"I'm alright with you guys scouting and climbing" Tariq says, "just don't expect me to follow you." He uses his knuckles to clang his armour, to back up his claim.
As Antarah closes in on the building with determination to ascend to its roof, he finds that the house - that is partly collapsed - is not uninhabited. Out through the side where the wall collapsed comes an large ugly beast. A warthog. And large in this case means the beast is looking down on Antarah.
Aithaloessa’s jumpiness this morning serves her well, and as she trails a few yards behind the others, bow in hand, she’s on her toes when Antarah disturbs a very large warthog indeed. She slips ahead through the rest of the group, hoping the situation can be sorted discreetly before the adventurers draw too much attention to themselves.
Tariq follows the group at ground level, preferring to keep his feet on a solid and stable surface. "Look what happened at the altar room in the monastery."
When the powerful beast is discovered and itv looks like it discovered them too, Tariq decides to put a quick end to the potential fight to avoid sounds alerting a hypothetical patrol or sentinel. Unsheathing his scimitar, he closes in and strikes.
The boar stops mid movement and freezes in place, but you can see how it stares daggers at you.
Not able to defend itself it takes the blow from Tariq.
As the huge swine jerks to a stop at her spell, Aithaloessa sets a finger to her chin consideringly (but still rather smugly), “I was expecting a bit … more.”
Then again, it is a quite a large hog, she thinks, and she has only just figured out how to produce her spells at all reliably. Maybe she miscalculated a bit, or didn’t quite gesture correctly, or the boar is just too big and stubborn after all… Anyway, there’s nothing for it.
“You’ll have to kill it, please,” she asks the others.
Antarah also cuts deep into the boar, but it is far from defeated.
Yasmeena dances forward quickly, trying to get behind the stunned creature, and stabs at it with her scimitar.
Aithaloessa doesn’t actually mean to ask the others to do all the messy work, though she does make sure to keep back out of the immediate range of the boar’s tusks. While it’s still stunned, she takes her chances on loosing an arrow into the melee.
Capitalising from the hog being disoriented, Tariq strikes once more.
He puts too much strength in the blow and little control, though.
Aithaloessa and Yasmena add to the wounds, but it is not enough to end the beast. As the boar isn't held any longer by the spell, it attacks Antarah. And rips open his leg with its huge tusk.
Yasmeena dips and steps, carefully keeping the boar between them while dancing. She stabs at the boar gracefully.
Antarah nervously tries everthing he has, and fumbles it all. Yasmeena adds another cut to the boar's hind legs, drawing it's ire.
As a shake of the boar’s head gives Antarah a brutal toss and the melee continues to swirl, Aithaloessa decides against trying another arrow, instead trying to find space in close, drawing her sword and lunging…
The beast hits hard, it seems! And both Tariq and Antarah suffer a bit of unluck... Could there be pugwampis around?
The beast is hit hard by Aithaloessa and Tariq, but it doesn't give up. It turns on Tariq for being the one who has caused it the most pain.
Yasmeena again gracefully thrusts her scimitar at the beast.
She swiftly closes her eyes and concentrates momentarily, casting a spell. Her scimitar begins to sparkle, and like Aithaloessa's spray of color, Yasmeena twists her weapon just right to reflect a burst of light into the beast's eyes.
Suddenly, it all turns black.
Aithaloessa's eye is distracted and her hand trembles as the warthog throws Tariq aside, but she tries to correct for it and lashes out again, hoping desperately that her calculation that she'd be of more use trying to bring the swine down before helping the fallen cleric is correct.
Why won't this thing die already? she thinks, bringing her sword back up to a guard position.
Aithaleosa adds to the wounds, and Antarah adds the final blow. With a loud shriek, that echoes from the mountains the warthog goes down.
Yasmeena rushes over to Tariq and begins casting, hoping to keep him from dying.
Tariq slowly opens his eyes. "Uh... Who put the lights off?"
You hear some howls from the largest building, the battle market. Seems like your fight is getting some attention.
Aithaloessa flinches at the shriek of the dying boar, afraid that the sound is shortly going to attract more unwelcome attention. She quickly wipes her blade clean and sheathes it, her other hand tightening its grip around her bow, as her head jerks up as a series of howls confirms her fears. Her eyes take in Antarah’s rope still dangling by the ruined building’s wall.
“Fall back to higher ground and cover, or try to get through to the other side of the river?” she asks tersely, before she lifts her hand and hurries through another incantation.
“I can manage one more spell, I think, but I’d rather hold onto it for some fireworks just in case,” she announces.
Tariq finally stands up. Seeing the defeated beast, he phews. "Good job. And without setting anything on fire."
He quickly invokes the power of the Lady to heal his wounds, for the howling sounds around warm him that the fights might not be over yet.
"Yes, let's retreat." Tariq helps whoever is wounded, and stays vigilant until everyone's safety is assured.
As soon as the group gains the ridge surrounding the old trading post and a spot behind the screen of one of the small copses of scrub, Aithaloessa calls a brief halt, albeit with an anxious look over her shoulder back through the shrubbery for any visible signs of pursuit.
“Three things, quickly,” she says tersely. “First, I’d like to wait just long enough to see what they call out to check signs of a fight.”
“Second, what are we all carrying to engage at range?” she asks, thinking ahead for the group’s options in terms of combined arms.
“Last, back up to the hills the way we came, or try to skirt between the river and the pesh fields? If we can find a safe camp out here, we might be able to try sneaking across the ruins again before heading back to the monastery. Gain more intelligence.”
|
As they stop fleeing, Antarah pants for a while before replying to Aithaloessa "I think I want to wait for a while before going that close. What was that thing? Well, I'm not particularly good at fighting from afar, but I have a sling if I cannot reach my quarry. I think the other buildings in the ruins might be inhabited like the one we saw. I think I'll want to go in from the river next time."
"The same argument for approaching via the hills holds for escaping through the hills, right?" Yasmeena sounds a bit unsure. "Though the pesh fields might better cover the signs of our retreat."
“If they actually set dogs on us, we might want to find a way to break the scent,” Aithaloessa says, her vagueness betraying a desert-dweller’s unease with the idea of doing any serious swimming.
The guardswoman turns to the group’s all too vital cleric, given the terrain. “Tariq, do you still have that spell to produce water prepared?”
“Let’s get someplace safe – but we still don’t have much to report back, and if we can keep these gnolls guessing, so much the better.” Her glance flashes defiance, perhaps even a degree of insolence. Alkenstar, after all, tends to look down on the beasts that roam the wastes below the city-state almost as much as it fears their barbarism.
|
|
Antarah replies to Aithaloessa "We might want to camp and keep watch. They seem to have much activity at night, so we would benefit from some guard duty. About our scent, crossing the river might mean we are the safest from tracking dogs. I mean, if we actually manage to cross it."
Antarah tries to see if there's something that could pass for a raft around them.
Two gnolls accompanied by hyenas emerge from the watch tower at the river to investigate what is going on. And it's not hard to find out with a huge mountain of dead meat lying around. They take a quick look around and then split up. One hurries over to the battle market. The other one runs back to the watchtower and beyond.
A minute later apatrol of four gnolls emerges from the battle market with that first one. They investigate the battlefield, looking at the trampled ground and checking where the tracks lead. They look over to the rampart and the bushes, the party hides behind. But they don't take up the pursuit.
Then something else comes in sight. A seven foot tall muscular homanoid, with the features of a ram - hooves, horns, fur, goatee. Wielding a weapon similar to a halberd, only that all sides are pointy. That one comes back with the other gnoll and the hyena.
"Yes, I have it ready. I guess you want to use water to erase the tracks, right?"
Which turns out to be futile - before they can do anything, the gnolls have already found their trail. The sight of the huge beast they have worries Tariq a bit. "That giant goat seems... effective."
All in all, it seems a wiser idea to stick to the exploration from afar and leave contact for when they have better capabilities, equipment and support.
Meanwhile the goat creature arrives at the crime scene. A heated discussion starts, with the gnolls pointing in the direction the tracks lead.
The creatures appear troubled. "They're probably arguing about who's having each piece. We should probably capitalise and try to disappear."
As it becomes dangerous to stay, the group desides not to wait any longer and retreats on the path, they came to town. Once in the rocky hills it is also easier to leave no tracks.
Looking back now and then, you notice that the gnolls follow your tracks for a while, but the goat doesn't.
After a while they give up and return.
Aithaloessa watches the response from Kelmarane nervously, giving an anxious, but curious, start at the tall, extra-pointy, goat-y creature that appears further up the hill of the village. Her knowledge of wasteland mutants, such as it is, isn’t particularly helpful, and the guardswoman asks tentatively, “Gnolls don’t normally range beyond dog-like, right?”
"Yes, I have it ready. I guess you want to use water to erase the tracks, right?"
Which turns out to be futile - before they can do anything, the gnolls have already found their trail. The sight of the huge beast they have worries Tariq a bit. "That giant goat seems... effective."
She shakes her head at Tariq’s question. “More thinking if we can comfortably spend a night out here, get some more watching done tomorrow. If we can avoid getting chased down, never mind back to the monastery.”
“First things first. We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
Once the group gains the heights of the rocky hills and sees that the pursuit breaks off, Aithaloessa relaxes, turning to the others to see how they feel about braving the chill of a desert night.
"It's fine for me, though with the monastery so close it seems wiser to sleep there, ain't it?"