DM, thank you for many years of good gamin'. It's much appreciated. I hope that you go on to have more joy! :)
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Rexandi turns profile and draws her hands in a slightly-parted pattern, reminiscent of grasping an invisible orb. Sparks fly between her fingers and then with a few mystical syllables she unleashes a familiar arc of lightning down the hall at the Dottari.
Rexandi moves to back up Aster. "I've had it with these guys. I'm full of anger and lightning bolts, so just let me know when the Dottari are coming down the hall."
"Time to go!" Rexandi uses her healing hex on Hortense to at least try to get her onto her feet.
Rexandi shouts, "We need to get the prisoner off of that rack!" as she throws her misfortune hex at the kyton.
As Rexandi notes the symptoms of deprivation, she says, "They need food and water if they're going to have a chance of getting their strength back. Anyone?"
"One of the guards ran away early in the fighting. We should expect reinforcements sooner rather than later." Rexandi moves from armiger to armiger, helping with the armor and checking to see if anyone needs a healing touch; she deploys her healing hex on any armigers who are in less-than-ideal condition.
"Let's not stick around for their overwhelming waves of associates," says the tiefling. "Come with us, Octavio. You have some influential associates of your own, and we're getting you out of here."
Rexandi throws a misfortune hex onto Sabo.
Rexandi tells the servant to stop what it's doing and open the door.
Rexandi casts an unseen servant and directs it to turn the barricades and push them up against the supply barrels.
"Aster, we need to get in there and help the prisoners," says Rexandi.
Rexandi hops over the fallen guard in the hallway and races down the hall to the southern guard room, where she takes up a position in the corner so that someone can open the door and see what's happening on the other side.
Since Rexandi already used her hex of misfortune on the remaining guard in the hall, she instead throws some ill omen his way.
Feelin' the bind here, I feel bad about lightning bolting the regular guards, but I'm stuck in this room until the two in the hall are down, and darkness would just make everything worse for the party. Might lean on a shadow conjuration. Sorry that I'm having trouble making up my mind.
Sooooo...
Worried about overkill, Rexandi lobs a web bolt at the guard near the door to the room that she shares with Bazzle and Vandomir.
Rexandi ducks out the doorway just enough to throw a misfortune hex at the guard who seems to be skilled at avoiding taking an arrow to the knee.
Rexandi staggers back a half-step, just enough to avoid getting disemboweled, but it definitely leaves her flustered and in a bad position. She scampers away from the fray and into the warden's chambers.
Rexandi freezes, as there's not enough time for her to do anything.
Rexandi keeps a cautious lookout.
"Can we give her all the things that the current status quo has denied her? We can pay her more money than she makes in a year, all at once. We can probably arrange to find her ex-husband with scrying magic—maybe Hetamon Haace can cast it, or we can find someone who can do it. She fears the demonic thing Ghenemahl, and we were planning to banish it anyway. And as much as she may not like the idea of being on the run as a deserter, she's currently getting a preview of what will happen in her position when someone decides that it's convenient to throw her on the rack, as she's seeing it happen with Octavius, who was a high-ranking member of an Order serving the organization, and now he's in chains getting tortured," says Rexandi. "Her faith in her institutions is creaky. She's been shaken by having to become the warden to a high-ranking official who was much more devout and much more diligent than she is, which is making her worry that she could be on the chopping block at the whims of someone else. She may support Thrune, but the current regime has done nothing to improve her quality of life. For the right amount of inducement, she might be encouraged to just... walk away. Go somewhere far away, start a new life with a stash of money, leave this nonsense behind." Rexandi straightens slightly and adds, "Heck, I'll pay her out of my own stash if it does the trick."
"Can I see the notebook for a moment?" asks Rexandi.
"Wait... based on these entries, the commander might... be susceptible to an enticement to leave her position. There's a combination of general dissatisfaction with her job, fear that her position might not be stable, hatred for her employees, and unfulfilled personal goals. She gets basically no fulfillment of long-term goals from what she's doing here... and especially if we could locate her ex-husband, who abandoned her and their child. She's not a fervently devout Asmodean," says Rexandi. "She's not a nice person... but she might be able to be turned."
"Given the nature of the poison, if anyone gets scratched or cut, let me know—uh, once any fighting is over, of course. With the magical satchel I can probably get the wound to stop bleeding," Rexandi says to the group with a note of caution.
Rexandi blushes and seems quite embarrassed and frustrated with the Skritt's insistence on making a big spectacle of her personal disappointments, though she refrains from chastising them or making a scene. "You're right of course, Bazzle," she says eventually, glad for the chance to turn the topic to something else. "Do we want to enter the Holding House from below? It might be a better way to sneak in than coming up elsewhere and then trying to figure out an entrance above."
"We ladies can have our heads turned, too," blurts out Rexandi with an angry blush. "Especially when you've got nobody."
"Great work!" Rexandi says enthusiastically to the skritt. "We need to come up with a better way to deal with the current, it kept pushing us downriver and making it hard for us to get across. Obviously we can't just leave a line running across all the time, maybe we can figure out some... pulley or something to help drag the boat across." She glances back toward the river as the team makes its escape and gently bites her lower lip, then murmurs to herself, "I didn't know when I created that shadow of a merman that he would be so... shirtless."
"Blast, we're spotted," mumbles Rexandi. She hurls deeper darkness onto the Imp to give the team at least a little time to get away.
Rexandi lets the merman continue pushing and casts another illusion, this time a vague minor image of a small group of people sliding off the shore and into the water behind the Stinging Imp, as if to cross the waterway behind the ship while it's trying to chase down the Ravens' small craft. The figures are hard to make out in the dim light but they do seem to create small splashing noises and ripples in the water as they slide into the water.
Rexandi lets the shadow merman keep pushing while she throws her voice magically behind the Stinging Imp. A growly, harsh whisper of Rexandi pitching her voice down sounds from somewhere in the dark behind the Imp. "They're distracted! Go, now!"
Rexandi looks a bit panicked for half a second, then she weaves subtle strands of shadow. "I hope this works," she mutters under her breath.
celestial merfolk The shadows ripple and form into the strange, light-and-dark dappled form of a merman with shimmering scales, who at Rexandi's urging immediately starts pushing the boat while swimming with his powerful tail fluke!
"Well I'm thinking of using my water lung hex and having one of us go into the water with a rope and swim to the far side, and tie the rope off there so we can pull the team in."
"Bazzle, how are you at swimming?"
"The city and especially the church of Asmodeus does do quite a propaganda job of telling everyone how important they are and how much you should be constantly afraid of crime, so recruitment probably gets a combination of well-meaning folks and those who just want to wield power, and it's not until later that the former discover that everything's run by the latter."
"I'm torn," says Rexandi in a low voice to the group. "We should get intel on what these Armigers are doing, just for the sake of keeping tabs on... you know. But we also don't want to take unnecessary risks. What do the rest of you think?"
"What now, Aster? Do we just wait for the Armigers to head past the bridge and then see if we can get past the Dottari as just a pair of common travelers making our way across the city?" asks Rexandi.
"We'll miss the meeting but we can be caught up in the morning." Aster offers to Rexi "You are welcome to stay at our place tonight if you don't wish to try sleeping at the Bones. Becky had a delightful time at your last visit, so I don't think she'll mind the loss of me only time." she apologizes to the others, saying rumors of too many armed people combined with Men on top of that would be too risky. "Thanks Aster. I appreciate it." Rexandi has a good time winding down in relative safety, and using her illusion spells to make entertaining shows for Becky. The next morning she says to Aster, "I need to keep my promise to Hetamon at some point. If we wind up with a day off I want to go down to one of the poorer districts and see if I can help people who're sick or injured for a bit." She keeps her head down as the team approaches Bleakbridge. Why draw attention, even if it's just armigers?
Gonna be spending all weekend moving a bunch of stuff and won't be available until Monday.
"If there's no pressing need for us to cross right now, let's just stay on this side for tonight," says Rexandi. "We can cross tomorrow during the day once the curfew is over, and maybe wade the river if we need to then."
Feels like shadow step is just strictly inferior to dimension door. Shorter range, limiting conditions on use, can't take other people with you, even though it's the same level. I only took it because it thematically fits with Rexandi's Shadow patron. I'll swap it next level.
OK, so Rexandi can't shadow step it, either. This will require some sort of significant teleportation or illusion magic.
I don't know how far across the river is. I presumed this was like a Venetian canal.
Rexandi can shadow step, but can't take anyone else with her. :/ Ideally at some point we figure out a way to either make our own tunnel (though going under a river is a problem), get a way to cross invisibly whenever we want (and with nondetection because I guarantee at some point the Thrunites will use invisibility purge and see invisibility at choke points), or else build our own teleportation circles that we can use around the city. This might be a pricey stopgap: Instant Bridge
Paid dividends while we did the underwater adventure with the aboleth, so I'm happy to get continued use out of it. Eventually we'll want a reliable bypass, either by illusion, invisibility, or making our own crossing at a different point along the river. |