Xeria barks over to Ripper who responds. The small dino weaves in and amongst the underbrush moving closer to the ramp up to the camp. Xeria flies up and over to the camp, keeping herself about 15' off the ground and casts a spell at the bandits.
Gorthug watched everything with a blank stare. He stood next to Cindy, unmoving. Nobody had told him to fight, and he didn’t see any bears. Absent an order, of a spark of life, time (and common sense) has little meaning.
"Get up here and fight, everybody. I can't decapitate them all on my own!" Tina shouts at the rest of the group. She adds, "Oh, sorry, Goldslip, this might make it a touch difficult for you," As she casts on the pebble, and drops it onto the ground near the bandit leader.
"Get up here and fight, everybody. I can't decapitate them all on my own!"
Both surprised bandits manage to dodge the worst of Snowball's puff of snowflakes and quickly regroup, scrambling to surround the young dragon and stabbing at her with spears. Two of them find home! (13 piercing damage in two hits).
The bandit leader looks around bewildered and shouts out "Crazy monsters are attacking us! Not bears!" From here, you notice that he is holding some sort of very nice longbow in one hand and a wand in the other. He stows the wand quickly and fires an arrow very hard at Piedmontina. Two more bandits rush over to her and jab with their spears. But Piedmontina dodges all incoming attacks in her tiny form. The bandit leader, whose description matches Black Lew, narrows his eyes.
Cindy slowly starts up the hill towards the fight, feeling like her legs are way too short to deal with brush and slopes.
The cloaked form that was Gorthug came out of the woods, following behind Cindy. His features were still covered, but the large axe was easily visible in his hands. Wordlessly he ambled towards the bandits.
"Oh no..." Goldslip murmurs. "We didn't need to kill them all before, but now we'll have no choice."
Goldslip starts moving--she goes as fast as she can considering both the steep slope and the thick undergrowth she's fighting against, and it's not very fast at all.
Many of the slower denizens of the Dungeon of Last Hill make up this hill that has no particular cardinal designation but the going is slow with all of the brush ending in a steep slope to boot!
Xeria barks over to Ripper who responds. The small dino weaves in and amongst the underbrush moving closer to the ramp up to the camp. Xeria flies up and over to the camp, keeping herself about 15' off the ground and casts a spell at the bandits.
"Bah,"Tina exclaims, "I hate doing this. I should be far away from here." She reaches out to the leader, and taps him with her undead hands, turning visible as she does so.
The bandit leader is overwhelmed by something from the terrifying little undead!
Snowball shrieks in pain and then lashes out before retreating into the air.
"Boo." Tina whispers, as she suddenly appears, seemingly knocking the bandit leader dead with a single touch.
Three bandits stab at Snowball as she flies up into the air but only one lands a blow, heavy though it may be (11 damage). The bandits' eyes go wide when the tiny, undead Tina appears, which you all find unsettling as well. Thankfully, you've already been exposed to Tina today and resist the fear. Only one of the bandits is terrified of Tina and he runs off toward the east, cursing about crazy monsters. Two of the bandits move toward the approaching monsters and stab at Gorthug but only one connects (8 piercing dam before DR). Over by Tina, one bandit, cursing "Stupid dodgy thing!" reaches out and snatches Tina out of the air. The other stabs at her but can't hit her without hitting his partner's hand.
Snowball begins flying in a very large circle, eyeing the bandits. Her wounds are already visibly closing due to the magic that mutated her.
Cindy finally makes it to the top of the hill, and seeing Tina struggling in a bandit's hand, wants to clear the path so others can help. She glares at the two bandits in front of her and yells "Go to sleep so we can help our friend, darnit!"
The bandit stabbed at Gorthug, but he felt nothing. The zombified orc groaned as it swung it’s axe back.
Gorthug, however, tripped on his own cloak. He barely kept to his feet.
One of the bandits falls prone as Xeria's spell trips him.
Bob tries to leap on the bandit grappling Tina but the bandit dodges out of the way.
Goldslip continues her slow approach up the hillside. Being not far from the battle anymore she pauses here and reaches out in Gorthug's direction. "You'll be okay, Gorthug," she says as she links her life force to him.
Tina looks straight into the eyes of the bandit who has grasped her, and says, "Unhand me, and you might just live." She then charges her body with negative energy.
Xeria sees that Tina is in the clutches of an enormous human and decides to bring him down a peg or two. She casts a spell at the bandit holding Tina.
Two of the bandits stab at Cindy as she is casting her spell and one of them jabs her quite hard, damaging the porcelain of her leg!
Tina zaps one of the bandits hard with her nasty hand. He shouts in surprise then grits his teeth in anger. Cindy's spell is interrupted while Xeria begins casting a spell.
The bandit holding Tina manages to grip her more tightly entirely within his fist (Tina is pinned!). The prone bandit yelps in surprise at Bob's appearance in the fray and stands up (provoking from Tina or Bob if either have 5 ft reach) and stabs at Bob, hitting him hard (7 piercing before DR), though he has no idea what he is fighting and curses when his spear begins dissolving slightly.
The two bandits by Gorthug shake their head in disgust as it becomes apparent they are fighting some sort of bizarre... abomination. One grunts to the other "This is worse than what happened with that butcher's daughter..." but they stab in unison and strike Gorthug two solid blows (7 and 6 piercing before DR).
As the bandits stabbed Gorthug, they ripped away much of his cloak. Revealing a horrific zombified orc.
The shock left the first bandit standing still, even as the massive, blunt axe came down. It hit the bandit squarely atop the head. It didn’t cut so much as it crushed. The orc then tried to swat away the second.
Which ended up being little more than the waving of a (now) bloody hand.
Snowball continues flying (relatively silently) in a wide arc, finally coming around from the other direction.
With one mighty blow, Gorthug kills one of the bandits in front of him!
Again, the bandit dodges Bob's leap! "What in the Abyss is this thing and why does it keep leaping ten times its height at my face!?" the bandit complains as he prepares to stab Bob again.
Tina attempts to wriggle free of her captor. "I've no good reason to destroy you, but you are annoying me enough that I'm considering it."
Most of the damage to Gorthug is repaired--similar injuries briefly appear on Goldslip's body, but she heals quickly, as well.
Goldslip completes her ascent of the hillside, at last!
After feeling her spell fizzle when she was crunched by the bandit, Cindy steps to the side, trying to figure out what to do next.
Tina barely escapes the bandit's grasp!
Tina zips into the air, hovering about 10 feet above the bandit's head.
Ripper finally makes it up to the top of the hill and attacks the first bandit she sees.
+
Xeria finishes casting her spell and unleashes it on the bandit near the one that was holding Tina.
The other bandit stabs at Tina as she flies up but he misses horribly. Ripper rushes up the hill and takes a nasty bite out of one of the bandit's, who yelps in pain and curses "What is going ON!!??" as he sees another addition to the hostile menagerie materialize. He stabs Goldslip in anger (4 damage) before stepping back carefully. The two other bandits stab at Bob in anger as Tina has escaped them, striking him twice and hard (4 and 9 damage to Bob).
As the lifelink attached to him, Gorthug’s eyes flared open.
He raised his axe, but hesitated, confusion written on his face. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Or when it was. Everything was hazy. There was something blurry in front of him. It looked like a human, but he wasn’t sure. Gorthug lowered the axe, as he saw the one thing that was clear. Goldslip.
The figure was in his way. He slapped it away so he could see the Nixie better.
Snowball finally flies in close enough. She expels a blast of ice breath that engulfs three of the bandits as she passes by.
Shortly after, she lands next to Cindy.
"Meat?" she asks her friend while jerking her head towards a nearby bandit corpse.
Goldslip is shocked as the bandit strikes her, though her fey resilience prevents any pain or damage from the minor blow. She had done nothing to harm this man, yet he attacked her...
"You should have run like the other one."
She then casts bless.
The bandit that Bob is attacking proves very dodgy! He dodges the worst of Snowball's breath then also dodges Bob's leap! It's unbelievable! The other bandit, however, does less well and is blasted by Snowball.
Ripper tears into the bandit fully this time.
+
+
Xeria adds an acid splash to the mix.
The bandit resists Xeria's spell.