Maura nods, frowning, as she heads up Iris Hill with the other.
She seems like she might be about to try speaking to the guard when Vix kicks the door. "Well, if we were trying to convince them that we weren't thugs, I think kicking the door down probably wasn't the best course of action."
“Or maybe they’re thugs with intent to harm the lady o’ the house. Something ain’t right about the discrepancy between their words and their actions.”
Maura just shakes her head. "It matters little now."
"Wait, what?" Saiya had been lurking behind, still perfectly happy to let the talky-people do what talky-people did best, when the Vixen suddenly kicked the door. She was pretty sure she'd heard the guards draw weapons, but they did have Ci Ci in a bad mood right outside. She'd draw her weapon too. "Did I miss something?"
As Vix explains her reasoning, Saiya resists the urge to pound her head against the nearest wall. "So, either we're about to heroically rescue Melisenn from a horrible fate, or we're all about to die because we just picked a fight with every guard in Thrushmoor. Wonderful."
Vixen kicks the door in to the surprise of everyone around her. Large splinters of wood are flung in every direction and the loud can be heard from miles around. The debris gets in your face and eyes while the concussive wave knocks the wind out of you. Vixen barely registers the poison coated pin prick of a needle sticking in her cheek as she falls over stunned and unconscious. Only Saiya and one of the guards manage to recover from the onslaught but they are both left shaken by the sudden violence.
The guards while clad in breastplate armor and weilding fine battle axes have a decidedly uncivilized air to them. Their eyes are a piercing red color. The third individual wears a yellow robe that is very similar to the robe worn in her recent vision.
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Saiya coughs. Looks at Vix on the floor. The others all stunned by the impact. The very large battleaxe being wielded by the guard in front of her.
"Well f&$% me."
On the bright side, that yellow robe might mean that Vix had the right idea about the guards being bad people. Although she was pretty sure they were telling the truth about being guards. They certainly matched the description of the 'red-eyed foreigners' Melisenn had hired.
On the less bright side, she was effectively alone facing someone whose weapon was about as big as she was. Not her favorite situation.
"Hey there big guy." She gives the guard her most winning smile. (Which isn't particularly winning, but she can try.) "Real sorry about the mess, but there's no need for that axe, is there? I'm not going to hurt you."
Saiya gets a good look at the guards, in addition to the red eyes they have filed their teeth down to points, they sport disturbing red tattoos on their faces. She realizes they are an obscure humanoid native to the Shackles. She recalls an account of a former sailor who was taken along with the rest of his ship’s crew. He escaped but the other sailors were eaten alive as sacrifices to their goddess. The Kuru grow stronger after eating flesh from a sentient creature.
The guard cocks his head as he steps around the stunned Vixen. Saiya gets the impression he didn’t understand a word she said. The swing with his battleaxe is hesitant so Saiya easily maneuvers out of the way.
Ci Ci recovers from the blast and focuses on the vicious cannibals.
She extends her hands in a fan-like shape at the one nearest to her.
"Burrnn, you pointy-toothed prig!"
Maura stands, shaking her head and mouthing a strange word as she does.
As her eyes finally focus and hearing comes back, she notes the man in the yellow robes that match those of her vision. Well... at least we are in the correct place to solve that mystery, I suppose. Turning to the guard just getting up, she focuses her thoughts on his essence. "Yes... strong... you will do nicely..."
As she says this she attempts to pull some of it away and into herself.
Saiya sighs and draws her sword. "Worth a try I suppose." She's slightly worried about how not worried she is about the sharp object that came very close to her skull. Bad sign. I'm getting far too used to this.
Something to think about later, when she's not fighting for her life.
She returns the guard's slash with one of her own, far less hesitant.
The Vixen soundly sleeps through all the commotion.
As Ci Ci concentrates on forming the spell in her mind the Kuru guard brings his axe to bear against the sorceress. Ci Ci fights through the pain, still managing to blast a gout of flame in front of her.[/dice]
Flesh is blackened and charred while the guard’s breastplate monetarily grows red with heat. It would almost smell like bacon frying in a pan if you didn’t know any better. Saiya also stabs the cannibal guard leaving a wound that spurts blood. However he still fights on.
The cultist barks some orders in a language no one understands and the guards carefully maneuver closer. One faces off against Saiya and hacks into the investigator’s chest while trying to bite her shoulder. The guard’s teeth are unable to penetrate the kayal’s hide armor but the battleaxe does its job. Ci Ci manages to side step her opponent’s battleaxe but he lunges again with his mouth tearing off a chunk of her forearm and swallowing the bloody flesh.
The cultist casts a protective ward, shield of faith, and taunts you, ”You will feed the monuments to He Who Shall Not Be Named.”
Ci Ci hisses and jumps back from the ripping pain of the creature's bite
She focuses her anger and rage, seeking to pour it out upon the vicious cannibal. She fans out her hands again.
"Burrnn, little piggy, burrnn!"
The kuru threatening Saiya noticeably moves slower and with more effort as Maura drains the energy from him and bolsters herself. The gout of flame Ci Ci expels from her hands reduces the other kuru into a useless pile of charred meat.
Saiya gasps as the kuru manages to get through her guard, and the pain noticeably throws off her retaliatory swing. It doesn't completely distract her from noticing the caster in the back, and she takes a few steps backward to get out of his line of sight. (Which will also hopefully force the kuru to step into Ci Ci's range for burning him alive.)
The pain also doesn't detract from her natural sarcasm.
"It's always 'He Who Shall Not Be Named' with your type, isn't it? Don't want to admit you're worshipping a guy named Bob?"
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The cultist answers Saiya's retort with a rapier to her gut. While the kuru tries for revenge against Ci Ci.
Ci Ci shuffles out of the kuru's reach , then draws upon a part of her power the sudden chaos of combat awakened from her amnesia.
"Flash!" she cries, extending her hand towards the area between the kuru and the yellow-robed figure
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Saiya coughs up some blood even as the smirk remains on her face. It hurts, and there's a part of her brain screaming that this isn't normal, she shouldn't be used to this. But honestly, compared to the Tatterman, this was nothing. Just a shell of a man worshipping a god he couldn't possibly understand.
"Hit a nerve there, did I? Sorry, I shouldn't have called your god Bob. He's probably more of a Dick."
Ci Ci and Maura can handle the kuru. She's got other fish to fry.
Maura takes a quick step back from the laboring brute. "Yes, you were strong. Now... show me where you are weak... show me what trauma made you pick this path..."
So saying she begins probing the hulking guard's mind, looking for vulnerabilities. As she does so she takes a kettle from her robe, gripping it by the handle.
The Vixen remains in her dreamless sleep.
Ci Ci's flash of light exposes the evil of the guard by burning some of their flesh away. They both manage to shield their eyes just in time, giving Saiya a precious second to stab the distracted cultist.
Maura tries to find a way into a vulnerable part of the guard's mind but finds it dense and thick with bloody sludge, difficult to move or harm. She doesn't find what she's looking for but her intrusion is enough to give him a raging migraine.
The guard tired and squinting still manages to bash through Ci Ci's magical protections carving out delicate flesh and consuming it.
The cultist presents a gold three armed triskelion and the area is washed with negative energy, but it only saps a tiny bit of life from everyone.
Ci Ci jumps back again , starting to feel the situation turn desperate.
She draws upon her power focusing it into the advancing brute, trying to heat his body until the tallow under his skin ignites.
"Burn, motherf--ker, burrnn!" she cries in an exhortation of anger and pain.
“Khk,” Vix snores sharply as the wave of negative energy washes over her.
Maura winces slightly as the wave of negativity hits her. "Oh, alright... you want to feel my thoughts, here they are." As she says this, she gives the yellow robed cultist a glare, focusing her thoughts on his mind and defenses.
As she finishes her thoughts, she moves to get out of the way of her flame obsessed friend as she attempts to burn the brute to a crisp.
Saiya's eyes flick briefly to the kuru. It's definitely doing more damage than the cultist, (whose negative energy barely tickled), but it also seems to be burning rather spectacularly.
Hoping she's not making the wrong choice, she continues to focus on the cultist. He has to be close to dead by now. He has to be.
Saiya sends Maura a quick nod of acknowledgement while she moves closer to the kuru, quickly looking for any weak points. They're almost done. Surely the kuru has to be close to dead by now; he's certainly been burning for long enough.
Both of your opponents slump over after a flurry of fire, steel, and mental energy.
"Oww, that f--king thing bit me, twice!" She glances at the body burning, steadily crisping and blackening in the summoned fire. She then looks at the gashes, teeth marks and missing bits of flesh on her arms and shoulders. She gags reflexively, trying not to vomit.
"Please tell me one of you can patch me up. I'm not feeling so good at the moment."
Maura shakes her head, the vitality stolen from the guard dressed goon fading from her with his death.
"I am afraid not. If you were affected by some form of mental malady I might be of more use, but physical wounds are beyond my skills. Speaking of, anyone have some way of getting Miss 'I-knock-by-kicking-down-the-door' over here up and about again?"
Ci Ci suddenly remembers the healing potion in her pouch. She retrieves it, pops the cork and downs it quickly.
Saiya downs a potion of her own, grimacing slightly. "I'm not entirely sure why she's unconscious, so figuring out how to get her up will be a bit of a challenge." She wanders over to the Vixen and quickly examines her, all the while praying to gods she doesn't believe in that no one else heard all the commotion.
She tends to talk while she's nervous, so anyone close enough can hear her rambling under her breath. "Some sort of poison on the door, probably, I really need to get better about checking things for traps before they get broken down, at least there wasn't a river of blood behind this one..."
"I can try what worked last time," Ci Ci says, approaching the sleeping Vix and pointing a finger at her.
"ZZap!" she says, unleashing a small arc of electricity at the sleeping woman.
Party
Saiya finds the needle stuck into Vixen's cheek and from the residue deduces that the poison was blue whinnis. Without an application of smelling salts or something to clear the poison Vixen will be out for another hour at least.
Allegra
Allegra ascends the stairs and they open up into a stable damp with blood stains. Musty hay is scattered across the floor. It opens up to the courtyard of a manor house surrounded by a hedge. The courtyard is eerily shrouded in a thin mist that lingers over the grass despite the driving rain. All the buildings appear dark and quiet, the odor of heather and ivy seems mixed with some sweetly sour, unwholesome essence.
Evidence of neglect lies strewn across a once magnificent garden. The grass grows tall and yellowed, and weeds choke flowerbeds along the sides of the estate’s buildings, leaving only a smattering of color from the few flowers that survive. A few overgrown bushes once trimmed to look like humanoids stand in a rough circle around a brick well in the center of the estate. A gravel path leads from the gatehouse and circles the well before branching off to each of the estate’s buildings.
Ci Ci sits down on the ground next to Vix and tries to arrange her into a more comfortable sleeping position. "As long as she's out, we can at least make sure she doesn't wake up with a bad back and a crick in her neck," she says to no one in particular.
She turns her head towards the others. "Clearly, we came to the right place to find malicious intentions. How many small towns have evil priests guarded by bloody-toothed cannibals?" She shrugs her shoulders slightly.
"So, are we planning on waiting here until she wakes up, or should be try to carry her back to town, or....inside...?" her tone at the last remark makes it clear she is hoping that is not the answer.
"Let me think for a second." Saiya carefully pulls the needle from Vix's cheek and gives it a few (careful) sniffs. "Blue Whinnis, if I don't miss my guess. Annoying, definitely knocks people out for a while, but with an application of smelling salts..." She triumphantly pulls some out of the haversack. "Tada! One hopefully awake kicker. Who will also have hopefully learned her lesson about kicking too soon." She waves the salts under the Vixen's nose. "Once she wakes up, I vote we get the hell out of here before anyone comes to investigate that racket."
"As for small towns with evil priests guarded by cannibals?" Saiya purses her lips in thought. "Actually, that sounds kind of normal to me. I must have had an interesting life, in the old Tian curse kind of way. He had a holy symbol, didn't he? Let me see if I recognize it, Dick jokes aside."
Allegra hikes out of the prison once she's donned her armor as best she can on her own. She hits herself with two more charges of her wand along the way.
She moves as quietly as possible under the circumstances, keeping an eye out for any movement.
Vix finds herself in a comfy position and smells… the ocean?
“Oh…”
She looks around at the splinters… three very dead men… and wounded women.
I’m so f+@~ing useless.
“Sorry,” she says in tired but genuine tone of remorse. “So… there’s that guy who invited us for drinks? Maybe we do that, and um… yeah.”
Maura sighs.
"No... as much as I do not envy the idea, we should at least head inside and do a cursory look around. If security was this... elaborate... before a certain someone kicked in a door," she looks at Vix in a pointed manner before rolling her eyes and continuing, "then I do not want to have to come back again later once they realize they need thicker doors, more deadly poisons on their darts, and more guards that like to eat tourists while alive."
Vix doesn’t let the snide remark slide, but hopes she doesn’t come off as a defensive jerk as she replies, “Me spontaneity may come off reckless, but I heard weapons drawn and yeah, I fell for the lure. They knew me—and knew I’d break their trapped door upon hearing naked steel.
“But now… now I’m thinking this through, and we’ve too many wounds to go fifteen rounds against cannibals. We’ll be dinner.
“If we’re voting, I say we heal up, and come back ready to f%## this place up. So what they fix the door while we’re out? There’s lots o’ doors to pick, and less three guards to spread thin.”
Maura holds out a hand to help Vix to her feet, locking eyes with her as she does.
"Your spontaneity is reckless when it ends up working against the rest of us. Yes, you were right to see the threat I, at the very least, was not... but your reaction to kick down the door quite literally stunned most of us. Seriously, I still haven't fully gotten the ringing sound out of my ears." Assuming she accepts the offer of assistance, the psychic pulls the hero up to her feet.
"And then, you get hit by a dart trap attached to the door and spend the rest of the ensuing fight out cold... leaving us to clean up the brawl you started. Ci Ci had two literal bites taken from her shoulder. You could have been dead for all we knew." Her tone softens a bit at this point.
"And we would have been unable to prevent it on account of said guards and cultists. I do not mean to be overly harsh, but you need to at least think of your surroundings before doing something like that again. As I said, though, what is done... is done. We have already paid a blood price for entry. I say we at least step inside to look into the room that should not have any guards right now, due to our killing them. Perhaps we get lucky and find something useful for our return trip if nothing else."
Vix accepts the help… and the lecture… and the truth.
I slept through a fight.
“Well, the three o’ ye can figure whether we go in or not. I’ll just hang back until there’s a person to break or an object to kill.”
Vix steps back from the house of traps and looks around to see if any guards are sneaking around from the outside.
Saiya carefully stoppers the smelling salts and shoves them back into the bag. "If reinforcements haven't showed up by now, they probably aren't going to. I'm okay with a quick look around so long as we don't go too far. Maybe we could try to make it look like someone else attacked the place..." She glances towards the splintered door and the scorched guards. "Nevermind, scratch that, they're going to know it was us. Terrible idea, forget I had it."
She crouches down next to the dead cultist, snagging the holy symbol and searching the body for anything else of interest. "Think there's any chance these guys carry paperwork labeled '10 Steps to World Domination?' I'd like something on hand to show Wrentz while we explain why she shouldn't throw us all in jail." Cursory search finished, she pockets anything of use then makes her way to what remains of the door.
"I'm guessing no more traps in this room, but let me look around just in case."