"Viloence, got it, Captain" Lilly teases only partially, since she agrees, the dead thing art is very very creepy and it is hard to imagine whatever it is will be open to talks.
"You diplomate. Me? Violence." He has his scythe in hand as he says this.
"See." Lilly pats Bukis on the arm and nods to the captain. "All bases are covered."
Advancing cautiously into the trees is extremely difficult, they are close together and extremely sharp.
Suddenly a small, vaguely humanoid figure that looks as though it is made out of twigs pops out from behind a tree. It's tiny face scowls at you and it chatters something in a strange language.
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Ever the diplomat, Estian applies some Andoran tact and grace to defuse the situation with the rather tense-looking stickman. He speaks slowly and overemphasizes every syllable. "I DO NOT KNOW YOUR LANGUAGE. DO YOU SPEAK ANDORAN, BY CHANCE?"
"Oh that's an evil fey if I've ever seen one, not that I have, but I have seen them in books. I think it is a Twig Jack. An 'I speak for the trees' type. They'll protect them in any way possible, most likely by skinning your children and hanging their bits in the trees themselves as warnings... so yes, bad little nasty guy right there."
The twigjack looks at Lilli and she could swear the creature is laughing at her for a second.
"I DO NOT KNOW YOUR LANGUAGE. DO YOU SPEAK ANDORAN, BY CHANCE?"
"No." It replies, following that with a blast of splinters that tear at exposed flesh!
Somehow Estian manages to avoid the worst of the creature's deadly hail of splinters, but the attack does rattle him. "You'll pay for that, you ... you sad excuse for a tree!" The insult might be terrible, but perhaps the lack of verbal oompf instills the creature with a false sense of security as the strike that follows is anything but lacking in power.
Lilly's eyes widen, and she opens her mouth to apologize for her rudeness, then collapses in a gross warm puddle of her own blood.
Turning towards their Captain, Bukis yells out his fear and frustration. He then seems to actually gain muscular mass as his shrink to pinpoints and he focuses his rage on the creature.
Maia gasps as Lilly collapses. Moving as quickly as she can to her friend's side, she hums a somber but hopeful tune as she reaches down and touches the other woman with a glowing hand.
Bukis and Estian both advance on the small fey with murder in their eyes but the terrain makes it nearly impossible to move with any speed. The creature waits until they are just out of range and then simply vanishes, reappearing some forty feet away on the other side of Lilli and Maia.
"Yeah, you better run, because when we get you, we're going to break you into so many pieces, not even Pharasma can put you back together, you ... !!!"
Lilly's eyes pop open with an agonized groan. "That was unpleasant... is it dead yet?" she looks up and see it cackling away. "No... well let's try this." she waves her hand and tries to make it scared.
THen she pulls herself to her feet.
Maia raises her hand to cast a spell and then hesitates.
if I cast it now the twig will be done laughing before the boys even get to it... I've got to wait until they get fairly close and then try it...
With a concerned huff, the singer presses forward towards the evil fairy, keeping her spellhand at the ready.
Lilly switches her spell to summoning!
Moving over the rough ground is frustrating under any circumstances, trying to do so while you are allowing your rage to control you instead of the opposite is an exercise in madness. is the closest approximation of the sound that comes out of his mouth as he moves as fast as he can toward the Twigjack, swinging his scythe at anything he can along the way.
The four of you fall back out of the forest, swearing vengeance at some point in the future when you can bring fire to help you. The twigjack doesn't pursue you out of its little forest and seems content to have driven you away.
Pushing on, as the afternoon sun beings to sink into the thick clouds at the edge of the Eye you find yourselves at a narrow inlet into the junk of the island which is dominated by a thick stake, protruding out of the water about five feet. The stake is heavily scarred and there is a pair of heavy, humanoid sized, manacles attached to the top of the stake with an iron staple.
More oddly the sides of the inlet are coated in a thick, viscous black fluid which seems to have dried hard just above the water line. Examining the stake shows signs of many scratches, made by relatively blunt instruments around the manacles - it's not difficult to imagine frantic victims clawing at the stake to try and break free...
Perhaps fortunately the inlet is currently empty.
During the trek Bukis moves close to Lilly, "Sorry." he says simply, "You okay?" He continues to stay close to her during the journey, ready to help her in case she shows signs of being tired or weak.
Lilly healed herself anyone else banged up, and mended her shredded makeshift tunic so she wasn't hanging bloody bits out anymore. She does look a bit tired but gives Bukis a smile "Sorry? Why, big guy? The evil twig is the cause of my unfortunate face in the blood puddle escapade. And you Carried me out of there saving me all that trouble of putting one foot in front of the other." She laughs at the memory of being over his shoulder while she insisted she could walk perfectly fine "I am okay. No worries." she assures him at the end.
Humor evaporates at the post. "This is a really bad place."
Maia frowns and backs away slightly from the inlet. "That black gunk above the water line," she points out, "is devilfish mucus... if we're going to look around here at all we need to be super careful. The devilfish will be a challenge even when we trap it, if it gets the drop on us here we'll really be in trouble." While she talks, she scans the area for any sign that the deadly octopus creature is nearby.
To his great relief, Lilli seems to be quite steady on her feet, once she is able to convince the big guy to put her down. "Devilfish. Octopus. Same?" He starts looking in the water for any strange looking sea creature.
It quickly becomes apparent that the devilfish is not here at the moment - which means this inlet might be a good place for an ambush in the future but is currently no use what-so-ever.
The light is beginning to fail but you can make it back to the Devils' Due if you hussle, or you could seek out the Mother and Father's encampment for shelter instead.
The light's curtain call brings urgency to Estian's step. "We ought to find shelter. This day has sucked more than enough, and we need to finalize our kill-the-fiendish-octopus plan."
Estian has been annoyed and a little on edge ever since being forced to retreat from the Twigjack's lair. Now, with them discovering the ritual feeding place of the devilfish and said octopus not being home, he's aching to put his sword to use and reclaim some glory and respect.
”Yes, Bukis, I think this devil fish is most likely what Akaleesh called an octopus,” Maia answers. Looking around, she affirms to Estain, “We’ll hurry back to the ship after this, but we should look for anything here that could help with the ambush... everyone take a quick look around for weapons or materials that could help, or anything that could serve bait, maybe?”
"Spears! Things with proper reach." Lilly does a stabbing motion "So if it goes under the water we might have a chance."
Back at the ship, she finds a new shirt from the captain's quarters to replace her ripped and bloodstained one. An emerald green, unfortunately, a shade shorter than the last one making her guard for too many quick movements otherwise her virtues will be showing. A wise decision later she has fashioned a bit of a skirt from a pillowcase and a length of rope.
Afterward, Lilly does the rounds to each of the sailors making sure each is fit and fiddle. Doing her best with smiles and perseverance on those indifferent to thaw the distance between them. Even those on the other side of the bars just a few short days ago.
"We all are needed in this endeavor if we are to survive." she tells herself as well as others.
She can offer minor healing and her goddesses blessings but has to show her ignorance a time or two on normal doctoring. "No, I know nothing about rashes so please put that back in your pants, Zane. Yes, I am sure massaging it would make it feel so much better, but that is something you'll have to handle on your own."
Before heading back to the ship that night, Lilly looks around the cove.
Like the others, Estian takes a look and strolls about. Unlike the others, he isn't expecting them to find anything and so performs the task half-heartedly.
Lilly notices nothing significant in the cove.
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Zane scowls, and one of his friends laughs. "Been a bit too much 'massaging' going on already, if you take my meaning!" He says with a grin.
Over the next two days the Devils' Due is a hive of activity, both of the shipwrighting kind and a more deceptive sort involving all sorts of scraps and other cunning ideas.
After two days hard work your lure is ready and as light rises on your ninth day in the Eye you are ready to set your plan into motion!
Being completely useless at woodworking, Maia busies herself mostly with fetching things and occasionally hold stuff in place. She does her best to be helpful but her main focus is on building relationships with the crew members she's tasked with working on the project.
"Noooo! I think you should put it on like ... so! Oh yeah, that's much better! Glad I could be of service!"
Lilly gives Estian a look of What? Are? You! then her eyes widen "Oh I see, yes, that would be better!"
With a little help from her friends Lilly is able to create a pretty impressive facsimile of Akaleesh - lifelike enough to at least fool at a distance. The question now is, what are you going to do with it?
Maia takes a step back and admires their handiwork. "Well done, everyone," she offers with a smile. "We have the bait... now we just need to figure out how to set a trap, and without any guns or bows or even longspears..."
"Can anyone remember any heavy things we've found but haven't used? Maybe we could set up the lure outside of the water with something heavy balanced nearby? That way when it emerged to grab Akaleesh II here we could drop the heavy thing on it... that should do some damage and, if we're lucky, maybe pin it at least partially out of the water?"
"Heavy? The lion statues from the Andoran ship, maybe, but such a thing would be so out of place. Even a fiendish nimrod will raise an eyebrow at such a ploy ... "
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"We place some bait in the water to temp it, then trail the bait up to the land, where our fake pretty dragon here is feasting on more yummy seafood."
"It's a fish, how smart can it be?" Maia asks in response to Estian. There's a joking tone to her question but her expression briefly betrays some earnest concern about how smart a devil fish could be. "A trail of bait is a good idea. Maybe that would distract it from the statues? Or, if we set it up right maybe they would seem like other food , or other intruders? I can't imagine its ever seen a lion before... we could try rubbing them with fish guts and maybe it'll mistake them for something from the sea?"
The elaborate play is in place. A lovely copy, a pile of yummy fish guts, a trail to the water. Two heavy statues ready to be tipped over. A perfect potential that has Lilly almost bouncing to see how it all might end up.
"Oh yeah, this plan is coming together juuuuust fine ..."
The grand plan of 'trap an infernal predator using a wooden dragon', also known as the 'it's so brilliant it can't possibly go wrong!' plan is enacted... The trail of fish guts and offal is placed. 'Akaleesh' is poised majestically at the top of a hill of driftwood. Now all that is needed is the devilfish...
The real Akaleesh volunteers to play bait, drawing the creature from its usual hunting ground on the great reef and you've only been in position some ten minutes when the dragon comes winging across the sea, his wide wings making an impressive sight. Behind him is a ripple in the waves, which jets straight into the bay and reveals itself to be a purple, horse-sized monstrosity with hook lined tentacles. It surges past the pillar, seemingly attracted by the trail of blood and guts...
It seems to glance upwards and then begins swarming up the hill towards you! It is significantly slower out of water and you have a strong advantage... now is the time to strike!
As the devilfish squirms towards them, Maia begins singing a hauntingly beautiful song about a wounded lioness who chases off a whole pack of hyenas to save her cub.
Lilly stands behind however is going to toppke a stair ands gives them a friendly pat on the back for luck.
The knight-errant puts his shoulder against the statue. He inhales deeply in preparation for what's to come and empties his thoughts. Like an Andoran first mate once told him, fear strikes those who keep on thinking when things get hairy. Luckily, shutting down his brain is an easy task for Estian.
And with the odds of the statue knocking the devilfish out cold being rather slim, one or two idiots most likely will get to dive into the water to finish it off. There's good reason for Estian to empty his mind and not give fear a chance to grab him by the balls.
With that out of the way, it's time to push. "Hey, ugly! Catch!"
Bukis and Estian send the two statues crashing down onto the devilfish. Both stone beasts hit it and although its rubbery body seems to resist the blows fairly well the sheer weight still does quite a bit of damage.
Maia smiles at their success. “Well done,” she says, “now, move quickly while we still have the advantage!” Leading by example, she moves forward and casts one of her spells at the creature.
Drawing his scythe Bukis moves to the edge of the water, ready to jump in if necessary and smiling (hopefully it's a smile, it's hard to tell with those broken tusks) at the thought of getting to trade blows with something that won't teleport away.
The devilfish beings to writhe and flail around in a rather unpleasant fashion. It doesn't get any closer though.