Phaed reprises her lead role in the community theater production of If Plants Could Scream, an eco-horror about wildflowers revenging themselves on farmers. She contorts her extra-jointed arms around her head and covers her mask in her hands like a closed flower. As she shuffles closer to the plant she produces forlorn whistles that linger among the bushes.
Her fourteen fingers unfold like a blossom. She pulls away the mask for a moment, giving the leshie a glimpse at what's underneath.
Abella is quiet good with most horrible smells, considering her line of work, but horrible sounds? Dreadful. With Pavo having kindly taken the spot on the far side of the plant, she conjures of shield of congealed negative energy to her hand and rushes forward to strike from a flank.
The plant can see! It's petals quiver in fear.
Abella moves in and with the flank and the fear her strike hits!
Pavo
Plant -18hp
Phaedria
Shade
Tuco
Abella
Tuco mutters under his breath "I knew there'd be trouble."
Tuco with surprising grace almost slides up adjacent to the plant leaping past it with a tatsu before landing.
Tuco follows up his spinning roundhouse with one last low sweep.
Tuco swoops in gracefully, but unfortunately fails to connect with his kicks or trip.
Pavo
Plant -29hp
Phaedria
Shade
Tuco
Abella
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"Tried to bite me! You see that?" Pavo exclaims. He tries to step out of the way of the vines but is only saved by the reinforced leather of his armor. "Whoa! Why am I spinn--urgh!"
He wobbles a bit as he strikes at the root-being with his sword. He drops his dagger on the ground and swiftly grabs the edge of his dueling cape. With a dramatic tug--the effect somewhat ruined by his unsteady stance--he pulls the cape from his shoulder and wraps it around his arm in a single motion. He holds the drape in front of him protectively. "Ah ha! Ah... ugh."
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Shade, being used to the grotesque, is able to throw off the vile shriek of the plant.
He then summons the blessings of Desna, casting moonbeam on the plant, after moving to position.
Shade blasts the plant with a moonbeam, and the creature writhes in pain! Pavo then stabs the walking tuber in the back!
Hungry for the blood of demons, the plant has to settle for the blood of fiends!
The plants bites onto Pavo and doesn't let go!
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It sucks the tiefling's blood!
And then tries to wacks at Abella with a thorny vine!
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Pavo -32hp
Plant -42hp, frightened 1
Phaedria
Shade
Tuco
Abella
Shhh… everything be alright, Pavo.
She then raises her shield, should her friends choose to fall back.
Despite holding her energy shield, she does not raise it to block the plant creature's strike. She has seen the creature bleed, so she has better, crueler ideas.
During the brief moments of her own blood flying through the air, Abella binds the trauma of her own wound to the creature. All trauma releases small amounts of negative energy that can be used by the clever, and Abella is very clever. "Bleed and writhe."
She then steps back, firing a shocking black bolt at the creature as a parting gift.
Tuco tries to shake off his pollen problem.
before trying to attack the plant again.
"Piddlespot" mutters Tuco under his breath.
Despite the chaos, Phaedria calmly soothes Pavo, healing some of his wounds.
Clever Abella turns the tables, and the plant doesn't have the strength of will to resist Abella's blood vendetta!
The plant dodges away from part of Abella's electric arc, and the electricity that does hit the plant doesn't seem to have any effect.
Pavo -27hp
Plant -42hp, frightened 1
Phaedria
Shade
Tuco
Abella
"Oh, no. Well, that won't do."
Shade casts a 2-action heal on Pavo.
He follows up by also casting Guidance on Pavo.
"May you be blessed by the Queen of the North Star"
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"Many thanks to your Queen and many thanks to you, Shade," Pavo says as he regains quite a bit of his verve. He looks down at the tuber clamped onto him by its bizarre maw and suppresses the urge to retch.
He stabs at the rootling valiantly and tries to pry its mouth off of his arm and escape. "Experience has been experienced! Get off me now!"
Tuco is still unable to connect with his kicks.
The plant bleeds out some precious fluids, a mixture of sap, and fox and tiefling blood.
Desna continues to look favorably on the party as Shade heals Pavo back to full health.
Pavo is not able to free himself from the plant's bite, but he does manage to land a piercing strike that does a little extra damage due to the plant's new vulnerabilities.
The hungry plant continues its grab on Pavo's calf, and with a never ending thirst, drains more blood and life essence.
Pavo -18hp
Plant -52hp
Phaedria
Shade
Tuco
Abella
Kill it with fire!
Phaed cuts her arm across the field, sending a thorny old branch to slash against the creature.
She then raises her shield.
Frusturated with the ineffectual nature of his kicks Tuco changes stances before trying to shake off the pollen.
He then snaps off a pair of arrows.
Abella holds up her clawed skeleton hand, charging it with an aura of cold, dark negative energy. As she steps forward, she slams her open-palmed hand into the plant creature.
Tuco's arrows come closer to hitting than his kicks, but still not close enough.
Abella places her golden hand upon the plant and sends slams negative energy its way, and the plant is not hardy enough to withstand it!
The plant withers and dies from the blast of negative energy!
There is another door to the house here, near Shade, and a broken window near Pavo.
Now that you are close to the building, you can see that a thin layer of transparent, moist webbing clings to the manor’s exterior surfaces.
Phaed turns her mask to Pavo. Well. I have never met a leshy that acted quite like that,. I wonder what it was doing here.
While Pavo is further healed Phaed looks around the garden for treasure. She also inspects the webbing and peeks in through the broken window.
When Phaed approaches and attempts to look into the window of what is ostensibly her new home, dozens of whippoorwills perched along the eaves of the run-down manor perk up and begin to cry out in an eerie song.
There are hundreds of the birds in all on the building’s roof and in the surrounding trees, and in one mass, the whippoorwills take to the air, flying in a spiral above the manor, singing.
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Pavo shakes the withered root creature off of his arm. "Thank you, Phaed. I suspect it was--urk--a vampire leshy," he pontificates. "Or a leshy inhabiting the roots of a parasitic--ugh--ivy and further twisted by the cosmic magics of this place. Oh. I had better sit down."
The tiefling lays down in the middle of the garden. "Am I still moving?" He stares at the circling whippoorwills for a good long while. "Fascinating."
Tuco keeps watch while Phaedria tends to Pavo's wounds.
Eventually responding to his awakened companion "I'm not going to pretend I understood that, but I think you're going to be alright."
Phaed pauses to listen to the birds' eerie song; she thinks about how in some cultures a whippoorwill singing near a house is an omen. Death is near.
She beckons to the door. Shall we?
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Once the vertigo from the root beast's scream fades, Pavo rolls into a sitting position and winces. "Let me sew myself up, and I'll--Say, Phaed, do you have a key? Or do you want me to slip in through that window and unlock the door from the inside?"
He pulls a curved needle out of his bandolier, a coil of thread, a flask of whisky, and a roll of cloth. The tielfling tears off a strip of cloth and lays it aside. He threads the needle and then sprinkles whiskey on it and wets the string with his fingers. Then he begins to awkwardly stitch the ragged bite wound.
"Is everyone healed up? Just want to be sure." asks Shade. When Pavo stitches himself up, Shade takes time to meditate, which he can do while he treats wounds as well.
"Let's try the door first, in case it isn't locked. Maybe you could unlock it, Pavo? Keeping us together seems safer than you climbing through windows."
Abella cleans the blood off her blade with a spell. She briefly considers getting the blood the splashed onto her nice white blouse, but she is actually feeling the pattern and aesthetic and decides to leave it. ”I have been injured, yes. The price of my exquisite gambit to lure the creature into my trap.”
As the group waits, bringing themselves back to full fighting strength, she examines the plant’s blood in various ways, but she does stop short of tasting it.
With everyone ready to move on once more, she examines the options. ”The window is certainly a possibility. I would rather clear out the more open areas first. Less likely for something to suddenly run in and bother us while we are the middle of work.”
"Climbing in unknown windows seems like a good way to lose your head." Quips Tuco.
"Agree on the door." Tuco follows up more politely.
As you debate and attend to your wounds, the birds circle and sing overhead.
The door to the manor in the garden’s south wall is not locked, but it is jammed; it can be forced open with a successful DC 18 Athletics check.
In either case, opening the door or climbing through the window involves touching the slimy film that covers the manor.
The stuff feels slippery and unnaturally cold to the touch, and it clings and stretches when a finger or object used to touch it is pulled away.
You think you could break though the film quite easily, like absent-mindedly walking through a spiderweb on a forest trail.
Shade casts prestidigitation to try and clean the film off of the door.
The prestidigitation does not clear away any of the film.
Phaed turns her mask to Abella. Perhaps not a terrible idea. But it seems a plurality votes the door. I am not skilled at brute force but I shall do what I can to help.
"Well, that is nice." says Shade, shaking his head. "Guess we get sticky."
He then looks for a nice stick on the ground, and uses that to try and pull off some of the slime, trying to determine if there is any way to not get coated in the stuff.
"That really doesn't look pleasant."
Shade tries to pull the coating off the door with a stick and the slimy film immediately bursts like an oily bubble, vanishing in an instant of foul-smelling smoke.
Fresh air rushes into the manor, giving the eerie sensation that the mansion just took a deep breath.
A wave of susurration creeps through the area, and for a single heartbeat you each experience a sensation of utter hatred toward birdlife.
There is a sudden, awful silence as the whippoorwills are all struck dead, quickly replaced with the patter of hundreds of warm corpses raining to the ground.
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Tears fall from Shade's eyes as he sees the servants of the Lady of Graves fall by the hundreds. "This does not bode well for us, my friends. May the blessings of Mother Moon protect us in our endeavors, that we might make it through alive."
Shade pauses for a moment, and then suggests that they carefully move in.
Tuco shurgs and looks back to the corvid statues before giving the door a kick.
Abella turns her perpetually-bagged eyes to Pavo. ”If Pharasma was in the habit of smiting people for such small offenses, why, I would have been pounded into a literal stain on the ground ages ago.”
She gives a look of the vaguest interest to the whippoorwills. ”Some nasty killing intent lingering here. Shame about the birds. Ah, but life is so fragile and so-on and so-forth.” Abella considers whether the murder wave was a negative energy effect.
Shade takes some time, trying to determine what was going on from his personal experiences and religious training.
Phaed says nothing as the birds fall.
Tuco pushes open the door and you enter into a narrow hall with many doors. Phaed, who is familiar with noble houses, recognizes this area as the servants quarters. The hall splits to the left and right with a window at the right, western, end
The house seems very quiet.
Tuco joins in on the thinking and researching.
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"Straight ahead, or close door to the right?" asks Tuco
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"Oh, I should have realized earlier!" Pavo says, snapping his fingers. "The web you broke, Shade, was a caul. It is the ectoplasmic manifestation of a great haunting. Now that it is broken, we are sure to attracted its attention." He looks down the halls. "We could do this systemically and start with that single door in the wall next to you, Phaed. Or we could split up!"