The raiders team up on Haleen to put the screws on her. And the mage too changes her focus on Haleen. But it is one of the Hyenas that deals a very painful wound.
Yasmeena laughs and taps her feet along with Haleen's song while she dances. She steps back from the hyena and shoots a blur of arrows at their enemies, her enchanted bowstring thrumming in time.
It looks like the mage will not go down as easy as the rest. Not one of Yasmeena's arrows hits.
There are still more joining the fray. One gnoll reaches Antarah and tries his luck. Two more come around to surround the group and attack Yasmeena. Haleen finds out, that it is very painful to stand next to an ettin. Luckily she is too agile for it to hit often.
Antarah kills a gnoll, steps up to a hyena and kills that too. As no one else is in reach he stabs it again, just because.
Three raiders swarm Aithaloessa. Also Yasmeena and Haleen get attacked.
"Antarah, stop playing around with the gnolls. There's a two headed giant for you to deal with." Haleen scolds her companion.
She stabs at all around her, left to right, then steps up to the one threatening Yasmeena and stabs once again.
Another hyena falls, and a raider, and many more are wounded. She manages another very painful stab at the Ettin too.
Aith really doesn’t like how quickly these cutthroats move, not least because she’s not sure how to lead them into her conductive rain without running a gauntlet of slashing swords. It looks like a bit of zig-zagging will be involved, and as many unpleasant surprises as she can manage.
Backpedaling furiously, she keeps her pistol pointed at the nearest raider, but rather than taking a shot, her free hand reaches for one of her pouches of spell components, and she focuses all her will on calling up another bit of magic, conjuring yet another cloud: this one comparatively dry, but sparking alarmingly.
The raider looks like a drowned rat as another cloud appears and zaps him. But he isn't as affected as the elf would wish.
One raider slashes at Haleen and faints. Another one attacks her and the gnoll mage keeps shooting her with magic missiles.
Yasmeena dances back a step from the gnolls and continues firing at the spellcaster.
Yasmeena turns the mage into a dead pincushion.
The Knights of Kelamarane get more and more swarmed by that huge amount of opponents. And Haleen still stands in range of the ettin, which is very painful.
Electric sparks sizzle through the rain, as Antarah's blade connects, and cuts open the big creature. Blood gushing out and the body in tremors, the ettin breaks down and falls face first into the dirt.
Antarah takes a load of Haleen's mind. Now there is only weed left to deal with. She starts with those around and then moves on to support Yasmeena and Aithaloessa.
A lot of the raiders bite the dust, as Haleen keeps moving like a whirlwind.
Feeling the press of fairly normal, mostly hairless raiders on one side, and the surviving gnolls on the other, Aith tries to remain calm – fortunately, the ones who’ve taken a swing at her so far seem not to be able to keep up with her accelerated movements.
Still, no sense in tempting fate, so she redirects her smaller thunderburst to swarm the gnoll directly behind her, and then sidesteps and lines up a shot from her pistol too, risking the opening that taking aim requires.
The gnoll is struck down by lightning. The other one shot down.
Yasmeena steps towards Aithaloessa and fires her bow at the ettin.
Yasmeena steps back and shoots the three raiders that are perfectly lined up into oblivion. This leaves only a single gnoll, who turns around and flees. Which earns him an arrow to the back and end that attempt.
With the raiders there are lots of arrows to fill up the quiver of Yasmeena. And a lot of standard equipment that could be sold for some coin, if one had the means to carry it.
The gnolls also have scimitars
The ettin has two flails.
The gnoll mage has some more interesting items on her. a magical +1 studded leather, a masterwork spear, a masterwork light crossbow, a cloak of resistance +1, a ring of protection +1, an obsidian unholy symbol of Rovagug and 45 gp.
"Whew!" Haleen wipes the sweat and blood off her forehead. "That was harder than I thought."
"Tariq, Yasmeena, if one of you has some healing for me that would be much appreciated." She sits down on one of the stones and sheathes her Rapier.
Yasmeena nods. "That's what these wands are for, right?" she winks.
"Whew!" Haleen wipes the sweat and blood off her forehead. "That was harder than I thought."
“Mm,” Aith says, taking a moment to recentre herself after putting quite a bit of energy out there. “Thank you for keeping the most dangerous of them off of us: I’m sorry I didn’t see a way to helping with that giant.”
She keeps tactics in the back of her mind as she scans the aftermath for anything interesting . In retrospect, her basic flight spell, however inefficient, would have got her out of the melee, but would have devoured much of her reserves for the day. Still…
Collecting the magical baubles from the perforated gnoll mage for closer inspection, as well as the fancier weapons, Aith suggests, “Back to the oasis to set up camp, if we can find or clear a spot without a layer of battlefield remains?”
Haleen gladly accepts the magic stick treatment. "Thank you."
"Camp sounds good. Hopefully those were the last with the intent to see us dead."
|
Antarah agrees and says still a little out of breath "It looks like we can get through anything." He quickly shuts up, remembering in the stories how things usually get worse when someone celebrates it going well.
Looking around, he says "I wonder if we'll stop hearing about troublesome gnolls near town now."
As you come back to the Oasis Radi comes out of hiding. He makes a guess what happened by the look of Knights "The things befalling you are worse than I ever had to face on my travels. But you definitely come out better than I did."
“We do manage to be professional, from time to time,” Aith says, managing to keep her military posture, and almost managing to keep a straight face.
“It was quite a fight, though. Hopefully, like Antarah said, that will be the end of it, but it seems like someone finally worked up the nerve to search-”
She stops herself before actually saying, -their own temple. She can only guess that someone’s noticed that the scroll of Kakishon has gone missing. Unless it was just the ransacking of the tomb generally? It strikes her as a bit strange that that would disturb Rovagug cultists, but what does she know.
It’s not that Aith doesn’t trust Radi, but obviously she has a hard enough time making sure she doesn’t let dangerous gossip slip herself. “At any rate. We’ve some road to travel yet, and could all probably use some rest.”
Haleen is still delighted about the magical tent. So easy to set up, so much comfort. As it stands after only 10 minutes, she lays down inside to stretch out. "Where does Radi sleep?"
The unspoken 'not in our compartment' is still obvious from her face.
Aith waves a hand dismissively, since the magical tent is a lot more comfortable than a long patrol through the Wastes with a squad of whichever guards one might be assigned to. It’s not worth fretting about, she supposes, since unless Radi’s playing a very long game or one of the knights has already been replaced by a disguised zombie or something, she doubts he’s a spy or assassin. “There’s the half of the room I’m not using, or just the main one? I don’t think I’m that terrifying a roommate, odd hours aside, unless I’ve taken to rambling about primal magic in my sleep.”
“Then again, if I have, maybe I should get someone to listen in case there’s anything interesting?” she muses. “After all, dreams sometimes bring inspiration, they say.”
Speaking of inspiration, the mage settles in with her spellbook, running over arcane formulae for some of her favourite and some of her newer spells to see if there are ways to remember them more efficiently, so that they’re less liable to twist and slip from her mind so quickly…
As she indulges her restless mind, Aith also takes a moment to murmur the trickier incantation for the bit of arcane healing that she knows to ease the bruises left by the gnoll spellcaster's magic missiles.
"Nightly lectures about primal magic sounds interesting." Radi replies and accepts the offer to join Aith in her compartment of the tent.
During the evening meal in front of the tent around a campfire the question arises if a night watch is needed.
On one side, one can never be too careful. On the other side, sleeping like a baby next to the carnage of the death worms for sure sends a message to someone pondering an attack. In case there is still someone around to do the pondering.
"Nightly lectures about primal magic sounds interesting." Radi replies and accepts the offer to join Aith in her compartment of the tent.
“Really?” Aith says eagerly, a manic gleam in her eye that speaks of a wizard deprived of an audience for some time. She’s always interested in what other people have to say on the state of the field, from finer points of particular techniques to the broad strokes of the pros and cons of Nexian vs. Nantambiyan traditions of primacy…
"I think setting a watch is prudent," she says while tuning her oud and strumming it softly. "I am willing to do my part, of course."
"Of course I´ll do a shift too. Maybe the one after your's? You could just wake me when you return to bed." he suggests to Aithaloessa.
Aithaloessa takes the first shift, as she needs her eight hours uninterrupted beauty sleep. Second is Radi.
You hear suspicious noises from Aith's cabin in the tent. And no, it's not the usual gibberish she is talking in her sleep.
Yasmeena wakes with a start, sure that she has heard something suspicious coming from elsewhere in the tent. She races to Aithaloessa's quarters and bursts in, scimitar drawn.
Radi jolts up from his sleeping place. "What happened? Are we under attack?"
Haleen shortly opens her eyes as she thought she heard something, but finds that not to be true and turns around going directly back to sleep.
Yasmeena blinks, and then laughs. "Shh!" she whispers. "I think you were snoring or talking in your sleep. We don't want to wake Aithaloessa! Why don't you come and help me finish my watch?"
It's quite a nice evening outside the tent. The stars are bright, and the oasis' trees take a bit of the edge off the desert night. There are some occasionally disturbing sounds coming from *over there* every now and again that are probably jackals or other scavengers nosing about in the wreckage left by either battle, and Aith finds her eyes drawn in that direction every so often just in case.
Mainly, though, it's kind of boring. Things that want to pick on such things have their choice, and, well, there' no one left who would know precisely where the knights of Kelmarane have camped, so. Her mind wanders, fiddling with ideas for some refinements to her spells.
Yasmeena wakes with a start and rushes quickly outside, where she comes upon Aithaloessa and holds a finger up for her to listen. Then she beckons the elven woman to follow as she bursts into the tent where Radi is sleeping. When the man pretends to have been asleep, she frowns and gives Aith a look and a shake of her head that says she does not believe him.
"Okay, you got me... but I had to look. See, I was sleeping here and suddenly I heard my name whispered. It woke me up, but there was no one there. But it kept calling. And it came from the bag. I swear..."
Yasmeena gives Radi an almost sympathetic look, and shakes her head again for Aithaloessa.
Aith is surprised when Yasmeena comes to get her, but follows her quietly back into the tent, wondering what’s going on. It doesn’t take long before she realizes that Radi’s been caught … with his hand in the cookie jar? Or something.
She is very grateful that Yasmeena is here to guide her: her own time in the Alkenstar guard was spent above all in analysis, occasionally in cleaning up nicely and/or patrolling, and only very rarely doing interrogations, for very good reasons.
“Oh?” she says mildly, slipping into the role of sympathetic hearer compared to Yaz’s no-nonsense stance. “As far as I know there’s nothing there that should be talking. What did it sound like?”
Well, there is her pistol, but that’s still on her hip as she takes her watch shift, and that doesn’t talk so much as just kind of grow fungus and tingle and somehow suggest strange ideas.
“At least it wasn’t the axe whispering, ‘Kill! KILL!’, right?” The plan is still to find a sane buyer for the life-draining weapon in the city, which is perhaps rather a tall order, but the sheriff is getting distracted again. “Give me a moment and I’ll check for any magic that’s out of place. There are some other simple tests we can do as well. I’ll move my bedroll into the main area, and we can keep our ears open in case there is anything we can hear.”
She braces herself for the shock that the scroll is going to give her, realizing that that’s the most important thing to secure – she’ll have to hand it over to Yasmeena and Haleen for safekeeping, looks like – and reaches out with her arcane senses.
There is still everything there and nothing missing. The scroll still stuns Aithaloessa shortly.
"That thing was it." Radi tells as Aithaloessa checks the Scroll of Kakishon.
“That is interesting,” Aith floats, not having to pretend curiosity. Whether Radi actually knows something about the scroll she doesn’t, or just enough to be plotting something she needs to watch out for, it’s another riddle to poke at.
“Like I said, I’ll take another look, and, for the sake of your peace of mind while we figure things out, I’ll move into the main area of the tent for tonight.”
She quickly gathers her things, acknowledging Yasmeena’s doubts with a tiny nod. While she settles herself again – as far away from her original alcove as possible, and making more noise unrolling her bedroll and getting a few odds and ends out than is strictly necessary – she whispers to the bard in a low undertone, “I have no idea what he’s up to. Whether or not we go right back to accuse him directly, I think it would be best if you or Haleen held onto the scroll for now. Keep it moving, just in case our new friend gets twitchy fingers again.”
After this embarrassing situation the rest of the travel to Katapesh has no more unpleasant surprises. Radi has to suffer through Aithaloessa's continuous inquiries about the calling of the scroll. It takes all his mental strength to not admit what really happened.
When the group reaches Katapesh Radi is actually helpful as he knows his way around Katapesh and can tell which way to the villa of Rayhan at the delta of the river Scorpius.
Then Radi thanks the group for taking him along, and leaves to visit his guild.
Rayhan’s villa is not actually located within the city walls itself, but in a well-to-do section of the city just to the southeast. This area, dominated by Castle Clarion, home to a relatively infamous family that
has made its fortune in the slave trade, is popular among several of Katapesh’s more successful merchants who enjoy the convenience of the city but not the bustle and mayhem of actual city living.
Rayhan’s villa is a modest three-story structure built from heavy clay bricks perched on a cliff overlooking the Obari Ocean. The villa is certainly not the extravagant affair one might expect such a successful merchant to own. The villa itself consists of the main house, a few outbuildings, and a well-kept garden. Grass grows thick on the villa grounds - Rayhan employs a caretaker to maintain it and the garden, and often keeps exotic and sometimes dangerous pets in a nearby building. A gated brick wall surrounds the entire cluster of buildings.