Miyuki jumps back and leaves the others to do the bloodshed.
Saiya grabs the loot, (never know when those things will come in handy) before leaving the first storage room. As the Vixen kicks open the next store, she's almost as startled to see the centipedes as they are to see her.
Almost.
She steps close to the one the Vixen didn't kick and stabs it with her rapier.
Seeing the creatures, Malarra throws a dagger at one.
The Vixen gives Saiya an admiring grin. "Ain't easy backing ye up from in front o' ye with yer jumping in the fray."
She figures Saiya and/or Erisa will check the room for loot, so the Vixen tries to stay out of the way. She looks down the hallway, the unknown, and then back at the barricade.
"We ain't like those @$$holes, right? We see strangers down the hall, we won't greet 'em with accusations and threats, right? And ye know something? I think there's a way to spot a shapeshifter. I've been thinking about the one we killed.
"She wore a lab coat, and these cute boots with lots o' buckles. I really liked her boots. Pained me to plant one o' mine in her back—and to see her torture a man like that. Didn't think someone could be so heartless, and yet she took the time to pick out her clothes that morning. What shoes would add a bit o' personality to an otherwise dull work uniform?
"But the thing we killed was disguised as whoever that poor woman was. And the outfit was part o' the disguise."
She concludes, "I don't think the shapeshifters can remove their clothes. Not like I'd ask people to strip naked, but certainly removing a lab coat or a shoe ain't a big ask."
Malarra reforms the dagger in her hand again, giving it a twirl.
"I get the sense I have done this before, somehow. Not sure where though. Or why."
So saying she steps over the bodies and looks around the room, seeing what else might be inside.
As she does this, she hears Vi's suggestion. Shrugging, she takes off her hat and tosses it to her. "Satisfied?"
The Vixen catches the hat, and replies with a nervous laugh, "I've no trust issues with any o' ye. I mean, those dicks back there—" Vixs jerks her thumb generally at the barricade. "—want us to bring 'em three dead shapeshifters. Last thing I want's to bash somebody's brains out, then see ''em fall dead without turning to a naked grey guy.
"Not sure if a shapeshifter'll give itself away by vehemently refusing to take its coat off. I just wanna try something other than attacking a person if I've reason to believe it's really a person."
The Vixen tries the hat on. She teases her fiery curls, then tilts the hat at an angle. She holds a pose for two or three seconds, then finally answers Malarra: "Satisfied and envious." She then removes the hat (begrudgingly?) and returns it to its rightful owner.
Erisa comments, "I wonder how tough the janitor around here is if they can keep those things in the broom closet?" she considers, "Or perhaps they just lose a lot of janitors."
She pokes her head in and starts to look around for anything interesting.
While the others collect whatever valuables are in the store room, the Vixen turns to the gentle Miyuki.
"I remember dreaming I carried ye, and ye cast a spell while I sped ye to relative safety. Stupid dream, really, especially since I forgot the best part where I beat the crap out o' the man in the fart cloud. But the ounce o' truth's that ye're really magical, ain't ye? What kind o' magic tricks y'know?"
The fight is over before Jassminder can loose her arrow; she stands down and joins in the search of the room, before resuming her guard. "That was interesting. But let's find the shapeshifters."
Erisa nods down towards the end of the hall, "Looks like we ran out of doors. Time to go past that rubble."
Malarra picks up the necklace. Hm... not the best condition... but might belong to someone. Who knows.
Shrugging to herself, she puts the tarnished silver into her coin pouch on her belt for safe keeping. The rest she leaves where it is.
"Toss me my hat first please. No sense in letting the light reflect off my hair." Once she has it back in place, she ensures that her shadow dagger is ready once more to greet whatever might be behind the rubble and follows the group wordlessly.
Saiya grabs the chain and the manacles, (assuming no one else wants them). Hmmm. What kind of place was this that they had manacles just laying around in a random storeroom? Still, could be useful if we need to capture someone. She considers adding to her new collection of winter blankets, but decides that two is probably enough.
In the meantime she half listens to the conversations going on around her. "Sure, let's keep following this hallway. It's got to go somewhere, right? Maybe even to an exit."
The Vixen heads down the hallway, as long as everyone else is moving with her.
Miyuki takes a deep breath and follows doubleV.
Vix tries to smile sweetly, though she probably comes off as more cocky than caring. But she does care. She sees potential in Miyuki, but the girl is young. A teenager. She can never be brave like Jass (who can, really?), but then she doesn't have to be. The girl only needs to believe she's got some 'big sisters' looking out for her.
The Vixen wonders aloud if Miyuki prefers her speaking Tien. "我應該說你的母語嗎？"
The question is rhetorical, so Vix goes on, "不要害怕。" She offers a smug look that's intended to be reassuring. "那些灰色的男人就無法殺死我們如果我們先殺死他們。"
Don't be afraid.
Those gray guys can't kill us if we kill 'em first.>
Looking at the others Miyuki shrugs.
"For the moment it would be impolite to speak what they can´t understand. Well being close to you makes me feel safer!"
The Vixen beams, somehow vindicated by the words.
"Safer around me? Yeah, I get that a lot. At least once, from this one memory... and no one actually said the phrase 'feel safer'—in any language. But..." Vix replays the inky memory in her mind's eye. "...it's clearly implied.
"Maybe I'll tell ye later. For now I wanna get this hunt overwith so I can clean the centipede gunk off o' me boots."
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You proceed north along the hallway, until it expands into a larger open area. (Google Slides updated with layout.)
The walls between the hall and this office have largely collapsed, exposing debris-cluttered desks, toppled lockers, and several bodies that almost look human.
At least one of the bodies still appears to have some life left in it, although barely. A grandmotherly old human woman in a white dress and hat is lying amidst the rubble, giving the occasional move and moan of pain.
Saiya freezes at the sight of the old woman. White dress and hat...looks like a doctors outfit. And we haven't had much luck with doctors.
She doesn't approach or call out to the woman, but she does look her over carefully. What kind of stains are on her clothes? If she'd injured, how?
The Vixen drops her cocky facade (as well as her brandished board) and rushes to the old woman—even knowing it may be a gray guy luring her. Too worried to cry, the Vixen tells the woman, "Hang on. We can help ye."
She reaches for the hat, in part to help any present healers to better seeher face and gauge the woman's condition—but then she recalls her own thought:
If she's one o' Them, the hat's part o' the head. It won't come off.
With that thought, she does not hesitate to remove the hat.
Jassminder stays back at a safe distance, covering the redhead with her longbow as she watches her search the bodies.
Malarra wordlessly approaches from an angle that will give her a clear throw at the woman should she turn hostile for any reason.
Foolish to rush in like that. Strangers are the enemy. Best to be avoided when possible, approached cautiously when not. Shaking her head at her own musings, she looks around to ensure that nothing else is still alive.
Miyuki goes slowly closer unsure if it is a trap.
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Saiya: The injured woman has a nametag on the breast of her dress saying, "Doctor Latchke". She has dark stains on her white dress that you think are blood, but the fabric of the dress is not torn in those spots. The woman's leg is broken in a gruesome manner, with bone protruding out of her flesh around mid-calf.
"Thank you, thank you..." the woman answers Vixen's words. The hat can be removed so Vixen can better see the woman's face.
Malarra: The bodies of several humans lie amid the debris, and you're pretty sure none of them are alive. You particularly note that the modes of death are different for some of them. Some seem to have been crushed under debris, but others are on top of the debris and instead have sharper wounds, such as from slashing or piercing attacks. Your search also spots three bodies that are not human, but instead gray featureless humanoids with crossbow bolts sticking out of them. Furthermore, you also notice that both the human corpses and the gray corpses have had lengths of flesh deliberately stripped from them, clearly cut long rectangular sections removed as if with a sharp instrument.
Jassminder keeps her bow trained on the apparent 'doctor' - she has noted that the bloodstains on the clothing don't match the injuries. "We met a doctor downstairs who enjoyed making people suffer. It seems from your clothing that you enjoy doing something similar."
"Please, Jass. Li'l bedside manner for the injured?" Pointing out the woman's injury—particularly the bone protrusion—Vix goes on, "The gray thing we fought couldn't hold its guise once we seriously wounded it. She ain't one o' Them, and I don't care how dangerous this place is, I ain't gonna go 'round pointing me weapon at someone who's likely an innocent.
"Granted, I'd look quite ridiculous pointing me boot."
Addressing the woman's injury, the Vixen asks, "Ain't there a healer among us that can tend to this?"
And jerking her thumb at the dead greys, she goes on, "—so I can start lugging bodies. The dicks behind the barricade asked for three. They didn't say we had to kill 'em ourselves."
Malarra holds up her hands, the shadow dagger ready in one of them.
"Quiet, all of you." She points to the strips of flesh gone from all sets of bodies. In a hushed voice she continues.
"Whatever did that was not playing favorites. For some reason, it reminds me of that thing in tattered robes chasing us in our nightmare. Up until now I had been willing to write that off as mass hypnosis or hysteria... something caused by the grey lady. Now... well... best to operate on the premise that the greys and the crossbow nuts are not the alpha predators in this place."
Turning to the injured woman, she adds, "By the way, you wouldn't happen to know where that is, would you?"
"Ye mean the guy in the fart cloud?"
The Vixen doesn't remember whose ass she kicked in the apparently shared dream. She was just about to face him after throwing Miyuki to safety so she and Saiya could flee to safety and live happily ever after. But... if the others saw a man in a tattered outfit, does that mean the Vixen lost the fight in their dreams?
Stupid dream.
"That makes sense," the Vixen replies. "I've a memory o' doing the same with two warring barbarian clans in Numeria. Let 'em deplete each other before picking off what's left o' the winning team."
Funny how that and other memories look hand-drawn while the dream looked like real life. But the Vixen doesn't blurt this realization aloud.
"Seems Mr. Fart McCloud gave us a dream to see how we react when the s&~@ hits. This means he knows I care enough about the innocent that I'll go to 'em. Maybe that's why he left one alive—he knew I'd go to her."
The Vixen looks around, gaze fixing on the yellowish clouds if she can see them from the current room.
"That don't mean I'm oblivious to the possibility o' traps, McCloud! Leave more alive so I can save 'em, and know this: only in yer dreams'll ye beat us! Why don't ye show yerself and see how ye fare in a real fight!"
Saiya frowns at the woman. A trap. That does make sense, why else leave one survivor? Is whoever or whatever laid this trap waiting for everyone to enter the room?
Aloud, she says, "I'm out of healing spells. Vix, why don't you carry her out of there? We can take her back to the barricade; maybe they have some healers." To the woman, she adds, "Also, who are you and how did you survive whatever killed everything else? Did it let you go? What happened here?"
The Vixen winces at the bone protrusion.
She says to the elderly woman, "I'm, uh... I'm gonna move ye. And it's gonna hurt, but it's better than staying here."
As soon as the woman's ready, the Vixen lifts her as gently as she can and carries her down the hall.
She says to others, "Might be a good idea for someone to bring one o' the greys along so the Crossbow Dicks know we're true to our word. I'll make a second trip if ye'd rather at least half of us keep hands on weapons."
Erisa walks into the room with the old woman, looks around, and notices that it's a room with no doors. She sighs, "I guess we need to deal with the folks down the hall behind the barricades. One way or another."
"Let's try to reason with them again. Failing that, I have a spell that can, hopefully, convince a couple of the to not harm us, but I don't think I can affect them all," she adds.
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"No, not at all! I would never enjoy torturing people like that...I'm a doctor, see!" the old woman points to the nametag on the breast of her white dress saying 'Doctor Latchke'.
As Malarra questions the woman about the location, the doctor looks momentarily confused -- why wouldn't you know where you are? -- before answering, "What, you mean this place...you don't know where you are?" She doesn't get any further along that line of answering though, when Saiya's words catch her attention.
"No, no -- I can't go -- I can't go *there*! They're crazy, they'll kill me -- they can change their shape, they're not who they look like, I can't go there, I can't go there, I can't --" the woman blurts out hysterically at the suggestion of going back to the barricade. Saiya's further questions don't evoke an answer, as the woman seems quite distraught now and preoccupied with just the idea of the barricade and clearly not wanting to go there. She keeps on babbling, "No...not there!" over and over again.
Lifting the woman poses no problem to Vixen.
Jassminder glares at the redheaded "Vixen" and the drow, before focusing her ire on the shapechanger. "Enough babbling. Gods, you need to learn the benefit of silence. And caution."
She looses her arrow at the shapeshifter.
She draws another arrow and nocks it to her bow. "I have more where that came from. Come on - reveal yourself. Or die in disguise. It's all one to me."
Saiya had already been pretty sure this was a trap; she just hadn’t been sure who set it. The woman's refusal to go back to the barricade combined with her refusal to answer questions made her an extremely likely suspect.
”The guys back there are paranoid as hell, but they aren’t murderers. So if it’s a choice between them and an old woman who miraculously survived a massacre that killed everyone else nearby and who is refusing to answer questions about how and who just so happens to be dressed exactly the same as the shapeshifter downstairs, I’m gonna go with the barricade people.”
Saiya draws her rapier. ”And if I’m wrong, that would be unfortunate, I don’t think I’m the kind of person to enjoying murdering an old woman, but unless you have a really good explanation and offer it right now I’ll just have to take that risk.”
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Jass' roll is *just* enough to hit, thanks to Precise Shot which saves the day! It's a hit, a palpable hit, and the crowd goes wild! The old woman lets out a squeal of pain as the arrow sinks right into her shoulder, and she recoils backwards.
When Saiya speaks and draws her rapier, the woman fixes her eyes on the fetchling with a cold, determined stare. "Fine. Have it your way, then!" she hisses angrily, and her form starts to waver. Her shape changes like flowing liquid, becoming a gray featureless humanoid just like your torturer downstairs and the three dead bodies in this room.
Saiya, Malarra and Jass may take a combat turn. Others may only fluff pose at the moment.
"Wait, ye mean ye used the same name tag as the other fake doctor? What a lame disguise!"
Malarra attempts to hit the shapeshifter with her dagger, but has to throw wide in order not to hit Vix. "Indeed. We know not where this is. The last one of you didn't survive long enough to tell us much more than blood filled screams."
The dagger fades into the shadows of the rubble, like a blob of ink. Around her hands forms a longer rapier as the drow takes a step forward. "Perhaps you will last longer. Now, where are we?"
Saiya moves forward and tries to stab the shapeshifter with her rapier, but she trips on the rubble and her strike goes wide.
Damn it!
Now that she has a humanoid in front of her Miyuki again tries to daze it!
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Vixen was the closest to the creature since she was trying to pick it up, so the enemy attacks her with two vicious claw attacks.
18 Malarra - miss
16 Saiya - miss
13 Jass - PENDING
12 Enemy - 9hp dmg to Vixen
NEW ROUND
08 Miyuki - daze fails
03 Erisa
01 Vixen
18 Malarra
16 Saiya
13 Jass
12 Enemy
Everyone except Miyuki (who took her turn early) may act. Jass has two rounds of actions, since the first round action is still pending.
Miyuki knows that the Daze didn't work because the creature does not qualify as "humanoid" type.
Erisa moves up behind Vixen and casts Guidance on her, "Here's a little luck to help."
The Vixen strikes back!
"Savor the hit," she says. "I'm still gonna live to watch ye die."
She backs off five feet.
Malarra circles around Vixen's back to approach the grey from side opposite of Saiya. Getting close she attempts to thrust the point into the creature's abdomen.
"What is the matter, Doc? Can you not speak in this form? I asked where are we. Do you not know either?"
Saiya snarls and jabs at the shapeshifter again. Now that she's able to plant her feet, her thrust is much more sure...although still not particularly effective.
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08 Miyuki - daze fails
03 Erisa - Guidance on Vixen
01 Vixen - hits for 10hp
18 Malarra - misses
16 Saiya - hits for 2hp
13 Jass - PENDING
12 Enemy:
The enemy attacks again with two vicious claw attacks. It first tries to finish off Vixen...
...and then next goes after the other one that has managed to injure it, that being Saiya...
I believe that may actually take two of your melee attackers off the table. :)
Jass has two pending rounds to take.
Everyone may act, including Jass with three rounds' worth of actions.
If you go down, make sure to calculate what negative hit points you are at, roll for stabilize, and keep adding the -1hp every round if you don't stabilize.
You have dealt a total of 16hp damage to the creature. (4 Jass + 10 Vix + 2 Saiya)