Declan frowned at the report that they were being watched. Turning away from the grate, he said in a low voice, "It is impossible to determine for whom they are watching the door. They could be spies for the Tarkanans, or they could be friendly to us and know of a back way in." He paused for a moment in thought, pursing his lips and furrowing his brow at the eaves of the building.
At last he added, "Perhaps one of us can speak to them. If they remain, then they may be friendly. We should not dismiss potential assistance when we are in need of intelligence."
Well, that was all the invitation Zander needed. He turned and approached the grate. The darkness beyond was no different to the senses of J'r-V'zz than would the brightest light of midday, and the psicrystal meticulously updated Zander's mental map as the golden-bodied warforged moved.
"Hello," Zander said, once he was close enough not to be shouting, "We wish to interact with the Tarkanans here in this hidden location in a way that should prove to be of significant interest to those you serve. Although," Zander paused, head tilting as he considered a thought, "this location is not as 'hidden,' perhaps, as one might have supposed. In any case, will you help us to enter without need for immediate violence?"
Relaying her discovery to her companions, Eyve considers Declan's suggestion, cocking her head slightly to the side as Zander simply acts on the suggestion with no further discussion.
She waits in silence, expecting violence in response.
Thraag blinks at Zander and then starts looking around to see if anyone who might be part of the guild might be around them.
"Slag off, clanker," came the reply. The group noted that the two sets of reflective eyes didn't waver- whoever it was didn't seem threatened at all by the possibility of sudden violence. The voice echoed up through the sewer drain but whoever was on the other end sounded big, and like their teeth weren't built for the common tongue. "G'wan 'bout ya bizness."
The depths of the drain were too dark for Thraag to see in but Declan had an elf's sharp eyes and J’r-V’zz had no eyes at all. Both could see the nightmare creatures lurking there. Even crouching and peering up through the drain they were huge, but worse was their unnatural, monstrous proportions. They resembled a twisted shadow puppet’s silhouette, a wild thing of flared black and brown fur whose pelts jutted out from their body at freakish angles. They had large, floppy ears, draping shoulder-length, adding to the creature’s unnatural shape. Their eyes were too big for their heads, tremendous milk-white ovals looming on either side of their wheezy pig-like noses. Their mouths were filled with bristly needle-teeth spiderwebbed in disgusting strands of yellowish saliva. Both wore nasty spiked studded leather armor and one had an oversized spiked mace while the other a recurved longbow.
Eyve, meanwhile, with android senses, saw all this and more, quickly putting two and two together and coming up with Daask. There could be little doubt why a pair of bugbears was keeping watch over a Tarkanan hideout.
Eyve knew that Daask, currently at war with the Tarkanans, used bugbears as assassins and torturers. While of course not every bugbear was a terrifying serial murderer, the ones who joined Daask almost all were.
Idrassa pondered these developments. Hostiles were watching the same door they were. Daask? Perhaps, though she suspected the Tarkanans were not short of enemies.
"So much for them," Idrassa commented to the others. "Should we...Go ahead with things?"
"Bugbears. Daask to be specific. A criminal organization recently spread across Korvaire. Using violence and intimidation to carve out a niche in the underworld, the group is composed almost exclusively of monsters from Droaam. Rumors say that Sora Katra is the mastermind behind this group. In common, the name would translate to “The Monster’s Eye.” They are currently engaging in an underworld war with the Tarkanans and use bugbears as assassins and torturers. One may find a rare bugbear that isn't a serial murderer, but not among the ones that join Daask." Eyve relates to her companions.
"They are unlikely to try and help the Tarkanans then. We should move." Thraag says.
"Daask, indeed? Unlikely to oppose us in this endeavor, and indeed perhaps will take advantage. At this juncture I am disinclined to perturb them."
Declan posted himself across from the door, his bow ready. He raised a nocked arrow, ready to fire if a target presents itself.
Thraag will approach the entrance and take a moment to look for traps.
Zander positioned himself behind and slightly to one side of Thraag and the door, his crystalline armor flowing into place around him. His halberd in one hand, Zander raised his other, palm up, aiming over Thraag's shoulder.
Thraag didn't spot a trap, per se, but he did note the arm of something or other hooked over the top of the front door. From this side he couldn't tell what it might do but he was reasonably certain something would happen when he opened the door. But since it was the front door and there was no obvious way to disarm it from this side, it was likely the door wasn't going to explode immediately upon opening.
"They have something hooked at the top of the door. Probably to warn them when the door is opened." Thraag whispers to the others as he points at the hook. He then moves to open the door.
Skylar was...well. Regretful, perhaps, but anger was charging far ahead, and fuelling her.
She opened her crusted eyes to slits, and winced; the lights bloomed painfully in her vision, dim though it was. Her cheek was damp against the chill, algae-filmed stone. Her hair was damp from the blow they had dealt to her, a strata of clotting now enclosing the wound.
She groaned as she set her back against the wall, pushing off against the floor with her icy hands, inching herself upright. Patience. The little explosions would recede soon. Hazy memories timidly gathered against the onslaught. As they came together, she was also regretting remembering. Torture was rarely a thing a body wished to bring to recollection. They'd left her in an undershirt and leggings. Blooms of crimson, purple, blue, and yellow spilled across her belly and ribs. The pain was persistent and bone-deep.
She was...yes. She was returning from the Southern Ward back to the Cassalanter Villa in Sea Ward. A collection job, typical of her labours under the ir'Cassalanters. Coin was a thing they wanted much of, very quickly, in a short amount of time. So, they would send Skylar to fetch it, whether it be calling in markers or collecting galifars. Some markers did not want to be called, but Skylar had a knack for coaxing the coins out of their hands.
Her time with the ir'Cassalanters had been an education. If she was entirely honest with herself, her time with them had also been a means to dance around talking to Declan around feelings, especially when said feelings led her to feeling any degree of vulnerability. If she was further honest with herself, she wanted to know, for certain, whether her closeness to him was simply dependence, or whether it was real. True to her nature, she had fled the more frightening prospect of stability and intimacy than the one that offered uncertainty and promise.
It could have, she knew, been a conversation. Hey, Dec. I'm struggling. Instead, she'd put up a fortress and created distance.
And now, she was here, in this cell, gods-knew-where.
As she prodded at an eye-- swollen shut by their ministrations-- she hissed a bit-back curse, more at another memory, than the blossoming pain. No doubt the thousand-galifar-strong bag was now in the hands of her kidnappers. House Tarkanan could go hang.
Bastards. They'd tried to recruit her to play turncoat, and she had expressed in no uncertain terms where they could put their request. She might not have been with the ir'Cassalanters long, but they were decent as far as she knew, and had treated her well. They seemed authentic to even her skeptical senses, and that was enough. She considered this as she painstakingly walked her fingers over her jaw. She was sure a tooth or two were loose, quick work for a healer, were she to escape.
She had been so careful. It was the middle of the bloody afternoon! She had taken that alleyway a hundred times without incident. Idiot. They must have been tailing her, learning her patterns. They'd caught her in broad daylight. How long had she been out? It had to have been a few hours, now.
Escape. Her laugh was a bubbling, liquid sound. She coughed, and something...jolted, like a faultline, something grinding against something else. That couldn't be good. Not that her situation was at all good. Whatever passed for torture was going to look like a magical bakery class at the Academy by the time the specialist the Tarkanan hounds had called for, arrived.
So, what did she have? Bloody nothing. They hadn't left a damn thing, not a convenient hairpin or a lockpick in her boot. Nothing. All she could do was breathe and find a modicum of energy to cast a cantrip. Perhaps it would be enough.
If it wasn't, well. She wasn't done yet, but the odds were hardly promising. Nobody would know she was missing for hours. Then, they wouldn't know where to start looking for her, because they trusted her to do jobs by the handful. She could be anywhere in the city. She moved carefully and quietly. By the time they retraced her steps, she'd likely be dead.
Not careful or quiet enough, apparently.
Strange, how at the end of it all...Declan's face loomed up amidst the red haze.
Sky is conscious and stable at 0 HP. She can do a single action or move action per round, 'til healed.
Idrassa held back, putting some distance between herself and the door but cocking the crossbow she had drawn from her bag. Tweety, for her part, had simply scrabbled along the wall and now hung upside down above the door, waiting for the mayhem that was to come.
"They have something hooked at the top of the door. Probably to warn them when the door is opened." Thraag whispers to the others as he points at the hook. He then moves to open the door.
Checking the door, Thraag found it secured but quickly disabled the basic lock. As he eased the door open a crack he heard a man's voice and stopped.
"...nother one last night. That's the sixth one." Someone was talking, it sounded like they were talking to someone else. But without opening the door all the way he couldn't see how many someone elses there might be.
The greater challenge was in disabling the simple chime rigged to ring when the door swung open, which he silently disarmed by reaching up and holding his hand over the clapper as he quietly eased the arm off the top of the door.
Thraag didn't hear any response but the man kept talking. They hadn't noticed him disarming the door chime. "It's just sailors but they're all elves. Everyone I know is talking about avoiding Dock Ward for now."
Thraag focuses his inner power and enhances his weapon as he steps into the room.
As soon as Thraag opened the door, Dec saw one of the Tarkanas leaning against the side wall. He took aim and fired.
As the door opened, Idrassa maneuvered herself beside Declan and loosed a bolt at the first of the two thugs. For her part, Tweety slipped through the open door, still clinging to the ceiling, and struck downward at the other.
Prepared as he had been, Zander simply slipped up behind Thraag, and even as the enemy came into sight, J'r-V'zz dropped a red character directly over the humanoid's torso, and Zander's mental trigger sent a shard of crystal flying from his palm towards the target.
They -- they, being the inbred streaks of piss who had shackled her -- had not yet noticed Skylar was awake.
Through the crimson fog of pain, she had resorted to putting her brain to use, a thing she often did to distract herself as much as to grasp at any remote advantage she might leverage when such situations had arisen.
Someone materialised before her. She lofted her gaze upward, and it followed a face as a ghost of her youth crouched in front of her.
Sylas smiled. Her brother's features were frozen in time, his face now far younger than her own. He draped his forearms over his knees.
"This is a tough one you've got yourself into, Sky," he noted, looking over his shoulder at the room. "How are you going to get yourself out? You know you can't die here."
She was unable to speak. He was likely the product of the blow to her head. At least, she hoped. Was she that close to death that she could see him now, as she hadn't in years?
"There's always a way," he continued. "What do you see?"
He stepped out of the way so she could take in the room. She called her powers of observation to hand. Right. What did she see?
First, there were manacles at her wrists and ankles. She was not in a cell, just disoriented, so much so she had not noticed the leaden weight at her wrists and feet.
Secondly, she was not alone. There were four in the team who had ensnared her, but three she was able to put names to. The delightful pair who had worked her over were Jarkoth, a half-elf male, and Vevette, a human woman. They were not of note, a thing that had been hard to ignore while raining blows on her. They answered to Avareen, another human woman. The harpy was in the room with her, sitting at a table, too focussed on penning something to notice that her captive was sitting upright.
Through slitted eyes, Skylar observed that the door to her left was open. Perhaps that would be useful, later.
Vevette was...beyond her view, whatever she was. Jarkoth was talking, somewhere out of sight. Jarkoth's voice might have been better deployed for torture, Skylar reflected. His voice grated and scraped over reading aloud of how elves such as he were being targeted by some elf-killer. Shame; she hoped they'd get around to disposing of them soon.
Her gaze shifted to the right as she took in a small cell in the corner of the room. The still form of whats he was sure was a dwarf served as its occupant, vitality unknown. There was a...Daask tattoo on his neck. Strange; Daask were usually of non-humanoids, such as those found in Droaam, but they did tend to host the monsters and misfits that were unlikely to be accepted elsewhere.
Her head lolled as she took slow, quiet breaths through her nose, and brought her focus to bear. His hair...why was she wondering about his hair? Identifying features. She couldn't see his face, but she could note the hair as standing out. A...monk-like haircut? But there were locks of hair, just in an uncommon style. If alive...possibly a temporary ally? If he was dead, was there something on his person she could use?
So...she had two known assailants in the room. She was chained to a chair, with no means to free herself. She was weak, had suffered blood loss, had internal injuries, and was weaponless. She had not even the internal well to melt through the chains with magicked acid. She needed rest, but they had called someone who had better expertise than they in the torturous arts, so time was not a luxury that she had to her name.
"You can't die here," Sylas whispered, and when she looked to where he had stood, the apparition had vanished.
I can't die here. Not now. Not yet!
Think, Sky. Bloody think!
That was about when the Abyss opened, and the world exploded.
Eve strides into the room taking a forward position as her eyes scan the room, taking in the opponents, mind already preparing responses for the most likely modes of attack.
Declan's arrow thudded into the reading man's shoulder like it was an archery butt. He screamed in surprise and pain as his partner- a woman with purple hair- fell out of her chair and scrambled to her feet. "Raid!"
A monster with wings and scales and undulating coils crawls over the lintel, moving smoothly over the wall and ceiling to coil on the wall above the door in the other room.
Zander's blast took the man in the side but the shard of crystal was stopped by the chain armor guarding his torso.
The woman screamed as Tweety's huge snake fangs suddenly snapped shut on her shoulder and the couatl's tail blasted the wind out of her. Idrassa followed up Zander's crystal attack with a crossbow bolt, also stopped by the man's chainmail.
As the group barged into the room, purple hair shouted "Who the Khyber are you!?"
OOC:
All PCs except Idrassa/Tweety are up.
Init:
Tweety- acted
Idrassa- acted
Declan
Thraag
Zander
Eyve
Red- moderate dmg (7)
Purple
Blue- moderate dmg (12)
"Justice," was all Declan answered as he nocked another arrow destined for the leaning man. He pulled back and fired, imbuing some of his magical power into the shot. He then stepped closer to the doorway.
Thraag calls upon his inner power and a shield of force appears before him. He calls out to the gang members, "Surrender and survive!"
Skylar froze. Her breath caught. Chaos was unfurling in the other room, but she was unable to fully see from where she sat.
She dared not draw any attention to herself. She feigned unconsciousness, slumping against the chair, but watchful through barely-slitted eyes.
Her breath caught again at the sight of, yes, that was Tweety, creeping overhead like silent death.
Stay still. Be still. She dared not hope until she was certain...
And then, a voice-- barely heard above the screams.
She knew that voice. Was she delirious? Hallucinating? What was happening was surely real, but the voice...
In the ensuing madness, could she free her shackles of the chair? She shifted her wrists behind her. Stuck firm. Damn. She was as weak as a damned fledgling! If these weren't friendlies, where did that leave her?
Someone unfamiliar called for surrender. The gang members would slit her throat if she moved too soon. Patience.
The room was quickly becoming crowded, and Zander considered remaining at the door and continuing to shoot, but J'r-V'zz suddenly painted an additional mark on his internal threat map, and Zander recognized that getting into and through the room was the tactical priority.
He waited just long enough for Declan to loose another arrow through the door, then moved to follow it, bringing his Halberd up in both hands.
Instead of risking the blade catching against the ceiling, and without the room for a wide horizontal swing, Zander instead went between his companions, and rammed the spiked end of the weapon forward at hip height, seeking to impale the closest enemy and open a path to the next for his companions.
Dropping the defensive stance, Eyve explodes into action, vaulting off of Zander's shoulder into a twisting somersault, culminating in a powerful snap kick to the purple-haired woman's face as she lands on the table.
"Justice," was all Declan answered as he nocked another arrow destined for the leaning man. He pulled back and fired, imbuing some of his magical power into the shot. He then stepped closer to the doorway.
Declan's freezing cold arrow slammed into the man as he struggled to react to the surprise attack, blasting him off his feet as he tried to rise and dropping him to the floor, motionless.
Thraag calls upon his inner power and a shield of force appears before him. He calls out to the gang members, "Surrender and survive!"
The purple haired woman leapt to her feet, a glittering blade sliding out of her right forearm with an audible snap as it locked into place. "You just killed Jark, you a@!%+&@!"
Instead of risking the blade catching against the ceiling, and without the room for a wide horizontal swing, Zander instead went between his companions, and rammed the spiked end of the weapon forward at hip height, seeking to impale the closest enemy and open a path to the next for his companions.
The warforged rushed forward, slamming his halberd into the woman's stomach. Her eyes bulged and she grabbed at the haft of his weapon uselessly.
Dropping the defensive stance, Eyve explodes into action, vaulting off of Zander's shoulder into a twisting somersault, culminating in a powerful snap kick to the purple-haired woman's face as she lands on the table.
Eyve impressed in her first combat with the group, dropping the claw-equipped woman with a kick so hard they could hear the crunch of boot on bone in the next room.
In the doorway to the other room, Tweety's target had drawn a slim rapier but instead of stabbing with it she had reached out to grab the couatl's withdrawing tail but was too slow. Skylar saw the telltale glow of a dragonmark in use emanating from the sleeve of her right arm.
OOC:
All PCs are up.
Init:
Tweety-
Idrassa-
Declan-
Thraag-
Zander-
Eyve
DOWN Red- moderate dmg (7)
DOWN Purple- major dmg (12)
Blue- moderate dmg (12)
"Remember, we need one alive," Declan said as he stalked into the room, stowing his bow and drawing his thornblade. He had no love left for the Tarkanans, but they needed information.
"It is possible that one of the two fallen combatants has not been fatally wounded," J'r'-V'zz said into Zander's mind. There was a pause. "It is not probable," the psicrystal admitted, after a moment, "but there does exist a non-zero possibility.""
Zander looked down at the female humanoid who had informed them of the name of the fallen enemy, the humanoid called Eyve had knocked her body off of his Halberd's spike and to the floor.
"The offer was 'surrender and survive,'" he said, "Jark did neither."
Seeing that the door into the next room was getting rather crowded, and recognizing that the Eyve humanoid had demonstrated a significant degree of competence in melee combat, Zander chose not to crowd his ally.
Instead, he simply lifted his arm, palm forward, and let fly with another crystal projectile, towards the humanoid that was already engaged with Tweety.
Idrassa held back, knowing the tiny space of the safehouse was already crowded and there was little she could do to assist. But Tweety saw a familiar face and the human's eyes widened at the relayed information
She almost blurted this aloud, but stopped herself. If the guard knew they were interested in the captive, it could become a hostage situation.
For her part, Tweety yielded to Idrassa's reminder to take prisoners, and attempted to grab the remaining guard, but was unable to slip her coils around the Tarkanan.
Skylar almost cheered. To the hells with feigning unconsciousness; that was bloody Zander she had heard! The Warforged's voice was a beautiful sound. And this was Tweety! She wasn't quite hallucinating, not yet. Whomever was with them, she could at least trust them (at least, based on a given value of trust).
She caught sight of a sliver of the Dragonmark on the arm of the hag who had tried to grab Tweety.
Contrary to what Idrassa was thinking, Skylar abandoned any desire for safety to deliver what she felt was a rather vital bit of information.
"Zander! Idrassa!" She exclaimed, voice hoarse from her less-than-stellar treatment, "Dragonmark! She has a Dragonmark!"
Declan paused a split second at the sound of the new voice. Something tickled the back of his cerebellum, bringing up memories set aside. There was something familiar about that voice, but something sounded off as well. Sky?
He shook his head, there was no time for what-ifs. He'd cross that bridge when he got to it.
"The dragonmarked one is who we want. Take her alive. Kill the others."
The woman twisted away from Tweety's coiling tail but whuffed out a breath as Zander's crystal slammed her in the back. Her head whipped toward Skylar when she called out, using the names of her rescuers. Sky knew the frantic look on her face- she was getting desperate enough to try something risky.
Don't you bloody dare, Sky thought. Getting her hands free was impossible; the shackles had been wound between the slats of the chair, and she was altogether too weak to attempt to free herself.
That was Declan, wasn't it?
"Whatever you're going to do, do it now!" She shouted hoarsely, words clipped so she could get them out quickly, glaring in frustration at the woman. "She's desperate!"
Thraag reaches out with his mind at the crystal and flings it back at Tweety.