Syrina braces for whatever seems to be charging toward their position, but relaxes when the rider turns away. A quick glance at the giant turkey leg and she figures whatever loomed above her limited vantage point was a bit more fearsome than the single limb dangling outside the window.
Meanwhile she listens to the abyssal gibberish being spouted by Simon and the the demonic weather vane sitting atop the rickety building and makeshift trap. She understand none of it, but the mere sound of the harsh guttural language is enough to make her grind her teeth and nervously pluck at the string on her crossbow.
I would say that this is the most obvious error of thinking. The fact that something has been recording for some time that A is replaced by B and back to A does not mean at all that this will happen forever, and the next time after A it will be B again.
"Ah, but imagine now a human mortal. All their life, when they drop an object it falls to the ground. Are they rational to then assume that next time, or some time in the future it would fall up into the sky instead of down? It is your breadth of experience which has lead you to such an inference, and this tormented creature-slash-device has no such pool to draw from. Perhaps the only difference between lowly creatures and godly creatures is experience." It pulls on the fiery lance through its 3rd heart again, and it budges a few agonizing inches. "Still, if you asked the creature to say, predict the 17th symbol, it would have a very good guess. It might claim to have developed a very accurate, scientific theory of its clay symbolism...perhaps it could even develop technology based on this science." it ponders.
cow etc
It nods, smiling as much as its organic alloy beak bones allow such humanistic distortions, adding "We seem to be in agreement, reason alone is not enough. As you have alluded, the townsfolk might have only been saved by imagining the unimaginable...their claims discarded by their peers as absolute insanity."
"The baatezu wish to ever gather soul and soul again to recruit into their ranks...but I think there is something more to it. Zariel's plundering of the mortal realm to this scale seems personal, almost irrational or at the very least emotional."
"As for us tanar'ri, when this rock was drawn to Avernus, the link between it and Torm was corrupted...a corruption sensed by the demon lord Baphomet. Seizing upon that link, Baphomet used it as an anchor point to slowly and methodically send demons through to the city...flooding it with our numbers before the baatezu could even mobilize, creating a hovering flank for the battle below. Even now, the demon lord and his closest minions work to widen and strengthen this connection, and soon our entire armies of demons will be led into Avernus by way of this Elturel...although we did not expect so many undead..." it explains. "We may die here, but will rise again in the abyss. How can I best exploit this twisted form of immortality...?"
The Sharite halfling drops some eaves on the demon and demonist. Finally concluding that the demon would have killed Simon by now if it was going to, Mal slides behind Simon and then slowly stands next to him to face the Vrock.
"Hello Xanxostyx. Pleased to meet you. I'm Malaric. Would there be anyway we could suggest to the armies of tanar'ri where to attack, without having them attack us?"
[dice=Persuasion]1d20 + 7
The priest feels no need to interact with whatever abomination speechifies above, let alone pollute himself by looking upon it. He says under the s roof of the structure and let's the bull s!## artists (Or is it trained diplomats?) handle it...
Thank you for an interesting conversation and your answers. I haven't enjoyed talking like this for a long time... Hmmm... Yes, the number of undead is really unexpected. Did you mention some kind of necromancer? Who is it? And where is he or she?
Turning its giant bird-head towards Malaric "Can you suggest to a fire what it might consume? Can you direct rainfall to flood your enemy's house, but not your own? We tanar'ri, taken together as an autonomous collective, similarly overwhelm as a chaotic horde. Our military has no order, and is not a military at all. We simply attack our enemies with fantastic numbers...defeated we reform only to cross the planes once more."
Malaric, you also recognize this demon as the very same you saw earlier. At the time it was being assaulted by the mounted narzugon, back when you were peeking out the ceiling vents of the late Stars Seen, Tales Told...the devil's fiery lance still pierces its organs.
Back to Simon "I've pondered this necromancer, but I know not all. An enemy of the tanar'ri, an ally of the baatezu..." it seems to struggle with speech, the voice once screeching and strong getting softer and without bite. "...the baatezu have been slow to reach here, our forces below prevent them from advancing. Yet the undead delay us from fully taking the city. Perhaps that was the plan, a defensive gambit of Zariel." it speculates.
Malaric nods at the answer, "Do you know that narzugon who you were fighting? Do you need help removing that lance?" He concludes that it's always good to have a demon on his side.
Lucian remains quiet rather the utter his distaste for dealing with any fiend.
Syrina usually doesn't have trouble with the whole 'an enemy of my enemy is my friend' way of thinkin'. But demons an' devils were all cut from the same hellish cloth. After her recent experiences in fair Elturel, the bounty hunter figures the only good fiend is a dead fiend.
As the others converse with the demonic turkey, she lights her cigar and stares out at the smoke and fires below. Cat strolls over and put his front legs up on the window sill. Three feline eyes blink as they look out over the city.
"Meowwwrr." Cat says, tail flicking slowly back and forth as he gathers in the situation.
"Yep." Syrina replies. "Ain't too pretty out there. Reckin' I'll be real happy to put this damned city behind me." She blows a stream of smoke into the building. Fingers drum on the wall. Her gaze flick back to the demon leg. "Yep...real glad."
"Meow." Cat replies licking some dried blood from his paw.
At Malaric's offer, the hideous but oddly intellectual demon glances down at its likely fatal wound. "It's no use, the devil hit his mark...*cough wheeze*" It certainly seemed to be no lie, the black blood of the demon flowing like rainwater off the scorched and ashen shingles of the small guildhouse. "I live, I die, I live again...farewell, and see you soon, as it were."
With a great deal of effort, the massive avian claws grip the burning lance, slowly pulling the infernal iron thing out. With a final shocked *squawk* the vrock explodes like a lanced boil as its punctured heart finally get hell's hot kiss, its essence torn from flesh violently vanishing into interdimensional travel. But the vrock philosopher's blood, or demonic ichor splatter is immense...
The lance, nearly twice the height of Grim in length, rolls off the roof spearing a frightened badger that darts from the shadows.
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26–30 A pair of wings, either feathered or leathery, sprout from the target’s back, granting it a flying speed of 30 feet.
76–80 The target becomes thin and skeletal, halving its weight.
Malaric screams as a wave of infernal ichor engulfs him from the death throes of the vrock. The weight of viscous black blood weighs him down to his knees.
He inhales to start screaming again as leathery bat wings explode from his shoulder blades above his backpack. He screams and screams as the wings push through his skin.
After a minute of deep breathes, he stands up and unfurls his new leathery wingspan of five feet wide. "Would you look at that." He says to himself flapping the wings until he slowly rises off the ground. Shar works in mysterious ways.
"Um, I've a pair of winged boots for trade. They are very useful." He offers with a mischievous smile.
Moving on instinct, Syrina ducks as the exploding demon rocks the rickety foundations of the shrine. Fortunately, she wasn't consorting with the doomed creature, so it's hell-slime insides don't reach her from across the way. All that comes close is a piece of dark meat that hisses and pops as it slowly dissolves the unfortunate bit of floor it happened to land upon.
Striding over to the opposite window, Syrina looks around to see if the others survived the demonic detonation.
"I take it ya'll are through chattin' with that over sized turkey." She says. "We best get moving before something else decides to see what all the exploding is about."
Following up her own words she slips out of the shelter and uses every bit of cover, smoke, fire, and carcass to stay as unseen as possible while making her way toward the bridge.
Reya rushes to Malaric's side at the scream, at first helping him back to his feet but then recoiling in terror as the violent mutation scrambles his flesh.
Taking the initiative, the bounty hunter vanishes into the northern ruins. Passing through a collapsed tavern, she sidesteps broken dishes and half-eaten patrons...one still sitting in its chair with a rotten arm clutching a mug of evaporated beer. Cockroaches engage in ritual combat over a few spilled complementary cashews. A large bed from the second story has spilled from above, offering a springy, cushiness to her step as she bounds over the crumbled hearth and into the open streets on the other side.
*clop cloppy clop clop*
Faintly to the east she hears the same mounted threat, but timing her dash just right zips west across the road and into a relatively intact house without any notice. Ducking in the darkness, it was obviously once a halfling or gnome house...the plaster ceiling brushing her scalp at times like sandpaper. A greasy circular window on the opposite side offers a nice vantage of Torm's Blade.
An infernal force has taken the bridge, and now patrols the hundred foot run across the chasm of doom. Syrina counts at least 7 in number not even attempting to hide themselves: two snake-bearded warriors carrying glaives, and four small spined devils which resemble flying porcupines of the damned. A final cloaked and hooded humanoid figure paces near the halfway mark, appearing to be painting or shellacking some gloopy substance on the bridge's stonework there.
Still below, Grim waits for news.
After examining his new curse wings, he shrugs. Which looks weird with his new wings.
Grim, you hear Malaric scream. After a brief pause, he screams again. You hear a strange sound like flesh rending from bone. Then, sure enough, a third scream from your friend the halfling. Harkina raises an eyebrow, turning to the Doomguide "Was that the wind I heard just now?" The mother of lost children could be forgiven, for it was certainly a nasally, draining sound consistent with a snappy gust.
"No, no, no..." Molly corrected. "Its more of a pinched, grating whine...as when a man, wholly disappointed in himself, stands too quickly only to bonk his forehead on a cabinet which he himself opened." such were the greatly detailed results of the psychotic woman's careful observations.
Lulu then tries to replicate the sound of Malaric's screaming with her trunk. *toot*
Harkina and Molly both immediately disapprove.
"You're much too low. You need to go up another entire octave!" Harkina suggested.
Molly added "Imagine you're extremely sad, like you just caught your lover cheating on you. Its forlorn, but with building anger."
*toooot*
It still needed work. Cat joined in to round out some of the more subtle details of Malaric's scream. *wowowowow* Soon the rules of civility were tossed aside as the animals engaged in a battle of elephant and feline shrieks. After multiple revisions, and along with someone performing a fast fourier analysis with an abacus on the back porch, the call of the wild produced an exact duplicate of Malaric's scream.
You hear Malaric scream from back inside the ruined alchemist's guildhouse...which is odd, because he is shrugging his shoulders right here next to you.
Shiiiit... Malaric, he says closing his eyes briefly before huffing out a breath and making his way topside.
Barely dodging the demon's blood, Simon freezes with the blood draining from his face, looking at Malaric. However, he does not feel any pity for the halfling. No matter what you say, but with such improvements, I would not get to any more dinner parties at Baldur's Gate. He exhales noisily, grunts and clarifies. I envy your improvements in some ways, Malaric, but I can't have this myself due to my status. However, I would love to take advantage of your generous offer of flying shoes. It's not for me to tell you how good flying artillery is.
Malaric smiles at Simon knowing exactly what he means. ”What do you have to offer for the boots? They were a significant cost to me and prevented me from acquiring other magic items.”
Malaric's screams cause her to wince, but Syrina takes the time to count and note the positions and descriptions of the various hellish denizens currently occupying the bridge. She also waits long enough to see if any react to the noise generated by the halfling. Under normal circumstances surely all the yelling would bring curious guards running, but this was hell, and screams of pain, fear, ecstasy, were constant as an ocean's drone.
Grim takes a mental bounce on seeing the wings... AND the big ass demon.
Pulling his dropped jaw into place he surveys the bridge and the defenses.
We might have to find an alternative route, THAT is far too well defended for us to try and break through, he says cursing their lack of speed that lost them the initiative in getting past the bridge.
Seeing the fiends staying put, Syrina chews her cigar. The thing had gone out again, but it continued to swing back and forth as she contemplated possible ways to deal with the devilish detail now guarding their only way to the citadel. With few ideas coming to mind, she slips back to rejoin the others and share the news and details of the blockade.
"Looks ta be seven devils in all." She pauses, thinking back. "Tsk...or meybe six. One of 'em was more human sized, cloaked and hooded. Looked to be doin' some sort of magical hoodoo on the bridge. Could be a devil, could be some human whose gone and joined the darker side." She adds with a shrug.
"Don't seem like they're finished doin' whatever it is they're there to do, so if'n we act quick, we might save ourselves a harder job in the end." Her eyes glitter in the crimson, hellfire light. "Reckin' it'd be a good idea to take out that little feller doin' the magic makin' first." A pause as she flips the cigar to the other side of her mouth. "Then we deal with them devils and head fer cover quick as we can in case the ruckus pulls in the attention of others."
"What'd ya'll say?" She says looking around at the ragtag band of survivors and hellish newcomers.
Seems like the best choice of a crappy hand... but that's gonna be a tough fight and some of us are running close to fumes on magical blessings... we never rested properly. I... still think maybe we try another route though. Not sure WHAT route however.
Syrina sighs. Her eyes are sunk into the back of her head, dark circles which have nothing to do with a fashion choice underscore them. Her scratched and bruised hand wipes a bit of smokey sweat from her brow. Eventually she nods her understanding to the concerns.
"Can't rightly remember the last time I got a proper bit o' shut eye. An' that was afore all the former citizens decided to start crawling about eatin' anything alive." She says, her voice raw and parched. "Hell ain't exactly accommodating to getting a solid night's sleep. More'n we try ta rest, more this place'll just chip away at us until we're all lurchin' around lookin' for the next bit o' flesh to fill our undying gullets." She recalls the being publishing building sliding off into the deeper pits of hell. "Or it'll just fall out from under us."
"Now them ugly critters on the bridge, don't look too awful tough. A few well placed shots from a distance might put an end to at least one or two of 'em before we're mixin' it up close quarters."
"I still say it's our best shot of breakin' through. We keep scurryin' around in this mess, this place'll get us eventually."
Malaric smiles at Simon knowing exactly what he means. ”What do you have to offer for the boots? They were a significant cost to me and prevented me from acquiring other magic items.”
I will give you an equal magical gift in the near future. The word of a nobleman. And before that, I will give you my pearl of power as if it were yours.
______
I can't disagree with my colleague. The fight looks like the most realistic prospect.
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"Deal. We can exchange the next time we take a break." The winged halfling offers his hand to shake to the noblemen.
The halfling then gets ready for battle.
Seemingly lost in thought, about what only the ranger knew for sure, Lucian snaps out of his distraction.
Seeing the new bat-wings adorning Mal's back, Lucian eyes the halfling warily.
The ranger assesses the situation and replays Syrina's suggestion that had just been seconded by Simon.
"It will be a tough fight to be sure, but I really don't think there are any other alternatives that will prove to be much better." he says, pulling out his bow.
"Definitely the one in the cloak should be the primary target. Watch out for the weapons of the bearded ones...more painful than they have any right to be."
Lets sneak a little closer... I can try to snarl up the hand to hand leaving you free to pin cushion the one in the cloak then lend us a bit of short range arrow support.
She was tired. It was only because she'd been across the ground twice already that Syrina was able to keep from stumbling into the dangle remnant of a wind chime hanging on a bent hook outside of what used to be a respectable cottage. It was pure luck she managed not to step on the small windup owlbear partially buried in the dried mud causing it to whir and growl like it once did to delight it small owner every evening. And it was simple instinctual self preservation that had her diving behind cover before the gaze of anyone of the hellspawned devils could lay eyes upon her weary, ragged frame.
Stealth or Stealth
Full plate has never been considered particulary 'stealthy' but this is not the first time his party had tried a similiar gambit and was ablw to make it without giving the game away for his own part.
,
Round 1:
Malaric, Lucian, Syrina, Lulu, Simon <--UP
Bridge Force
Reya, Grim
Syrina delivered the numbers, and the party responded with a plan. One devil at a time, the bridge would be theirs. The only catch to the strategy was a winding path through narrow, treacherous ruins. It may as well have been lined with the liverhooks of pit fiends, for all the snags and scrapes protruding from the demolished constructions. But it was invisible, like glass submerged in oil, this crooked path through hell.
Until a weird three-eyed duck waddled out of the side hatch, the fat mallard being immediately STOMPED by Simon's noble footwear. *wwWWWWACK!* its neck vertebrae fracturing into tiny splinters, which then eviscerated the water bird's spinal cord instantly.
Everyone's blood froze.
The devils seemed startled.
But then a questioning and much more quiet *ack?* came from the distance, and the disturbance was hand-waved away as a flock of abyssal chickens. They were soon back to their usual business of patrols, boasting, cajoling and generally torturing each other. Save the cloaked figure. That one remained crouched, engaged in some tedious task resembling oil painting.
The party took a final step, the last before they would break cover. With last second plans muddled and/or dropped, the Sword Coast expendables took the fight to the natives.
Round 1:
Malaric, Lucian, Syrina, Lulu, Simon <--UP
Bridge Force
Reya, Grim
Crouching behind the rubble piled near the end of the bridge, Syrina slips her hand into the dwindling contents of her casting pouch. She finds the little jar that was once filled to the brim with dozens of small desiccated newt eyes. Now only a few of the little brown orbs rattle in the container. Dropping one into her hand, she eyes the cloaked figure and slowly pulverizes the dried eye as she mutters the usual arcane words summoning forth a curse against the busy bridge brigand.
A raven chuckles throatily as the pact magic weaves its way to and into the cloaked person's being.
With the curse set, she unleashes a quick barrage of eldritch power on the figure, hoping that between herself and the others they can put a quick end to whatever nefarious magic the miscreant is busy trying to complete.
She then ducks back behind her cover.
Thinking activation of runes would be the most effective thing he could do, Lucian closes his eyes and begins uttering his prayer to Torm again. Opening his eyes at the conclusion of the prayer, the ranger is pleased to see the runes begin to glow.
Malaric flapped along with his companions, effectively making long jumps, practicing more and more with his new wings. His center of gravity was different than with the wings on the boots. His flight was more biological than magical.
Seeing Syrina target one of the devils, he raises his bow and snaps off a quick shot before diving behind total cover.
== 18 total
The Sharran's snipe from the shadows gets everyone's attention, as with a bolt in the back the crouching cloaked figure drops their brush and unleashes a (clearly human) scream. Something falls off the brush but it is hard to see from this distance, however the substance has a curious resemblance to chicken dumplings...falling from the brush in tiny wads.
The guard of Elturel doesn't hesitate to use the city defenses against these interlopers, his inner prayer again opening a conduit to Trueheart (the realm of Torm located in Mercuria). For a brief moment the clouds of dark ash part, and everyone has a glimpse of a clear blue sky...the odd combination of scents streaming from the planar nexus suggesting honeysuckle and copper.
The runes at Lucian's feet glow brightly, spreading to the others nearby and even all the way across the span in a blink. Already startled, the bridge force now scrambles in alarm.
The cloaked figure reeling from Mal's shot finally manages to pull the barbed projectile out, but barely squeaks out a sigh of relief before the Raven's gift of annialation pummels him to death. His brains splatter across one of the large white marble columns near the halfway mark, and the rest of the body collapses pitifully...nearly falling off the edge.
With the hollyphant's magics still spent, the too-cute-for-hell elephant ducks for cover struggling to think of a way to be more useful. Meanwhile Simon, still irritated from stepping on a duck moments earlier, pouts and considers leaving the fight to his subservients companions.
Round 1:
Malaric, Lucian, Syrina, Lulu, Simon
Bridge Force <--UP
Reya, Grim
A symphony of pain casts its overture for the trillionth time in Avernus.
Before Lucian can even open his eyes, the devils erupt into a white-hot radiance. The smaller winged creatures all burn to ash instantly, while the meatier snake-beards struggle to grip their glaive from the searing pain rocking their entire pink bodies (and scorching their paisley tunics).
Round 1:
Malaric, Lucian, Syrina, Lulu, Simon
Bridge Force
Reya, Grim <--UP