The dogs continue yelping and attacking Brand.
Brand narrowly escapes the attack.
Limping past the injured clerics, a pale and slimy woman stands behind Brand and pushes her ranseur into the hound.
"Ssorry for myy abssenccce, but I sseem to haave found you jussst in time. Let us retreat."
The dogs are as surprised as the others. The returning newcomer thrusts her weapon and feels some resistance, but blood still trickles out.
They're called Yeth Hounds. They're evil outsiders usually dispatched by an evil deity as a reward for service. They have DR 5/silver.
Azadi pulls the strange medallion off the woman's corpse and holds it up towards the hounds. "Down!" he commands, "Sit!"
With multiple people between him and the dogs and them involved in combat it makes little sense to try and fire an bolt into the fray. Elan watches closely to see what happens with the dogs.
The dogs find the new target exciting and go for her.
The tiefling's magic seems to stop the dogs attacks on her.
Azadi moves out of the room to a place where he can channel energy without including the dogs, and summons a wave a softly white light to further heal his companions. Noting that the new woman does not appear hurt, he instead extends to her an animalistic blessing from Gozreh.
"Yeth houndss," Ribitta spits, slowly backing to the door and blocking the hounds' egress with her body. "Silver will kill them! We shhall return for them."
Elan moves back and channels his goddess' power to further heal his comrades.
The dogs seem to not like getting bitten and move at the tiefling again.
The dogs manage to bite her.
The group manages to drag Thakus' body behind closed doors. The dogs seem to angrily claw at the door. The group quickly drags him back upstairs. There is no sign of the bugbear who came up and the dogs do manage to fly around the corridor to where the group was, but they don't notice they got upstairs.
Sweat is running down their brows as they look at each other trying to figure out what happened.
Seriously wounded from the dog's bite, Ribitta casts Boiling Blood on both hounds as they retreat and holds the spell as long as she can.
"Fffraogss in a pott."
Elan raises his holy symbol twice more and pours out healing energies on the group.
|
"We can't just leave. Based on the drawing in that one fellows journal, that was the woman we've been looking for. However, if we didn't get all of her followers they could have her raised. I think we need a rest though. What if we took over the goblin chief's throne room. Throw out the bodies, bolt or block the door and get some rest. When we recover we finish this place then come back, pick up Thakus and return to town. Thoughts?" Brand says laying out his thoughts on the general tactics of how to handle the situation.
"I'm afraid that if we rest inside the fort we'll wake up under siege..." Azadi confesses, "but we do need to rest, and I'm not sure what better option we might have."
The group can hear the hobgoblin shouting something in the distance, outside.
|
|
"If we do need to fight it would be better to fight here than in the nettles and in the dark. Let's go to the chief's place and wedge the doors shut with a couple of pitons. At worse, it will give us warning that something is trying to get through."
Assuming no one objects, Brand moves into the larger room, throws out some of the bodies and once everyone is inside he wedges the door shut with pitons and begins to pile things in front of the doors such as the throne or anything else of size.
Brand blocks the doors as best as he can.
Azadi frowns. "We seemed to fare slightly better with help from Betty, but I'm not sure how we could manage another encounter with those dog-things... getting some rest does seem like the prudent course, but aside from the danger that we might awaken to an attack but not just the dogs but whatever else is left in here along with the dogs, we also run the risk that if that woman wasn't the mastermind behind the attack we might let whoever was escape while we're resting..."
Ribitta concentrates still on the fires inside the dog as they set a hasty barricade.
"Doesss anyone have ssilver?" she asks.
|
|
"Guess I was being a sissy britches. Let's go knock some heads. As for silver, I don't think so. Let's see what we found on that goblin chief?" Brand says looking through his pack. He also checks to see if Thakus has any silver weapons on him, though he doubts it.
He stands from his pack and says, "We've got two potions of cure moderate wounds and a magical short sword. I'm not any good with it, what about you Betty? I already asked the others."
Elan receives some divine inspiration and then says "I do have the ability to cast one more spell. The Dawnflower just reminded me that she gave me the power to use my holy symbol to cast a spell."
"I can still summon mist to obscure us from an enemy's sight, and create a wall of wind to provide some defense from ranged attacks, that's all the spells I have left though," Azadi reports. "And, I can still conjure a few blasts of wind and little storm clouds."
"I guess the question, really, is can we finish off the dogs? If not, then we need to figure out the best place to rest; but if we can, the bugbear might be the only thing left to handle."
"We couldn't deal with both dogs at once, but there's a natural choke point at the door... if we stay outside the door only one of them will be able to attack us but Brand and Betty will both be able to attack it, and Elan and I could both make ranged attacks or provide support. It might be enough to turn the odds in our favor?"
The party can hear the bugbear still speaking in Goblin, and it seems to be approaching.
"Lady Nualia! Someone has killed our defenses. Get ready to fight!"
Azadi positions himself behind Brand and places a minor blessing on the dwarf . Then he whispers to those close enough to hear him, "it's calling for 'Lady Nualia' as if she's the boss... I think that's probably the woman we killed in the basement..."