Azadi grimaces as he tries to quickly guess which of his companions is in more immediate danger...
Guessing that Polli needs help more quickly, he hurls a blast of cold energy at the creature wrapped around her face.
Before Marisan takes off, Tessa uses her positioning to her advantage and thrusts her rapier through the vine that is choking Donomsail. She shouts "Hang on, Donna!"
With Azadi's magical ice and Tessa's quick rapier, the remaining two creatures are dispatched. Stillness returns to the stockade.
Combat Ends!
Tessa sheathes Wayfinder as she spins towards Harmony. She rushes over to her and grabs her with both arms, looking at her wounds. "You're hurt! Nononono!" she cries out, fear evident in her face. "OhGodsOhGodsOhGods, no." She throws her hands over her face and panics. "I'm dead! I'm soooooo dead!!"
Cold slamming into the creature's face makes the rope-like arms relax enough to deposit Polli on her rear, coughing, retching, and looking quite miserable. She rolls over on her back when she finally catches her breath. "Firebomb the entire island. Massive fireball, take out the whole place. Only way to be sure..."
Pulling herself up, "We're doing something wrong here I think... but what it is... other than eating strange stews, I am unsure what it is"
"What in the... Tessa! Harmony is okay... ish... No worse than the rest of us at least. So please for all of our auditory sanity... calm down!"
Azadi ignores whatever Tessa is doing, and Polli’s response to it. Instead he moves over to Donomsail and helps remove the carcass of her attacker from around her face. ”Are you alright, Donomsail?” he asks, ”there are others who were wounded too... do you feel well enough to do some healing?”
Tessa hears Polli, but that doesn't do much good unfortunately. She pulls a bloody hand away from Harmony and looks up to the sky and shouts
Turning to Harmony again she nods and shakes the woman "Right? You're fine. Say you're fine!"
A look of anger crosses Domonsail's face as she stands, rubbing her hands across the raw wounds on her neck. "No more! I am sick 'n' tired o' gettin' smacked around. If this Gods forsaken island wants ta try 'n' kill me then I say bring it! Meanwhile, Gozreh willin' I will do all I can ta keep us able ta get back ta the ship. Soon though there will be a reckonin' with those back on tha ship!" With that she stands tall, raises her hands to the skies and spreads her healing to all who need it. "Gozreh! In die gees van balans vra ek dat u my moet help om seker te maak dat ons almal terugkom na die skip. Genees ons en help ons om ons missie hier af te handel, sodat ons almal kan voortgaan op die reis wat ons beplan het."
The lovely healing energies of the god of storms wash over her making her shiver in semi-intoxicated delight. Getting to her feet, "Thank you Domonsail. Without you, we would be lost, truly and completely" giving the other woman a grateful smile.
Then she moves over to the exploding berry. "The dryad again... You should really tell your friend what is happening instead of bottling it in and saving it for just the right moment to prove you truly are certifiable. Again that is, since you are Screaming At The SKY!"
Marisan rolls her eyes at Tessa’s dramatic outburst. ”There will be plenty of time to yell at clouds later. We should continue on.”
Tessa knows that the others think she is being overly dramatic, but they don't understand. She half-turns and waves a hand of frustration at them before turning back to Harmony again.
After ensuring that Harmony is going to be okay, Tessa leads the search of the lodge. "Come one, we don't have much time. Let's be quick about this."
The wooden door to the lodge is of good construction but is currently ajar. Inside is a single chamber, crowded with a large amount of high-quality furniture, including a comfortable looking bed, a small writing desk, cooking gear, and several barrels of rotting food. The stench of rot is overpowering and flies swarm within the room, particularly around the hooded corpse hanging from a chain off a beam in the middle of the room. A stool lies on its side on the floor nearby.
”Do ghouls breathe?” Azadi asks as he gathers a blast of cold and hurls it at the apparent corpse.
Azadi's spell of cold blasts the hanging body which rocks from the impact. Before he can assess the effect of his spell, a huge black cloud of flies takes flight from the body, swarming towards him and Tessa.
Combat Begins!
Round 1
"What is that?! Should I go in and flank it? Them?" Tessa shouts as the swarm advances towards her.
"No - a swarm like that you need splash weapons!" Harmony replies, her voice rasping but analytical. "Azadi, this is on you. Tessa get out. You can't help!"
Her advice is remarkably useful, even as the monkey clings to her neck and shakes a tiny fist at the flies.
Marisan hurls her flask of alchemist’s fire.
”Got it!” she shouts, pulling out the alchemist fire and throwing it at the swarm before backing away.
Hearing Tessa's cry Donomsail moves towards the front of the cabin.
Seeing the swarm she knows that conventional weapons won't work, using the flasks she agrees is a good idea and that is when she realizes that she has something she can also do to help with these creatures. As she splays her fingers in front of her the thought crosses her mind that most insects don't like the cold so she decides to blast the swarm with Storm Burst, hoping to catch the majority of them within the radius.
"Gozreh, help my om waar te wees, hierdie wesens is miskien klein, maar dit kan baie gevaarlik wees. Help my om my vriende uit te haal."
and -2 to attack next round
"Flies, but what kind?" swirling black dots are all the nearsighted sylph can see. Harmony's advice was spot on, so she moves up past Tessa, twisting her finger around her silver ring she pulls knowledge from her book to fan out fire from her fingertips.
Having determined the best strategy, Tessa tosses a vial of alchemists fire towards the buzzing swarm. Marisan follows up with one of her own.
Harmony encourages her companions to hold fast against the malevolent cloud while Polli blasts it with an arc of fire.
With an angry buzzing, the swarm of flies blasts through the doorway, surrounding Tessa, Marisan, and Azadi. Hundreds of the nasty little things begin biting the three.
Donomsail attempts to blast the swarm with wind and rain, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.
Gritting his teeth, Azadi ducks and tumbles out of the swarm of flies.
Once free he channels a blast of cold at the biting flies.
Azadi blasts the swarm with another shock of cold damage as he moves out of the area it covers.
Round 2
The remaining flames from the alchemist's fire is enough to cause the swarm to disperse.
Combat Ends!
Harmony claps Azadi on the shoulder in relief. "Let me do the checking from now on." She suggests. "I've got a little spell that will give us some range."
Marisan curses in Mwangi and smashes the lingering flies on her skin.
”That was at range...” Azadi half-heartedly protests, then he musters a somewhat annoyed smile and walks away while Harmony gets to work sifting through stuff.
if I hadn’t done it Tessa would have walked right in, but still it’s somehow my fault...
Returning to the unusual wellspring, he searches the water source more thoroughly than it had been previously.
Harmony frowns at Azadi's retreating back, apparently replaying the conversation in her head, before following the young undine.
"I'm sorry Azadi. I didn't mean to offend. I'm just sick of us being ambushed in empty rooms - it wasn't an excuse though." She waits a moment and then offers him her hand. "I won't make that mistake again."
”It’s alright,” Azadi answers with a more natural, but still somewhat forced, smile as he shakes Harmony’s hand, ”this place does have an unbelievable ability to catch us off guard.”
As Azadi and Harmony talk, Polli kneels down prodding a mostly crushed fly with her finger. "Instersting..." her lips form a thin line "It irritates me that I am unable to identify the species. What I wouldn't do for a proper book or two on entomology." she sighs, rising "Anything else of interest before we head out?"
There are minor flames still burning as you make your way into the lodge, but it doesn't take much to extinguish them with some water from Azadi.
The hanging, hooded corpse makes no aggressive moves as you examine it. Covered in rime crystals from Azadi's blast and burn marks from the alchemist's fire, if it was animate before, it's certainly not now. Removing the hood reveals a creature similar to the ones you fought in the tent - just with more stench. There's a wide collar around its neck attached to a chain that rises to wrap around one of the ceiling beams.
Searching the rest of the lodge turns up a suit of leather armor, six spears, and eight finely tailored courtier's outfits . Harmony's magic also reveals a silver ring in the pocket of one of the outfits .
There is a spice cabinet holding 5 pounds of pepper in waxed bags , a silver tankard , and a silver locket depicting a beautiful, buxom young blonde woman .
Meanwhile, outside, Azadi finds that the spring holds no surprises - just clear, cold, fresh water.
Tessa barely is able to fend off the diseased suckers, but her body's resistance proves to be just enough!
After sorting through all of the fine items they find inside the lodge, Tessa suggest "We need to get down to the Gobtopussies, doubletime." and heads to the door, ready to leave.
Marisan holds some of the fine outfits up against her body, smiling. At Tessa’s suggestion, she nods. ”Yes. Let us make haste.”
Polli is already following. She is concerned about the human members of the crew being able to see in the dark once they are down there, but it is better to risk that than to let their friends weather a night with the grindies.
"Yes, let's git down there, kill them baseborn dullards, rescue our lost companions and all of us work tagether so none of us end up on a place like this agin 'n' maybe Plugg 'n' Scourge could pay this place a visit 'stead o' us next time." Donomsail looks about, a startled look on her face as she realizes what she just said out loud. "Now that it's been brought up do anyone else think that now be a good time ta figure a way aways from them nullius filii? I donna advocate murder but less'n we find some sort o' permanent way ta deal with 'em it ain't never git better fer us." She looks around at the group, hoping someone has a nonfatal idea that they are willing to share.
Polli pauses in her desire to get going, her blue eyes going dark and cold for a moment as she thinks of those two "Murder." flatly said but with sharp edges "It is safest. For us and them."
Looking then at the cleric, she pulls out of her imagination and says more normally "We can talk and walk, if you wish to debate the finer points of safe incarceration, on a ship full of people that have been stolen, tortured, and forced to witness comrades murdered before their eyes. A quick death is a form of mercy when weighed against abject fear and little black pains given when they can."
”I’m against murder, as a rule, but Polli might be right...” Azadi offers as he falls into his spot at the end of the line. ”There’s only really three outcomes, I think: we kill them; we capture them, probably to sell into slavery at some point; or, we strand them on an island like this one, and with all the people on the ship we might not have full control over which outcome we get.”
”We have enough friends onboard we could try an open mutiny, but people will get hurt for sure. If we murdered them we’d avoid that, though we’d have to live with the choice... if we could figure out how to get them that poison Harmony found, we could capture or maroon them, but so far that hasn’t worked out. Someone could try to threaten them off the boat... maybe they’d choose this island over a mutiny if they knew they couldn’t win, but then we’d lose any element of surprise if they choose to fight...”
Tessa's haste is less hastey when she watches Marisan hold up the clothes. She stutters a half step, looking back over her shoulder before turning completely around. "You should take those, Marisan. They are going to go to waste here and I think that they are your size.
You would look amazing in them."
On the topic of dealing with the others, Tessa nods along as people weigh in with their opinions. "Since we're discussing murder, what is the difference in poisoning the food to killing him and pushing him overboard to drown exactly?"
”Well, I thought the poison was to knock them out? And, if we threw them overboard here they could swim to the island... slitting their throats in their sleep would be the most efficient solution but, to me, that somehow feels different than killing someone in a fight... sort of wrong, I guess?”
"Alright. So we're knocking them out and then tying them up and them dropping them off at the next port? I'm fine with that approach."
"So they murder, they torture, they kidnap, and we just leave them at port? A merry little wave bye bye" Polli snaps in irritation. "I don't wish to be a party to the deaths of others, but this situation is self-defense, no different than killing during combat. Leaving them alive is dangerous for us, even in a different port, and does a disservice to all those they hurt before."
”No... I think if we capture them we should sell them as slaves... they deserve that.” Azadi replies.
”But I’m also fine with rallying the crew to open mutiny, and either killing Scourge and Plugg in a fight or giving them the choice to swim ashore here and try to survive...”
”I am normally against killing if there are other options. But to protect us and our friends from future retribution, I think we must deal with Plugg and Scourge permanently.”
”So, death it is... now, do we mutiny and kill them in combat or does someone wanna try to kill them while they sleep?”
Tessa frowns as she looks to Marisan and shifts her weight on her feet. "Huh. I was convinced you would be against this approach, Mari. Consider me confused, you are an enigma!"
Turning to the group she shrugs "Alright, We need them gone one way or the other. I think we take whatever approach opens to us and seize the moment, doing whatever it takes to ensure our success. Should the opportunity arise to let them live and remove them from our new ship, we should take it. Given the horrors they have inflicted upon others however, we will not strive to ensure their livelihood in our task and prioritize eliminating them over saving them."
She looks to each of them, stopping to take a vote "Let's make sure we are all clear here before we continue. We all need to be on the same page so that we will not be second guessing ourselves moving ahead. Is anyone opposed?"
”Those two have already proven they cannot be reasoned with,” Madisan elaborates. ”It would be foolish to think they would forgive our mutiny should we spare their lives. I am many things, but I am no fool. Desna will understand.”
The group discusses the future of their current servitude as they descend the steep path back down the ridge. You travelling south along the rise towards southern coast of the island.
You pass near the edge of what looks like cornfields. You guess that there was organization to the crop originally, but it's now grown wild. Around the edges, you catch glimpses of heads on the top of spears with swarms of flies buzzing around them.
”There’s heads on spears over there,” Azadi points out, ”and more flies... should we take the time to investigate, or risk having something prowling behind us?”
"Better the danger we know." Harmony suggests, "There may be something there or there may not. Best case there isn't and we only lose time. Worst case there is and we get hurt. Best to leave it for now."
She's been very quiet during the morality discussion, following the arguments closely and nodding occasionally when people have made strong points, but without actually giving her own opinion. She doesn't object when Tessa calls for reservations though.