Round 1 completed._____________________
"Is it common for wild animals to wander into town?"
Asher enters Crane Style as a Move Action, and begins fighting defensively as well as utilizing Combat Expertise as a Standard Action, before taking a 5 ft. step. He struck at the wolf, and he hit square for moderate damage as the wolf untangled itself from its inglorious charge earlier.
Grobradon Draw weapon, bardic inspiration for +1 to hit and Fearsaves
Clover lowers her spear, starts poking at the beastie, and runs it through. With damage from Asher and Clover, It falls dead.
Wolf3 continues to worry Grobradon.
for a possible slashing damage plus if it hits,
Wolf4 Charges up to Asher.
for a possible slashing damage plus if it hits,
Wolf5 Charges up to Clover.
for a possible slashing damage plus if it hits,
Round 2______________________
Players take their turn in order of posting. Enemies will go last.
Another wolf charges up and bites Asher in the ankle, yanking at his pants, trying to pull him down. "Ow! Damnit!" He steps between it and the wolf attacking clover, kicking at that wolf's legs as it runs up before throwing an elbow at it with all his force. "Watch out!"
"He's not listening to you, Varys!"
"Noted," the half-elf yells out as he withdraws his blade from a dead wolf, flicking blood off as he assesses the situation.
Varys sees two more wolves join Clover and Asher at the other end of the alley even as they take one out. Grobradon on the other hand seems lightly armed and armored as his wolf continues nipping at his heels. He decides to protect the bard.
Varys bends his knee momentarily before jumping up and using his momentum to run on the wall over the head of the wolf. "Nice song," he quips to Grobradon as he runs past him.
He lands on the other side in flanking position with the half-orc and spins his blade about with flair, stabbing out once more.
Clover pokes at the wolf advancing on her a lot as she backs up.
"This is really, very odd for the streets here in Trunau" she tells the others nervously. She almost sounds like an embarrassed tour guide.
"Nice song,"
He nods a thanks as he keeps it up, this time he gets to fight back, and good thing too! This wolf's bites are way too close!
Round 2 completed______________________
Asher's AoO on wolf 5: Missed.
He takes a 5 ft. step, flanking wolf 5 with Clover and enters Snapping Turtle Style for his second style as a Swift Action. His new AC is 21.
Asher attacks wolf 5 with an elbow to its spine, but it twisted aside and he missed.
Varys decides to protect the bard.
Varys jumping up to run on the wall over the head of the wolf. He lands on the other side in flanking position with the half-orc and spins his blade about with flair, stabbing out once more.
His blade struck home, dealing critical damage to the wolf.
Clover pokes at the wolf advancing on her a lot as she backs up.
Lashing out as it approached, she landed a direct hit dealing moderate damage.
Winding up for a regular attack, she just missed it.
Grobradon hit wolf 3 hard and the wolf collapsed dead.
Wolf4 rolled around to flank bite Asher.
for a possible slashing damage plus if it hits,
Wolf5, attracted to Clover by her attack, stepped forward to bite her.
for a possible slashing damage plus if it hits,
Round 3______________________
Players take their turn in order of posting. Enemies will go last.
With a sweep of his raised elbow to shield his neck, Asher slams the muzzle of the wolf behind him out of the way, avoiding its frothing bite. His fist thrashes out at its skull before he jumps back to flank the other beast with Clover.
As Varys and Grobradon make swift work of the northern wolf, the half-elf watches as the southerly wolves continue to harass Clover and Asher. He rounds the corner and charges down to stride next to the halfling, stabbing out at another wolf.
"This isn't dueling as I'm used to, but it's working well enough."
The wolf gets a good nip in on her so Clover scampers back, still poking at it. Partially she tries to block it's ability to get at Varys, partially she tries to stab at it.
Grobradon moves to Clover's side, and stabs at the wolf there that Varys faces from the opposing side
Round 3 completed______________________
With his raised elbow to shield his neck, Asher slams the wolf behind him for moderate damage, avoiding its bite. He jumps back to flank the other beast with Clover.
Varys rounds the corner and charges down to stride next to the halfling, stabbing out at Wolf 5.
His blade thrust straight through its body, the wolf dropped dead immediately.
With her original target already down, Clover approached wolf 4 and put a hard hit on it. It collapsed and died immediately.
The battle is over.
Varys flicks some blood off his blade and sheaths it. He frowns as he looks at the others.
"Some of you have been injured," he states, obviously, looking at Asher and Clover. He has no capacity for healing, but hopes someone can assist.
The half-elf also looks at the wolves.
"These specimens were merely pups, and I believe they may have been raised in captivity. Poorly treated, too. Note the striations in the fur around their necks: signs of collaring inconsistent with natural living. And they were not developing properly either: they are clearly malnourished and diseased."
Varys blinks. "Do any of the town's residents rear wolves? Or perhaps a hermit living in the forests?"
"I think I'm alright. I didn't even get bitten exactly, more like scratches."
"Poor dogs."
Asher takes a few moments to look at the injury he sustained while everyone talks.
"Do any of the town's residents rear wolves? Or perhaps a hermit living in the forests?"
Varys shuffles uncertainly. "Are you two okay to press on to meet with Omast and continue our investigation, or would you prefer to return to the Temple to receive some medical aid?"
"It bloody stings, but I'll be okay for now. But afterward, prompt, yeah."
"Let me take a look Asher."
Clover locates Ashaer's wounds and caresses then withe her hands, making them disappear.
"I know a magic song of healing, but up to you folks if we hold it in reserve. No I've never heard of anyone in town treating animals like these."
Asher looks impressed, even a little stunned as his wound knits itself together. "It...why does it feel like it still hurts? Not hurts, but..." he twists his ankle around this way and that. "Like the hurt is fading."
He stands, looking impressed at the halfling woman. "I've never seen a priest perform a miracle before. I - I thought that was always an exaggeration, meant to entice me to give tithes to the local church."
He holds out his hand for her to shake. "Thank you."
When you move on, a diplomatic asking around results in tracking down Patrol Sergeant Omast Frum, who eventually is found at the South Tower of Trunau’s inner wall, dangling from the tower’s battlements by a rope tied to his belt.
His futile attempts to wash away the graffiti that recently appeared there are creating quite the spectacle as a crowd gathers below to point and snicker.
The white painted cross or sword symbol was seemingly immune to the sergeant's efforts with a bucket of water and a brush.
"Why are they watching him?" Asher mutters under his breath to his companions.
Varys arches his eyebrow to see the scene. He had heard about this persistent graffiti the night before, but to see Omast's attempts to clean it was curious.
"Perhaps they find civic duty comical," he observes.
He approaches the wall, looking sidelong at the crowd but mostly ignoring them. He clears his throat and calls up.
"Good morning, Sergeant Frum. Do you need assistance getting down? We would like to speak with you."
Varys points at himself and the other three. Of them, Frum had the most official authority, so hopefully his words did not come across as presumptuous.
Clover is a bit overwhelmed by Asher's praise of what she'd done as a 'miracle'. She laughs it off to hide her embarrassment at his praise.
"I'm not a priestess of anything like that. I just work at the Ramblehouse. I'm sure Desna is far too busy to be granting me miracles or anything like that. It's just something I can do."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Clover does her best to explain to Asher.
"It's not funny of course, the poor man. But it's kinda funny" she whispers.
"Hello Sergeant Omast!"
Grobradon starts to say hello, then his eyes fall on the symbol.
"Why are they watching him?"
"Perhaps they find civic duty comical..."
Watching seems to bear out Varys' speculation as the Sergeant clumsily scrubs ineffectually at the white paint of the graffiti. The force he used pushed him away and spun him around in a comical fashion, producing drunken cursing from the officer and gales of laughter in his audience.
"Good morning, Sergeant Frum. Do you need assistance getting down? We would like to speak with you."
"Hello Sergeant Omast!"
Sgt. Omast Frum
"WHAT? I don't need your kind of help! Be off with yer lookey loo selves! I'm busy!" He shouted drunkenly. The force he used in shouting and giving a rude gesture to you resulted in a slow tumbling motion.
...then his eyes fall on the symbol.
"Our kind of help?" Varys asks in response. He looks around at his companions and tries to think of what the spinning sergeant might mean. What kind of help did they represent? There was very little apparent that they had in common, being two Trunauans and two out-of-towners. Not a single related ancestry between them, unless you counted the human influence in three of them. Clover was still somewhat injured--could that be what he was referring to?
Eventually, Varys settles on sobriety as the common factor possessed by the four on the ground but not Sergeant Frum. He says so.
"Would you accept our help if we also consumed alcohol and tied ourselves up to scrub at the wall with soap? I have the rope and the soap, though I currently lack the ethanol mope. Or Cayden's hope, if you prefer that trope."
Varys' eyes turn to the symbol as well. He reaches into his belt pouch and pulls out a wine-stained pearl, concentrating on it for a moment and then looking at the symbol. As always, nothing happens. He sighs and turns to Clover and Grobradon.
"Do either of you possess any kind of spells to allow you to assess magical auras? I unfortunately do not, though I would be curious if there is something different about this paint and the method to remove it."
"Why? There's no reason to believe it has anything to do with Roderik's death, and even if it is not removable, which we've no reason to believe it is not, who cares? That has bugger all to do with us." He looks up at Sergeant Frum. "Come down here, Sergeant. We need to talk to you."
Clover is appalled at how her compatriots are speaking to Sergeant Omast.
Never mind the out-of-towners Sergeant, I don't think they were raised right. But, we do need to talk to you if you could spare us a few minutes. It's about an important recent event you know... the murder." Clover drops her voice down to almost a whisper when saying the last part.
"Maybe you could take a little break, get some refreshment, before finishing up with the graffiti? On us and wherever you like?"
Varys looks down and sideways at Clover.
"Did I say something wrong?" he asks. "Or was it Asher?"
The half-elf nods solemnly. Yes, it must have been Asher, loudly declaiming the irrelevance of the current quarry.
For his part, Varys had enjoyed creating a relevant rhyming scheme. And he was mostly curious about the why of Frum's shooing and earnestly trying to propose a viable solution. But maybe it hadn't been received that way.
"It's not coming off, the mark... it should at least be fading" He blurts out, then he tries to get closer to cast a detect magic upon it.
Sgt. Omast Frum
Frum hesitated at Clovers words, then nodded.
He worked a knot on his rope and let himself down, barely avoiding a long drop on his head.
Sensing the entertainment was over, the crowd broke up and wandered off.
Thumping to the ground, he struggled out of his climbing harness and dropped it to the ground.
Weaving his way forward, he elbowed his way past you and across the street to a tavern. There he sat down at a table and accepted a mug from the keeper.
"Ah, very good," Asher says, walking behind the sergeant and into the tavern. "Five ales, then, please," he directs towards the barkeep as they hand one to Frum. He pulls out his journal and a pen and places them both on the bar before realizing that he had dipped the corner of the journal into a wet ring. "Oh dear," he says, eyes widening. "That's no good." He frowns, quickly lifting the journal and grimacing to see a stain already having seeped up through, growing. "Oh no, no, no," he repeats, fumbling around in his pack before pulling out a shard of red-tinted glass, a few beads, and a toothed wheel from a clock. He concentrates on each one in turn, looking frantically at his wet journal after each item before sighing and giving up. He puts the ink and inkpen away and starts fanning his hand above the wet pages, listening in as Clover begins speaking with the Sergeant.
I should have brought more paper...
Frum looked at you blearily.
"Heard 'a ye. Outsiders... Goin' around askin' questions... 'bout Rodrik."
He burst into tears and took another drink.
"...poor, young Rodrik, that magnificent bastard..."
"Outsiders and locals," Varys clarifies (unnecessarily) while he absentmindedly fans his book with one hand. Word spread quickly around town. "His brother has asked us to look into what happened."
The half-elf looks at Clover and Grobradon for confirmation, and then continues. "You seem upset. Do you think Rodrik was the sort of person to take his own life?"
"Do you think Rodrik was the sort of person to take his own life?"
"...hunh? Nah... just got promoted... 's got a girlfriend... Here's to girls!" He shouted, downing the rest of his mug. He waived at the barkeep for another.
Clover is grateful for the mug. Some ale will go a good ways toward steadying her nerves after the harrowing encounter with the dogs.
She tries to give Omast her undivided attention, but Varys, with his book and baubles makes it hard. Her eyes keep shifting in his direction, watching him do, whatever it is he's doing. Clover decides he is a deeply weird man. She also wishes someone else had gotten stuck with this chore. It's very unpleasant, and the foreigners are hard to predict. When one is as small as Clover, predictability is a good thing to wish for in those considerably bigger people all around.
It harder to find in foreigners. While Clover is always pleasant and accommodating, it's because foreigners are the Ramblehouse's bread and butter. There is a small minority of permanent guests, but not nearly enough to get by on.
"It's sounds like things were going really well for Rodrik. Sergeant Omast, do you think anyone might have been jealous of him? At work or in love?"
Varys has no real sense of what Clover thinks of him (which is probably a good thing). As Clover continues the line of questioning, he repeats the gleaned information in his head. Promoted, girlfriend. No new information yet, but maybe they could continue to press. Clover seemed better at that, but Varys raises his glass in the toast to girls.
Asher leans over to the group at large and whispers discreetly, "Promoted? He was next in line to be the Patrol Leader. But he was a brand new Patrol Captain? Why was he next in line if he'd just been promoted?"
Grob takes a drink offered, looking thoughtful, but he does vouch for the others "these strangers are good folk, take my word for it"