The walls of this chamber are adorned with a plethora of weapons, shields, armor, and tattered banners and standards. Interspersed among the displayed arms are scenes of battle, pillage, and conquest. These carvings are caked in flaking pigments, and many have been defaced, apparently by repeated weapon blows.
A withered undead warrior stands here, wielding a broken bastard sword and wooden shield. He lets loose a snarl as he prepares to fight!
Gun in hand, he immediately raises his gun and fires. he quickly reloads and gets off another shot
Both of Knaxshi's bullets ping off of the warrior's armor. The undead man moves in to engage Russ'ruk, raising his shield and attacking with his broken sword!
Blaze shoots jets of flame from her hands, pouring on the heat as she tries to stare down the dead.
The flames coalesce into a miniature sun in the corridor that abruptly drops to the ground, bounding and leaping hungrily for Blaze's foe!
"Russ!"
The sight of the kobold warrior almost getting eviscerated by the undead one makes Vesi go cold all over. The druid begins a whispered chant, and the floor tiles next to Russ'Ruk crack and split as a pale sapling emerges, growing in a few blinks of an eye to stand taller than him.
Then the druid hurls a chunk of fallen masonry at the undead.
Knaxshi realizes that Blaze is right. If we can get this guy off guard that will help take it down. [b]"You might as well drop. We're taking you down either way."
Then he puts his bullet where his taunts are, and reloads.
The undead blocks Russ's strike with its shield, though the blow slightly damages the creature and leaves it off-balance. That allows Vesi to bonk the creature with a chunk of debris. Blaze's flaming sphere engulfs the undead warrior, wounding it, while Knaxshi manages to hit the creature this time.
The undead groans, ignoring its injuries, as it slices at Russ again. The sword cuts clean through Vesi's protector tree in a critical hit, wounding Russ again! Its follow-up strike lays the kobold low! The warrior raises its shield again as it regards the rest of the party...
"Russ'Ruk! No!"
Vesi rushes at the kobold's side, trying to staunch the bleeding.
Knaxshi continues shooting and reloading as Vesi tries to get Russ back up.
"Hells hells hells," Blaze whips the blazing sphere back around to crash into the skeleton again, meeting that blast with another surge of flame from the front! "Knax? Good time to start hitting!"
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Russ comes back to the waking world with a start at the blue druidess and the undead wight standing over him. "Thanks." He croaks out.
In a flash he stands silently thanking the skeletal knight for giving him the opportunity to stand at least before he brandishes and slams with the steel shield he'd taken earlier.
It lands with a resounding but hollow thud.. Russ looks up battered and bloodied. "Alright... tactical retreat it is. RUN!"
Without a second thought he turns and bolts.
The undead warrior dodges Blaze's flaming sphere, though she hits him with a smaller fireball. Knaxshi's bullets ping harmlessly off of its armor, and Russ'ruk misses with his shield bash. As the kobold falls back, the warrior turns its attention to Vesi, stepping forward with shield raised to attack the druid! He narrowly misses the undine!
Vesi sends an entangling vine towards the undead before beating a hasty retreat with the others.
Knax will nod at Blaze. "Go on, and I'll be right behind you."
After she goes, he'll take a wild shot to cover their retreat.
Blaze pours on the heat, but not into the Watchful Skeleton this time. Instead she turns her attention to the ground until the ground is a morass of slick ooze.
...But she doesn't entirely neglect her bony buddy.
The warrior dodges Blaze's flaming sphere again. It blocks some of the damage from Knaxshi's bullet with its shield, but Vesi manages to tangle it up as the druid falls back.
With a surge of strength, the wight bursts free of the tanglefoot. It then rushes forward, moving across the grease without even slowing down! It warily keeps its damaged shield raised as it draws near once more!
Blaze’s reaction causes the wight to stumble and slow. It ends its movement still 15 feet away from the party.
Blaze sags from the effort of bending the air in front of the wight, but begins her own careful retreat, falling back behind the frontlines once more, hucking fire as she goes.
Knaxshi moves back, reloading and firing on the way.
Vesi sends another sticky vine to tangle up Elder Bones as they run alongside their companions.
The undead warrior critically fails to avoid the flaming sphere this time, but unfortunately the ball of fire only clips the creature. Blaze strikes him with more fire, but Knaxshi and Vesi both miss. Russ'ruk drinks another healing potion and readies himself as the warrior closes in once more!
Unfortunately, the undead scores a critical hit, tearing open Russ's wounds again! It raises its shield as it bellows an unintelligble challenge!
At the edge of her range, Blaze continues pouring on the heat, trying to finish off the deadly sentinel before Russ falls again. "Come on scales! Duck and weave, duck and weave, keep him moving!"
"Moving? I'm trying to keep them still, so they don't keep hacking poor Russ'Ruk to bits!" Vesi's voice is high with tension and a little bit of desperation as the druid pulls forth another root to try and stop the rampage of the skeleton warrior.
They stop running for a moment to quickly tie a bandage around the worst of the slicing, but in their panic they fumble the strip of cloth.
"This place is cursed." he says as he loads and fires again.
"See? It's shifting my sightlines." He reloads again.
Knaxshi and Vesi miss with their attacks, but Blaze burns the undead again with her flaming sphere and adds more fire to further damage the warrior. Then Russ'ruk delivers two powerful strikes with his sword!
The warrior staggers, but before he dies, the undead swings on Russ one final time!
Fortunately, Russ's decision to raise his shield saves him as he deflects the final blow. The undead warrior collapses, quickly crumbling to dust at the kobold's feet.
With trembling hands, Vesi enchants two more berries and offers them to Russ'Ruk.
"That was... whew. We should not have come here. This crypt..." The druid shakes their head, not finishing the sentence.
Knaxshi slumps for a moment, overcome with the nearness of death and the shame of not being able to hit the damn thing half the time.
"Really? Cause the skeletons are all dead. Or- whatever," Blaze gives a huge yawn. "And besides we-" Another yawn, and the willowy ifrit leans up against Vesi, practically sprawling across their shoulders. "Might've burned too bright. Just get me back to camp and then 'Miri can carry me around." Blaze grins wickedly, "Or maybe Ekundayao."
"I hope that whatever we find here was worth... oof!" Vesi's legs buckle as Blaze leans against them, and the undine's cheeks flare purple. "I-I am pretty spent as well."
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Russ takes the berries from Vesi and nods along retrieving his gear and panting the whole while.
"Let's return to the others and establish a camp. No good going through the rest yet. If there's much else I'm afraid we'd not make it back in one piece.. thank you all."
He holds the bridge of his upper jaw where the rotten blade of the wight had cut deep into the scales. "I was too reckless."
There is little treasure to be gathered here, but the wight's broken blade is enchanted. It must be repaired to restore the magic to it, but once that is done, you can wield it as a +1 cold iron flaming bastard sword.
You return to your camp to recover from the grueling battles.
Blaze doesn't make any more noise aside from the occasional whine against Vesi's shoulder as they head back to camp, and as soon as she sees the campfire, she barely unfurls her bedroll before face-planting into it from just outside the flames. "'Miri break their arms if you've-" she yawns for long enough that she loses her train of thought. "I want Ekundayao to carry me tomorrow if I'm stilll sleeeppyyy..."
Lacking even the energy to make dinner, Vesi falls asleep against a tree, a half-eaten heel of bread tumbling from their hand as it falls open - and quickly snatched by an enterprising squirrel.
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Knaxshi is busy taking his gun apart and rebuilding it, trying to find what had happened to set his aim off so badly. He does pause to watch the squirrel dragging the bread away. He sees a jay eyeing the bread and tosses a pebble at it to keep it away and give his fellow rodent a chance.
Maybe he wasn't so useless after all.
The next morning started overcast, and quickly got darker and damper, even in the carefully chosen copse that sheltered their camp.
"Uuuugggghhhh. Okay. Time to fess up. Who pissed in Gozreh's soup? I haven't known her to juice undead to get back at insolents, but rain in the middle of Arodus? That's right up his alley."
Blaze looks miserable. It's the only time you've seen her actually wrapped up in her oilcloth travelers cloak, and she visibly shivers every time a drop of rain works its way down through the leaves and branches to splat against her.
"Alright, who's got a game? I'm not playing strip anything in this weather, but there's gotta be some kind of- Oh! Never have I ever. We'll play for forfeits."
She drops into crossed legs from standing position and gestures for everyone to gather round, leaning forward to scrutinize everyone's face as she asks:
"Never have I ever... Told someone I loved them and meant it. Oh, and in case you didn't know? This game is sacred to Calistria, so she'll strike you down if you lie. Or at least send a bee to sting you."
Turning from where they are hunched over the soup pot, Vesi frowns in puzzlement. "Wait, do you mean you never told someone you loved them, or that you did, but it was always a lie? Oh! Were you never in love, Blaze?"
The druid offers a steaming ladle for tasting. "Here, do you think it has enough pepper? With this weather, we need something spicy to warm us up."
Blinking, the undine seems to remember something. "Oh! Never have I ever been stung by a bee!"
"Win a forfeit or use your turn, Blue." Blaze says with a grin, but when Vesi brings up bees, she immediately lowers a finger.
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Russ slept in late in the morning after their fight with the undead and he looked on at the little game that Blaze wanted to play.
Deciding to join in he also has to put a finger down at the bee sting, "You do not want to mess with Brevoyan bees. They are vicious."
He then thinks for a bit, "Never have I ever.... served under an overlord." It may be a bit easy for the others to slip by that one but it was one to get out of the way early.
Knax pauses, wondering how personal to go. But a smirk appears as he comes up with an interesting one, "Never have I ever... kissed a goblin!"
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"Booooo" Blaze complains to Russ. "No using questions to dig into people's pasts like a paladin." But she keeps her fingers up.
"One second there fuzzball." With more energy than she's shown all day she glides over to Nok-Nok, and plants a big loud smack on the top of his head. Then she puts down a finger. "Of course I have."
"Hmm... Never have I ever gotten out of trouble by leaning on a title or namedropping my family."
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If a kobold was capable of blowing a raspberry which they weren't Russ would have. "Ah but I thought the point of this game was to learn more about one another hmm? I have not had titles or a family name really and none really know kobold clan names except kobolds honestly so they'd carry little weight in the walking world of man." He looks to Vesi as she's up. Still with four of his fingers present in the circle.
Blushing purple, Vesi puts down a finger. "I, uh, it was at the university, there was this professor... anyway." The undine thinks for a moment.
"Never have I ever been in love."
"D'Aww, poor widdle Vesi. Out on their own in the big world looking for a love they've never felt?" Blaze's fingers all stay raised.
"What? I haven't been in 'love' in a cool rebel loner kinda way."
"Oh, I've been in love, but never have I ever had something last more than a season." he says, "The perils of nomadic life.
***
The next day, the rain clears up, and you resume your explorations. You head west through the hills. Most of the day is uneventful, but as dusk falls, a hulking white-furred wolf approaches, three smaller wolves trailing in his wake. The wolf steps forward and addresses you in Common. "Bipeds. You are trespassing on my lands. I am Howl-of-the-North-Wind. You have not right to be in my territory. Leave at once, or suffer my wrath."