Magda shrugs to Shi "If things start to go badly, this way we have an easier escape route." pointing to the city behind them. The teenager hurries after the walking steel walls.
Shi shrugs as the two hot heads storm off for a frontal assault, and then tries to get in front of them, but they take up a lots of space so she pokes her head over to the side as she puts on a smile and calls to the guards in fronts "Good morning. We were here last night with some business for the King. We had something left that we forgot if you wouldn't mind letting us pass."
On the spot, with the abruptness of the plan her lie wasn't all to convincing.
The four guards do not seem to be paying much attention, and wave Shi past as they watch the early morning revelers depart from each ship, seemingly ignoring her. Two near Marcus and Krovax seemingly are guarded as the big guys approach, but have let people pass who are more disreputable.
The intermittent and subdued carousing murmurs from the elegantly painted barges moored to this long pier. Large signs painted in several languages are nailed to pilings and hang from ropes slung between barges. The closest barge to the east bears a sign that says, “The Twin Tigers—Take the Tiger by the Tail and Try Your Luck!” Opposite that, to the west, a boat’s sign says, “Welcome to the Goldenhawk—No Safer Stay in Old Korvosa!” Further to the southeast is “Dragon’s Breath Corridor—Dream the Dragon’s Dreams at Affordable Prices!”, while opposite that is the “House of Clouds—The Caress of Our Lovelies Will Take You Straight to Heaven!” Only the largest vessel, an old warship to the south, bears no signage at all. Short rope bridges or gangplanks provide access to the decks of these ships from the pier and from the decks of other ships.
Shi nods to the others as she notes "Come on, can't keep him waiting..." As she hurridely walks past the guard toward Devargo's ship.
Marcus makes mental notes of who is out here and where they're located; within a few minutes he would likely be clashing to the death with these men.
He continues forward towards Devargo's ship.
"we need to take out the guards at the door as quick and quiet as possible. Distract them and I'll try to paralyze one on the right."
Magda takes that moment to ask the city for its aid for them all.
The large ship tied off to the pier bears the name Eel’s End; its figurehead is a coiling eel with a woman’s head. Several drunkards, sailors, and revelers dance and drink on the large open main deck here, while the aft deck is relatively clear. A pair of large double doors bearing a complex painting of a spider allows entrance into the stern section of the main deck.
Two guards stand by near the deck. The party doesn't recognize any of the guards they first interacted with. The two guards see the party as they approach, and rest their hands on their saps, though they are not apparently threatened.
"Distract them. Right. Hang back a bit at first. Wait until I have their attention and then make your approach using Falcor as cover." Kali says, donning her official marine attire.
Climbing aboard Falcor, she rounds the corner and approaches the two men at the end of Eel's End looking as official as one can while paroling the streets on a hippogriff. She dismounts and pats Falcor's neck twice, telling him to stay put before turning to the entrance and striding to the two men with a parchment of nonsense rolled up in her hands.
She holds up the rolled parchment "Good day, gentlemen. I'm here on official business and I need your assistance."
The guard squints at the scarred, approaching marine, and says, ”can’t ‘magine what a marine needs with the boss. And who are those other folks with you?” sniffing and wiping his hand. His eyes are hard and his nose appears to have taken a beating. ”No visitors before noon - ‘specially not without appointment” he recites, as if recalling a script.
Shi's eyes go wide as Kali rushes forward and takes the lead and spins a tale. She winces a bit when the gaurds automatically start poking holes in the woman's ruse and Shi just watches to see if she can recover.
This is going poorly
She holds up her scroll in her hand and says "I don't need an appointment! I said I'm here on official business and you best get out of my way before I. Fine! What are your names?! I'll report you back and have a full squad here to handle this then." she says sternly.
Gods, have they moved up yet? What's taking them so long?"
Magda moves into cover behind the great and wonderful FALCOR.
Once she is in place, she will cast charm person on the nearest guard.
The guard Kali is talking to laughs at her, "right, and I'm the bloody queen, shove that trash up yer arse, 'marine'" and leers at her.
The other says, "Off the ship, or we'll have more than words, you lot ain't getting in here."
Magda whispers some magic at the second guard, and he blinks, his apparent years of training to resisting enchantments and the like making him particularly resilient. "Someone's cast some magic on me!" He shouts angrily, drawing his sap too, "knock 'em all out and we'll let Devargo decide. Help lads!"
The four enforcers on the pier turn toward the noise.
Sighing, she steps back and fires two quick shots at the red-clothed guard.
The one hit by the arrow seethes, and slams his meaty fist into the door, loudly, shouting, "under attack, tell the boss!" He then steps up a small distance to threaten Kali, and it looks like he's readying something.
What he's readying becomes clear, as the other enforcer moves to flank the ranger. They coordinate their blows, attacking at the same time, catching Kaliyah off guard.
Their assaults are meant to break the will of their attackers, but Kali's training allows her to steel herself. She is thwacked quite handily with the saps, and looks to be doing poorly.
The other four don't have nearly enough room to maneuver, but seeing the teenage girl, the two closest rush past her towards Magda and Marcus, hoping to catch them off guard and dispatch them.
Both Marcus and Magda are hit by the saps, and take some damage, though Marcus mitigates it a bit with his training. Marcus is also shaken by the assault, as he wasn't expecting to get attacked.
The last two awake enforcers see Vera, and attempt to thwack her on the head!
Somehow one of the enforcers misses, but the other thuds into the back of her skull like a roll of coins, and she's scared of the assault as well.
One of the enforcers up above wakes up, but he's groggy and confused. He sees the fighting and stands up, then shakes the enforcer next to him. "Wake up, there's fighting on the ship!"
Marcus's nostrils flare, and he tries to shove back the man in front of him, but the absolute dumpster fire that this mission had become is getting into his head.
Shi frowns as things go crazy and she finds herself wishing they would have just swam to the bilge instead, but there was nothing to do now but fight, she pulls her blade
She tries to get around the one fighting with Marcus but ends up opening herself up to an attack in the process. Even so she strikes out at the thug.
Krovax slashes wildly at the nearest thug as his blade begins to glow a sickly red. He turns to Marcus and gestures with his head to the flank. ”Go help there!”
"Balls" Magda swears as her head gets smacked. Stumbling back she lashes out with her spear, but her throbbed head makes the thrust go wide.
The enforcer swings and misses Shi as she tumbles into the flank.
Kali takes a 5' step away from the two men adjacent to her and fires two more shots at the same target.
As numerous guards try to thwack her in the head, Vera screams and sidesteps, trying to protect herself. "I'm not a troublemaker, promise!" she says, trying to divert attention from herself.
At least one enforcer seems to take Vera’s advice in stride, and moves to attack Shi. The other takes advantage of the flank to continue his assault against Vera. They coordinate their attacks to ensure that they flank.
Shi takes two hits and is shaken, briefly, before she becomes frightened! Vera is again spared an attack.
The one that attacked Madga continues to press her with an assault, but does not manage to flank.
Magda is shaken by the assault.
The two on Kali continue to attack her, maneuvering to keep her flanked.
The two flanking Kali put her down, as the one with three of her arrows in him breathes heavily and grunts in pain.
The two awake enforcers upstairs spend their time hurriedly waking the other two sleepyheads, who are the two guards guarding the door earlier. The four look like they will start coming down soon.
Marcus winds back, gaining his composure. They were falling and hadn't done much damage. It was time for a retreat.
He roars and shoves forward into the man in front of him
He shoves the man forward and tries to throw him to the ground.
But fails to get underneath the man. Undeterred, he sees the edge of the boat and keeps moving, crashing the man into the thug behind him and continuing to move!
"We are leaving!" He roars to the others, trying to clear a path through the thugs.
Shi gets smacked over the head a couple times and things go dark for a minute and she panics as the world starts to feel like it is spining out of control. Her instincts kick in and all she can do is try to get away, get some space and gather herself so she tries to tumble past Vera and move off the ship.
Magda steps back from the smashing, cursing, clanking mess, and unleashes fire on the bad guys
Krovax thrusts a hand around the neck of one of the thugs assaulting Kali and drives his blade through his back!
Two of the enforcers look badly singed by the burning hands, and one appears to evade the worst of it. However, the one that Marcus shoved off the edge topples into the water at the same time, the violence of the assault preventing him from being able to grab hold of the slippery railing for purchase, and he slides between the ships.
Krovax's brutal assault hurts the enforcer standing over the crumpled form of Kali, but doesn't knock him down. The stab causes a lot of bleeding, but seems to miss his vital organs. He grimaces, wheezing, and spits blood onto the ground near Krovax.
"Bad, bad, bad, very bad!". As Shi flees in panic and Kali is knocked unconscious, Vera is nearly about to run away herself! She decides instead to take a step back, pop out a wand, and fire a missile of force at the fellow Krovax stabbed.
Marcus throws one man off the ship, and struggles with the other. As they are locked and baring their teeth at each other, he glances to assess their situation.
S~!%.
"Tighten up!" He roars to his breaking companions. He strong-arms the man next to him further overhanging the lip of the boat, turning to shout at them. "You don't get the luxury of crying or panicking, we have a comrade down! Collapse on her, now!" He shakes his head as the man he is struggling with punches him across the jaw, spitting blood back into his face. "Get together, back to back! We are f%*&ing leaving!"
The one enforcer dropped off the ship starts to swim to shore, shouting.
The two enforcers engaged with Vera ignore her and make careful approaches to Marcus, trying to knock out the big guy.
One of the enforcers follows Marcus’ lead, and seems to try to shove Magda off the ship, stepping away from the edge and using some of the same training Marcus had! ”get out of here all of you! For your own good! Devargo does not suffer fools!” he grumbles.
The two that dropped Kali maneuver to take out the vicious warpriest, seeing as how much the man injured one of them, carefullh maneuvering to flank him and attack with their advantage.
Three of the remaining enforcers from upstairs move down to support and provide flanking, while the friendly door guard the party met yesterday stays on the railing just above the door and shouts down, ”he has the right of it, lay down your arms at you can go. Devargo doesn’t want trouble from you lot!” The two badly injured ones glare at him, and then at Krovax.
Marcus pauses, sneering at the men surrounding him. A momentary abatement, if that. He knows they're looking at him and Krovax for the first twinge of continuing the violence.
But he wouldn't say no to a free escape. Given their situation, they certainly didn't warrant any leniency.
Marcus stays still, waiting to see how his allies act.
Focused on the men in front of her and bathing them in fire, Magda didn't even see the runaway carriage ram into her. In fact she barely registered anything until she broke the water.
Coughing, cursing, she looks the long way up, then fumbles and gets her rope and grappling hook out.
Krovax takes a hold of the one he had already stabbed and looks to the other thugs. ”You don’t seem to understand do you...” he snarls as his form takes on a deathly, shadowy, vile appearance. He thrusts his blade once more through the man’s chest, who falls limp in his left hand as Krovax holds him up as a warning to the other thugs. ”We aren’t trapped in here with you...you are trapped in here with ME!” he threatens before dropping the man to the ground at his feet!
Throwing a grappling hook while rat paddling is hard.
Shi snaps back to her senses once she is on the other boat for a moment and see's how grim things have gotten. Kali is down, Magda is no where to be seen and Marcus and Krovax are being swarmed. Shi rushes back to the main boat and starts to drag her away to safety on the other boat.
Vera wonders if she can trust the folks who had wanted to let them go.
.
She has absolutely no idea, but then Krovax pretty much eviscerates the guy in front of him, and she decides talking is their best hope for survival. She acts as innocent as possible. "Please, he's gone crazy because that's his sister! Just let us go, so nobody gets hurt!". Nobody had to know that Krovax was pretty much being his normal self.
She herself backs away slowly as she says this.
"The last time he was like this, he killed three men with his sword and one with his bare hands!" she adds.
Marcus shoves past the men cornering him and against the flat of the ship. He had to break their flanks, else they would quickly overwhelm him.
Marcus draws his sword for the first time this fight, sneering at the men next to him and daring them to move.
The fallen enforcer... lays still, bleeding out from his wounds, staring vacantly at the sky.
His partner, furiously, glares at Krovax, and nods at the new guys, who are confused, but move to flank.
One connects, and Krovax feels fear for the first time in quite a while. Marcus gets the sense that one of them, at least, is out for blood.
However, the other two, while they approach and reposition around Marcus , do not attack him. One nods for him to leave, gesturing his head towards the dock and Marcus gets the sense it isn't a trick, though they have their saps raised should he attack.
If Marcus attacks, he will be hit after the attacks, and take 8 nonlethal, but will not be frightened.
The enforcer under the pier swims closer to the shore.
The rest of the boats have cleared out, and there's screaming coming from them. Streams of debauched people flee from the carnage, past Vera.
The friendly descends the stairs, up on top, and says to Marcus, "the boys want to talk to that guy who killed Zack. We got you outnumbered, stand down and get out of here or you'll answer to Devargo!" He says desperately, and descends, approaching the double doors.
Krovax hears the sounds of shuffling from the other side of the door.
Well.
S~@*.
Marcus stands facing the west, eyes watching all three of the men around him. But as the battle hangs above them quietly, he steals a glance up at the speaking man. He considers the terms of their employment. He thinks of Magda in the water, Kali on the ground, and Krovax losing his mind.
They won't settle for anything less than death.
Marcus grits his teeth. S#%&. "Can't do that." He says quietly. His sword lashes out violently, cutting the two to the south of him even as the blows rain down.
He throws his back against the wall of the ship, preventing the thugs from flanking him any more. "Gotta leave alive, and your boys are out for blood!" He cries out. "Either we all leave alive, or we see how many of you f&+*ers we can kill!" He roars.
With Marcus' attack, they all pile on him, but he deflects most of the blows and manages to drop one.
With Kali in relative safety Shi rushes back to help Marcus.
Krovax, seeing the situation he is finding himself, immediately mentally agreed with Marcus. He sliced at one of the thugs before raising his shield and moving to the corner and pressing his back to the wall