Hannelia’s first arrow spangs off the creature’s chains. The second arrow hits the monster’s torso but leaves only a scratch on its skin.
Their defenses are strong:
DR (good or silver)
SR
Regeneration (prevented by good or silver weapons, or good spells)
Immune to cold
”Hit it with silver,” Hannelia says, indicating the tips of her arrows, ”or holy power. You won’t hurt it as much without and it can heal from normal wounds really quickly. Magic can hurt it but it has some resistance and it’s completely immune to attacks from sources of frost and the like. It’s a kyton, known as chain devils but you can see that and we don’t need to go into further detail right now.”
It's a hell of a thing to be brought out of a daze by a monstrous figure slicing into you, Emma thinks.
The lingering evil haze of the monstrous eye... thing... sticks with her, makes her feel a churning in her gut, just short of actual nausea. But that will have to wait. Whatever the hell that thing is that just attacked her is now the priority.
Picking up her weapon, she glares at it. "Begone, outsider," she snarls, as she calls upon the Inheritor's holy energies to smite the creature.
Then, Emma takes a step and lances out with Redemption against the creature, whatever it may be.
Round 1
The kyton sends a chain lashing at Emma as she stoops to retrieve her sword. After the other wounds, she’s wary of the attempt and easily bats the rusty blade aside.
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Then she steps up and slashes the monster. It’s a palpable hit but not nearly enough to fell the foul creature.
Initiative Order
Roger, Hannelia, Emma, Nerissia, Baddie, Majara
Bolds are up!
Roger is wary of the lashing chains, and switches weapons, dropping his Falchion to the floor and drawing his cold-iron Glaive, sadly wrought for slaying the wrong sort of evil foe, yet still fulfilling a useful purpose in letting Roger cautiously advance into spear range and have at it.
Round 1
Roger proves that, with enough force, even a hard-skinned monster can be hurt. The glaive slices deeply, adding to the Kyton’s collection of wounds.
Nerissia considers the 8 chains and decides to hang back. She moves next to Hannelia and fires a silver arrow which flies past the monster.
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While somewhat enjoying its own bloodletting, the kyton targets the most active threats to its attempts to flay the party. Half of the chains lash out at Emma and the other four fly towards Roger. Despite Iomedae’s protection, two of the blades slash Emma’s arms. Roger deflects all but one of the chains coming for him. But that one smashes him across the skull, leaving his head ringing.
At Erastil’s temple in Saringallow, a nearly catatonic Constantine lurches up in his bed, scaring the novitiate trying to feed him supper. Soup sprays liberally across the blankets. The bowl hits the floor and shatters. The psychic’s panicked screech could wake the dead. The novitiate practically falls to the floor in her haste to get away. She races for the door, yelling for Father Ruvarra.
Constantine weeps and mutters a child-like mantra. ”Go back to sleep, you’re just dreaming. All sights and sounds are just a seeming. The shadows fall; your darkness grows. Shut your eyes and let it go. Sleep now, sleep now, sleep now… ”
Back in the cavern…
The wandering white pupil in the black eye is attracted to the only bright spot in its world… a glowing point of vile daylight on a tiny silhouette. The eye struggles to lock on to the aberration as the pupil narrows, trying to bring the source into focus. A sleep-fogged mind begins to stir toward consciousness…
Majara watches the chain-slinging abomination fighting with her allies. For no reason she can name, she glances back into the niche and sees the white pupil/black eye wheeling in her direction. The malevolence of it is almost tangible. The pupil narrows.
Initiative Order
Roger, Hannelia, Emma, Nerissia, Baddie, Majara
Bolds are up!
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....What's the old joke? A man falls into the Abyss and finds himself stranded on a narrow ledge, the smallest outcropping of a sheer cliff. Climbing up seems death, climbing down seems worse. And he sees silhouettes of flying demons coming his way. Caught between a vrock and a hard spot...
The malevolent will of the eye of Sauron is bending her direction. It would be... good, Majara thinks, to not be standing where it can see her.
She glances at the kyton....
...mostly to determine if this is likely going to hurt... but even if it will, it's a flesh wound. Just like the other cuts from it already have. Not -- whatever might be coming from the eye. Majara takes a breath, and plucks another bomb.
When in doubt, burn the damn thing. Alchemy 101.
"Kiss my blue ass," Majara mutters at the eye, before pulling the hell away from the thing. Her blood marks her trail over the floor.
Round 1 End
Majara is about to lob a bomb at the eye-thing, when something like a distant psychic scream raises the hair on her neck. She has a strong sense this particular sleeping dog is one they should let lie. She adjusts her stance and hurls the flask at the kyton – a direct hit on the chest. Flames scorch the foul creature. Majara hustles out of the eye’s er… eye-line and determines (through not getting knifed while she moves) that this type of kyton does not have Combat Reflexes.
Round 2 - FIGHT!
Initiative Order
Roger, Hannelia, Emma, Nerissia, Baddie, Majara
Bolds are up!
"Keep pilin' in the fire, we'll bring it down!" Roger calls in the group as he maneuvers for the flank and keeps attacking.
Roger's blow breaks ribs and drives deep into the monster's chest... but there is still some fight left in it.
Stepping to the side of Majara, Hannelia lets fly with another pair of arrows. As before, one hits the target, the other gets caught in a whirl of chains.
Hannelia's arrow sticks in the monster's eye. The kyton roars it's disapproval... and somehow manages to hang on to life by a slender thread.
"As you say," Emma says in response to Roger. After Roger and Hannelia take their swings at the beast, Emma steps forward and lances out with Redemption once more, letting out a cry of challenge.
Emma drives redemption into the monster's chest, killing it. It collapses with a final rattle of its chains.
Emma drives Redemption into the kyton. It roars and rattles its chains... and then slumps, dead. Emma kicks it forward, drawing Redemption back, and then kicks it once it's prone on the ground, if only to make sure its dead.
One evil entity down.
Another one left.
"Now," Emma says, looking over at the... well, she isn't really sure what it is, to be exact... just that it radiates a sense of evil strongly enough that it sets all of her senses on alert. "For that thing." She looks at her companions. "Whatever that thing is... it's evil. Truly evil. Any ideas for what to do about it?" She eyes the thing warily, disgust on her features.
”Well done, everyone,” Hannelia says, the team having efficiently put down the kyton. Emma’s question, however, is considerably more challenging.
”I don’t like it,” she says slowly, thinking aloud, ”but I think maybe our best option – or at least, our least worst one – is to leave it alone. I think it appears to be sleeping?” She shoots Majara a quizzical look to confirm this assertion. ”In which case we should probably let in continue its slumber. Majara threw a flask of holy water at it and it literally didn’t blink, merely stirred and summoned the kyton. I shudder to think what it might be capable of when fully awake and acting consciously. I’ve felt… overmatched throughout this entire investigation,” she admits grudgingly, feeling both disappointed in herself for not being able to do better and vulnerable in confessing as much. ”But if this thing, whatever it is, is half as powerful as it appears to be, that goes a fair way to explaining it.”
She turns to face Emma. ”That doesn’t mean I think it’s a good thing to have something so irrevocably evil lurking in the vicinity of the manor, or indeed the town. It’s a threat and that isn’t going to go away. But perhaps we need to accept what we can do for now, which is to contain it rather than end it. History is littered with stories of similar dilemmas.”
Hannelia walks over to the kyton's prone form and retrieves the two arrows that connected with it, twisting and freeing them, as well as the pair that did not find their mark. She examines them, cleans them with a cloth, and inserts them back in her quiver. Although these were the qualities that she parted with a fair amount of money for, she's impressed by their efficacy and durability.
Majara takes a breath as the very immediate threat of the kyton is dealt with, and wipes at blood seeping from a fine cut from the kyton's chains. They'd been so sharp that she almost hadn't felt the blows - almost.
"Do you remember Constantine's words," she says, her voice lower than usual, a bit raspy. "A darkness that he looked into - and it looked back? An eye, that he was terrified of it opening-- of the waking? I think--"
Majara swallows once, and fishes out a potion with her now bloodied fingers. "--I think this is... it. Or one of its eyes. It's rolling over. An eyelid is flicking,' he said. And that's... that's what I saw, just now, around the corner. That's why I pulled back."
The healing seems to barely tingle against her tongue, whether that's due to her own distraction or a defective brew last night. Which had also been distracted, of course. She grimaces and pulls another bottle, a less potent one, but still healing.
Better, at least.
With no one in the sightline of the eyeball (you can peek around the corner periodically), the pupil gradually widens, losing specific focus. After another couple of minutes, the eyeball begins to roll lazily, directionless. Finally, the pupil meanders upward to face the ceiling of the grotto. At this point, you believe it is ‘asleep’.
Emma purses her lips, glancing over in the direction of the eye-thing. She reaches up and places a hand on her chest before speaking.
Better.
"I'll admit, I don't remember the particulars of that conversation, given the variety of things Constantine has talked about at random bursts. But that seems all the more reason to deal with this thing, does it not?" She looks at Hannelia. "I'll concede that it might be a good idea to do some research on it, and perhaps reach out to those who might know more about how to end it. I just don't like the idea of it."