"Is that a rhetorical question?" Haleen inquires from Yasmeena.
The ghouls wait.
Neelah begins her Blazing Rondo performance, enchanting Aithaloessa, Yasmeena, Bylo, Haleen, and herself. Then she guides the carpet with her and Yasmeena forward 40', keeping it just above the ground.
Yasmeena casts freedom of movement on Haleen before Neelah whisks her away on the carpet. She also performs her Dance of 23 steps for protection.
"You wouldn't know us, but holy Sarenrae sends Her regards!" she shouts at the jinni over the sound of the building tornado.
Haleen appreciates that the wind can't affect her anymore and she decides to approach those undead.
Two of the greater ghuls disappear, leaving Haleen momentarily without someone to attack.
Aith hoofs it as quickly as she can in the wake of the warriors riding the flying carpet while still giving herself enough time to feel out the distance ahead and stability to form the gestures of her next spell.
Brow furrowed in concentration, what comes out of her mouth is a forcefully repeated incantation calling earnestly for Findeladlara’s grace, despite the fact that Aith is no priestess. The old traditions she follows must be working, because a burst of holy light flashes out to engulf at least the djinni and the ghuls she can still see.
The other two ghuls disappear from sight too. Which could also be because the debris hinders sight.
Bylo strides in behind the rest of the party. He raises his voice, calling out a sermon to his Goddess.
The Jinn doesn't look impressed. Instead he comes over and grabs Bylo. "You want to talk scripture?" he inquires while seizing him at the collar.
Haleen finds herself attacked out of nowhere. Also she finds that standing in the whirlwind is a bad idea.
Haleen retreats to help out Bylo and get away from the invisible enemies.
Instead she stabs the Jinn.
Aith worries about where the ghuls are going, so she tries to think of the right spell to lob where Haleen was. The unwelcome prospect of being surrounded by invisible undead inspires her to make an impromptu, last-second adjustment to her casting, and so, instead of blowing out a lamp, she conjures a glittering cloud of ash instead.
The two of the ghuls appear as glittering outlines ready for shooting, if it weren't for the strong wind.
Yasmeena sighs as she realizes that because of the winds she will have to step off of the carpet and attack with her scimitar instead of her bow. Fortunately it is low to the ground, so all she has to do is step off and begin her battle dance.
Yasmeena carves some chuks out of the Jinn. The ghuls are persistent and follow Haleen.
Bylo grins at the Djin and calls out a reply.
He focuses for a second on his Deity and suddenly starts to glow light daylight.
"Is that so? Want to meet her?" The Jinn drags Bylo with him into the raging thunderstorm.
More invisible ghuls try their luck at Aithaloessa.
"Keep throwing scripture at it." Haleen shouts while following the Jinn to keep stabbing it.
Neelah maintains her Blazing Rondo song and tries to keep the carpet steady as Yasmeena steps off. When she sees Bylo grappled by the jinni, she quickly casts a spell to help him break free.
Then she begins a song about her inner flame to summon a fiery champion.
Yasmeena continues to attack the jinn, keeping herself opposite Haleen.
Feeling Neelah's spell affect him Bylo struggles to slip out of the Jinn's grasp.
Knowing that he won't likely get another chance he quietly tries to shield himself from such an attempt again.
As unseen claws tear into her, Aith gives a short cry of pain and surprise before gritting her teeth and trying to just hold out under the assault. At least she can be reasonably sure where the last of them are now, though getting clear is another matter, with two of them harrying her.
She can’t do what Bylo can, but she tries to follow Haleen’s recommendation as far as possible, quickly channeling her magic through what anyone who speaks Elven can recognize as a general opening prayer to all her people’s gods, repurposed to a desperate plea to any of them who might be listening, as she keeps her movements tight in an effort to avoid a claw catching at her arms as she moves through the gestures of her spell.
As she shouts the climax to her improvised litany, she fumbles the cane they found in the last room from out of where she tucked it through her belt, in the hope that she’ll have better luck fending off the ghuls with a bit more reach than her flailing about with her pistol.
Yasmina pokes some more at the Jinn, Bylo keeps enlightning the undead and Aithaloessa brings down the wrath of the gods on all.
All that find themself in the storm with the Jinn are hit by lightning and Bylo gets clawed at in addition.
Two glittering ghuls come at Haleen again.
"Ugh, you smell like you haven't had a bath in a thousand years!" mocks Yasmeena, slicing again at the black jinni with her scimitar.
Neelah's fiery hound archon comes into being next to Yasmeena this round. After maintaining her Blazing Rondo performance, she directs the dog-headed celestial to attack the black jinni, and then she readies an action: she will cast mirror image if she is attacked.
Source Pathfinder RPG Bestiary pg. 19
XP 1,200
LG Medium outsider (archon, extraplanar, fire, good, lawful)
Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect evil, low-light vision, scent; Perception +10
Aura aura of menace (DC 16), magic circle against evil
Defense
AC 19+4, touch 10+4, flat-footed 19+4 (+9 natural; +2 Blazing Rondo, +2 deflection vs. evil)
hp 39 (6d10+6)
Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +5; +4 vs. poison, +2 resistance vs. evil
DR 10/evil; Immune electricity, petrification; fire resistance 5; SR 15
Offense
Speed 40 ft.
Melee bite +8 (1d8+3, +1 fire), slam +8 (1d4+1, +1 fire) or mwk greatsword +9/+4 (2d6+3, +1 fire), bite +3 (1d8+2, +1 fire)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th)
Constant—detect evil, magic circle against evil
At Will—aid, continual flame, greater teleport (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), message
Statistics
Str 15, Dex 10, Con 13, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 12
Base Atk +6; CMB +8; CMD 18
Feats Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack
Skills Acrobatics +9, Intimidate +10, Perception +10, Sense Motive +10, Stealth +13, Survival +14; Racial Modifiers +4 Stealth, +4 Survival
Languages Celestial, Draconic, Infernal; truespeech
SQ change shape (beast shape II)
Ecology
Environment any (Heaven)
Organization solitary, pair, or squad (3–5)
Treasure standard (masterwork greatsword, other treasure)
Special Abilities
Aura of Menace (Su): A righteous aura surrounds archons that fight or get angry. Any hostile creature within a 20-foot radius of an archon must succeed at a Will save to resist its effects. The save DC varies with the type of archon, is Charisma-based, and includes a +2 racial bonus. Those who fail take a –2 penalty on attacks, AC, and saves for 24 hours or until they successfully hit the archon that generated the aura. A creature that has resisted or broken the effect cannot be affected again by the same archon’s aura for 24 hours.
Change Shape (Su) A hound archon can assume any canine form of Small to Large size, as if using beast shape II. While in canine form, the hound archon loses its bite, slam, and greatsword attacks, but gains the bite attack of the form it chooses. For the purposes of this ability, canines include any dog-like or wolf-like creature of the animal type.
Description
Hound archons look like well-muscled humans with canine heads typically resembling those of noble-looking wolves or dogs. Well trained, they prefer to make use of their greatswords in battle, though they are equally adept with their natural weapons. Hound archons loathe killing mortals and prefer to disarm or incapacitate even evil individuals when they can. Against fiends and the irredeemably corrupt, though, they show no mercy.
Hound archons are disciplined soldiers and sentinels. Occasionally good-aligned deities send them to watch over specific places and individuals they take a particular interest in. Under the guise of unassuming but friendly strays, such secret defenders might follow their ward or guard their post subtly for years.
In Heaven’s armies, exceptional hound archon paladins lead their fellows into combat, taking on roles as captains and knights. They lead incursions against fiendish holdings, whether that entails strikes against daemonic fortresses or liberating the captives of night hag soul collectors. Such missions make hound archons perhaps the most likely celestials one might encounter upon the Lower Planes, and packs of swift-moving wolves occasionally reveal themselves to be welcome saviors to those lost within such realms. Regardless of their orders, hound archons universally exhibit a particular hatred of canine fiends, abandoning all mercy and going out of their way to put an end to the evils of barghests, glabrezus, yeth hounds, and similar depraved outsiders.
The archon brandishes its greatsword and gazes levelly at the black jinni. In a booming voice, it upbraids him: "Thou hast been found wanting of virtue, creature of black fire. Prepare to be vanquishéd!"
The Jinn isn't hurt by the insult and also not by the houd archon who is not cut out for that job. Yasmeena cuts it some though.
Haleen steps up to quickly stab the jinn and then move out of the storm again.
While Haleen moves away, the Jinn drops to the ground and the ghuls crumble in the holy light of Sarenrae. Moments later the storm settles.
Besides the Jinn corpse you are left with the already rotten meal that has additionally come under the weather.
Bylo stands over the corpse of the Jinn, staring at him in disgust. "I know I don't practice my sermons enough. I'm not in a temple holding services for those that need the word that much. But I've never had someone die just to stop my sermon! Vile creature!" He allows Sarenrae's holy light to fade out after he has confirmed that the creatures are dead....
"Well, I suppose we could see if this unfortunate had anything useful in his possession, or stored in the area. I don't suppose there's any way to clear the stench?"
Neither the ghul, nor the Jinn wear or carry any usable equipment - besides stinking clothes in the wrong size. There is also no treassure hidden in this room if you don't count silver dishes and cutlery.
Yasmeena returns back the way they came to pick up her bow where she dropped it and catch a breath of fresher air. Returning to the others, she regards the fallen with a regretful expression. "Thus passes Imam Shabendeh, now to his final rest. Onward! We must find and deal with the other 'palace guards', as well as the Flickering Candle assassins."
She proceeds to the exit on the opposite side of the banquet hall, creeping forward carefully and listening as she explores ahead.
Yasmeena walks over to the large double doors and opens them. Behind a huge roof walk extends from the gatehouse to the palace, its eastern face a crenellated battlement overlooking the Sea of Fire far below. To the west, the rooftop looks out over the palace courtyard, while a number of guard shacks, turrets, and garderobes top the walk. Yet the most impressive sight here is the one-hundred-foot-tall pyramid of ancient tarnished bronze that stands in the northern half of the rooftop. A wide stair rises to the pyramid’s apex, where a small temple with a double-peaked roof stands. Statues of draconic, four-armed female centaurs stand at each corner of this top platform, keeping an eternal watch over the surrounding area.
Two Forbidden Gate patrols, each consisting of a fire giant and a Nessian warhound, walk this area.
Aith gazes out over the weird planar vista, thinking that she’s finally seen someplace that beats the Katapesh desert and Alkenstar factories for crushing, impossible heat. The City of Brass is in a cool spot, all things considered, but an ocean of fire is the sort of thing that makes even her whimsical imagination balk.
She redirects her attention to the palace, something easier for her to wrap her head around.
“The pyramid next, I suppose?” she asks. “The sculptures are interesting, and I wonder about those turrets. Do you think they’ve got defenses for a siege in there?”
The mechanically-minded part of her brain is deathly curious about the sorts of exotic war machines the denizens of the Plane of Fire might use, so she lets her path arc out to examine one of the turrets on the way to the pyramid. She sets her jaw in case the patrolling giants notice her and her friends, ready to try to brazen out their presence here. After all, they have just got rid of the gross imam for them, like Yasmeena said.
One of the patrols notices someone coming out of the palace, shouts something in giant and comes over charging, weapon drawn.
Yasmeena calls out to them in their language.
The giant slows down as the thinking starts and finally comes to a halt. The hound notices slightly later and stops, looking back and wondering why the change of mind. "<You need to go down. There is no entrance to the building the flickering candle is in on this floor.>" the giant tells, pointing at the building. It is on the other side of the opening, with only a narrow path leading between the palace and the open yard below to a part of the building, where one could approach a window.
Bylo grins at the instruction and nods, "Excellent! Thank you for the instruction."
Yasmeena bows slightly in thanks to the giant and proceeds to follow his directions. She scouts ahead of the group as they go, watching for surprises and hazards with her bow drawn.
The path is really narrow at the tightest point and you might need to pull in your belly to squeeze through between the wall and the rail at the tightest point, if you're a huge creature. This place wasn't built with humans in mind, which can be a boon sometimes.
Yasmeena smiles at the group. "If that is the building over there, maybe we can follow this path and open that window to enter from a different way than the inhabitants expect. Shall we?"
If no one objects, she leads the way over to the other building, checking for hidden hazards as she goes. Neelah follows on the carpet, flying low at the same height as if she were walking.
"Sounds good!"
Checking through the window Yasmeena finds a chamber elaborately decorated with a circular bed covered in cushions and red crushed velvet, a large granite table with six matching chairs, a finely crafted hookah filled with water, and windows curtained with fine links of interwoven copper chain.
The elf that is inhabiting the room doesn't notice Yasmeena.
Yasmeena returns to the others waiting nearby and informs them quietly what she saw. "I will unlock and open the window, but we should all be prepared to jump in. I do not know how common elves are here in the City of Brass, but based on the opulent surroundings I would guess they are somebody important, and could very easily be an assassin. Ready?"
When they confirm, she returns to the window and attempts to open it.