With two more cuts, Tariq turns the death worm into a dead worm.
Panting, Yasmeena tentatively moves closer. "Is everyone all right? I've got wands so we can heal before we continue."
"I really thought you'd still have a few years before becoming worm food." Haleen jokes looking at Tariq and Antarah. "Good job here."
"Hey, don't joke with food" Tariq says, grinding his teeth. He sits on the ground and bandages himself. "Just gimme a second, will ya?"
"That's much better, now I would accept a touch of your wand" he smiles.
"You mean the magic stick?"
While the others lick their wounds, Haleen looks around if the blinking in the distance comes back, or if there is something of interest in the mess the dead worm created of the previous group coming through.
Haleen finds a polished obsidian stone, with an engraved spider that has a maw on its back. Also she finds a gnoll hand holding an eight inch long, finger thick carved stick.
The only blinking is from coins spilled all over the place from the gnoll corpses.
The stick Haleen found is magic.
While Antarah considers the wand, Aith assesses the engraved stone, trying to identify the possible significance of the mark.
She hands the rock over to Yasmeena to get her opinion. “I’m sure I don’t like the looks of that. You don’t think…?”
She waves back in the direction of the oasis’ bloody mess as a theory begins to form in her mind. Some sort of botched summoning? Or what brought all the parties together at just the wrong time? Well, the right time, from the hungry death worm’s perspective, until the Kelmaranian knights showed up.
Yasmeena stands a little straighter as she looks at the stone.
"Hearken, sheriff of Kelmarane, for this symbol heralds the Rough Beast that is named Rovagug, the monstrous deity imprisoned by the other gods and said to sleep in torpor deep inside Golarion. This stone was likely carried by one of its priests to aid in channeling the unholy power of its master. As you no doubt recall, the deceased Carrion King numbered among the followers of The Great Destroyer."
"Oh no! Who will save us from the wicked ways of this great evil" Haleen answers, tilting her head, with the back of her right hand at her forehead.
"I need to note that down, we can use that for a drama back home on stage. It's kind of ridiculous doing it after the fight though, we should rearrange the events."
Yasmeena laughs. "Who will play the giant worm?" she wonders, imagining seeing the fight again in smaller scale in the battle market.
"Either our resident mage can come up with some magic figment, or we put Kurellak in a costume."
"Antarah, can you forge us a spiral spring, twelve foot long, about tree foot circumference, that waves back and forth at the top, when we put our gnoll barkeep into it?"
"Hearken, sheriff of Kelmarane, for this symbol heralds the Rough Beast that is named Rovagug, the monstrous deity imprisoned by the other gods and said to sleep in torpor deep inside Golarion. This stone was likely carried by one of its priests to aid in channeling the unholy power of its master. As you no doubt recall, the deceased Carrion King numbered among the followers of The Great Destroyer."
Aith gets a bit of a sinking feeling as Yasmeena confirms some of her suspicions, though if it’s not just a coincidence… Anyway, Yaz’s performance perks the elf up a bit.
“Good bard,” Aith begins, aiming for a mock-serious tone, “I feared as much, and now this news forthinks me, aye, full sore. For, if this should be one of those profane priests’ blasphemous bauble-icons, could these be they who hunt us?”
She overshoots quite a bit, and descends into full paratragedy, or pantomime villain, before deciding the scenery’s not that nice to chew on after all, and resuming her usual tone. “I suppose it really calls for the past tense, but as Haleen says, some artistic liberties with chronology might lend more interest to the story, which isn’t what I started out to say. I mean, do you think these could have been the gnolls Dashki told us about, who were nosing about after us once we dealt with the Carrion King and ever so coincidentally one of their relics went missing? If they got ahead of us… maybe the worm saved us from another sort of ambush? Or are there a lot of Rovagug gnolls about annoying everyone to murderous distraction, I wonder?”
Or … she looks back down to where the adventurers left Radi. If it’s the sort of symbol that priestly magic often calls for presenting, and if they were the same group of raiders that attacked him, maybe he could recognize it? Not that it might not be the same gnolls anyway, with just a terrible chain of bad luck for everyone except Kelmarane’s knights, so far. They attack him, get attacked by the worm, and then…
She wonders if she should worry about more pugwampis showing up, or some other dramatic way for their luck to run out.
Losing Aithaloessa's thought of train halfway through its departure Haleen points to the top of the dune. "We're still going there? Or are we moving on - to set camp in the oasis?"
“Right, yes, onward,” Aith nods, recalling belatedly – since she hadn’t seen the flash herself – that whatever signal? trick of the light? Tariq had spotted was further up into the dunes. So, wary of other movements in the sand that might betray the presence of another giant worm, she trudges on, now with her pistol in hand.
As the group reaches the top of the dune after some minutes there is nothing there that could have caused a reflection. Just some footprints of whatever creature was here.
It's been a while since Aith was on patrol, and she was never the best guardswoman for that, compared to running a lab to analyze more interesting evidence, but she can read some tracks, sort of, mostly.
"I'm not an expert," Aith cautions, "but it looks like about a dozen people or so here, in a bit of a hurry?"
"And heading that way," she points, before peering off in that direction, checking the ground again for any better hint of what they might have been. More gnolls who managed to escape the slaughter at the oasis? Or their original targets? Something else entirely?
The tracks move on for a while before the terrain changes. The tracks lead north, out of the sand and into the rocky foothills of the Brazen Peaks, where following them farther requires better tracking skills.
|
After years of training to work metal into deadly weapons, and the magical secrets to imbue them with powerful enchantments, Antarah is asked to build and animate a theater prop. He is so confused that it takes him full minutes to process this information as the others think of theories and find tracks. He finally says, completely out of context "I suppose..."
He realizes he has been following the group to some rocky terrain. Not realizing that it looks like he has started a sentence without finishing, he says "What's wrong, Aithaloessa, do you need help with your tracking?"
"The tracks were just there, they didn't start to fly, did they?"
Yasmeena laughs. "These tracks look almost like dancing to me. But I suppose all steps look like dances when one follows the path of the Dawnflower!" She casts a spell and then draws out her oud and plays an inspiring tune while Aith puzzles out the path.
“Not yet, but once they reach those rocks…” Aith huffs a breath. “Let’s keep all our eyes open: if I miss something maybe someone else will pick it up again.”
Not wanting to rely too much on luck, Aith gratefully accepts Yasmeena's magic, and makes sure that everyone's spread out enough so they can get a few more angles on the tracks than proceeding in stark single file, and soon a chorus of queries and confirmations rises up as the adventurers set off, as even on the rockier ground, the collective effort picks up signs of passage.
As they go along, the encouragement boosts Aith's confidence, and soon the group is breezing along at speed.
After quite a while of following through the rocky terrain, you hear some cheering in the distance. Sneaking closer you find a gnoll camp. Going around to a vantage point you get a good overview. At the center of it a gnoll lies dead in his own blood. The gnoll seemingly responsible for that is giving a victor's speech.
"<No more useless traps, no waste of time and effort for useless ambushes. We're going to get them with an all out attack. This night, we attack their camp and make short work of them. They'll learn the painful way what it costs to anger the Sons of Carrion!>"
The speech is answered by more cheers from the gnoll crowd and some respectful applause from the band of human mercenaries with them. All in all it's maybe a dozen gnolls, some less humans and some pet hyenas in sight.
From the vantage point the adventurers gain on their quarry, the pleading look Aith sends the others is truly pathetic. She really ought to just learn the lingo at one point, rather than (theoretically) rely on a spell that she never prepares.
Even though she’s pretty sure that if she ever actually tries to speak Gnoll she’ll sound unflatteringly like some sort of yappy lap dog, compared to the growls and snaps from the gloating champion below.
“Some sort of double-cross? Probably not an internal dispute we can just leave them to sort out and hope they murder themselves over?” she whispers quickly.
The sheriff also decides she really needs to increase her spell capacity, because if ever a situation just begged for a fireball, this would seem to be it - assuming these gnolls are just as nasty as they usually are.
"I think they had a dispute over us not dying by the hand of the worm and now are planning our demise at night." Haleen explains.
“Lovely,” Aith says with something between a pout and resignation as she considers the situation.
“There’s a lot of them,” she acknowledges. “Do you think we could or should kick up a fuss right away, or try to lead them into a counter-plot or -ambush?”
With just a bit of paranoia, the sheriff switches to Elven for the details as she turns to their resident arcane weaponsmith, in case her voice carries further than she thinks. <“Antarah, do you still have that electrical magic ready? It won’t be much, but I can call up some rain that will conduct it a bit more easily, and ward off fire. If we want to rush in immediately.”>
"Give me haste, and we'll take them down right on the spot."
“Very well. With all speed!” No sooner said than done, Aith taps into her magic to give everyone another boost of speed, and readies herself to follow along with more spells or bullets in support, depending on how needs must.
Casting a spell isn't exactly stealthy and it catches the attention of the gnolls.
Two of the humans that cooperate with the gnolls fire their bows. Some others, some gnolls and two hyenas charge over to swarm the group.
Especially the hyenas are very fast and one reaches Aithaloessa.
Haleen is delighted to face that many enemies. To show off she does her whirlwind dance. Which is for some very deadly.
Haleen's performance leaves two gnolls dead and a hyena badly wounded.
Aithaloessa freaks out a bit as the hyena rushes her: way too many teeth way too close to her face. Fortunately, her spell’s just taken effect, and she rushes just as quickly a hasty step back, and gives the barrel housing of her pistol a whirl.
She blasts away with enthusiasm: it's not ideal, compared to casting another spell, perhaps, but it means that the others won't have to worry (so much) about saving her hide just yet.
Aithaloessa slaughters the hyena and the gnoll with ear numbing shots. The remaining hyenas run into melee and more raiders follow.
The gnoll that held the speech summons an etting, starts working magic and shoots magic missiles at the elf.
Yasmeena draws her bow and shoots the caster as part of a flowing dance.
Yasmeena steps to the side and shoots over three enemies to target the mage. Still she manages to land a hit.
The ettin is very fast too and closes the distance from the tent it came out to the melee fight in one go. The remaining raiders and gnolls charge in to join the fight.
Antarah places himself as a shield for Aithaloessa to deal with anyone approaching from that side.
The raiders close in further and shoot their bows. A hyena find Yasmeena looks tasty.
Haleen keeps stabbing everything around her. First the wounded Hyena, then she steps up where the hyena stood and stabs everyone there clockwise.
Haleen kills the wounded hyena and wounds everyone else.
It’s tricky to dictate the terms of engagement in a mostly open space, but, and though Haleen is doing very well cutting down all comers, since the raiders seem to be content so far to rush in to their doom, in case they can all be lured into a huge brawl…
Aith quickly steps to where she can fight mostly back-to-back with Antarah, if they get rushed before he can move to intercept, and then, throwing her arms into the air, raises a loud, ululating cry that, in a heartbeat, causes an improbable downpour to start dropping heavily from the sky over the centre of the melee.
She hopes it isn’t too annoying to fight in.
Halleen starts laughing as the downpour wets everything. A nice change to the dusty dry desert weather. First she starts to hum, the singing out loud, doing a Gene Kelly like performance with her rapier instead of an umbrella.
"I'm singing in the rain,
just singin' in the rain.
What a glorious feeling,
I'm happy again.
I'm laughing at clouds
so dark up above.
The sun's in my heart
and I'm ready for love.
Let the stormy clouds chase
everyone from the place.
Come on with the rain,
I've a smile on my face.
I walk down the lane with a happy refrain
Just singin', singin' in the rain
Dancing in the rain, I'm happy again
I'm singin' and dancing in the rain"