As Zsofia moves off to keep lookout, Jando shrugs and moves off in at a slightly different angle to form a crude picket line. Meanwhile the rest of you get to work as best you can, gathering up what little deadwood and burnable scrap can be found. After a moment's consultation--and some careful prodding of Jonnar--you settle on using the half-collapsed farmhouse as the core of the pyre.
Unfortunately, your pile of kindling is only just hitting an appropriate size when Jando and Zsofia come loping (or drifting, in the phantom's case) back, expressions respectively grim and eager.
"They're here," Jando announces curtly, jerking a thumb back the way he came and drawing an arrow from his quiver. Within moments you see them too: three masked figures similar to those you fought before, knives in hand as the fan out on approach. At their head is an ugly purple ghoul who makes the hairs on your neck stand on end. She moves with the languid menace of a hunting cat, a long tongue tasting the air like a serpent. She is armored in blackened scale mail and carries an enormous, ornate scythe with disturbing ease. As the group sees you gathered they pause.
"I had wondered what became of my initiates," rasps the ghoul. "You have denied them their immortality, a slight I am disinclined to ignore. Tell me how you crossed the Fetoring Fog and I will--" she cuts off abruptly, peering more closely at Garret, and then at Silvia. "...how strange," the ghoul draws out the words as though speaking to herself. "Take those two alive, if you can. Perhaps the armored one is about as well."
Sanduro looks over at Ketra. "Should we feel insulted?"
He moves quickly to join the rest of the group, using the brief pause before the inevitable combat starts to return Zsofia to her corporeal form.
I'd rather keep you out of this, but I think we're going to need you. Try not to get yourself hurt any worse than you already are.
The druid gets ready to cast one of his battlefield control spells as soon as the tension breaks, but is reluctant to be the one to break it.
Yeah, like you'd last twelve seconds without me.
Zsofia glides back to stand next to Sanduro so that she can guard him if necessary (and also gain the benefit of any helpful spells he might choose to cast on her).
"Jonnar, I believe these are allies of the ones who destroyed our town and killed your beloved...Perhaps you would like to extract a bit of vengeance?" says Garret as an aside to their erstwhile ally as he prepares for battle himself.
Ketra glances back at Sanduro "Honestly, we can work that out later." She draws her two blades, swishing from from their sheaths. While Garret speaks to Jonnar, she addresses the ghoul "Shame you lost track of him, isn't it? Would be an even worse shame if he was closing a trap on you right now." As she offers her bold lie, she settles into a fighting stance.
"They...killed...Siara?!" The entity that is still at least partially Jonnar darkens like a thundercloud, swelling with rage.
Ketra's bravado has the ruffians looking nervously over their shoulders, but the ghoul hisses in derisive laughter. "If he is anything like his corpse, the rattle of steel will signal his approach long before we see him. A worthy attempt though, duskwalker," She snarls the last word like a curse. "That prancing fool Quietus won't continue his work while you're here, so I will solve his problem--and give you the goddess' precious gift of immortality, even. Kill them."
"Yes, Lady Esuri," the ruffians respond in unison, clearly used to following the ghoul's orders. The thundercloud that is Jonnar grows to a towering twenty feet in height, the skull at its center barely visible now. "DID YOU KILL MY LOVE?!" he howls in a voice like a thunderclap. The sound causes Jando to flinch just as he looses his arrow, the shot going wide of the sneering ghoul.
Again that hissing laughter from the ghoul "We killed a great deal more that that--and the best is still to come," She grins, showing off her many needle-like teeth as she invokes a profane prayer. "Corpse Queen! Pallid Princess! Accept this gift of blood!"
For her part, Mirhet rolls her shoulders and darts forward to back up Jando.
She has cast Keen Edge on her scythe.
-ROUND ONE-
Jonnar
Jando
Mirhet
Ruffians
Ghoul
Ketra
Garret
Silvia
Sanduro
Zsofia
“So your leader is afraid of us? Maybe he knows something you don’t, Esuri.” Sanduro’s voice hardly quivers at all when he taunts the ghoul.
What do I know about ghouls like her?
With a short prayer to Pharasma, he causes the mutated undergrowth to spread and grasp at Esuri and her minions with sickly green tendrils.
He draws his bow and gets ready for the real fight to start.
"Beware of the ghoul's scythe" says Garret as he carefully positions a fireball so he affects the lead ghoul and the blue and green ruffians.
fire damage
With fire and plants erupting around the foes, Ketra stays back to avoid getting herself tangled up. She moves up to cover the casters and keeps her weapons at the ready. She locks eyes with the blue ruffian and says "You're really going to stand against us after what happened to your buddies? Well, if you insist..." She raises her blades as if ready to strike immediately.
Silvia hops backwards to evade Sanduro's grasping plants, then unloads a fusillade into one of the goons trying to flank them. "I'd always heard 'dead men tell no tales,' but this one can't seem to shut the hell up," she quips.
Sanduro & Garret's spells wash over the foe--though quick and evasive against the fireball, Green is nabbed by the entangling vines, which hold him in place long enough for Silvia to gun him down. Ketra's implied threats are underscored by the enraged screaming of Jonnar, who transforms into a towering dust-devil that tears across the ground towards the nearest ruffian. Desperately clinging to the undergrowth to keep himself from being lifted bodily into the air, the thug claws is way out of the entangling morass--the ghoul attempts to do the same, but doesn't quite make it out.
Jando & Mirhet square off against the other thug, each delivering a nasty blow. Evidently deciding caught between them isn't where he wants to be, the ruffian dodges away from Mirhet before drawing and downing a potion--he promptly vanishes from sight, to the angry curses of your allies.
-ROUND TWO-
Jonnar
Jando
Mirhet
Ruffian Blue (Demoralized)
Ruffian Green
Ruffian Red (-16hp)
Ghoul (-12hp)
Ketra
Garret
Silvia
Sanduro
Zsofia
Trusting the others to deal with the ruffians, Garret moves more centrally to the defenders and drops a Burst of Radiance on the Ghoul Leader, hoping to both damage it and--hopefully--blind it so it can't use that dangerous scythe on anyone.
against evil creatures, DC 19 Reflex Save or rounds
Ketra leaps into action as blue pulls free of the tangling vines. To his great misfortune, he's trapped between Ketra and Zsofia as her mithril knife stabs toward his back. "You're running away in the wrong direction."
Sanduro casts barkskin on Zsofia, who smacks an ectoplasmic fist into her palm and grins before grabbing the thug's shirt with one hand. She whips her forehead forward towards his nose and aims a punch at his kidney.
"Glad to have a real stand up fight again! We haven't had a good brawl since what, the day before yesterday? When we beat up all those losers who were looting the abandoned farmhouses and whatever? Losers, the bunch of them. I hope we run into their friends sometime - if they had any - so we can kick their heads in, too, just for hanging out with losers like that. You think we'll run into them, Ketra?"
Silvia repositions behind her allies, casually blasting the goon trapped between Zsofia and Ketra as she steps around the melee.
Though Garret's burst of sacred light sears the ghouls flesh, it doesn't blind her and she pulls free of the grasping undergrowth with a hissed "Kill the small one!" She begins to speak again but is cut off by an arrow to her gut from Jando. The half-orc quickly nocks and fires again but the ghoul is ready for him this time. It also seems her foul goddess hears her prayers as well, for her injuries slowly begin to close.
Ketra and Zsofia close on the unfortunate blue ruffian, the dancer darting in for a vicious stab that draws his attention for a fatal moment--the phantom seizes him by the jaw and hair and with two sudden twists snaps his neck. Her quarry already slain, Silvia turns her attention to Chatar and snaps off another shot, dealing a terrible wound to the ghoul.
Suddenly the remaining ruffian shimmers back into view just as he drives his knife into Garret's shoulder, narrowly missing something immediately fatal. With a shout Mirhet closes in and delivers a cut from her hatchet in response. For her part, Chatar lets out a horrific shriek and rushes the clustered of Garret, Sanduro, and Zsofia--targeting the duskwalker first, the sweep of her ornate scythe nearly takes his arm in a single blow. He knows he would not survive a second.
-ROUND THREE-
Jonnar
Jando
Mirhet
Ruffian Red (-21hp)
Ghoul (-53hp; Fast Healing )
Ketra
Garret (-16hp)
Silvia
Sanduro (-25hp)
Zsofia
"Yeeow!"
Sanduro leaps back (5' step), clutching at his wounded arm. Wincing with every movement, he pulls a potion of invisibility (taken from the last group of thugs) from his pocket and gulps it down.
"You're uglier than your minions, let's see if you're any tougher!"
Zsofia steps in front of the ghoul and lashes out at her with another pair of strikes.
With a wordless cry of anger, Silvia unleashes a flurry of gunshots at the ghoul, each bullet infused with righteous anger.
Taking a five foot step away from the ghoul and putting his back to a wall, Garret casts defensively, preparing to evoke a burning ball of fire to put between himself and the fearsome foe!
On a success, Garret is able to place the ball of fire in the square he just left, then he wills it to impact the ghoul!
Ketra joins the rest of the group in focusing attacks on the ghoul before she can deliver any further attacks with her clearly deadly scythe. She ducks low, then slashes at the base of the creature's spine.
Just as the foe comes to grips with the party the trap is sprung--the power of the General of Vengeance blazes through Silvia's rifle as bullet's speed and glow give it the appearance of a beam of golden light lancing straight through the ghoul. Her black heart pierced, she crumples into true death.
Ketra is equally quick to close with the final thug. Too harried to effectively guard against her, the dance slips a knife between his ribs and ends him.
"YOU KILLED HER! I'LL KILL YOU!" In his rage and grief Jonnar shows no sign of stopping, his increasingly tornado-like form reversing and sweeping over the melee! The bodies of Chatar and one of her slain minions are swept into the air to join the other debris, but Sanduro and Zsofia find themselves in danger of being pulled off their feet as well!
"Shit! Do we kill it?" Jando shouts to be heard above the shrieking winds, looking skeptical that his arrow could harm it. Mirhet is shouting in Shaoanti, sheathing her weapons to raise her hands in a placating gesture--though it's not clear Jonnar can even hear her.
-ROUND FOUR-
Jonnar
Jando (Delay)
Mirhet
Ketra
Garret (-16hp)
Silvia
Sanduro (-25hp)
Zsofia
yells Garret,
Zsofia:
Ketra readies her weapons, not really wanting to fight Jonnar, but understanding that the twisting of his soul and mind might make it inevitable. She waits to see if Garret's efforts might bear fruit.
Howling, Jonnar surges upwards into the sky, spinning the bodies of your fallen foes--and Zsofia too, who tumbles about cursing but uninjured. Garret's appeal to cathartic ritual seems to bring the elemental-ghost that is Jonnar back to himself, and the whirlwind subsides to deposit bodies and phantoms alike on the ground.
From there, it's a simple matter of igniting the pyre for Siara; Mirhet offers a Shoanti benediction as the sparks and smokes rise. Your foes are disposed of in whatever manner you see fit. Jonnar seems to sink into a torpor as he stares into the funereal flames, becoming unresponsive to your overtures--not even Mirhet or Ketra speaking Shoanti can draw his attention, and after a time the older Shoanti shrugs sadly and moves off to speak with you.
"Thank you, for helping me with this. It's not the resolution I'd hoped for, but we have helped him. It seems the area under the dome has been...well, not made safe, but far safer than before. I would like to linger here for a time, and see if I cannot convince Jonnar to relinquish his grip on that poor spirit."
Jando gives the elemental a skeptical look but only nods. "Gods go with you then. We still need to figure out how to escape this place--that spirit at the graveyard said something about tunnels, yeah? If the death-fog doesn't go underground that could be our ticket out of here!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As the funerary rites finish and Garret causes the flames to roar skyward and explode into a massive wave of sound and light (Pyrotechnics), he finally looks to the logistics of their next step while Jonnar sinks into a somber depression.
Spending a moment to recover, Garret casts Detect Magic and scans the bodies of their enemies, then follows up with a careful search of their bodies for any important clues or useful items or treasure.
Ketra follows in Mirhet's footsteps, imitating the older shoanti woman's benediction and rites for the dead. Afterward, she blinks in surprise as Mirhet announces her intention "Don't you think it's dangerous to stick around here al-" She cuts herself off and instead continues with "I mean, if we cross any more of those thugs or undead creatures, we could use your help. I don't think we're going to get out of this without crossing paths with their leader at this rate." She uncharacteristically starts to fiddle with the end of her braid.
To Jando, she nods "I think that makes sense. We can help out more here later, but we need to know there's a way to leave. And we haven't yet seen how Roslar's Tomb looks like on, well, this side of things."