Search Posts
"I dunno about you guys, but I'm cool to leave the bats alone. I've nothing against bats. These guys now, she pokes the druid with her blade "I'm glad to have cleared from this life onto the next. I say we pack up, head home, and enjoy the spoils! Celebratory drinks, and ribald drinking songs, anyone?"
Raising herself groggily, Dentesila shakes her head and emits a hacking coughs - a thick cloud of masonry dust envelops her, and has coated her from head to toe. Glancing downward, she sees the druid rising to his feet. Courageously, and perhaps foolhardily, she determines to pursue him alone whilst the battle rages above with the crocodile. Eschewing the stairs, she sheathes her sword and nimbly parkours down the shattered edge of the tower.
Nervous? So am I
Wow. 6d6 is immense. I'd only consider that to be balanced in the case of immense PC bad luck, or immense PC stupidity, or both. This feels arbitrary. I've been in many ruined castles. I've seen precarious areas of masonry which look like they're about to fall, but probably have looked like that for hundreds of years. Yet this section of the tower was 2 or 3 people's weight away from sheering off the tower, without any visual clue beforehand? Either that, or the druid deliberately chose to stand somewhere near to collapse, alongside his 300 lbs croc pet? Very odd.
"By Desna's grace please let it stop," cries Dentesila as she charges at the albino crocodilian, "Balenar I'd tie you up and beat you myself for rhyming 'Lodge' with 'crotch'..." Launching a serious of quickfire slashes, she seeks to either sever the mighty sinews at the side of the croc's jaw, or blind it if she can:
"Well this is it. We can safely assume this will be no easy fight. We need to talk tactics." Dentesila holds her chin in her hand as she considers. Softly, out of earshot of the room above, she whispers to the others: "I suggest we rush them - we need to get all of us up there fast, to maximise our attacks against the two of them. Irvine, it has to be me and you against that croc. We need to flank it and take it down as fast as we can. Watch out for those jaws." Remembering some advice her uncle gave her, she adds, "Konner, I suggest you and Caitlyn target the druid with ranged fire; if he's a spellcaster try to hold your shot until you see him preparing a spell and maybe we can disrupt his casting. Even better, if you're outside the room, you won't get so affected by that terrible stench." Looking at the cleric, she says "Caz, do you want to use your speed to get up close to the druid, or hold back and support us against the croc? We have to assume that one of us will take some serious damage from that armoured beast." This said, she limbers up, stretching and flexing her muscles, ready for the trial to shortly come.
"Huh" Dentesila grunts, as she prods the two severed halves of the frog with the toe of her left foot. "Invine, I have to admit that was pretty showy. Even one of the gladeguard back home would be proud of that move. I guess there's something to be said for raw power, when wielding a beast of a sword like that. Good work!" She flashes him a grin. "I'm afraid I have no smokestick or anything similar, Caz. Plus, looking at this view, I would worry that any smoke column would be seen from far and wide. I don't want us to draw more trouble than just the bats. There are those who might seek our hard-won treasure." here she glances at the figurine Conner is examining "They avoid the danger of adventuring themselves, yet are well prepared to rob those who do on the journey home." She glances aprehensively up towards the next level "Come on then, let's do this. We have a date to keep with the leader of this crew. Let's not keep him waiting. Or his crocodile..."
Dentesila unslings her pack and retrieves her blanket. Approaching the battered man, she holds out the blanket, and if he lets her, wraps it around his shoulders. Gripping the wand of CLW in the way that Caz showed her, she gives him two charges of the wand, and a third if required.
"This wand will repair his physical frame, and we can undo those manacles, but I expect the mental trauma he has experienced may prove harder to recover from.". To the man, "There - how do you feel? We're here to help you. Can you give us your name? Do you remember how you came to this sorry state?"
Spoiler:
Gritting her teeth against the stench, Dentesila launched herself at the creatures with a steely resolve. Parrying one blow on her blade, she unleashes a sweeping uppercut to the chest:
Fort saves:
Dentesila passes her club to Caitlyn beofe downing one of her two healing potions supplied by Caitlyn "Thank you - I needed that.". With the assent of the others, she sweeps the silverware into her sack, and passes the scrolls to Cazithiel "I hope you can make sense of these. I think I'd struggle." She hefts her sword, and looks up expectantly to see what might be found on the other side of the secret door...
"By damnation! These skeletons are less fighting adversaries, more walking mortar shells!" Dentesila swears viscerally in elven, patting her singed hair. "Dammit - I've got someone's smoldering finger bone embedded in my shoulder" Brushing herself down, and still muttering to herself, Dentesila scans the room with her sensitive elven vision, looking for evidence of some way out other than the door through which she entered. She notes the carved symbols and writings along the walls, but ignores them, the altars, and the charred bodies of the burnt figures on the floor, in case there is any threat yet to be confronted.
Dentesila rubs her arms with some nervousness as she hears of the undead foes ahead. She's never faced such creatures before, though she has heard stories from her uncle of their fearless nature and murderous intent. And these are flaming skeletons? She shudders inwardly "How are we doing this? I'd suggest that our current selection of rapiers and arrows will not have the greatest impact on these bony horrors. I for one might be better using one of those clubs the creatures downstairs were wielding. I'd suggest we open the door and pepper them from range from here. It may be that the limits of their summoning may not allow them to exit this room. Worse case, they attack us from the doorway, where several of us can fight them one at a time." Dentesila whips downstairs at a run, to retrieve the Troglodytes' clubs. When the door is opened, Dentesila will wield a single club two-handed, standing at the door readying an action waiting for a skeleton to come to us. Spoiler:
"Over to you Konner - I have a crowbar here which I can use, but this is more your area of expertise I believe?" If Konner cannot pick the lock, and if everyone else is happy for Dentesila to force it, out comes the crowbar: Force the door:
If Konner picks the lock, Dentesila will be ready for action, elven blade raised, expecting trouble...
Quietly, Destesila whispers: "Hey Caz, I have an idea. When you look through the door, have a look across to the left to see whether the door from where we killed those two monsters links into the same room. If so, is that door clear? If there are hostiles in this room, we could try attacking from both doors simultaneously, to catch them by surprise." If there are hostiles, and the other door is clear, and the party is to assault through the door, Dentesila (plus an archer? Konner or Caitlyn?) would go back through the rooms to the other door, and listen tfor a sign to go through together. Just an idea - what do you think? Not necessary if the room is empty, obviously.
"Ahh!" There's a cry of surprise and pain as Dentesila dives to the right in an unsuccessful attempt to dodge the clumsy yet effective spear trap. Picking herself up, she inspects the wound. "By Desna's right ear, that stings!". She steps to one side to bind the wound, gingerly, whilst eyeing the archway and nearby door warily.
"The Forest of Shadows? I heard some terrible things about that place. I heard that there, a party of adventurers can be adventuring together one moment, then the next, some of their number just vanish without a trace - even in the midst of combat!" Dentesila looks about her in trepidation. "I even heard of one group of adventurers who found themselves lost, frozen in one place, able to talk together but not move, for what seemed like an eternity..." She looks at Caz fearfully: "You are so lucky to have avoided such a cruel fate. The Pathfinder Society would not allow such a horror to happen so close to having left Absalom."
Moving up to the nearest (southeastern) door, Dentesila readys an attack against anyone coming through. readied attack:
If nothing appears to be coming through, she'll risk putting her ear to the door to listen for activity on the far side of the door.
"Hey - anything worth taking in here? Let's not dawdle: this stench is driving me mad!"
"Good work Irvine - this is being swiftly settled. Let's finish this one, then hope their struggles have passed unnoticed." Dentesila looks over her shoulder, warily "although I don't know whether I'm more apprehensive about the threat of reinforcements, or the threat of turning my back to three trigger-happy archers..."
Ducking in reaction to the impact of the javelin in the armour rack behind Cazathiel, Dentesila recovers then launches herself across the room at the remaining creature. "I've got this" (muttered more to herself than to the other party members). Flanking the creature, she watches for an opening, then aims a lightning slash at the creature's right forearm - a literal disarm attempt. move, flank attack whilst sickened
Although if I had another suggestion for you, it would be to try in every post you make, to move the game along. Another time, maybe outline what you want to do alongside your question, so enabling the GM to interpret your action for you and keep the action going. Keeping it moving forward helps maintain momentum which I have read is critical in pbp, especially when there's 6 other people backed up behind you.
Regarding diagonals: the first one costs you 5' of your movement to enter, but the second costs you 10', and it alternates after that. This reflects the fact that it's further to travel diagonally. Rough ground (like we saw at the start with the rubble) costs double to cross. But we don't have that here. It's free to pass through allies, but you can't pass through enemies. In certain circumstances, they can have a free attack if you move out of a threatened square (the 8 squares adjacent to them). This gets complicated, so I'll stop here. For you, this turn, I'd assume that you can get through the doorway past Gabriella and motor up to the square adjacent to Dentesila to attack Red (standard move plus attack). You could move up to Green, but you'd need a double move (remember the diagonals) and would therefore lose your attack. It's great to ask - we all had to learn once!
Seeing Cazithiel lunging into the room, Dentesila raises her blade and rushes after him to engage the righthand creature. Her movement is hindered by pushing through her allies, and so she is unable to charge it or attach its flank, but nonetheless she arrives at speed and drives a rising lunge at her foe's exposed throat.
"Someone watch the other doors in case that was a call for help!"
Retrieving her dagger from the ceiling webs with a hail of stones, Dentesila heads over to the curled corpse of the spider. She administers a super-cautious coup de grace to the arachnid. "Can't be too careful". Bending over the body, she gingerly ( to extract the poison glands of the spider, curious as to whether they can be removed intact."I wonder whether these could be used to apply spider venom to a blade?".
"I wonder why these fortifications were constructed as a sealed unit, without doors or windows at ground level? Were they sealing something in perhaps?" Dentesila peers cautiously into the halflight of the right hand archway with her sword held aloft, relying on her lowlight vison to pierce the gloom.
Catching sight of the snarling hounds arrowing towards the party, Dentesila snapped swiftly from her practice exercises into a loping charge of her own. Teeth bared but silent, she sprinted past the foot of the rubble pile to Irvine's side, launching a full-bodied cross-body slash at the flank of the nearest dog.
Slipping off the cart onto the uneven ground just short of the rubble pile from the collapsed eastern wing, Dentesila shades her eyes with one hand, scanning the walls of the siege castle for signs of life or features of interest. "Here we go - I can't screw this up, or let the others down. The paths I chose have lead me here - time to see if I've got what it takes..."
Unsheathing her blade, she begins a series of stretches to unkink her knotted muscles. "So how are we going to do this then? Irvine, Kenner, how about we ascend up the side of the rubble, flanked by the wall, whilst the archery-types cover us from below?"
"So I heard from over there..." Dentesila gestures in the direction of the tavern floor, "that we're to investigate some..."Forlorn Fortress" was it? I wasn't really listening...". Addressing Konner, "Konner, you're a local lad - what do you know about this fortress? Why's it supposed to be forlorn?" Dentesila flips a gold coin around her fingers, then holds it up at the barkeep. "Barman, a bottle of wine for my travels, please, and you can keep the change if you can tell me anything remotely helpful about where we're headed."
|
