Nutmeg casts guidance on Rashk, then follows up with an electric arc between both wolves.
Nutmeg's sends a jolt of electricity jumping toward the closest wolf, but unfortunately, the little Leshy cannot quite see the second wolf that Loki had warned them about from her position in the passageway.
The wolves close in on Rashk at the passageway exit with bared teeth, snarling viciously.
The closest wolf launches at Rashk, ferociously tearing into his throat, and Rashk drops to the floor, a pool of blood growing around him.
The second rabid wolf stays back, snarling, ready to defend its home.
Red -3
"Get back up!" Nutmeg shouts, healing Rashk's wounds.
She then raises her shield.
Baldur adds his own magic to the communal 'get Rashk back on his feet' effort, before imbuing Nutmeg with guidance. There's not much else he can do with the tunnel as bottle-necked as it is.
Rashk stands and chops at the blighted wolf. There may be a bit of emphasis on his strikes. Perceptive people might be able to tell by the steady stream of orcish cusring coming from him.
The redhead looks a little shocked by the scene unfolding before her, but after hearing encouragement from the voices behind her and Rashk apparently recovering, she starts crawling forward and through his legs to try and find some open space where she might also be able to actually fight.
-11 Red
The wolves continue their ferocious assault, their long incisors ripping deep gashes into Rashk and Illyria's flesh that burn as well as bleed.
Illyria is barely able to regain her feet when a wolf beset her, gnawing right through her breeches. Her eyes glimmer, as she responds to the pain with burning anger, barely taking the time to adjust the grip on her blades before chopping down desperately.
As the red-eyed wolf tears into Illyria, Rashk cries out, "No!" and slashes furiously. He cant get through the beast's hide, but shoves the uzzle a little bit away.
And then he drops again under the strike of the other wolf.
Deciding the best way to defend Rashk is to defeat the wolves, Nutmeg unleashes her lightning on them.
Still stuck at the back of the tunnel Baldur can do nothing to help with the battle ahead of him.
Or can he...
Yellow -4
The smell of burnt acrid hair fills the air as the wolves are zapped, just as Illyria manages to make deep wounds in the most threatening wolf, a think very dark blood, oozing from its wounds.
The wolf retaliates against Illyria and lets out a high-pitched whine of pain as it does so and it drops to the floor.
The second wolf bounds over Rashk towards Nutmeg, its jaws snapping viciously.
Baldur frowns and attempts to pierce Yellow's mind as he did Red's.
"Oh...no you don't! Get back here!" Illyria slashes as the wolf goes past her, then tries to chase it down, seeing quite a bit of red through her own pain.
Nutmeg takes the hit, her shield splintering under the wolf’s jaws. She zaps it again!
The wolf, now wise to Nutmeg's tricks, manages to dodge the lightning entirely, although Illyria drives her blade deep into its side. The wolf spins on her, biting and snapping like a mad thing.
The fighter falls under the rabid beast's onslaught.
Baldur sees Illyria fall and fights back the fear surging inside him. With a sharp gesture he pulls one of the roots from the tunnel wall, thrusting it at the wolf like a spear as he impells Loki.
Seeing Rashk in a bad way, Nutmeg enchants a berry with healing magic and hands it to Loki. "Go! Get to him, swiftly!"
Rashk stands, licking his lips at the unexpected sweetness. He roars at the wolf, hoping to throw it off enough to take it down.
Illyria gives out an unconscious grunt as Rashk rolls her off to get up, while she's still bleeding, although she apparently got flipped right into the perfect spot to get some pressure on her injury.
Rashk's powerful blow, combined with Baldur's telekinetic attack is enough to slay the last wolf! Everyone breathes a sigh of relief which is only heightened by Illyria's near miraculous state of not dying.
With more time to examine the den you can see that it is lit by a shimmering pool of oily water. The chamber stinks of wet fur and sickness. Next to the pool, between the gnarled and dying tree roots, is the rotting carcass of what must have once been a truly gigantic wolf.
The water gives off an acrid smell, and anyone who touches it notices it has an odd, oily texture.
Aside from the strange pool there is nothing else of interest or value in the den.
Rashk will look at the carcass and the pool. He doesn't know much about such things, but know these aren't natural. "Can we purify them. Or burn them?"
Baldur examines the pool closely and swirls a stick in it, but declines to actually touch the water. "Something is polluting this pool." He says with a frown. "It must have done that to the wolves. I wonder where its source is..."
He muses until Rashk's question breaks his reverie.
"We could try burning them but I think we leave them here and collapse the tunnel behind us. Best to contain this... corruption for good."
Rashk will use lay on hands on Illyria, and continue to do so until she is healed. Then he will continue on himself.
Illyria comes to her senses with a gasp, a little shaken upon realizing she had blacked out from her injuries. She spends a fair time sitting down, rubbing her head.
When she finally regains her verve, she asks, "Would it not make it difficult for someone who understands such strange things better to actually get at the corruption and purify it if we do so? Though...I guess we can't stay here forever to make sure no other animals drink it."
"Without getting into the water it would be impossible to tell if there is corruption in this pool only, or at the source of the pool somewhere else." Baldur counters. "If we collapse this tunnel no animals will be getting in here any time soon regardless."
"We can return to purify this tainted pool once we have the proper magic to do so. In the meantime, destroying the means of accessing it seems to be a prudent course of action," Nutmeg says.
"I'll put my strength into it, but I'm not sure where would be best."
After searching for a little while, its clear that there is nothing else here apart from the sign of the blight and you return back to find Noala. You find Noala burning a pair of mangy wolf bodies at your meeting point. "Stragglers I caught trying to sneak out of the den after you went in, crazed by this blight."
"Tell me, did you discover anything of use to either of us?"
"The pool inside the den is tainted somehow." Baldur reports. "I think drinking from it must be what caused the wolves to mutate. We're going to collapse the den to stop any more animals getting in, but I don't know how to make it better short of tracking down whoever, or whatever, did it in the first place."
"Alright, I'll help collapse it, if Noala doesn't have a better idea on how we could contain the pollution." Illyria finally concedes, though still looking rather sore after being pulled to the dirt by wolves. "Certainly can't be letting every wild beast out there get as strong as those creatures were..."
"I suggest circling around the cave to look for for further blight. We go wider until we find a clue to the source." Looking for evil is what he knows.
[ooc]Are there any large rocks nearby? That might be easier than collapsing the cave.[/oob]
Noala nods, concerned about your findings. "It does indeed sound that way. I don't know any caves nearby that contain any access to signficant sources of water though. Rashk is right that we need to look wider but my only lead is to travel to the largest blight in these woods. I've never really explored it myself as its full of the nastiest predators. Its pretty unforgiving wilderness to get there and I will wait until morning to set off - its not safe at night with this threat. I will camp here but understand if you want to head back into the town to rest tonight."
The journey to the Pen is long and challenging and it takes all your energy just to put one foot in front of the other after a full day of hacking away at the tangled thick woodland withuneven footing.
Upon arrival, it is obvious that this resembles the blight surrounding the wolves' den. The plants on the perimeter are sickly and dying.
"I am going to patrol the perimeter to check for any other signs, but you should take these before I do - you may need them."
It is even slower movement as you begin to head further into the blight. At first, it is just rotting trees and dying plants, but after 20 minutes or so all of the plants have died, lying limp and rotten; the air thick with the scent of sweet decay. There is no sound of chirping birds or insects and there are only remains of some critters who have succumbed to the blight.
Passing through this section takes another 15-20 minutes but it clears up into an area where smaller trees and plants seem to have returned to twisted life. Their leaves drip with an oily sap, their branches are gnarled yet strangely pliable, and their bark looks like scales. Many of these plants are covered in odd pustules that emit a faintly glowing light, and biting gnats swarm around you. Swatting these gnats causes them to burst into tiny flames that does not hurt but emits a terrible smell.
Nutmeg manages to uncover a set of faint bootprints and following them leads you to a pen built into the side of a hill in the middle of a field of twisted poisonous-looking brambles.
Deeper into this massive blight, the plants take on unnatural shades, and their branches seem to shudder and quake at the sensation of something passing. Up ahead is a wall of thick brambles with some sort of thorny iris in the center.
Clustered near to this probable gateway are four more of those shrubs that you had a tough time with yesterday. Today you are much more prepared and manage to burn them to a crisp and hack them into splinter wood before they cause too much harm.
On the other side of the wall of brambles is a yard dominated by three large, wooden cages and a pool of bubbling sludge. A wretched-looking horse stands in one of the cages, while another cage is filled with a swarm of gigantic rats covered in white blisters. The third pen looks empty, but it appears to be built around a small cave located in the hillside. There is another cave entrance on the north side, near one of the pens.
As you carefully enter through the thorn iris, you see two orcs; one dumping a bucket of something into the pool and the other in front of the horse's cage, prodding it with a javelin for amusement.
Baldur claps Illyria on the shoulder and empowers her weapon with magic.
Nutmeg fires a ray of frost at the nearest orc before raising her shield.
Rashk will move up to the nearest foe. He briefly considers dumping him in the pool, but that unnatural sludge is cruel even for his enemies. So he gives him a cleaner death.
The closest Orc os covered in a thick layer of frost and he struggles against it, letting out a ferocious roar but before he can even act, he is eviscerated by Rashk.
The other orc quickly fumbles with the gate lock on the cage, letting the very bad-tempered horse free before rushing to another cage on the far side of the enclosure.
Despite seemingly being taunted by the orc previously, the stony horse still leaps towards Rashk all in defense of its masters rearing up and bringing its metallic hooves down on the Paladin.
Illyria nods her thanks to Baldur for bewitching her sword, then rushes into the frey to give Rashk her assistance. "Let's see how this beast deals with a magic blade."
Nutmeg steps up a bit and casts a spell. Suddenly, a tree sprouts from the ground beside Ilyria and Rashk, its branches interposed between them and the stone horse!
Rashk will strike out at the horse statue thing.
The sudden appearance of a tree in the middle of his swing throws him off.
Perhaps it wasn't just the tree.
Finally, he'll run around to get a flank for Illyria. She seems to have figured out her stride against this thing.
Baldur edges around the pool and hurls a fist-sized rock at the orc with his mind.
It crashes into the cage behind the orc with a loud bang.
While Baldur proves that he is not even close to a champion shot, Illyria demonstrates her weapon skill quite masterfully. Although the horse is clearly physically tough Illyria's first blow sends cracks running throughout its body and the second shatters it entirely.
Nutmeg pulls back the magic of her spell at the last second and Rashk hurries as fast as he can towards the remaining orc, since there is no need to fight a shattered horse.
The orc gapes for a moment before frantically fumbling with the next cage and dragging the door open. From inside the mesh cage burst a pair of unpleasantly large rats!
Illyria continues to charge onward, unperturbed by even more foes appearing to bar her way.
Nutmeg moves up as the stone horse falls, then continues her stride towards the new foes. She electrocutes the rats.
Illyria's magically enhanced weapon continues to be brutally effective, cleaving through one rat and into the ground below as Nutmeg sends lightning dancing between the remaining enemies.
Both are surprisingly quick and avoid the worst of the damage.
Rashk head up and slashes at the orc before he can release more monsters.
Baldur meanwhile closes the distance and then lobs another rock.
Between Rashk's blade and Baldur's rock the orc collapses to the ground, leaving just an angry rat which bites ferociously at Illyria.
Its ferocity is considerable, but even with the obvious enhancements it has received it can't achieve much and is squashed flat moments later.
Two caves offer further options - one is narrow and opens to the south, even a cursory examination shows that it's not much travelled. The other larger one, to the north, shows signs of regular travel in and out.
"This way." Baldur says, pointing to the north cave. "Plenty of tracks. Whatever goes on here happens in there. Is everyone alright?"
Loki whines and rubs against his master's leg. The fox is clearly feeling as though he hasn't been getting enough attention recently. Baldur scoops his familiar up with a sigh and rubs the tiny fox behind its pointed ears.
"Is everyone else alright?" He asks.