Teegor just watches pretty lights wondering if they're really a threat. He holds his spear just in case.
"You can keep saying that as they cut your throat.", replies Nestis.
Ah softskins, with their notions!
"I'm disabling them to soften them up - prime, rare tactics!"
The injured one flees while the two remaining ones shake their raptors from their stupor and send them after Nestis and Corso as they argue.
Unfortunately neither manage to be very effective.
Meanwhile, the stupified yuan-ti remains so as a volley of arrows aimed at Mark and Teegor fly from behind.
One manages to nick the wizard in the neck while Teegor deftly knocks the other from the air before it can harm Elandria or himself. Anya and Aria, Mark's wife and daughter, hide in the underbrush as mayhem ensues.
Mark returned fire with cold.
The raptor stops attacking and cocks its head at Corso before becoming very frightened and bowing low before the Pigeon King, Emperor of Birds.
"Your Most Plumed Majesty," it says in an archaic dialect of the bird's tongue as it spreads its feathered arms wide. "Forgive us! We did not recognize thine radiance beneath thy humble countenance."
The other raptor pauses, then it too bows low with arms spread wide.
Nestis whips out his exquisite cittern and *strums*.
He strums until his fingers turn barky. As does the rest of his flesh.
He snaps his wood-feeling fingers, as if testing them and calls out:
"Teegor, get stuck in!"
Without animosity or realistic threat from the strangers, Teegor is only provoked to attack from his friend Nestis. The bugbear charges one of the yuan-ti with a flying kick, then a legsweep, followed by thrusts from his spear.
Teegor's flurry downs and dazes one of the Yuan-ti from earlier, leaving him on the ground incapacitated while his companion stands in slack-jawed amazement.
Nilelane nicks one of the still moving ones in the neck causing him to look around for his attacker and fails to spot the stealthy drow. Mark's spell can't find the right angle and bounces harmlessly off some of the bleeding brute's armor.
Nestis plays his tune and inspires Teegor to greater heights while also covering himself covered in bark. Meanwhile, Corso plots while two new courtiers grovel before him.
The Yuan-ti ahead of the group, outmatched and outnumbered, book it, leaving their still hypnotized companion to his fate while the last of them, the one that came from behind, breaks cover and calls them all every name under the sun.
"Teegor, help me bind these ones. They might be talkative!", the em-barked Nestis says rather cheerily, reaching for his own rope.
Teegor shrugs and tying them up.
It takes a little bit to get the last effective Yuan-Ti tied up, but after a few minutes all three are bound and gagged. Nestis recognizes Dalzi and Zayre from before, the latter still dazed from Teegor's beat down. The third he only knows as the son of some assistant to the Beast Master, but beyond that, he's an unknown to him.
Corso finds the raptors similar to the birds he consorts with, and, unsurprisingly, their goals are to eat something and survive to eat something else, though they do so between platitudes and apologies to His Most Beautifully Plumed Holiness.
Mark's family and Elandria come out from hiding as it's clear the fight's over and they look over the surprising lack of carnage.
Mark turns to his wife and says "Can you take those two" he gestures to his daughter and Elandria "Over there a bit so they can't see or here? What's about to happen isn't something more innocent people should see."
Teegor starts a short rest before the torture aggressive negotiations show starts.
Peering down at the captured trio, Nestis asks:
"Soooo, Dalzi, Zayre, youngling. What was the big plan? Kill or capture?"
"Kill," the young, so far unnamed member of the prisoners says.
"Shut it!" the other two yell, their voices cracking with fear.
"What? It's not like he has a grudge against me," the lad says.
Job's done.
"Okay, so where to now? Don't y'all have to deliver these still," Elandria says as she points out the sack of plums.
"I really want to f#....fork up their dinner." Mark says, stopping himself when he sees his daughter.
"You know what? We can leave them here. We have a job to do."
Nestis begins to stroll off...
"Oviparity?"
The raptors pledge their loyalty to Corso before running off to free their brethren while the young, unname Yuan-ti laughs his head off at the expressions on Dalzi and Zayre's faces at being left alive and humiliated. Aria giggles at Mark's slip of the tongue, which earns him a stern glare from his wife, Anya. With nothing else to do but return back, you leave the scene of the battle behind and make your way back to the dragon's lair you had left just a day ago.
And find it in utter chaos.
"Ze jelly tartz! Zey are eaten," the head Chef says after zipping over to you and climbing up Corso and grabbing the front of his clothes for balance as he plants his scaled feet onto the druids chest.
"Do hyu know vat zissss meansss?!"
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Mark sighs and hands his wife his money pouch, then says "you two need to head back to town and wait for me there. There is an inn there. Get a room. I have some business I have to finish first, and I am NOT taking you where I am going. We can talk more when I get back."
Mark. Has. Had. Enough.
Before anyone can stop him, he snatches up the chef and slaps him twice across the face, just shy of hitting him hard enough to break something.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up. Go make more God@#$m tarts, if you're that worried about them. I am sick and tired of you." Mark then releases the Kobold to fall to the ground.
Nestis fishes out the amethyst plums he had carefully stashed in his apparel.
He coughs, trying to seize the chef's attention from Mark's justified rage and Corso's delusions (?) of grandeur.
"Head chef, we have the plums, as *requested*. Do you have our stacks of platinum ready?"
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"Pla-ti-num.", Nestis stresses to the chef, doing his level best to ignore what sounds like mental breakdowns all around him.
Anya doesn't miss the tone in Mark's voice and heards both Aria and Elandria away towards the tow.
Which looks almost as if it hadn't been set fire to just the day previous.
After some rough-handling, the Chef seems to calm down.
"O-oui. It iz being brought now," he says in a more normal tone. "We are stretched thin. We need sssomeone to either find ze tarts or help make more. I shall double your fee," he promises.
"I'll go find who f#$king took your stupid f@#king tarts." grumbles Mark as quietly as he can.
"I'll join you, Mark. Let's hunt down this tart thief so we can get paid double!"
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Teegor looks around blinking hard at the choice and waits to see which way they tell him to go.