Every one of Xing’s instincts roars for her to take this creature’s life-blood. The Old Man would have wanted her to show self-control. Are we shaped by those who would do us harm? Or can we overcome?
Exerting a massive amount of self-control, she instead shifts her grip, spinning the creature so it’s neck is in the crook of her thick arm … then squeezing, trying to render it unconscious.
Xing knocks the creature out and leaves it slumped in the corner before moving to flank the sleeping grey.
Sabelina has another go at the one on the floor.
Yash bellowed in pain as the blood ran down his foot. With a snarl, he plunged his bone dagger down into the creature's chest.
With two quick blows, Sabelina and Yash quickly put the last active combatant down.
Senna keeps an arrow knocked and her eyes on the exits, adding quietly. "As I was going to say before I was interrupted... Yash believes the bone-eater is about his size as was the bone-owner. And whatever ate him had a firey bite that slagged the bone."
She glances at the teeth of the nearest grey. "Pretty sure it isn't one of these fellows."
Xing regards the two unconscious attackers. "In case these things are not in these sewers at the general welcome of the community, maybe we should take them up when we return?" She grabs the rope still around her waist, her golden eyes following its length back .... to Yash, who still holds the other end.
"You have held this rope this whole time? Instead of using both hands to defend yourself?" She pauses, considering the big man anew. "I see you, Yash. And thank you. Please feel free to protect yourself equally in the future."
She shakes her head, trying to refocus, "So the thing that made these burned bones is still here somewhere?" She frowns, "I guess that's good to know."
If there are any clogs in this area, she will clear them out as quickly as possible. Then she will once again channel Iro-Shu's power to heal the group.
Mama quickly checks the monsters over for any insignia or trinkets that might tell them more about who they are. Remembering the Architect's words, she says a short prayer over each of the dead, commending their souls to the Great River that feeds into Phrasma's realm of judgement. She tries to see them as misguided children, not as purposeless monsters.
We should bind the others, just in case they come up swinging. she suggests in response to Xing's proposal.
Cookie's search yields some interesting results. While you have no clue where they came from or their activities, these greys are well equipped aside from wearing little more than loincloths. You net a total of 8 GP, 12 daggers (4 per), 3 Tanglefoot bags (1 per), and 3 MW backpacks.
In the process of clearing the muck... Senna spots a 'stick' in the gunk that is too straight to be an ordinary stick. She quickly pulls it free and wipes it off. It appears to be a wand.
CURRENT HP:
Cookie 24/24
Sable 26/26
Senna 18/18
Xing 18/20
Yash 21/22
Sabelina keeps close watch and her guard up for unhappy surprises if Xing and others are going to be binding the unconscious... whatevers.
"Not fiery for sure, more like slimy, so the bone isn't their work."
Xing takes a moment to unbind herself from the rope, giving Yash a small, appreciative smile as she takes the end he was holding, as well. Using it, she binds both creatures.
Eyeing her handiwork, she dusts off her hands. "So do we drag these guys along with? Or just tie them to some location we hope they won't get away. I would think the residents of Threshold would want to know about these threats, and maybe put them to any necessary local justice."
She notices the stick Senna has found. "Oh, what's that?"
If you have your target pinned, otherwise restrained, or unconscious, you can use rope to tie him up. This works like a pin effect, but the DC to escape the bonds is equal to 20 + your Combat Maneuver Bonus (instead of your CMD). The ropes do not need to make a check every round to maintain the pin. If you are grappling the target, you can attempt to tie him up in ropes, but doing so requires a combat maneuver check at a –10 penalty. If the DC to escape from these bindings is higher than 20 + the target’s CMB, the target cannot escape from the bonds, even with a natural 20 on the check.
"Te stworzenia mogą być tutaj częścią naturalnego cyklu, tak jak robaki. Mogą być jednym z powodów, dla których ostrzegano nas przed przyjściem tutaj. Zaatakowali nas, ale nie więcej niż zwierzę broniące swojego legowiska. Możemy się wtrącać do domu. Możemy być outsiderami."
"These creatures may be part of the natural cycle here, like the bugs. They may be one reason we were warned about coming down here. They attacked us, but no more than an animal defending it's lair. We may be intruding in their home. We may be the outsiders."
It's true. Lady says as she absently scratches her ear.
Senna mutters an incantation and examines the wand. ”Ah. It’s a wand of healing.” She hands it to Xing, ”That’s not in my skillset.”
Senna regards both the tall half-orc and the small fox. She says, with sincerity, ”A fox that can speak orkish - what times we live in! Sure, these fellows may be native, or maybe not. I guess I’d side with taking them out of here when we leave… and let the authorities tell us if they are supposed to be here or not. We can always return them. Their gear seems a bit fancy to have been created down here, unless this sewer leads to some sort of underground settlement. I don’t believe in coincidence… so finding them right where we also find a humanish bone is not making me trust them more. Do we know anything about this species?”
Xing accepts the wand, but doesn't put it away yet ... instead looking over at Mama Cookie. "Mother Cookie is also capable of using this, I believe. It might be better if she had it." She gives the halfling a half-smile, "She tends to ... wisely ... avoid being in the middle of the fights."
"I think—"
The Minatan blinks in surprise as the Fox speaks Common.
[b]"A fox that can speak orkish - what times we live in!"
Xing cocks her head curiously, her tone is serious. "Do you suppose there are Orks that speak Fox?" She nods, considering the question before looking over at Yash. "I tell you this as someone who didn't speak Common a few years ago. It would be helpful if we all could speak a single language. Do you speak no Common? I do not know your Orc tongue."
"Some Yash responded as he made his way towards one of the mw backpacks. He reached down and picked it up, wiping the muck off of it and testing it's strength, pulling on this and that, and even biting a section of it before spitting.
"Ale orki brzmią lepiej" he said with a grin.
"But orkish sounds better."
"Yash keep" he said as he began moving the contents of his old backpack to the new one.
Lady seems amused at Xing's confusion. There are some Orks that speak Fox, but they tend to have strong connections with nature and it's powers. I learned Ork a while back on a dare. It's super hard to pronounce right, though.
Mama Cookie takes the wand and tucks it into one of her many pockets. Fighting is for the young or the opportunistic. I'm the latter. She says with a mischievous and yet slightly savage grin.
The backpacks are all too big for her (as is everything else), so she leaves them for the longshanks to have. Let's not linger too long. These things maybe out, but they won't stay that way forever.
Xing finishes tying down the two unconscious creatures, then lashes the end of their rope to one of the grates of the sewer. She gathers whatever items from the gray-men that the group doesn't take, combining them into a single pack ... which she carries.
She nods to Yash's confirmation that he spoke a little Common. "That will be helpful, at least." She gives a mischievous grin, "我自己的语言也不是很有帮助"
Xing finishes up un-clogging any areas that need it in the immediate area. Then she points to the northern tunnel. "I guess we go that way." Then she waits of the team to resume their previous marching order.
Senna swaps out her cheap backpack for one of the finer ones and attaches a tanglefoot bag to the leather sash slung across her chest.
"Ale orki brzmią lepiej" he said with a grin.
”Orkish curses are definitely more creative.”
Senna considers the melted bone and what it may foretell. She mutters an incantation and touches Xing. An opaque bluish shield briefly surrounds the monk before vanishing. ”Think of it as armor. It’ll last for a couple hours… just in case the bone-chewer lies ahead and not behind us. Also, 同意不同意您的語言的有用性?”
Sabelina is mostly left out of the multilingual conversation. She doesn't understand why everyone else is language hopping when Taldane is so perfectly expressive and beautiful.
Instead she busies herself switching the contents of her old pack into the nice new one she has just procured. She also keeps the contents that came with it.
With matters sorted, and the filth cleared from the ditches here, our heroes continue cautiously up the corridor. At a bend in the corridor, they encounter another pile of filth… this one containing more blackened and melted bone shards that appear to belong to bipedal species. Some of the bones are quite small and delicate. At a guess, they either belong to a child or one of the smaller races.
The team clears the pile and continues down the corridor which emerges into the largest chamber yet. They only grasp the size of it because of the intermittent pools of light that illuminate its length. As they approach the entrance with (if we’re being honest) a tiny bit of trepidation, the illumination from their spells falls on a small purple plant haphazardly growing along the side of a pile of muck. As soon as the light hits it, the strange plant lets out a high-pitched ear-splitting wail that jars the teeth from your skulls especially as it echoes relentlessly off the stone walls in here.
Most of you are able to cover your ears in time to avert the worst effects of the horrid din but Sabelina feels like her ears have been boxed and Yash knows what it must be like to have a dagger shoved into his skull. His eardrums bleed .
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CURRENT HP:
Cookie 24/24
Sable 25/26
Senna 18/18
Xing 18/20
Yash 17/22
"ARRGGGHHH, MY EARS!" Yash bellowed. His hands immediately went to shield his ears, but came away covered in blood. He rubbed his hands on his armor and across his face before grabbing his greataxe with a snarl.
Sabelina grimaces and bends over, covering her ears and cursing a blue streak though it's unlikely anyone hears her. She takes stock of the offending purple plant and retreats out of the room before her ears are ruined.
Xing similarly retreats, not wanting to deal with the shrieking as they make a plan. She pays attention to ranges as they regather in the hallway.
"I have no reason to believe that it means to harm us," she says when/if the shrieking stops. "I guess we can destroy it, but I'm not sure if it's necessary." She looks at the team uncertainly, "Thoughts?"
"Yeah, f~%$ that thing! It's a plant! It's gotta go, part of the cleanup job."
Xing (still rubbing an aching ear) can't help but grin, and looks to Yash and Mama Cookie ... seeing what their suggestions are.
"WHAT?" Yash shouted, his ears still ringing.
"Musimy wejść do tego pokoju, prawda? Dokończyć pracę? Nie widzisz, jak to robimy, jeśli najpierw nie uciszymy tej rośliny?"[/spoiler]
"We have to go in that room don't we? To finish the job? Don't see how we do that if we don't silence that plant first?"
Our heroes retreat back down the hall until the shrieking doesn’t rattle their teeth anymore. Soon, the strange plant quiets, so they can hear themselves talk as well as think.
Senna grunts at Yash’s questions and regards his bleeding ears. ”Right. Don’t see how we finish this clean-up job without going in there. I’ve got nothing against a noisy mushroom but if we are going to muckrake the dungpile it is growing on – that might kill it anyway. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather shoot it when it isn’t wailing and get about our day.”
An interesting side note, some creatures will plant Shriekers in areas to act as an early warning system for unwanted visitors. There is no way to ascertain if THIS shrieker was planted on purpose.
Mama opens her mouth wide a few time in an effort to clear the ringing. Ohhh my... but I have an idea? The cat. The Architect, said this place is, at least in part, responsive to our expectation of it. I wonder if all this trouble is partly an effect of our cultures tales, told to us since we were all little, to expect such things in a dark, dank sewer?
Either way, we should kill the plant, I think. We need to get the sewer flowing, after all. But maybe we should take a moment after this and seriously consider our own expectations. For instance, Savelina, dear, you are set on creating a book of you valiantly and gracefully overcoming all manners of difficulty (especially in combat). What if we all made our best effort to change our mindset? What if we willed ourselves to expect an easy job from here on out?
Lady trots up to Yash and puts a paw on his leg before quickly translating. She omits some of the more flowery language, but gets the point across clearly anyway.
Xing nods, "It sounds like we clean up the plant. " She looks over at Senna, "I don't want to have to get close to it again. See what you can do with your bow."
She grins over at Mama Cookie. "I will from this point forward, be expecting this job to be clean, easy, and quick."
Senna nods and catfoots up the corridor until she can just see the now silent fungus. She aims carefully at the stationary target. Three arrows and no missed shots later, the plant is dead.
Mama nods with finality and advances with her tools in one hand. With the other she pats Senna's hip as she passes. Thanks, dear. You did a marvelous job!
"Agreed," she pauses, her face dead-pan, "Senna the plant-killer. it has a nice ring to it, does it not?"
Sabelina stews over Mama Cookie's comment at first, especially since she specifically was called out. But while Senna is shooting the plant she can't help herself but to scoff openly.
"Ridiculous. I didn't expect anything like this at all."
She crosses her arms and snorts derisively.
"One of the most absurdly parental things I've ever heard. Change my attitude and change reality. If I wanted that kind of advice I could have stayed at home back in Oppara."
Mama Cookie looks back with a raised eyebrow and a half smirk. We'll, I am a parent. Several times over and across generations, Little One. she points out. Now, stop pouting and hold still.
She takes the wand and summons it's magic. The tip sparkles and Mama taps Sabelina, Xing, and Yash.
"Agreed," she pauses, her face dead-pan, "Senna the plant-killer. it has a nice ring to it, does it not?"
Senna gives the tall amazon a hard look and waggles the arrow in her hand. "You're going to look silly as a tiger with two tails."
The pool in this large room is broad but relatively shallow . There appear to be several more piles of detritus aside from the one the noisy mushroom sprouted from.
Now that his ears had stopped ringing, the blood had stopped dripping, and Senna had dealt with the loud plant, Yash hefted his axe and moved into the room. After the last room and the creatures hiding in the shadows, Yash is much more on edge, his eyes scanning from shadow to shadow.
Sabelina is likewise more suspicious of everything she sees. She proceeds carefully back into the room after Yash, poking anything larger than a squirrel with her blade before considering doing anything else to it.
"You're going to look silly as a tiger with two tails."
Xing seems momentarily taken aback by Senna's comment. "We wouldn't want that," she responds neutrally.
The tall woman dips her head briefly in response to Mama Cookie's healing, "I thank you," she responds quietly as she follows along, eyes always roving as she seems to sniff the air.
"Change my attitude and change reality."
As they carefully move forward, Xing can't help but consider Sabelina's previous words. "I don't know. I think there may be something to that. Yes, there will always be absolutes that either are or aren't. But we all see those absolutes slightly differently, don't we? Take that plant back there. Maybe one of us only saw it as a threat, so their retelling of this adventure so far ... their truth of it ... will only mention the many dangers that lurk down here. However, another traveler may have been fascinated by the same plant. So while they, too, are now aware of the dangers such a plant poses, they may view this experience as one of discovery ... of new opportunities."
She shrugs, "And if this place does have some way of tapping into our preconceptions or expectations ... it might create slightly different situations." She grins, "That being the case, I'll begin expecting this room to offer us only fluffy, tasty desserts."
Focused on the possible threats, Senna only latches onto the conversation’s tail, ”I love desserts.”
Our heroes walk cautiously through the low pool in this large chamber, poking every pile of debris, wary for threats. They have only a moment to spy a flicker of motion as four of the grey men leap down from small holds skillfully crafted into the curved walls, and attack with a speed and skill the other greys lacked. Their blades are faster and far more deadly…
Armor and reflexes turn the blades aimed at Sabelina and Yash. Xing feels cold steel bite into the joint of her neck and shoulder, narrowly missing her carotid artery. Senna can only gasp and stare owl-eyed at the dagger sticking out of her sternum. The blow nearly drops her.
CURRENT HP:
Cookie 24/24
Sable 26/26
Senna 0/18 - staggered
Xing 8/20
Yash 22/22