, his beady black eyes scan over the corpses, but as Ka comes in to check on their condition his curiosities move towards the containers in the back of the chamber. Making a soft trilling sound in the back of his throat, Kūtayak motions to the southern wing where boxes and crates are stacked up. Shūkantayāk heads in that direction, sniffing at the ground and inquisitively watching his surroundings. Meanwhile, Kūtayak heads in the opposite direction and begins rooting around in the stores there.
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Ssselvesss will ssstay here to make sssure no one disssturbsss you while you sssearch thossse cratesss. But be quick. The longer we let the vermin flee, the longer we will have to chassse them.
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Selter and Sithiss move to the next opening to make sure no one is preparing to attack the team. They are specifically looking for anyone hidden in the opening (including the ceiling) or booby traps ready to hurt the unwary.