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Sanjay stands, breathing deeply, trying to shake the unnatural torpor from his limbs. No doubt it will quickly fade now that the beast is defeated. "You all... fought... very well," he says, and tries to add his words, however slurring, to Amiri's prayer to the hunting lord.
Sanjay says some rather unenlightened things under his breath in Vudrani as he feels his muscles locking up and slowing down. Moving like he is underwater, Sanjay reaches into his robes and draws one of the flasks of holy water he caries. "The... creature," he manages to get out, "the hole... in it chest... the spear... fits?"
As Sanjay runs forward, he leaps directly beneath the monster-- and punches upward with the hand not holding his sword, attempting to strike it bodily from the air.
Sanjay holds his sword out to the evil beast in a challenge. "Your time here is done. Your desecration of this place will no longer be tolerated. Come down to earth and fight as if you had honor." He dashes into the room, intentionally running close beneath the hovering beast.
Sanjay says nothing, only grips his sword's hilt and nods, indicating his preparedness.
Sanjay frowns deeply at the things he sees, his face drawn with worry. He lowers himself back to the ground, clinging to the ledge with his fingers until his body is fully extended, then pushing off to land on the ground below in a crouch. He offers a stiff bow to Five at her compliment, but his attention is on the omen of the beasts outside. "All the natural world outside seems to be mad... or tainted with the hells, perhaps. The birds scream as if each sought to rend the sky, and I saw blood on the talons of the nearest. I can hear other beasts, sounding as furious. There are clouds building on the horizon. This is not natural. Some corruption must be caused by these cultists." Picking up his sword again, Sanjay grimly follows Five's lead. "We could try the symbol we found in the locked door, yes? Or shall we clear the rest of the temple first?"
Sanjay sets his newly-sticky sword down for the moment. Calling on the secrets of his monk training, Sanjay takes a deep breath, then launches himself at the wall, seeming to almost run up it with superhuman grace. He just manages to grab the window ledge, and hauls himself up to peek out over the forest around them.
After Five signals that the coast is clear, Sanjay moves into the room as well, looking sober when he sees the dead priests. "May the Lady of Graves guide you to a forest worthy of your god," he murmurs over the bodies. "I mean no desecration, but..." He crouches, to untie one of the cords and take the holy symbol. Then, he looks over the other pools.
"...Odd," Sanjay murmurs. "This is holy water, but some sort of.... sap? has been mixed with it. I suppose it is thick enough to coat something.... perhaps a blade." Thoughtfully, the monk extends the blade of his sword into the green-blue slurry. Then he raises his head, listening. "...those birds. I heard them before... but they are louder now. Like something had riled them. Or they are getting closer?"
Sanjay silently follows, keeping his blade ready in his hand and resisting the urge to glance back over his shoulder at the strange water.
Sajan purses his lips. "It is possible that in another section of the temple we might find an intact symbol of Erastil," he says. "...or Amiri might try the path of the body. Or perhaps, you ladies are skilled with locks?"
Sanjay takes a few steps closer, sword in hand. (He tries to avoid stepping in the water.) As far as he is concerned, Five may open the door whenever she chooses.
When Five gestures that the immediate coast is clear, Sanjay sidles to join her in the hallway, gazing at the door niche.
Sanjay murmurs softly, "That niche-- it is a stylized symbol of Erastil, I believe. You can see the shape of the bow, in the curve there."
He arches a brow at the water flowing from under the door, but doesn't know what to make of it.
Sanjay nods thoughtfully. "Well, let us take the western passage, then, and be cautious for what may come."
Sanjay looks over to Amiri at her words. "Hmm. Two paths diverge before us. One is marked by blood, the other.... apparently by silence. If we can follow that trail of blood, I suggest we do so."
Sajan stands, breathing heavily for a few seconds and looking around. "What terrible creatures, to steal a man's identity... I do not have high hopes for any to still live, but as you say, we must look. Clearly these monsters have some grudge against this temple... but what is the purpose of impersonating the priests? Did they wish to take the Arrow from us, perhaps?" Pondering this, Sanjay retrieves a potion from his belt sash, and sips.
The blow he took fades to only a small scratch. Sanjay inspects it a moment, then decides that he is well enough to continue. He glances at the bodies of the twisted creatures, but takes nothing. His own sword will serve him well enough. Then, he moves after 'Five'.
Sanjay whistles as Amiri destroys her loathsome foe. "Well done, sister-in-arms!" he says with a quick bow towards her. He draws his temple sword per Balazar's excellent advice, steps forward, and tries to emulate Amiri's mighty strike in his own fashion. "Release my friend, beast!"
Sticking this behind a tag because it's pedantic and I've already flooded the page with enough pedantic blue text:
"So I see!" the monk shouts in response to Balazar's advice. He will draw his sword at the soonest chance.
Sanjay hisses as the blade bites deep into his flesh, stinging pain. He grits his teeth, but rather than pursue 'her', he turns on the supposed 'acolyte', who is standing dangerously close to the less-hardy Balazar. His fists fly in a blur towards the whorled flesh of the creature. "Balazar, pull back! By golden Irori, what are these formless creatures!?" he shouts to his teammates.
Sanjay arches both brows at the explanation, and almost begins to offer a little apology-- before he notices the oddly-hued blush to Layla's cheeks. "...." Sanjay takes a half-step back, wariness written in his body language and his eyes flicking between Layla and Enogas. "What manner of magic is this?" he says, sharply. "Are you under some apprentice's trick?"
Sanjay's eyes linger on the blood as well, a frown creasing his brow. He notices the fang-defacement as well, a bit disturbing, but doesn't know enough about religion to have solid notions of what that might mean. More study in the monastery is required. He bows a little to Layla at her entrance. As she keeps talking, his small frown becomes more pronounced. "With all due respect, priestess... is there something you are not telling us? I will pledge my blade to help seek out whatever vandals have done this to your lawful temple, but my heart tells me you know of something that you have not yet spoken of. Honesty is the foundation upon which the house of brotherhood is built."
Sanjay takes a step towards the acolyte and offers him a little bow, hands clasped at his chest. "We are all here, yes. We have retrieved that which was sought.... but what has transpired in our absence?" he says, nodding towards the broken statue. "Has some violence intruded on what should be a peaceful house of worship?" Though Sanjay's demeanor is calm, his eyes are alert and watchful, studying the acolyte closely.
"Perhaps the temple has local visitors from around here. They seem to still be present," Sanjay says calmly. "Let us go greet them." His skin crackling with the spell Balazar called forth on him, Sanjay pads forward tothe door with the others.
I wouldn't worry about the "more than our share" thing. This is a one-shot, and Amiri is contributing like four times as much gold as anyone else, so... :P Okay, so let's use that last 50 GP on the oil of bless weapon. So our final s the list posted above, with addition of one oil of bless weapon. Obviously, Balazar will be carrying all the scrolls, as the only caster. ;) I'll take my obvious 1 potion of CLW, 1 holy water, 1 acid flask. Can't use the spare silver mace (I intended it for somebody else), so Amiri or Merisiel #1 should take it. I'm not worried about giving myself DR-piercing items; if we run into stuff we need it on; I'll aid AC and attacks for others, or do combat maneuvers or things. Honestly, the unchained'd rogue's d6+9 is a lot more damage than I can crank out, so the rogues and barbarian are our damage dealers, and I'm more tank and mobility and things.
Good point re: DR. Looks like we also have no way to deal with swarms, though if one of the three-ish encounters in a 'you must use these characters' scenario has swarms when the pregens can't deal with them, I'll go kick a designer. ;) (Nah, not really.) Okay, rather than go back and forth, how about I propose a list of purchases using our full 750 GP, and if anyone suggests something needs changing, go for it: 5 potions of cure light wounds = 250
That's 700 gp right there, leaving us a little bit of slack if someone else wants to suggest something I'm forgetting for the remaining 50 GP. Adamantine is outside our budget short of a weapon blanch, and even that's 100 GP... I think we may just have to cope with it the Amiri way if there is adamantine DR coming up. edit ninja'd, but my post more or less stands. Maybe the last 50 on a potion of Prot Evil?
Sanjay arches his brows at Balazar. "We have safely retrieved our item, and now we return to the temple-- what need could we have of protections now? Still, I will not argue with you, my friend." He gives a small bow to the gnome, and consents to the scroll's usage .
Problem is, even if we pool all gold, it's 647-- short the cost of any level 1 wand. And a wand of mage armor is only really good for me and maybe Balazar's eidolon, and none of us can use a wand of CLW. eta: Oh, wait, with two Merisiels that puts us at exactly 750, I believe-- but the same issue as above applies. We can't use a CLW wand, and I wouldn't want the group's main purchase to be just for my benefit. So, we either pick up a wand of Infernal Healing for out of combat heals and emergencies-- and nothing else-- or we divvy the gold around on smaller purchases like more potions and scrolls.
For my part, it'll definitely be the 4 scrolls of mage armor; I'll give the remaining 20 GP over to Balazar to help buy whatever he wants. Of course, Balazar will also be carrying the scrolls of mage armor, since I can't cast them. :P
Sanjay is not disappointed by the easy recovery of the arrow-- as he sees it, it would be pleasant if all tasks that the Society orders could be resolved with a minimum of bloodshed and chaos. As he walks with the others towards the Erastilian temple, he remains, as always, observant of what transpires around him.
Mage armor is by far my preferred choice for my resources. I find Enlarge to kinda be more of a hassle than it's worth, often, especially for a mobility char. Anyway, I'm willing to turn my 100 gold into 4 scrolls of mage armor, and we can parcel those out between Balazar and Sajan as needed? (That leaves 20 GP here in change that could be pooled towards another scroll.) ...huh, yeah, we have no healing, do we? Besides potions. Infernal healing as a preemptive buff is sort of a dicey tactic to me, it's only a minute's worth and that can be tricky to time. I would not mind picking up one scroll to keep as an emergency heal tactic in Balazar's toolbox, but for the most part I'm happy to rely on the potions.
Sanjay (Sajan) is also here, bowing calmly to his fellows.
*snags Sajan* This is Dien, and I might as well dust off this alias that was supposed to be a monk. Sajan, Sanjay, close enough. Will update the sheet later.
(dien here) Ugh, don't tempt me. Do you have any idea how many games I'm already in? :( Also, I have this character just sitting around from the last WotR I was in that died in our very first fight....
As a heads-up, my laptop's power adapter seems to be missing. I'm hoping it will turn up in short order, but until then I'm on battery power with minimal computer time, so I may be slow to post for a while. I suppose this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back of forcing me to get my PC's screwy connection sorted out again....
And since I foolishly neglected to link~ Roll20, if anyone's unfamiliar
OOC blither:
Sanjay stares down at the hideously burned face of the elf. Gruesome injuries are nothing new in Kenabres-- any warrior who's lived past a few trips into the Worldwound usually bears some nasty scar as souvenir. His own parents have their share of mementos, and Resh lost her eyes to a demon's acid. So it is not shock that holds his gaze on the man's ruined face, it's... What, exactly? Seeing the visual reality of devastation, perhaps. The ravaging of the elf's face is likely being also enacted upon Sanjay's home-city, however far above them that may be. "You have lost your sight," he says in an even, hollow voice to the elf. See, father, mother? I am calm. (The calm of emptiness, of desolation.) "The healer will do what she can for you." The cry of the others makes his head whip up. Sanjay rises from his crouch, his young face perfectly devoid of emotion as he takes in the sight of the maggots, the others racing forward to join in combat. Wordlessly he undoes his compact bow from where it is strapped flat against his pack, and begins to move to a better position to fire from. The bulk of the spider's motionless body is in his way, here.
For my two cents, the 'cluster' style of initiative works well for the PBP games I've been in. My only other suggestion would be that my favorite way to do maps for PBP is via Roll20, but I know not everyone likes that service, and some people can't access it from work, or whatever. But for myself, having both GMd and played PBP using Roll20, it is waaaay more convenient than anything else I've tried.
Sanjay wordlessly obeys the woman-- Vaashti, was it? --his eyes darting over the elf and his injuries in the half-light. In his time running around the temple of Desna, he has seen many injured people, but he never learned the ways of healing them, whether divine or mundane. There was so much else to learn, after all. There was the style of fighting his parents attempted to show him every time they were home-- drills with blows of the hand and the foot, how to strike with the heel or the elbow or to use his 'walking stick' to trip-- and he had taken to those lessons better than he had their lessons of inner tranquility and calm. There had been Resh's lessons. Magic constantly piquing his interest, but it had all been so-- abstract. Words and theory and discussion of energy. Never anything he could touch, could know with his body. Right now there is an injured man under his hands, a slender arm twitching under his hands. Sweat beaded on the elf's pale face. Vaashti's dark head bent to inspect his injuries. Sanjay stares at the elf's face. He should feel compassion for him. He does feel compassion for him. Really. Truly. Somewhere in there, in the middle of the cold knot of nothing that is forming in his belly. Jens asks Will he live? and again Sanjay bites back on the urge to say Does it matter?
"It is difficult to judge his injuries in these shadows, but he is conscious, at least," Sanjay says, feeling with his deft fingers for any dampness that might be blood. He relates whatever else he can tell of the elf's condition, while murmuring to him to be still, just wait, sir.
Sanjay knows the words that Aaliyah and Kel speak, but he knows quite well how he knows the language-- long hours of study under Resh's demanding tutelage. His father was the one who taught him to walk with a stick as if it were not a weapon; to wear a blade hidden. So Sanjay doesn't let on that he knows Celestial. Who knows what any of these people intend, after all? The discovery of the elf cuts off such unusually paranoid thoughts. Sanjay drops to one knee beside the man. "A man here-- an elf. Hurt," he says softly, and reaches to still the man's movements. "Hssst, quiet, my friend-- there are people to help you, just lie still. You may be badly injured."
Sanjay looks with a dead-eyed blankness at both Kel and the Ulfen (Jens? was that his name?), his face streaked with dust and tears. Find a way out? I do not care about a way out. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? Let's all die facing this damned spider. The thoughts are a far cry from his usual reaction to a crisis. Sanjay is not generally given to pessimism or despair, on a normal day. This is not a normal day. After several seconds he jerks his head in a nod and turns to scramble along the bottom wall of the cavern, to try to get a glimpse of the rest of the cavern. The wavery light from Aaliyah doesn't shine far, but he'll dutifully, resentfully, look for exits. Still Kel's guide, after all.
The gentle hand to his shoulder registers, even if the words are a wash of meaningless noise right now. My son, control yourself. Only he who is master of his own will can be master of his environment, he imagines he hears his father's dry, even voice saying. I don't WANT to master my environment! I want to be home! I want you there! I want no more war, no more funerals, no more demons! And selfish desires bring down all the world. His mother, just as steady and quiet as his father. Seek to help others, Sanjay. Whatever path this takes. "--Please, Sanjay, will you?" says the woman's coaxing, soothing voice. He hiccups through his misery. A very unenlightened desire to keep crying like a child is in the forefront of his mind. But then the woman's voice changes to a cry of startled apprehension, and Sanjay looks up despite himself, staring for the threat despite the tears in his eyes. He lurches to his feet, picking up his stick again. Giant shape in the shadows. He tries to count legs, despite the distance and the vast darkness of the cavern. "Looks like a spider," he says hoarsely.
As Sanjay's head clears enough that he can remember, his face goes slack with shock and devastation, and the youth drops to his knees with a wheeze as his legs refuse to hold him. For everyone else here, this may be a strategic loss, a worrying realization that Kenabres has been compromised, that the first line of defense for the whole world has fallen. For Sanjay, it is his home. He takes shallow gasps for breath, staring down sightless into the rubble from a position on his hands and knees. Tears start welling up, running tracks down the grit and dust and on his face then landing in the cavern dirt below. Resh. The rest of the wizards at the Tower. Tookah and the others of the temple of Desna. Almost everyone he knows in the world was in Kenabres, and with great Terendelev fallen and the Kite destroyed-- can any of them possibly survive? Resh is a blind old woman, in a city whose gates are now open wide to all of the Abyss's fury. His parents. His parents had not been in the city. Sanjay hiccups through the tears, fingers clutching at the rocks and grit. Perhaps they are safe-- but what safety? They'll return to Kenabres to find it a smoking, demon-claimed charnel house-- Desna, WHY? All other questions are irrelevant. Vaashti's query about if she can heal him goes unheeded, as the youth wordlessly smacks his hand over and over into the earth.
"Bruised, I think. Nothing more." Sanjay touches at his limbs and a sore spot on his temple to be sure he's not bleeding, that nothing is broken. The curving, twisted wood of his walking stick is sticking out from the rubble. He wrenches it free, then checks his small rucksack-- also still intact. He starts to pick his way towards the light that the dancer holds aloft. Dutifully, he answers the call for introductions by saying, "My name is Sanjay," but he sounds distracted. Is that the arm of a person, jutting from under that stone? He will stop to investigate, and pray it is just a piece of wood, caught in the shadows.
"Sanjay. What happened? I hope you aren't here because of me. I, uh, I don't remember anything." Sanjay shakes his head helplessly. "I regret I can be of no assistance. My own memory is also... incomplete." He stares around, looking at the others-- the Ulfen, yes-- the dancer-woman-- a woman with skin of a violet hue...
Kel and Asara are not bothering me!
Sanjay stops hunting for his flint and steel once the supernatural light fills the area. He shades his eyes-- his head is throbbing-- and squints around at the other figures who are moving, and tries to judge their surroundings. "--Kel," he says, with a sigh of relief for someone he knows, even if not well. |
