Round 2
Bonita moves up the stairs and into the mess of vines.
She nimbly avoids the enchanted foliage, though steps within the range of the vine’s attack.
Her facial features suddenly elongate into a human/hawk hybrid and she snaps at the vine with a sharp, hooked beak, but fails to connect.
Robert and Eudamonia are up.
Euda frowns as she gathers together another mass of jagged petals and pointy thorns and hurls them towards the angry vine.
Euda finally hits something! Jagged leaves, hardened into knife blade, tear into the vine and shred several branches.
AV:-21
Robert?
Robert continues to try and prune the dangerous weed.
The vine wraps around Robert and gives him a bone-shaking crush. The warrior farmer turns purple and goes limp.
Everybody is up.
Fezzan keeps inching around, trying to set up a flank on the vine. and starts hacking at the plant.
Euda cringes slightly at her own success. "I'm sorry, Mister Angryvine. I don't want to hurt you, but I can't let you keep hurting us, or other people, either..." she mutters as she gathers up another mass of petals and thorns and hurls it at the vine again.
Your combined efforts give the assassin vine a fatal pruning. As the vegetation goes inert, it releases the unconscious Robert onto the floor.
”Leeka knows how to heal people,” Euda remarks quietly as she turns towards the druid they’re escorting, ”isn’t there something you could do for him?”
"There is no need. We have we procured a wand of healing as I recall. We can easily heal them that way with it and anyone else for that matter," she speaks rummaging through her pack and pulling out the Wand of Cure Light Wounds that they had gotten from her home and master's own storage.
"Now, does anyone know how to use?" she says, twirling it betwixt her fingers before seeing sparing tinge of magic come from the tip,
"There we go, lets act quickly," she says, casting it towards Robert.
I believe the DC to activate a wand is 20, so Gunnar manages one charge from the wand so far. The dogs above continue to bark, unchanged. It is odd that, by the sound, they have not approached the open stairwell leading to your floor. It’s possible they are barking for some other, unknown reason. This close, now, you can hear the unmistakable yip of a lapdog in the mix.
Sure thing.
With the assassin vine dead, the other animated vines fall still, but they are still in the way. You fortunately get Robert on his feet before John makes it up the stairs to see how close he came to losing his remaining son.
Robert shakes it off and quickly stands before his father can see his wounds. He says "I could use some more of that before we proceed."
With the sound of distressed dogs echoing down from above, Fezzan decides to not waste any time with clearing the way.
"I don't like that there's been no response from our kidnapper. I'm going to take a peek. Press on and I'll meet you at the top."
Grabbing a vine, he starts to haul himself up the side of the tower.
While Gunnar continues working to finish healing Robert, Euda joins in the effort to clear the way to the stairs by resuming her quiet requests to the vines to pull back their tangles.
Standing with her back to Fezzen is a young woman wearing a simple brown robe, and a garland of vines and flowers around her neck. She holds a small knife in one hand as she carved similar markings to Benji’s into the side of a dead wolf lying on the ground. From the state of decay, the wolf has clearly been dead for weeks.
Seeing the dire situation, and wanting to take advantage of the element of surprise, Fezzan creeps over the lip of the tower and tries to sneak up on the woman and stop whatever she's doing.
Mary showed off her utter incompetence with wands as Gunnar had to be the one to activate it and heal Robert. When he was using it, she didn't even ask for it back after as she furrowed her brow in partial frustration.
[B]"No use standing here while Fezzen goes up, let's continue on with some haste shall we"[b]
”You? You cannot be here!” a woman’s shout carries down below.
Caught out, Fezzan smiles sheepishly, and holds his hands out apologetically. He speaks in a clear, carrying voice,
"So sorry to disturb you, but a nice old lady I know hired me to find her missing dog." He leans over and give a little wave to the snarling dogs. "Hello Tricia, mummy misses you so very much."
"You seem to have a lot going on right now, so if I could just have Tricia, I'll be on my way."
Knowing that she very well could not climb such a distance without a rope she decided to rush for the stairs, pushing away vines to clamber up the steps, "Come on, we need to get to Fezzen."
Climb check is Dc 5. It’s 15 feet up to the top floor from here, but climbing time depends on your speed and your climb check result (if you choose to add 5 to the dc to climb faster).
Maria takes the chance to climb up to the next floor, damning her terrible physical prowess as she had trouble climbing up the vines.
Euda swallows hard as her companions begin abandoning the quest for the stairs in order to climb to the next level. She reluctantly moves to the edge muttering, "well, I'm sure you're right, Mister Branch, the stairs would be much, much safer, but one of my new friends got himself in some kind of trouble, so now we're all doing something foolish to help him."
Taking hold of the vines hanging down from the floor above, she takes a deep breath and implores, "please don't let me fall, Mister Branch," before attempting to climb up.
Robert looks around after being healed and hears the commotion above, "Speed may be needed here." He heads for the vines to climb to the next floor.
All of you, skilled and unskilled, manage to climb the thick vines. While this clearly would have been perilous while the assassin vine still lived, other than Maria grabbing a small garter snake instead of a vine, the ascent is without incident, and you peer over the edge to behold the scene Fezzen had interrupted.
Peering over the edge, you see Benji, naked and tied spread-eagle between four climbing pitons driven into the stone floor. The boy’s clothes, clearly cut away, make a pile to the side, and strange ritual markings, which you first thought were painted on his face and torso with thin red paint, have now clearly been cut into his skin. The missing village dogs (and two you didn’t know about, so five total) are straining against ropes around their necks to reach Benji: their shrunken sides and frantic light of their eyes speak to the fact that they have clearly not been fed for many days.
A young woman wearing a simple brown robe, and a garland of vines and flowers around her neck, holds a small knife in one hand. At her feet lies a dead wolf, its hide carved with similar markings to Benji's. From the state of decay, the wolf has clearly been dead for weeks.
The dogs return their attention back to Benji as the young woman addresses the growing crowd.
"You cannot stop this. Justice will be served, a murderer punished, and the life that was taken will be restored. A life for a life."
The woman rushes towards the nearest dog (one of Elipho's) and starts slicing at the ropes restraining the now feral creature.
Euda's young eyes start to well up at the sight of the all the symbols cut into the boy's flesh and the starving dogs. "What have you done?" she quietly asks with a mixture of horror and pity.
"Help me," she implores the vines as a cloud of razor sharp leaves gathers around her hand.
"Please," she calls out to the crazed woman, "we can't let you do this, but I don't want to hurt you... if there's a need for justice, step back and drop the knife, and we can talk about helping you get justice, the right way."
Whether to prove her seriousness or from fear of the dog getting loose while the poor boy is helpless, she hurls the whirling tempest of flora at the other girl.
Round 1
Euda’s actions precipitate a sudden burst of violence. Fezzen is actually first, then the druid, then everybody else. Euda is attacking the druid, while Gunnar is knocking a dog unconscious.
Being not the more physical type, Maria, stumbles up from the vine on her hands and knees, peering out a scene she was not rather expecting, "What the..." she spoke just as the violence began to occur. She quickly went to action however, knowing full who was the villain of this little story as it appeared. Her right-hand dove for a small pocket of blue, red, and yellow sand before tossing forward with a shout of magical words.
"Burstrati Corveli!" she shouted out loud as the sand turned into a barrage of colors aimed towards the crazed druid and a dog.
Fezzan moves over to the druid, and tries to sweep her legs out from under her:
"Just stay down. I can understand your grief, but this escalation will only make things worse. How many more must die, in the name of balance?"
Fezzen dashes forward as the druid reaches for the dog’s rope lead, knocking her to the ground. Lying there, she casts a spell, not even trying to do it defensively.
Fezzen can have an AoO to try to disrupt the spell.
Seeing the druid down, Robert runs over to his brother to free him. "Don't worry Benjamin, we are here to help!"
Sighing at the woman's refusal to give up, Fezzan tries to disrupt her spell.
Fezzen bumps the druid with his knife, not enough to really hurt her, but enough to ruin her attempted spell.
Euda sends razor-sharp thorns at the woman, who is unable to avoid the magical foliage. Robert dashes over to his brother, who looks quite relieved at his arrival.
Maria, unable to target the druid without getting Fezzen, alters her aim slightly to catch a pair of dogs, both of whom fall unconscious, along with the one Gunnar clubs, leaving one sheepdog and Tricia to growl and snarl viciously.
”No!! You cannot gave him! He must pay for his crime!” Mallia screams in protest, more than a hint of madness in her voice.
Robert looks back at the druid and yells "What crime has he commited? He doesn't come into these woods but stays near our farm."