Even with the leaves that get in the way, Hannelia's shot flies true and catches a goblin unaware! It shrieks as Hannelia's arrow bites.. but sadly, at this range she doesn't have a lot of power to the arrow, and the goblin's still alive. And capable of retaliating.
Two arrows streak out of the trees and answer Hannelia's first strike! Another goes for Emma, but falls short of the paladin, skidding in the dirt.
More troubling than the mere pain of Hannelia's injury, however, is that the three sentry goblins immediately start screaming in their shrill tongue. Constantine knows just what they're saying, for all the good it does-- about what you'd expect. Intruders! Attack! Longshanks! Get everyone!
Roger makes his way up the stairs, hoping to get a closer look at the trap or whatever it was halfway up them. He might have told the others he'd climb around, but that took time, and if it looked like a trap he could skip by just taking four stairs at a time, he'd try for that instead. With the alarm being raised, his best bet now was speed and a trusty pair of boots.
Wielding Hannelia's old bow, Constantine moves forward, takes aim at the closest goblin he can say, pulls back the bowstring, and...
...misses spectacularly. Pulling the bowstring is an easy matter, but aiming with the finesse to handle the foliage is well beyond his usual capabilities. "Damn it," he hisses.
Sirio advances toward the nearest goblin and menaces his pentagram at it. A dry, raspy whisper carries all the way to its ears, filled with otherworldly dread.
The goblin starts gibbering and pointing at Sirio, clearly afraid...
Another just laughs at Constantine's missed shot!
Roger sprints up the stairs, slowingly only as caution dictates he's nearing the rigged step.
While her first flight found its mark, it only caught the goblin a blow, taking it in the arm rather than somewhere more vulnerable. In reply, two of the goblins' arrows catch her. Neither bites deep but she grits her teeth in pain. She turns to hear Constantine curse as he fires, presumably missing, and Sirio whisper words of power that leaves another of the goblins shaking with fear. Refocusing, and determined to finish the job with her next shot, Hannelia continues her advance and draws a bead on her target before firing once more. She stops carefully positioned among the trees to give the other goblins less of a line of fire at her.
Emma contents herself with watching the card match between Hannelia and Constantine with a bit of a smile, remembering how many of the guards at her old fort would do the same to pass the time.
When Roger returns and startles their group with his sudden appearance, Emma's hand flies to her sword...and stays there as the group realizes they've been made by the goblins up in the trees. Damn! she curses to herself. So much for an entirely stealthy approach. Hannelia manages to get a shot off at them, but the goblins return in kind - one of the goblins tries to take a shot at Emma as well, but misses. Constantine, bless him, tries to use Hannelia's old shortbow, but ends up missing his shot. Emma can sympathize - she was always a bit rubbish with any type of bow weapon. She'd been trained in it's use, but Emma's mom had said it wasn't too surprising - Iomedae favored the blade, after all.
Emma takes a moment to make a quick assessment of the situation. She considers using one of her javelins straight away, but realizes that at her range, it would be a fruitless effort. And her sword is little more than a stick she can wave around at this point. Oh Iomedae, you know I respect and love you - but would it have been too much to ask for you to favor a ranged weapon as well? Or provided us with swords that could be thrown with the force of an arrow in times of need?
The only option at this point is for her to get closer. Keeping her shield at the ready, she begins moving closer, shouting at Hannelia to get into cover behind one of the trees in the meantime.
Roger tries to use the wall to get over the board section, but the stone here is smooth as a baby's bottom! He cannot find any purchase and comes back down.. a little too close to the questionable boards. One foot lands on a suspect plank.... the plank pivots down... a rope thwiiips up... and a jar breaks on the rock face dangerously close to Roger.....
Meanwhile, on the forest floor, goblins return fire...
The blue-garbed goblin, badly hurt by Hannelia's two arrows, fires once more.... like a honeybee stinging and then dying, since the goblin's injuries seem to catch up with it right after its arrow twangs. The creature weaves a little and then drops bonelessly from the tree, unconscious. But its last arrow did find its mark.
Miss!
Miss!
You begin to hear shouts and noises from behind the palisade walls....
As the two sides continue to trade arrows through the foliage, Constantine draws out another arrow and takes a breath. He aims once again towards the northernmost goblin, pulls back the bowstring, and lets it fly.
It's...well, it's certainly better. Instead of completely twanging the bowstring, the occultist almost hits a tree. Almost.
"After we survive this," he calls out to Hannelia, "I may need to ask for some aiming tips."
For the second time Hannelia’s arrow finds its target and for the second time the goblin remains standing. Again it returns fire, catching her despite her position behind the trees. ”Ouch,” she curses, followed by a quieter ”Huh,” as the goblin tumbles off its branch, the effort of firing seemingly proving too much in addition to the wounds it had taken.
Moving forward once more, she draws next to a tree, hoping it might shield her somewhat and targets another of the goblins, flashing an arrow at her foe and taking it in the thigh. She hears Constantine’s commentary and calls back ”You got it, it takes a lot of practice. And seems I could use some myself, these arrows aren’t biting deep enough for my liking right now.”
Above.... the jar breaks... and some sort of brown spores fill the air around Roger. He very nearly dodges, but not quite...
Roger, where the floating fuzzy brown strands hit you, it feels very cold...
Wincing as he goes, Roger dashes up the rest of the stairs. His goal is just to jam something in the mechanism so the goblins can't close it on them. His halberd is a sturdy thing.
Huffing and puffing, Emma continues to muscle her way through the undergrowth of the forest. This is really just not the best environment for heavy armor, Emma thinks to herself. Though there is something to be said for the fact that most of the undergrowth has no clearance on her skin thanks to the coverage of the armor - small favors at least.
She maneuvers her way closer to the last remaining goblin and decides to chance throwing one of her javelins at the little beast. She hefts the javelin and gives it a toss towards her prey.
I know you favor the sword oh Iomedae, but perhaps just this once you can make an exception and help guide my hand!
Roger races up the stairs, teeth chattering from the strange goblin trap but determined to commence the boarding action as it were. He reaches the gate and has time to jam his halberd under the rusty, wicked looking grill.... perhaps noticing as he does so that the spikes of the gate seem to drip with purple-black tar.
He has a glimpse into the fortress proper: a practice yard before him, dusty and dotted with crude targets of sackcloth and junk. Three startled goblins are looking his way-- one stands by the gateway of some sort of enclosure, hurriedly trying to undo the chain that holds it shut.
A structure of sorts sits in the midst of the courtyard, looking as if it was but recently put together, and more a conglomeration of junk than a proper stone building like the rest of the fortress.
Cursing his armor much as Emma is doing to herself-- perhaps with fouler curses-- Sirio pushes through the woods to keep pace with Emma, as the Iomedan works closer to a goblin, wrests a javelin from her back, and manages to.... pincushion the goblin clean out of the tree!
Those on the forest floor looking up can see a goblin appear on the rooftops, roughly above where the stairwell trap broke . She clutches something in her hand but doesn't seem to do anything else yet.
In the courtyard, the three goblins stare at Roger a moment, then two of them scatter hurriedly out of his line of sight...
The last one frantically undoes the chain on the fence, and then scrambles away from Roger at top speed.... something snarls inside the fenced area.
Seeing Emma skewer the goblin sentry out of the tree, Constantine crouches to the ground and takes off running towards the fort, flashing Emma a thumbs up as he goes. Constantine had been relatively useless in that fight, but he would find his use as they closed into melee.
Sirio nearly shouts to ask for more information from Roger, but he decides against it. The old man may still have the element of surprise despite the scrambling of the greenskins. Still, he would need backup and Sirio was so very far away. He continues running somewhat recklessly toward the Highfort.
As Roger storms the fort and the rest of the party prepares to follow him, Hannelia's eye is drawn to the goblin now loitering above the staircase. She closes in before refocusing, whispering another blessing to guide her arrow, and releasing her shot.
Roger steels himself and moves forward cautiously, drawing his trusty blade. The snarl sounded like a beast, and they were often foolhardy enough to charge against the long blade.
It's with a grim sort of satisfaction that Emma watches the goblin she threw the javelin at fall from the tree, looking somewhat surprised at the fact that it had in fact been skewered. Truth be told, Emma herself is somewhat surprised that she was able to make the throw.
Of course, the opportunity to celebrate is short lived, given that things are starting to move quickly. Wiping her brow slightly, Emma once again sets out through the forest, heading towards the fort as quickly as she can. Whatever dangers may lie ahead will be best faced if her party stays somewhat close together, and she has a feeling that whatever is in the fort is going to put up quite a fight.
Keen-eyed Roger adjusts his stride to close with one of the skulking goblins! His eyes, however, are better than his swing in this instance... the little goblin ducks.
And then they respond to the intrusion...
The goblin in the purple bandanna runs out to join his companion in attacking Roger!
But neither of their attacks strike home on the big man. Yet, a goblin arrow whistles from around the corner of a building, fired by the black-clad goblin!
The red-hooded goblin on the rooftop-- the one Hannelia shot-- howls out orders in the Goblin tongue.
Then, she draws a flask from her armor and hurls it down... not at Sirio... but at the spot where strange brown spores still haze the air above the stairwell. The glass shatters...
...exactly where the goblin means it too. The air seems to burst into flame with more force than the little flask would merit. The fire evaporates mere seconds later, but the brown fuzz seems to have covered additional steps of the stairs, now.
After chucking her fire flask, the goblin drops prone on the rooftops, to make a smaller target to the arrows of those below.
The goblin dog runs from her pen, snarling, jaws dripping black-purple goo and eyes alight with a fiendish red glow! Her form looks more muscled and lithe than the 'dogs' you saw back at the Escoro form. She beelines for Roger with savage hunger.
But the pirate's luck holds, and the bite fails to connect.
Constantine continues to move towards the stairs, hearing the sounds of combat breaking out on the other side. He looks at the brown covering the stairs but has no earthly idea what portents it could entail.
"They're going to try to bring the gate back down! We should hurry!" Constantine says to his companions.
Seeing the goblin drop the flask and a flash of ignition as it breaks near the cloud on the stairs, Hannelia realises what it is.
”Oh blast,” she mutters, before calling out in a louder voice to the others. ”I know what that stuff is, it’s brown mould - chills you right to the core if you get too close to it. Something cold should shut it down but flames just cause it to spread, as our friend up there has just demonstrated,” she gestures to the goblin now lying atop the wall. ”Anybody got any tricks up their sleeve to deal with this? Constantine’s right, speed is of the essence here, and who knows what Roger has found up there,” she finishes, a definite note of concern in her voice.
"Nothing?" she replies to the hanging silence in response to her question. "Ah, more hope than expectation I guess." With her target clearly hurting from the first arrow and having dropped to the floor, Hannelia squints up to see whether a second shot is on. With the goblin pressed to the rooftop, she doesn't have much to aim at and decides against it. Concern for Roger foremost in her mind, she takes a deep breath before racing up the stairs, doing her best to gracefully step around the mould spores and bracing against the chill.
As Hannelia bravely charges up to make sure Roger doesn't face off alone against the goblin hordes, bitter cold seizes her, the innocuous-looking brown filaments seeming to burn her lungs and throat as they rob heat from her body.... but she does make it up!
Just in time to see Roger lay a goblin out with a mighty whack, and take a defensive spot.
Emma frowns up the stairs at the brown mold ahead of their party. So far, their excursion into the fort wasn't going as planned - she could only hope that the goblins were equally caught off-guard by their impromptu blitzkrieg into their territory.
Glancing around for a potential secondary path into the fort, Emma can find and think of none - and now two of their party members are past the mold and facing an unknown amount of goblins and whatever other creatures may lurk there - all of whom have likely been touched and infected by the abyss.
There's no choice, really. Hannelia has already braved the mold to reach Roger - how can Emma do any less?
"Life before death," Emma murmurs. She flexes her hands slightly, letting out a breath. "Journey before destination!" And then she charges up past Constantine and Sirio to reach the top of the stairs.
The cloud of spores blocks Sirio's path up the rickety stairs. He starts toward it, then covers the bottom half of his face with his sleeve and says, "Ugh, that's foul. Goblins truly are disgusting creatures."
He considers waiting for the cloud to disperse. But he couldn't be shown up by the others. He would appear weak. It just wouldn't do.
Damnation. he thinks. His familiar chortles a bit at that.
He charges forward after Emma.
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Behind everyone else running through the mold, Constantine sighs. "Wait, I can, you don't need to..."
The occultist wracks his mind to think of a way around the mold but doesn't have a strong way aside from attempting to climb the cliff. He looks at his sword and shield. "Any ideas?" The obvious silence tells Constantine what he expects to learn: nothing. "Stupid clever goblins," he mutters under his breath.
The twisting, drifting strands of brown mold look so innocuous and yet when they brush your skin, they feel like ice worming inside you.... Emma and Sirio struggle up, and through, chilled to the bone.
The purple-scarved goblin follows its leader's orders, though it seems nervous about getting close to Sirio, Hannelia, and the others. Still, it runs up to the gate, and tries to dislodge Roger's braced weapon with a tug and a yank....
...and Roger's halberd is yanked back onto the Goblin side of the compound, the goblin looking relatively surprised that worked, actually. It blinks down at the halberd, which looks comically oversized in its hands, then flashes a fangy grin at our heroes.
The goblin dressed all in black moves to have a slightly better line on Roger...
...and gets lucky, the arrow biting deep into Roger's shoulder. The hound is upon him seconds later, trying to savage his body with those drooling, ichorous teeth.
So far, however, its bark is worse than its bite.
Constantine is the only one with the current line of sight to see the red-hooded goblin roll back to her feet, for a moment. Then she steps back from the building's edge and he loses sight of her....
Trying to shake off the bone-numbing cold, Hannelia is immediately drawn to the goblin prising Roger’s halberd away from the gate and shouting, presumably in triumph. ”Oh no you don’t,” she growls out before loosing an arrow from close range straight between its eyes.
As the goblin slumps to the floor, she races past it into the courtyard, trying to survey the area. She positions herself to try and give the best shots at the other occupants and help out Roger, being pressed hard against a wall. ”In, quickly!” she calls to Emma and Sirio, giving them a line to charge into melee, and hoping Constantine will catch them up soon.
Constantine grits his teeth and sets to the unpleasantness of trudging through the brown mold. But before he does so, he reaches within his store of mental focus and steels his nerves to manage the expected pain. And then he runs through the patch.
The cold chills Constantine to the bone, but he's quite confident that it would have been worse without his mental preparations. He catches up with the others, shaking lightly, and reports what he knows.
"The goblin on the roof is going to close the gate on us!"
Hannelia's arrow is a bullseye shot, penetrating right through the goblin's skull and causing the little creature to drop like a sack of rotten potatoes. Hannelia sprints in to come to Roger's aid, if needed... while Constantine bulls up the stairs....
Even on his last legs between the cold and the few lucky blows, the salty old dog takes a good swing at the mangy new dog.
Roger's strikes are true, and the dog falls!
Emma clenches her teeth as the frigid effect of the brown mold takes hold. It makes her think of how much she hated the cold weather drills back home. They'd been a necessary but annoying part of her training - no one had liked it, but it had been deemed necessary should they ever find themselves in a winter storm somewhere. But being cold made everything harder, in a way that warmer weather typically didn't. Stopping to build fires was a necessity, and you had to take extra care of your equipment, lest it freeze to the point of being useless.
All of this goes through Emma's head as she comes to a stop, panting slightly from the exertion of running through the forest. Her adrenaline is still up from her earlier throw of the javelin against the goblin in the trees.
But their work is only just beginning.
At Constantine's shout about the gate, Emma doesn't waste any time and quickly passes through lest she be shut out of the fight. Her eyes quickly scan the area - less goblins than she was expecting. Apparently Hannelia and Roger had fared better than she'd initially expected. Still, there was one goblin left in the field and one on the roof of a nearby building. It wasn't yet clear if there were any goblins or those accursed dogs lurking within - and for the moment, she wasn't keen on finding out.
She gets right up in the sole remaining goblin's face, brandishing her shield at it. "Alright you ugly little beasty, let's dance," she taunts. Between her, Hannelia, and Roger, it likely won't take long to dispatch this final goblin and turn their attention to the one on the roof. The quicker they can gain control of this area, the better their chances will be of winning the long term fight.
Of course, I may have just jinxed us with that particular thought, Emma admits to herself.
"May your arrow flight straight and true." Sirio says, holding his pentacle toward Hannelia's bow as he arrives by her side. He murmurs a blessing and the unholy symbol glows faintly as it brings order to her next shot.
He looks to Emma to be sure she hasn't fallen, and curses himself for being so slow in his armor.
Sirio calls divine (depending on your point of view) influence to aid Emma, who charges on in to take the fight to the last enemies standing...
Sirio, Emma, and Hannelia can all see the red-hooded goblin standing on the rooftop above you all, a bottle in her hand. She lifts it to her lips-- then disappears from sight.
For a moment, the only foe you can see is the rather pathetic figure of one last goblin, dressed in black, blinking up at the imposing figure of Emma. It squeaks a bit, looking around helplessly, and then takes a step back and looses its shortbow at Emma.
But the arrow, shot from trembling fingers, falls short. The goblin looks down at it, up at Emma, and shrugs.
"MEZZODARATH!!!! MEZZOOOO-"
The sound of a door flying open interrupts the goblin's shrill cry.... and a hulking figure steps out from the crude structure at the center of the fort's courtyard. He is well over six feet, with rippling muscles that ooze with purple, ichorous tar, his deep-set eyes blazing with menace and madness. A scimitar is clutched in one massive hand, and the other grips a symbol of a monstrous three-eyed jackal head.
He snarls words in a tongue that almost hurts the ears to hear it...
...before a sickening pulse of energy rips from him and over all of you. It catches all of you but Constantine.
The brutish hobgoblin, for such he surely is, switches to the Common tongue with some effort after his energy washes over you. "What... did you come here... for? Your.... friend? This, maybe?" And he starts to laugh, horribly, gesturing to the open doorway of the hut.
A familiar form staggers out, though his eyes weep with dark ooze and his eyes shine with a light of hatred. His hands clutch a bow.
"Worms will feed," Talon whispers, and sends an arrow at Emma, his eyes fixed on the Iomedan symbol that adorns her shield.
Caught off-guard by the sight of a friend so transformed, Emma seems to be a sitting duck for the arrow. It slams into her chest with a sickening crunch... and she topples to the ground like a felled tree, the fresh injuries too much for her current cold-weakened state.
At the sight of her former colleague, Emma feels a chill grip tighten around her heart. No, she thinks. We were going to save him...this can't...I'm so sorry my friend. It didn't seem that long since they'd wandered around the town, enjoying some fresh bread as they set out on the adventure.
For him to be reduced to....to this corrupted thing, this abyssal perversion standing before her. There's no justice in this.
"Talon..." Emma whispers. "Please. No..."
"Worms will feed," Talon whispers back. It feels like a slap to the face.
Emma doesn't have time to respond before an arrow finds it's way to her, and strikes true. Between the chill from the brown mold earlier and the arrow...
She finds herself suddenly blinking up at the sky, and is confused. She doesn't remember lying down...
She'd failed to save her mother...she'd failed to save Talon...
She opens her mouth to beg for forgiveness--
And everything goes black.
The battle is in full swing now, so many moving parts, so many permutations. "No time for plans now," mutters Hannelia to herself. "Act if you can, Hannelia, react if not."
Seeing the irritating goblin on the rooftop drink something and vanish, she blinks and does a double take. "Watch the goblin on the roof," she calls, mainly for Roger and Constantine's benefit, "it's drunk something and seems to be invisible. Or not there any more – be on your guard."
Just as she finishes, the other goblin's cry overlapping her warning, an imposing figure bursts out of the central building. It's massive bulk seems composed of muscle and demonic energy, the sickly purple of abyssal bile clearly showing its hand in the insane look in the creature's eyes. It growls out something in a language that Hannelia doesn't understand but the way it makes the hairs on her arms stand on end and her teeth shake suggests it must be from the lower planes.
"Hnnnngghhh," grunts Hannelia as the energy pulse from the hobgoblin momentarily engulfs her, almost ripping the sound from her. She clenches her teeth and gives an involuntary shake of her head and torso, the worst of it seeming to simply wash over her.
While this is happening, she doesn't immediately see the figure of a half-elf slip out from behind the much larger hobgoblin. "Talon," she moans, the relief of seeing him alive melting away as she sees he too has been captured by the fiendish purple ooze. As if to confirm this, he draws his bow and from close range takes Emma with an arrow right in the body, piercing her armour and dropping her to the floor.
Forgetting the shot she had been considering, she whispers "React it is. And luck help all of us get out of this alive." So saying, she picks a careful path away from the enemy combatants to get next to Emma. Dropping to her knees, she places her hands on Emma's chest, trying to stop the bleeding as she chants the words to her healing spell. She can feel the life-giving magic pour into the paladin, closing the wound on a superficial level at least. As Emma take a sharp intake of breath she removes her hands in relief, wiping the blood on her leggings.
Constantine is hustling around the corner, still chilled from the brown mold, when he hears the racket. There is some nonsense in that terrible Abyssal and tongue and then...was that...Talon's voice?
The occultist careens through the gate just in time to see the afflicted form of the half-elven ranger send an arrow piercing through Emma's armor. Hannelia quickly springs into action to try to revive the holy warrior, and Constantine blinks in shock. Logically, Constantine knows that Talon is not in control of himself. But that logic doesn't stop the anger the boils up from his belly.
"Talon!" he calls out. "You slay goblins! You don't work with them!"
Calm. Center yourself.
Constantine thinks of a blanket swaddling him, and the calming protection of being swayed back and forth. There are a few flickers of red light as a shield of energy begins to spin in the air around him.
"Bloody mutiny in the ranks is what this is, none of that now!"
Roger runs up to Talon and tries to grapple him to prevent him from shooting any more friends, but...
"Arg, this goop is slicker than snot! It's that damn boat where I got my sword all over again!" His efforts are in vain. Presuming that being gooped has not reduced Talon's CMD by at least 4.
"Another possession? Begone demonic spirit, that body does not belong to you!" the priest shouts indignantly. Sirio gathers his pentacle in his fist once more and brandishes it at Talon. "Begone!
The mold had taken too much out of Emma. She'd be one of their strongest fighters. He had to get her up. After casting his spell, he'll retrieve a scroll from his scroll case. He nods to Hannelia, indicating his intent to revive their comrade.