For now the rats-with-exposed-brains keep their distance. Hiding in the nearby rubble.
"Rats?" Nik asks, completely uncaring about Savi's nudity.
He looks where she's pointing and catches a glimpse of exposed brain.
"Ugh, cranium rats."
He wrinkles his nose.
"Ehh, I think we can probably ignore the rats or negotiate with 'em. Hopefully they aren't in a pack big enough to be psychic. Huh. Unless- if they're psychic enough to know whats in the box and that's why they're here. Uh... they might pick a fight over the box. And if they do, that means they're very dangerous..."
"Did they eat your clothes?" Jek asks unsure if he's joking.
Baraxx looks over fascinated at these cranium rat things.
”How do they taste?”
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Savi happily accepts her sleeves from Lunk (who apparently fished them out of her bottle). She puts on one translucent sleeve…
“No, they didn’t eat… why? Did rats eat Bedu’s clothes?”
When she puts on the other sleeve, a blue backless minidress and matching jazzercise leg-warmers (but no underwear) cover her nude form.
“No, they don’t taste… oh, yuck, Baraxx. Just no. No, not just no. No and yuck.”
Rinika glances over at Baraxx. "I don't suggest trying them."
Then she crouches down and wiggles her butt a little bit in anticipation of hunting some rats.
After muttering to himself about rats and wondering if they'll attack after the box is opened, Nik decides to just open it himself.
Nik opens the box with some effort and finds a desiccated hairless cat napping within. It perks its head up regarding Nik with it's piercing eyes and bounds out of the box with strange jerky motions. It pads up to Nik and gives him a full body push against his legs.
Did you guess it was a Migrus Locker?
The cat swivels jerkily towards the rubble with the cranium rats and growls low, it's about to pounce. The rats swarm out of the hidden spaces in the rubble at least 75 in all.
Initiative
Round 1
"A cat in a box...?" Nik wonders aloud before turning to see the rats gathering.
Crap crap crap that's a lot of 'em!
"Uh oh-" he explains as he starts casting Fireball.
before this post
Items with limited uses per day
. 3/3 Lesser Rod of Metamagic, Extend
Supernatural Abilities
. (1 at a time) Corpse Companion
. 11/11 rounds Life Sight (10' range blindsight (to detect and differentiate between living and undead creatures only))
. 10/10 Power Over Undead (30' burst; DC 19 will)
Spell-like Abilities
. 10/10 Bolster (Undead) (+3 profane on attacks and saves; 1 temp hp/HD; +2 turn resistance; 5 round duration)
. 1/1 Pyrotechnics (DC 14)
Spells Prepared:
. 6th (2+1/day) Curse, Major (DC 23) (S), Disintegrate (DC 23), Disintegrate (DC 23)
. 5th (3+1/day) Possession (S), Undead Anatomy II, Shadow Evocation, Wall of Force
. 4th (4+1/day) Enervation (S), Black Tentacles, Dimension Door, Flaming Sphere, Greater (DC 22; +1 CL), Summon Monster 4
. 3rd (6+1/day) Vampiric Touch (S), Appearance of Life (DC 20), Fireball (DC 20), Fly, Haste, Haste, Tiny Hut
. 2nd (6+1/day) Command Undead (DC 19) (S), Blur, Flaming Sphere (DC 20; +1 CL), Glitterdust (DC 19), Levitate, Mirror Image, Resist Energy (+1 CL)
. 1st (6+1/day) Ray of Enfeeblement (DC 18) (S), Feather Fall, Grease (DC 18), Infernal Healing, Infernal Healing, Infernal Healing, Warp Sense (+1 CL)
. cantrips (at will) Detect Magic (+1 CL), Ghost Sound (DC 15), Mending (+1 CL), Prestidigitation
The spell twists and distorts. Some of the cranium rats are burned to char, making lumps of coal where they stood and sending the foul smell of burnt hair into the air. One is badly burned but alive. The rest are completely unharmed.
The migrus leaps at the burned rat and rakes its claws at it get it into its grips.
After Lunk casts Haste, Savi strikes, then flies back to him.
Jek takes a Fungal Stun Vial from his bandolier and throws it at the middle of the cranium rats.
Rinika casts Aura of Doom and wiggles her bum in anticipation, crouched and ready to pounce with a feral smile across her face.
Savi slices a single rat on her katana hot dog style.
The rats seem undeterred by Jek's and Rinika's strategies. They swarm over the migrus paying it little heed. A wave of mental static overcomes the area either giving you a splitting headache or become entirely insensate.
Rinika casts a spell and the shadows surrounding her take on a gnawing hunger. Vampiric Shadow Shield.
Her eyes roll back in her head for half a second as her spot begins to channel power directly from the negative energy plane, sending it careening across her with renewed Vigor.
Then she moves up to the rats.
Grinning a wide grin now that something more interesting was finally happening, Baraxx leaps into the air and flys over the rats, kinetic blade already forming in his hand.
Nik, having never really liked the Sensates in the first place, is entirely insensate.
Baraxx's earthen whip kills a large number of the rats and the rest of them scatter, no doubt plummeting in intelligence to nothing more than normal rats.
The migrus collapses from numerous rat bits, it still clutches the one it killed in a a death grip.
Blade Whirlwind
Element universal; Type form infusion; Level 5; Burn 3
Prerequisite kinetic blade
Associated Blasts any
Saving Throw none
You create a kinetic blade and swing it in an arc around you, making a single attack against all foes within reach as if with kinetic blade. If the result is a critical threat, roll to confirm the critical hit against only the first target you hit. The blade vanishes instantly after the whirlwind.
Lunk is just gonna try not to pee himself. He. Does. Not. Move.
Savi swords another rat when she can safely not get chopped to bits by Baraxx’s attack.
And if he gets ‘em all… one less thing.
Swooping over the swarm, his familiar earthen blade held low Baraxx seems to blur reality as he turns into a tornado of whirling blade and flying rat parts.
When its all said and done and the pieces have fallen to the ground, he stands amongst the wreckage and fleeing rats with a big toothy grin.
"Nice little workout. You sure these things aren't good to eat? There's gotta be a cut or two around here still usable."
Looking over at the wizard and his new friend, "So... this was all about another cat? What's the box for anyway? What's this cat mean? Is this a typical night in this city? Seems fun!"
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Jek drops his shield and stands expressionless with Nik unable to cringe or tell Baraxx that there's better food everywhere in Sigil.
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Rinika is quite impressed watching the display of carnage, but she turns her nose up again at the mention of eating the results.
"If you must have streetmeat, there's a decent stand about 3 blocks over. These are too...gooey."
She walks over to Jek and holds his shield up to him as she continues to list other nearby streetmeat vendors along with speculation about what their meats might actually be. She absent-mindedly pokes Jek with the edge of the shield until he eventually gets better and takes it.
Nik comes to at about the same time, and while Jek picks his stuff back up, Nik hefts his crossbow and checks for scuff marks.
"Shamblers, grab the box and follow me."
The box... hmmmm...
Finally, Nik remembers a thing he'd been meaning to ask about.
"Hey Rinika, what's 'the box'?" he asks as soon as she takes a pause for breath in-between descriptions and suppositions.
Baraxx flicks a few rat pits off of his armor with his tail while listening to Rinika's extensive list of street vendors. "Not really hungry, just curious. Hate to be wasteful." he answers, then pays attention to their strange necromancer and echos his question.
"Yeah, what's with this box?"
"Not 'this box'." Nik interjects.
"...or- at least I don't think it's this box? 'the box'." Nik explains.
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Rinika stares at the Migrus locker for a moment, and its not quite clear if she heard the conversation.
A shiver cascades across her fur and she looks to between Nik and Baraxx. "Lets grab some food and find a place to sit and drink. Where all of us can sit and drink. And I'll...I'll tell you about the Box."
She'll steer everyone to a place far, far outside of Doomer territory for this conversation.
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Baraxx shrugs and grins, ”Second best idea I’ve heard today! First was those rat things decision to give me a workout, short as it was.” he replies cheerfully as he trundles along with the group, tail swishing and huge grin on his face.
“Well, going to dinner covered in spattered vermin is the second worst idea.”
Savi uses Prestidigitation to clean bits of rat off of Baraxx (and anyone else who’s a mess).
Jek takes hold of his shield and gives Rinika a nod of approval.
"Heh, I know what you mean." Jek grins at Baraxx. "Luckily, being a courier is an amazing and constant workout. If you'd like to carry some of this, all you have to do is ask."
Nik shrugs.
"Or you can just get shamblers to carry stuff for you."
He looks between the shamblers to make sure they're still following and then back to Rinika to make sure he is still following.
"Too bad those rats are only great as a team. Maybe next shambler I make should be something that replaces horsington." Nik wonders aloud on the way to the next eatery.
The nearest street vendor
Just a few feet away from the Office of Vermin Control in the Hive Ward you find a berk named Creeden. This foul-looking man is standing hawking his wares. He carries a long wooden pole; dozens of skinned and cooked rats dangle from it. As he speaks, he gestures to them with a broad filth encrusted hand, smiling a yellowed, snaggle-toothed grin all the while. ”Oye, cutter, ‘ow, ye doin’ there? Wot sorta deeelicious rasties is ye interested in this fine day?”
"My friend we are quite satiated as we have just killed more rats than our bellies have room for. Bur for a mere 5 gold pieces, I'd be more than happy to tell you where you can find a whole cartload of fresh rat corpses, still warm!"
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Creeden frowns and waves them on. Clearly the poor sod doesn't have a clipped copper to his name.
The party trudges to their usual hangout The Poor Sod's Tavern. Ariel serves in her usual airy fashion. She brings Jek a pile of sod, a type of fescue purportedly found only in a remote part of Mount Celestia. Is that bit of chant is just screed or if Vorn going to bizarre lengths to increase the variety of sod he offers? It's quite tangy almost causing Jek's lips to pucker.
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Baraxx barks in laughter at Creednen's frown and gives him the location of the rat massacre anyway, to the best of his ability.
"Gotta say, them rats be chopped pretty good though, hope you can make do with all the bits and bobs."
As the crew gets to Poor Sod's the half-fiend's grin widens even more, "I like this place." he comments as they enter.
Upon his eventual turn to order a drink, he asks for whiskey .
Rinika begins to order when her Spot zooms across her face. "An aCIDER ANd a pot of whatever stewing." She frowns, considering the conversation to come. "And a whiskey."
Man, that guy with the rats makes me really happy that I don't get hungry these days. Almost as happy as the walk back.
After giving their orders and finding a table, Nik looks expectantly at Rinika.
Comforted by his usual spot at his usual booth, Jek does his best to keep the tanginess at bay by spacing out each bite of the eclectic fescue.
"You guys have got to try this... Vorn's outdone himself."
Baraxx frowns at the sod for a moment, then answers "Uh, no thanks. I'm going to need to order whatever that meat is cooking right there." he adds before suiting task to words and ordering cooked meat to go with his whiskey.
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Rinika accepts a few sprigs of the fescue and absentmindedly chews on it. As soon as her drinks arrive, she downs the whiskey in two gulps and then frowns quizzically at the cider before shrugging and taking an exploratory sip. She grimaces but continues to sip. "Ew, too sweet. Okay. So you wanna know about the Box. Well, I can't really tell you the why, or the how, but I can tell you the what."
She takes a drink and sighs, but doesn't continue until she scans the bar for any Doomguard agents. Then she begins her story in a conspirationally low voice. "When I was still pretty small, I was abducted from the village I lived in. I barely remember it now. And when I woke up, I was in a box. It wasn't much bigger than a coffin. Pitch black inside. And every now and then, it was filled with..pain. Hurt. That same feeling that we all felt, or at least I felt, in that temple in the negative energy plane. It started slow, and short, but eventually it would last days, maybe weeks. It was really hard to tell. I had no way of keeping track of time, but I'm sure I was in there for years. Eventually I found that I was able to see in there, not that there was much to see. The weird negative field stopped hurting so much. And this," She motioned to her Spot, which she concentrated for a moment to keep on her cheek, "appeared after what must have been the longest, strongest exposure to the field yet. It started small, but it grew."
"I didn't have any company while I was in there, but I could hear what was going on outside. Lots of magical research, most of it was far beyond my understanding but I started to pick things up. While there were a number of different voices over the years, one was almost omnipresent. The others referred to him as Schrodinger. I never did see him but I would recognize the voice anywhere."
"I went through a lot in there. Fearing for my life, lamenting my old life, raging against the injustice of it all, accepting my fate. Eventually, after I found myself able to see, after everything that I'd learned about planar magic, negative energy, and the mystical bonds that linked them, I started to push the limits of the Box. After months of working, I managed to get a panel open. It didn't give me a way out, but it got me to some of the mechanisms that bombarded me. I started tinkering. I thought I'd figured out how they worked. Eventually I was able to supercharge one of the emitters, which I thought would..."
She gulps down more cider and scowls. "Well, it surprised me. The next time the field fired up, something resonated and it tore open a gate. I popped out into Sigil, and had...a lot to learn. I met Jek not long after." She shoots Jek a tight smile, and looks around for any reactions or questions.
Baraxx listens with some interest and even some ... sympathy? While Rinika talks.
When she's finished he looks strangely subdued as he responds slowly.
"That reminds me of .. the hole. I was raised for a single purpose, fodder for the Blood War. A whole town, or maybe a camp is more apt, devoted to raising half bloods to go to war. We fight, its good, we die, our corrupted souls just get sent back to the grinder. Overall, pretty fun, lots of stuff to fight and kill, rarely boring.
But, when I was a little one, if we screwed up only a little, bad screw ups were usually fatal and the screwup became lunch, we got put in the hole for a while. It was a, well, it was a hole, that was just barely big enough to get forced into, but not enough to move at all. If we were lucky they put us in feet first, but we weren't usually lucky. Not fun.
I liked the fighting pit more. Punishment that was also reward." he finishes with a little bit of a grin and a far away look.
Shaking himself out of memory, he drains his glass, and orders more whiskey, upbeat and smiling once again. "Oh, and more of that roasted meat!"
"Suddenly Sarenrae doesn't sound so bad." Nik mutters into his ale as he takes another sip.
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Jek takes a deep drink.
"That's a lot to take in..."
He gestures to keep the drinks and sod coming.
"The worst stuff I've seen... well... you've seen it too. I'm here because I didn't want to stay in my herd. The chief's my dad, and my brother's next. I didn't want to be a spare or even a leader. I knew a guy who used to be a courier, and that sounded better... so here I am. It all worked out though. I even have my own little piece of heaven." He looks proudly at his fescue, tears off a chunk of sod, and slides it to Rinika.
A dark look passes over Rinika's face as she looks to Baraxx. "You ever thought about going back to those pits and killing the ones who threw you Hole?"
She takes a sip and gnaws on the fescue.
Her next words come out as barely a whisper. "I know where to find Schrodinger. He's a high ranking Doomguard. I nearly saw him once, before he disappeared. I'm getting close, so close I can feel it sometimes." She balls one paw into a strained fist, and her Spot floods into it, showing dessicated muscles tensing.
"And when I get to him..." She trails off, leaving her vengeance to the imagination.
"I can make a new friend?" Nik suggests, perking up.
Baraxx grunts over his whiskey, "Sometimes, sure, but there are plenty of Baatezu to take it out on. And even if I do they'll just come back eventually. I think. That's what they said about us anyway." he mumbles, then fades as the vengeful catgirl continues.
"So, lets go kill him. What's a Doomguard? They fight well? Can I kill a bunch of them?" he ends on a hopeful note.
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Cagers know that with perhaps the exception of the Harmonium or Mercykillers, the Doomguard are the best armed faction in Sigil. They make a sizable chunk of the weapons in Sigil, know how to use them, and like using them. Their spellslingers tend towards the destructive side of things. And Rinka knows they are working on a WMD for the Blood War. So even the fiends acknowledge their expertise.
The random Doomguard may not pose more of a threat than a trained but uninspired swordsman. But the high-ups are artists of the highest caliber of causing death, decay, and destruction.
Rinika also knows in addition to the Armory in Sigil, they maintain 4 fortresses on each of the quasi-elemental planes close to the negative energy plane. She has heard rumors that portals exists to these towers in the Armory but the location and keys are kept dark.
Rinika looks at Baraxx and pokes herself in the chest with a thumb. "He outranks me. By a lot. And yeah, the Armory is probably one of the most dangerous places to attack in all of Sigil. Everyone is armed, everyone can fight, and everyone knows that their time is going to going to come sooner or later so they won't much fret over their own lives. We'd need an army to fight everyone."
She scratches her hair thoughtfully. Her tone seems to indicate that she's more worried about the chances of being killed than she is about killing a bunch of her fellow Doomguard.