Hello, and welcome to another rescued AP. This time... War for the Crown!
Present and accounted for! :)
Dot.
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After what seems to be months, Piri is commenting on how deep this well must be, when suddenly a creature bursts out of the fetid water and tears into his neck! Piri falls into the well, gurgling.
As the ghoulish creature turns toward the rest of you, he grunts and licks his would-be lips with a lonk, forked tongue. You here others in the doorway just to the north.
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Valeria is horrified at the sight of Piri being pulled into that fetid water, but keeps her head cool and collected. She lets go of the low, almost quiet musical hum she was maintaining to enable her detection of magic, accelerating both tempo and volume, seamlessly leading into a song of courage for her companions!
Let us see if the Andoren military anthem will quicken the blood of my companions here... at the very least it might anger these ghoulish creatures into making a mistake...
*♫ "Raise up the eagle! Bear it to the fight!
Common Rule forever, a beacon in the night!
We shall never bow to kings,
Never kiss their golden rings;
Raise up the eagle and fly unto the fight!" ♫♪
Valeria slowly moves next to Eregos as she sings.
In this case, it is Bimple's vast knowledge of religion that leads him to conclude these are typical ghouls without anything more sinister or deadly. Still, that is enough - their bite can cause ghoul fever, something you will want to avoid. And even a minor scratch can cause paralysis.
The purple hued one slips and falls, while the more greenish one stops, trying not to slip and eventually succeeding.
Eregos moves forwards towards the closest of the ghouls, falcata out and ready to strike the creature. "Let's finish these things quickly, whatever they are!"
Eregos' cut is severe, but not enough to drop the foul beast.
It responds with tooth and claw! But Eregos is well armored, and managed to avoid direct contact.
Purple rises back up, and tries again to approach.
Green also tries to walk out of the slimey area.
Both succeed, although at least the grease did slow them down.
Green gets to Ereros, but again finds only steel in its grasp.
Valeria continues her song, and taking cover around the corner, she fires Dignity's Barb at the creature to the north!
She reloads the legendary crossbow.
With all three ghouls on him, Eregos tries to take out one of them, striking the same he'd attacked previously.
And that will do it, as red drops into a bag of bones.
Sveng sees the weak undead, concerned for a moment but soon realizing their group had the situation well in hand. He conserves resources, drawing his own crossbow which he holds with an amateur, but steady grip.
Sveng surprises even himself as he puts a bolt right between the eyes of ghoul. It doesn't kill it, but it certain has it wobbling a bit, as Valeria finishes it off with her own shot.
Only one remains.
No need to fix what's already working.
Valeria continues her song, and continues to shoot!
Eregos turns his attention to the final ghoul, striking it with his falcata as he tries to finish it off.
Valeria passes the crossbow to Bimble. "Mage Bimble! your arrival timing was impeccable! we were expecting you in the next few days, based on Martella's last letter. Glad to see you made it ahead of time. Here, you may use the crossbow if you wish. It's name is Dignity's Barb and it was used by a famous Taldan general in ancient times. Legend has it that with it, he killed an enemy war chieftain in one shot through a snowstorm!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! PIRI!" yells Valeria, bringing up a spell of dancing lights and heading right over the watery pit where Piri disappeared. She sends the lights into the water, as deep as they will go. She then begins to scan the waters for several moments with a spell of magic detection, trying to find the familiar magical auras worn by Piri along the last few weeks...
At the very tip of your range, you do detect some magic. It must be at the bottom of the well...
"There is something magical at the bottom of this well, no doubt on the body of Piri... will anyone be brave enough to swim these dark waters?" asks Valeria, clearly not volunteering for such unfashionable dirty work.
Someone comes bursting into the pumphouse, rapier drawn and out of breath. "Master... Fickleblooper... I thought you were going to wait on us." the dark chocolate-haired young woman has to bend over, hands on her knees to catch her breath. Apparently, she ran all the way here. "Capricia, got hung up with something. otherwise she would have been here already and not even be breathing hard" it is only then she notices the others.
"Oh, Hi. I'm Sara Nole, from the Nole's Bakery, and from rebellion team number two. Lady Lockheed suggested I could act as a lady's maid to..." looking at the two men, and then finally to Valeria. "... to you?"
Sveng's brow furrows with concern. He hoped Piri was still with them and could be retrieved. "Sara, well met." Sveng gave a small, controlled bow of his head. "I'm afraid we must save the proper introductions for later, as we have a comrade in need of our help. Are either of you strong swimmers?"
"Unfortunately, no. Not many opportunities in the city for swimming, I'm afraid." Sara hurries over to the well. "If someone is in danger, I can try. Do you have a rope or is there one around? In case I start drowning?"
"No time for rope, ma chère! SWIM! SWIM AT ONCE AND SAVE PIRI!"
Eregos runs over to the well, sheathing his sword as he goes. ”It would take me too long to remove my armor so I don’t join him in his fate.”
He turns to the newcomers. ”Well met, both of you. I have a rope I can lower to help you.”
He pulls his rope out of his pack and lowers it down the well, looking for something to tie it off on.
Sara while not known for her aquatic skills, is known for being impulsive in the face of danger. "When I tug twice, pull us up. She drops her sword, grabs an end of the rope, and jumps.
Sveng grabs Sara's shoulder. Not a strong grip, but an insistent one. He reaches a hand into his shirt, grabbing onto something. "Rirharf bap." Sveng's eyes go night-sky black and his hand glows a deep blue. He softly touches the side of Sara's neck, which adopts a fainter version of the blue glowing. Then he does the same for everybody present, repeating the effects. [b]"You can all breath water as you would air for
A tall, fit redheaded human female jogs up to the party. She wears a suit of quality studded leather armor trimmed in blue and wears a falcata at her hip. "I think I've managed to fix the heel of my boot well enough for now," she tells Bimble and Sara. After a quick curtsy to the others she adds, "Capricia Belacrest, at your service."
Sara turns in surprise as Sveng grabs her and is about to say something akin to 'As much as the thought is appreciated, I don't need a kiss for good luck right now.' The grabbing of his own shirt has her Really confused, thinking 'just how far is he thinking this kiss will go? Do I look THAT easy?'. All of that reproach is buffered by the sudden intriguing night sky eyes.
"Oh..." she says with a slight amused smile when he gets to the explanation. "... that will be useful. Capricia, help pull me back up in a second." she yells back to her friend before she dives into the well.
If Sveng was aware of Sara's line of thoughts in response to his actions, his face certainly didn't betray the insight. Although his eyes did flick back to her for a moment after she stopped looking at him.
Sveng makes sure to also enchant their newest newcomer. "Well met. I have a line on local tailors, if you need a recommendation." He says to Capricia. Evident by Sveng's own sharp and well-made suit, the man clearly had good tastes.
Valeria continues her song to enhance Sara's swimming skills, pleading with her eyes something akin to I can't do this all day!
*♫ "Far below the booted feet
Of Jackknife Lane and Mermaid Street
Far beneath the weary load
Of Sailors' Walk and Timber Road -" ♫♪
She also adjusts her dancing lights down in the water to guide a clear path for Sara!
Holding her breath, (which is silly when one is protected with a water breathing spell, but she hasn't had the opportunity to test it yet so better to be safe than drowny), the baker dives in...
Sara has trouble getting to the bottom, so really doesn't get a chance to search well. She comes up sputter, thoroughly disgusted by the water.
As she comes up, she also sees a hideous ghoulish woman with little left of her face staring at the party, licking her lips.
Cursed with ghoul fever in the Shining Crusades and succumbing to the disease before returning home, Marjorine Sandaris arose as a ravenous undead at her funeral and attempted to devour her family before a cousin and cleric of Aroden laid her to rest with a burst of divine light that burned the face from the dead woman’s skull. The cursed strain of ghoul fever that afflicted Lady Sandaris would not let her rest for long, however, and she rose again under the next new moon. Eventually
her family bound her coffin with wards and blessings from several good-aligned gods to keep the war hero in a blessed oblivion. This peace lasted for a thousand years until flooding washed and rotted away those protections, and Marjorine, now calling herself the Queen Without a Face, rose again to prowl the moors.
Valeria continues her song, but seeing the deformed undead lady, her eyes widen in recognition! Instead of testing the nerves of her friends with this appalling new information, Valeria decides to throw her voice into the next octave during the next verse, to both alert and embolden her stalwart companions!
*♫ "Where sewage spills and garbage plops
And rats repair to dine on slops
A dukedom sits of skulls and bones
A barony of catacombs!!" ♫♪
With Sara endangered, Capricia doesn't hesitate. Swinging her long legs over the edge of the well's wall, she plummets into the darkness, falcata at the ready.
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Sveng frowns at the gap in his knowledge. He hopes the creature is not particularly dangerous, as since it is badly outnumbered they should be able to dispatch of it quickly otherwise.
Still, he aids with a crossbow bolt, if nothing else for the time being.
"Oh, you are an ugly one." Sara says with a quiver of nervousness in her voice. That is before Capricia splashes in like a serrated cannonball!
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