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Mavro's lip twitches in annoyance, both at Crove's taunting and his subsequent disappearance. Having run out of patience, he ceases his bantering with the other old man and rushes forth, swinging his walking stick wildly at the spot where he last stood. Only after following through with his action does he notice the ominous sound past the door, baiting a crooked frown from the Pathfinder.
"Crove! Get back here you bastard!" If Tempest moves or dismisses her spell, Mavro will continue his pursuit of Crove.
"You think you can hold ME?" the old man bellows, pulling his arms in an attempt to tear himself away from the sticky webbing. "You fool, don't you realize? You will learn nothing! You will share Marshan and Baskerwhel's fate, in the bowels of the beast!"
Mavro bites back a shout of pain, instead baring his teeth in a fierce scowl. Lowering the end of his quarterstaff, the magus sweeps it beneath the wizard's feet, attempting to knock him off balance.
Mavro emerges from the cloud, still coughing slightly, yet otherwise miraculously unaffected by the foul stench. The old pathfinder takes a quick glance at his comrades, not quite fortunate as himself, before spotting the fleeing old man. "Crove!" he shouts out, gripping his magical staff. For a moment it flares out with arcane power, enhanced by its master's magic. As Milo steps out of the way, Mavro then charges down the hallway after their quarry, staff held in both hands.
I'm used to slow games myself, so I suppose I don't feel as strongly about it. I do think we might have lost Varta, though.
Clutching his staff in both hands, Mavro steps into the fog in search of Crove. "Where are you, you devil? You rat! You--"
"Ugkkkk!"
"This glorified smokescreen won't save you, Crove!" Mavro howls ruefully, peering into the fog.
Mavro lifts up a handful of platinum coins, letting them slip through his fingers and back into the bag. The miser in him said that this was just another spoil of war, but the realist said that other people probably needed this money more than he did. That and the bag was probably pretty damned heavy. "Foolish man. I could live for the rest of my life in luxury with this kind of coin. Yet he would toss it away for some gods-forsaken plot? What knowledge could be worth that?"
"No! We've come this far! I'm not about to walk back out into that damned rain empty-handed!" Mavro enters the room and starts to fruitlessly ransack it.
"Crove must be getting sloppy. Hurry on so that we can teach that cur a lesson."
Mavro grunts at Xander's comment, grinning toothily. He scoops up the broken onyx and dumps it into his belt pouch. Crove could pick up the tab on healing wares for his wrinkled hide, as far as he was concerned.
His wounds now more or less fully healed, Mavro harrumphs gratefully, if such a thing is even possible. "I will keep that in mind. Not that they'd do me any good in an emergency, either," he replies bitterly, indicating that all is well. The magus promptly wipes his blood off his hand using his cloak. Looking across the room, he then hobbles over toward the only other apparent door in the room to investigate, listening carefully to whatever is behind it. ()
"Useless, stupid thing!" Mavro can be seen muttering angrily, evidently speaking to his wand. Positively seething, he briefly considers snapping the thing in two before simply shoving it back through a belt loop. Now having a free hand, the old man clutches his wounds and leans against a nearby wall. Slipping a hand into one of his belt pouches, he retrieves one of the healing potions he had been keeping on reserve and hastily imbibes it.
"Blasted, budget potions," he complains as the most serious of his wounds heal over slightly.
"Try that again, you raving twit!" Mavro shouts out, muttering a long string of curses. His hand flies to his belt and retrieves the wand they had found down in the sewers. Murmuring its command phrase, he thrusts its glowing tip toward his assailant.
"Out of my way!" Mavro bellows, raising his staff and smashing it down over the head of the madman in front of him.
Assuming that he drops like a sack of potatoes, the magus would then step over his body, moving to engage the bizarre creatures.
Mavro grunts in the affirmative, tightly clutching his weapon.
With a grunt of effort, Mavro heaves himself off Crove's chair with the help of his quarterstaff. "More stairs, bah," he complains quietly as he follows the others.
"Yes, yes, we have already established that these wretches had to have been foolish or stupid or insane," Mavro states with unreasonable impatience, leaning forward heavily on his staff. The question nagged at him as well, but speculation was not in his nature.
Mavro seems content to stay put in Crove's chair, finding it to be the damn near closest thing to comfort he had felt all night. A few times the elderly Pathfinder seems to nod off, his head bowing against his staff. If it were not for his occasional incoherent grumbling, he might have been thought to have died in his sleep.
Mavro carefully takes the tome and sets it down on the desk. He runs a his fingers along the sides of its pages, perhaps hesitating. After just a moment's pause he scowls, pulling the book open to a random page. As his eye full upon the page, they suddenly widen. "I... this is...! I cannot read this incoherent babble!"
Well, we could always trot down and bang on the door of some Ye Olde Magick Shoppe until they cough up a scroll. At any rate, Xander seems to be rightfully concerned that just looking at the book is enough to make you go mad, regardless of whether you know what you're looking at. Maybe he'd be willing to read it if a guinea pig takes a peek first? From a pure IC standpoint, it makes sense to be worried about reading the book, and yet the book has more or less had a post-it on it saying "READ ME" since we first got it.
Mavro blinks. "Just hand me the damn book. If I turn into a raving lunatic I expect you to put me out of my misery just like the rest of them."
"Hmph. Growing old is not all that it is cracked up to be," Mavro says with a scowl, eying Milo's muddy boots. "If the dwarf will not do it, then I would sooner read the book myself than leave it to some young whelp."
"Hmph. Well, the stout folk are certainly reputable for having stubborn minds," Mavro says in agreement, stroking his beard. His tone certainly makes it sound like a compliment, blunt as his words are. He glances at Varta, frowning thoughtfully. "But it is her choice to make. Of course." The frown bends into a crooked smile when he hears Tempest's words. "Aha. The real question indeed. As much as it would please me to see the rest of those fools torn asunder by their own doing, I would sooner knock them down myself. But yes, you are correct - the creature must be real. We know who summoned it, and where. But the question that remains is what."
"Perhaps it's about time we looked at that damned book," Mavro suggests, falling into the comfort of what is presumably Crove's chair. "With all these raving lunatics around, I am starting to wonder if there even is a monster."
With a veritable grunt, Mavro hobbles toward the dying fireplace and sticks the bottom end of his magical staff into it, stoking its embers. "Bah. Blasted madman. This room and those buffoons could hardly have kept him safe... he must be hiding elsewhere."
"Madmen," Mavro mutters, shaking his head while wrinkling his nose from the stench. He could not count the number of foul things they had smelled that day if he tried. "Madmen everywhere." Evidently unshaken by the encounter, the Pathfinder steps over the dead bodies toward the next door, and opens it.
Mavro did not know what Milo had seen in the room, and he did not really care to. All he knew was that the moment the lunatic attacked Milo, his life was fair game. To be deprived of intellect was a terrible thing. If the first lunatic survives Milo's attack, Mavro will attempt to finish the job - otherwise he will move further in and attack the other.
"Someone is having fun sawing through bone in here," Mavro says to the others with a look of disgust, "A little too much fun."
"Bah, now where were we?" Mavro asks rhetorically, approaching a door off to his left. He places an ear close to the door, and will open it if he does not hear anything.
Mavro pays no mind to the fleeing orderly, muttering something offensive to its intelligence under his breath.
"Hmph. Perhaps this will teach Crove not to use drooling idiots to do his bidding. Even Myre's corpses put up a better fight. We've wasted enough time here!"
Sneering when his dwarven ally is struck, Mavro raises his walking stick high over his head - very nearly throwing out his back - and brings it crashing down onto the orderly.
Grunting indignantly, Mavro thrusts the end of his quarterstaff at the orderly.
"Enough banter!" Mavro shouts at the others, as he swings his staff at the orderly in front of him.
I honestly think it makes perfect sense, but it's not such a huge deal. And speaking of traits, I honestly have no idea why I forgot to take Magical Knack for this build. Oh well. On an unrelated note, would anybody object to the gigantic orderly being removed from the map?
"On your guard, more are coming!" Mavro calls out, peering down the southern hallway, waiting for the enemy to come around the bend. If any of the new arrivals come within range, he will swing at them with his staff.
"There he goes again," Mavro says, shaking his head as Milo chases down the orderly. There was no hope for youth these days. If the orderly beside him still lives after Varta's assault, he will attack with his staff again.
The opening Mavro was waiting for presents itself when Varta's target drops dead. Poised to strike, the old man swiftly slips past the dwarf and through the doorway, to where Milo stood just before. Unaware of Xander's devices, Mavro smacks the uninjured orderly upside the head with his quarterstaff.
"Infuriating boy," Mavro mutters, unable to join the action. Readying his staff, the magus bides his time for an opportune moment to present itself.
"Clear the way!" Mavro says to Milo, his staff already in hand. He quickly takes a step back, not intent on being clubbed to death.
Mavro glowers at Tempest, unamused. "You are lucky that you are a lady. A tiny one, at that," he growls, before turning back to the door. He takes another moment to look at the shrieking patients with disgust. "It seems more likely that Crove left them here as alarms than as bait. He is bound to know we have arrived, at this rate!" Without further ado, he reaches out and pushes (or pulls) open the door directly south of himself. |