Baldrek reverses his grip on his ranseur, readying himself to strike at the guard with the butt of his weapon if he somehow finds them.
Short sword in hand, Patizamo readies a spell to fight the guard if he finds them.
Pilzip tries to create a distraction, tossing a stone into the nearby underbrush.
"Hmm? What was that?" the guard says, distracted by the thrown stone. He turns to look, giving you an opportunity to move away before he gets too close. This time, you manage to avoid detection as you move up along the sides of the manor and quietly approach the holes in the walls where the water is seeping inside.
The water ripples around your lower bodies as you enter it to get into the manor, revealing your location despite your invisibility. And your presence doesn't go unnoticed, as two enormous water cobras emerge from the hole in the wall, tongues flicking out to taste the air as they pick up your scent...
"Why did it have to be snakes!" Pilzip mutters in characteristic fashion. He uses the advantage of invisibility to fire a blast of ice at a flat-footed snake.
for and
Baldrek steps forward and lunges forward to thrust at the closest snake.
Patizamo doesn't want to move into close range with two cobras alone, so he instead casts an arc of electricity between the two cobras. Capturing some of the lingering electrical energy, he imbues it into his personal aura, and his blade crackles slightly with the lightning.
One cobra dodges some of Patizamo's electric shock while the other takes the brunt of it. Pilzip blasts the more injured snake with a ray of frost, then Baldrek stabs it with his ranseur. As the cobra tries to get closer to the fighter, he impales it with a critical hit, taking it down!
The other cobra moves closer and flares its hood with a hiss! It then snaps at Baldrek.
Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature is frightened 1.
Failure The creature is frightened 2.
Critical Failure The creature is frightened 3.
Ubasu takes a step back when the massive snake flares its hood. He knew it was going to happen, but nothing could prepare his senses for this. No amount of knowledge, no amount of reason or talk. To experience it is to truly know.
Patizamo decides he really doesn't like snakes as he jumps back from the cobra's flared hood. Pushing past his fear, he circles around to flank the cobra with Baldrek before casting a rending spell into his blade and stabbing it into the cobra.
"You are a mean beast, yes?" Baldrek retorts as he is bitten by the scary cobra. He then stabs twice before stepping back a bit to give them some room and force the animal to waste some time chasing him.
The threatening display of the snake startles Pilzip, but he searches his mind for all he knows about cobras, then blasts away with a magical attack.
for and
The snake dodges some of the debris Mokhasi conjures. Pilzip hits it with a ray of frost and Baldrek stabs it once, then Patizamo manages to score a critical hit, his blade and magical claw slicing through the giant cobra's neck and slaying it!
With the threat neutralized, you make your way into the flooded room. Long tables and chairs, the remains of a once glorious dining hall, drift as flotsam in the water. The top of a mostly submerged doorway can be seen on the eastern wall while curved stairs ascend out of the water to double doors to the south.
Pilzip whispers to his companions. "What a mess! Flooding has really done a number on this place, too." The flooding problems in the city seem to be way beyond what would naturally occur. "Should we head upstairs before we're totally soaked?"
Patizamo wiggles his toes in his wet boots. "Might be a little too late for that. I don't think opening the submerged door is an option, so up the stairs we go."
Whatever transpired here, the sight of the dining hall plants a seedling of fear in Ubasu's subconscious. Things are truly amiss. "Alright. If anyone feels like scouting ahead, I can make you smaller for a minute or five."
The Alijae half-elf casts a relatively simple but impressive spell that tugs and pulls at his form for a split second before transmuting it all into a tinier package: a many-coloured jeweled lizard.
Ubasu the lizard slips through the open double doors and into the main hall of the manor. A sodden, torn rug lies half-submerged in a two-foot deep pool of water that fills most of this hall. Double doors to the south are ajar, and that room also look flooded. To the east, semicircular stairs lead out of the water to a double door.
Peeking through the south doors, Ubasu sees what seems to be a flooded ballroom. Once-fancy mildewed tapestries hang on the walls, filling the room with a rank scent. Several drums and koras float on the water’s surface against the room’s western wall. The top portion of a submerged doorway is just visible on the eastern wall, and a ragged hole ten feet wide is visible in the southern wall.
A reptilian creature resembling an enormous, long-legged alligator lurks in this room, but it pays no heed to the tiny lizard at the top of the stairs.
Ubasu goes to the door at the top of the stairs to the east and squeezes under it. A round teak table with chairs is in the center of this room. Abstract wood carvings of people line the walls. A painting of a hyena, once meant to be the room’s focal point, has a large rip across the canvas. The painting hangs crookedly above a large bronze door on the eastern wall.
A bearded man sits at the table, stroking the fur of a black panther by his side. While the man doesn't notice Ubasu, the panther turns to regard the polymorphed bard. It bares its fangs and growls. "Magic," the cat hisses in Mwangi!
Ubasu's tiny legs respond to the cat's hiss by attempting to carry him away as quickly as lizardly possible!
Ubasu scurries back to the rest of the party to report what he saw.
The half-elf shifts back to his normal form and flashes his companions a rather nervous expression. "Beyond this water-logged central hall is a room inhabited by a bearded man accompanied by a panther. When I took a peek, it wasn't the man who noticed me, but the cat! Who hissed 'magic' at his boss in Mwangi! We either go back and report what we've found, or ... well, there's also a long-legged alligator in the water-logged hall that certainly won't let us through ... we'll have to fight."
Patizamo considers, then says, "There really isn't much to report, though, apart from the fact that the mayor's manor is in a state of disrepair and there's a bearded man with a talking cat that can sense magic. I think it will have to be a fight - although being aware of the alligator means we can maybe take it out from range, before it closes to us."
You make your way across the main hall and head north to the room where the bearded man and the panther await. The man narrows his eyes as you enter, and the panther lets out a low growl. "Who are you? How dare you barge into the home of a member of Nantambu's government uninvited?" the man says.
Mokhasi, Patizamo, and Ubasu recognize the man as Magistrate-Mayor Thuba, Asanda's peer. However, Usabu remembers that Thuba is desperately allergic to cats. He wouldn't be able to stand being so close to a panther...
"Building inspectors! You've really let this place go!" Pilzip bluffs for time as the group surveys the room.
Thuba looks puzzled. "Building inspectors? You are very heavily armed for a group of building inspectors," he says. "Surely you would have an official seal or something proving you are who you claim to be, yes?"
"We could ask you the same thing. Do you have a license for that creature?" Pilzip doesn't know quite what he's dealing with here, but keeping the enemy talking seems a solid strategy.
Ubasu knows the jig is up, but it's Pilzip that's dancing. Perhaps the grippli can still turn this around ...
"Of course I do," Thuba says. "You should just... just..."
The bearded man sighs as he strokes the black panther's fur. “Ah, perhaps it’s time to get out of this awful costume he has me in.” His appearance wavers and changes into that of a serpentfolk as the panther grows blue spirals in its fur and a second pair of eyes. "I'm too tired to keep pretending to be a warmblood. I'll just kill you now!"
"Ack, a snake!" Pilzip manages to react before the imposter and fires off a blast of energy before shielding himself.
for and
Pilzip just manages to hit the serpentfolk with the ray of frost. Wincing in pain, the man falls back to the far side of the table and casts a spell, surrounding himself with mirror images.
Meanwhile, the strange feline creature pounces on Pilzip, attacking the grippli!
"Don't cats normally meow when they're hungry?" Ubasu tries to unsettle the cat by appealing to its (comedic) senses. And then, with a quick one-two as if he were a boxer, Ubasu tells the cat a horrible, not-even-my-gramps-would-dare-tell-this joke. Magically, the Alijae's words are whispered right into the feline's ear.
-Success As critical success, but the penalty is –2.
-Critical Failure Your quip is atrocious. You take the same penalty an enemy would take had you succeeded. This ends after 1 minute or if you issue another Bon Mot and succeed.
Baldrek wastes no time fighting the weird cat and instead rushes for the serpentfolk. "Your kind had all the opportunities to have chosen peace, yet you choose war everytime!"
Pilzip rushes away from the cat, slipping behind the serpentfolk.
for and
for and
With Pilzip and Baldrek engaging the serpent folk, Patizamo decides to help safeguard Ubasu and Mokhasi. He weaves magic into his blade and strikes out at the cat before conjuring a shield of force before him.
Ubasu targets the cat with a spell, but as a reaction, the cat alters the dweomer to bolster its own resistances. Still, the magic causes the beast to begin to snicker and yowl, preventing it from using further reactions. Its will proves strong enough to ignore Mokhasi's daze spell, and it dodges Patizamo's attack.
Baldrek moves in to attack the serpentfolk, destroying two mirror images while landing a hit on the real enemy. Pilzip ignores the last mirror image as he stabs the serpentfolk twice, leaving him critically wounded!
The serpentfolk spits blood onto the floor and sneers at you. "I will not surrender. I will fight and die as a proper zyss! Not like my master, Salathiss. He has gone so deep into his role he's forgotten how disgusting you all are. He thinks he's actually Asanda!" He feints against Pilzip, then stabs the grippli twice.
The strange cat rears up to attack Patizamo, still snickering with laughter.
Patizamo's shield intercepts the cat's second attack, helping him avoid some of the blow.
Deciding he didn't want to be the only one on the cat, Patizamo teleports next to the serpentfolk and stabs him, instead. He follows up by casting an electrical spell that arcs between both the serpentfolk and the cat.
"Asanda!?" Pilzip gasps at the news, leaving him open to the creature's attack. He slashes out with his own sword and casts a shield of arcane energy in place.
for and
for and
Ubasu focuses his efforts on fixing the worst of Patizamo's wounds. But, with him being in combat and teleporting around, it's no easy feat to do so.
Baldrek turns to the cat and stabs twice before tending to Patizamo's most critical wounds.
Patizmo's strike finishes off the serpentfolk, who groans and collapses at the magus's feet. The rest of you turn your attention to the magical cat, badly injuring the beast. The creature yowls before disppearing through a dimenisonal doorway, leaving behind only a faint shimmering of magical energy in the air.
"It seems the Academy isn't the only place that serpentfolk have infiltrated." Pilzip casually gathers the jewelry from the fallen imposter. "It seems even the Mayor has been replaced! I wonder what happened to the originals?"
Patizamo exhales painfully from his wounds of the cat's claws and says, "Thank you, Ubasu and Baldrek, for the timely intervention to help keep me standing. Let us hope that the originals are still alive, although I fear the worst for them. Should we take a moment to catch our breath?"
Ubasu inclines his head in response to Patizamo's words. "That would be wise, yes. And as Pilzip says, where are the real mayor and the others they're impersonating? We ought to start by checking out this place before we head back to the Magaambya."
"I think they might be still alive, because even if serpentfolk are ruthless, they still do need information from the source they are impersonating from time to time to keep their ruse."
"Thanks for the patch up, Baldrek. And, let's hope you are right!"
When everyone is ready, the grippli leads the way further into the mansion.
The large bronze door on the eastern wall seems to be barred from the other side. The doors are well-made and thick, making it nearly impossible to open from this side.
Smaller doors lead to the north and the south. You can hear two voices talking beyond the north door. Listening to the conversation, you are able to pick up on the following:
• The interminable practice at being warmbloods is wearing on them; if they could leave safely, they would.
• Their superior has been devoting a lot of effort to studying “the egg,” which is someplace hard to access. These serpentfolk don’t know what the egg does and make several fanciful guesses (that it’s the egg of the serpent god Ydersius, that it contains a dangerous monster, that it’s made of solidified magic, and so on).
• Salathiss can’t get at the egg any longer, and the serpentfolk guarding it have been eliminated, putting the whole reason they’ve come to Nantambu in jeopardy. They think all the serpentfolk should leave.
• Salathiss has instead focused on stealing the magistrate-mayor’s identity. He’s getting too deep into the role; one voice tells a story about how he tried to get orders from Salathiss and the serpentfolk didn’t even seem to recognize his own name. He would only talk to his subordinate as Asanda! The serpentfolk now derisively refer to him as “Salathiss the Warm.”
When they hear that Salathiss can no longer access the egg, because apparently the serpentfolk guarding it have been killed, Ubasu starts thinking of places that could fit that 'description'. The one place he knows of where serpentfolk have been slain is in the academy, but that seems preposterous. Or does it? It's something he must mull over before sharing it with the others. He doesn't want to be thought of as a fool.
"Say, should we simply ... abandon this place, and let the serpentfolk find out their leader is gone, thus giving them a good reason to leave? Or is that a naive approach?"