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"Alright, well, I guess we're gonna try and be all diplomatic. In our hypothetical, we'd just try to get up into the third floor, as Ruika suggested," says Sarala, leaning back and tilting her chair so it's balancing on the back two legs. "After your signal that you've talked to some people, Haleen. Then some hypothetical violence will occur."
"I guess I never thought about the philosophical difference between murder and justified killing. I just think of it as 'justified murder'," says Sarala, "Back where I come from, that's what we call it when any of us happens upon a snake. But I appreciate you lending a hand with that stuff, because even though we're pretty good at the straightforward approach, I believe that moderation is key." She nods very seriously. "How long do you think it'll take to convince these people?"
"Well, I'm sure Thurrios knows. He's our accountant, right?" says Sarala, crossing her legs on her chair. "I don't concern myself with stuff like that, since I'm more of a ruins researcher, though I did get a couple sweet rings out of the deal." She holds up her hands so that Haleen can see. "So... hypothetically, you know, purely as a mental exercise. Like a fun little thought experiment. If you wanted to commit atrocious amounts of murder in the ways that we've playfully implied, what would your approach be? You seem like the kind of person who's plotted a murder or two." Sarala stares at Haleen interestedly.
"How much we're getting paid?" says Sarala, looking towards Julius, who is apparently just swaying unhelpfully for the time being. "Well... I guess we'll probably get paid, right? I don't think I was listening," she says, hopefully. "I'm not the sort who has sworn an oath to poverty or anything. I'm perfectly alright with climbing onto an ocean of riches." She looks towards the others and says, "As for a plan, I dunno, I've never been great at convincing people. I think it's something about my tone. I'd say we just... well, let's hear more about the mirror thing. That sounds... different?"
"Classic Julius charm," says Sarala, nudging the arcanist lightly, "So flirtatious, he makes himself weak in the knees." To Thurrios, she says, "Actually, yeah, how does a man-birdmonster relationship work?" She glances back towards Ruika and then continues, barely taking a breath, "Eheh, crazy, yeah. Crazy like a fox." The Vanaran then addresses Lyssa, "No offence to you, Colonel Biteyface." And then back to Haleen. "But yeah, I'd imagine talking about that sort of thing is frowned upon in his battle market or whatever. As for the battle stage, as handy as I am in a fist fight, this doesn't seem to be the kind of arena that has an 'unarmed' event. They should, it'd be real exciting, two fighters battering each other with nothing but the clothes on their back and their limbs a-flailing." The monk considers for a few moments, "So are there any conditions attached to your staying here? Or is it just... forever, until you die a violent death?"
"Another way in?" says Sarala, "Well... I guess. We just came through the door, but I don't like a lot of fanfare in my comings and goings, so just as well that we weren't announced!" She looks to the right while her tail points to the left, and then looks to the left while her tail points to the right, asking quieter, "And, well, let's just make sure Kardy and Ugruk don't catch wind. I'm not so worried about the other, personally, but who knows. Life can be crazy. So where does this Ugruk guy hang out anyhow?"
Sarala peeks into the bar before walking in and heading towards her companions and Haleen, having overheard something that Julius said, "I thought verbose was when you do a lot of verbs. Like a man or woman of action or something," she suggests, punching the air a couple times, "Punch, punch, verbosity!" She digs her hands back into her pockets, pushes a chair back with her foot and sits down on it, eyeing Haleen for a few moments. "Haleen, is it? I'm Sarala. A friend of Narks is a friend of mine. He's lent me his whetstone more times than I can count," says the Vanaran, holding out a hand to show the number of digits she has, "So this man in charge, this Kardy guy, what's the news on him? Why won't he let you go?"
"Betting sounds like it'd be fun to do, but..." Sarala just shrugs, having sworn an oath not to gamble. "Have fun selling your wares. Maybe I'll have to check 'em out. I'm itching to get myself some new wares." Once they are gone, she looks towards her companions, "Let's get back to the others with this." She looks down at the rail down the stairs, opting to slide down it if there is no traffic going up, but just walking down otherwise, hands in her pockets.
"Haleen, huh? If she's such a tough fighter, maybe you could beat her up for glory, huh?" says Sarala to Narkû, stepping out of the shadow upon realizing it's pointless. She looks down at the fight. "I bet her weapon is dull." She gives a thumbs down and a bit of a laugh at that, neither knowing nor caring who this person is. To the patrons, she says, "Oh, yeah, we're new arrivals. Fresh off the metaphorical boat to fortune and debauchery or whatever it is. Filled to the brim with vim!"
While they are discarding the corpses, Sarala spends some time whispering about the strange sound gnoll necks make when they snap and encouraging Julius that his javelins are, in fact, getting closer whether or not he might believe that fact. Once they get back to the door, she puts the key in the lock and turns.
Sarala answers Thurrios, "I think this is the route that a sneaky, clever and attractive Vanara would prefer." "I might go on a little ahead and gesture you guys forward, if you don't mind. Gotta make sure I've got some good help on my tail watching out for me, you know?" says Sarala, getting the keys, winking and then getting down to move towards the norther entrance.
"Heal potions, yeah. I guess we'll take a cure moderate wounds one and a few cure light wounds. I'm not sure on the whole potion economy. Julius, is that a good decision? One moderate and three light? I don't know the difference except 'moderate' is more than 'light'." Sarala makes a bit of a show of shrugging and then says, "But yeah, that magical armour stuff is really helping me out. Doesn't weigh anything, so that's nice."
Sarala looks down at Thurrios's kneeling and then looks up at the sky. "Sorry, but the thing is outta here. If you really want, though, I'll still vault off of you. 'cause I bet I can get some serious height by doing that." She nods towards Zastoran and says, "Yeah, I understand, I don't want to put you out too much or anything, but not getting dead is pretty high on my priority list."
"Yeah, I was thinking of trying to knock that thing down from the sky. I mean, it might eat my heart, but if I knock it out of the sky, that'd be a wash," says Sarala with a bit of a shrug. "I'd need something to climb onto to jump off of. I know this might come as a surprise, but I'm pretty good at climbing stuff. I'm pretty well ready."
"Yeah, may as well. And... you have some able-bodied folks around here who would be able to mount some kinda defence at least. You'll just need to stay safe until we get rid of their leadership," says Sarala, returning her hands to her pockets. "Sounds pretty dangerous, though, to go in there head on. We'll probably want to be well stocked on curatives. Not that these magical sorts aren't good at healing, just sometimes you gotta use that magic oomph to blow some guys up."
Sarala says, "I'll take another look, for your benefit, Julius. And this time, two eyes are better than one." She makes binoculars with her fingers and stares off at the thing in the air to try and make it out.
"Alright, so, maybe like a bird-wolf-deer sorta looking thing? It's looking at me and looking mighty mean, Julius. I just saw it lick its chops, it's gonna eat me! Quick! Negotiate with it!"
"Huh? No, of course I don't think I can throw a shuriken that far away, that'd be crazy. It'd hit as hard as a kitten's whiskers, too, after losing all that momentum," says Sarala, "I don't know anything about wolf-birds, to be honest, or wolves really, so I'm not gonna have any common ground to befriend it with." She shrugs and stops the spin of the shuriken, tucking it back up into her sleeve, "Feel free to negotiate with the wolf-bird. I don't know how angry it looks, it's hard to see, but don't come crying to me when it's sucking out all your blood." She pauses, "Sucking blood, that's wolves, right?"
"Huh? Not trusting my great eyes, Julius? I'll take another look," says Sarala, reaching towards her eyes to make her finger binoculars, then realizes there's a spinning shuriken on one of them. Instead, she makes a finger spyglass. "Oh! It's a wolfbird of some kind! Yep!" She lowers her fingers and then pretends to throw it towards Julius so that he can take a look. "Maybe we should ask it to come closer to get a clearer look."
After Sarala has done her morning workout and done the standard fruit/vegetable to meat exchange with anyone willing, the Pathfinder looks up towards the sky with a bit of a squint.
"Is that some kinda flying wolf? I wonder... hey," she says to nobody in specific, "You think I can hit that from here?" She produces a shuriken from her sleeve, spinning it around on her finger as she tries to determine the distance of the thing. "Is it some kinda monster?"
Sarala is a bit surprised that anyone would bother to follow her as she went to pester Father Zastoran. Still, the monk does not show too much surprise on her face, just keeping her hands in her pockets and her tail arced over her head. "Well, hopefully Julius will talk to him. I'm not a big talker, you know, or at least not a smooth talker like Julius is," says Sarala, shrugging lightly, "And hopefully you have some aconite that we could borrow if it came to that? I think you're right, though, it doesn't seem like he's always been some kinda crazy hermit. Hopefully he can also tell us why B Team is so sleepy still... But Julius'll need to rest first. And so will I. If I told you about the day I'd had, you'd probably be all, 'you should really wear armor' and I'd be all, 'nah'."
Of Ruika, Sarala says on her behalf mostly to assure Almah and give some sort of peace of mind, "Ruika has already helped us out of some jams, I think she'll be a great ally. Trust me, I'm a great judge of character!" Once Sarala has a meal and listens to Julius and Ruika talk about their magic, she decides that she has little to contribute to the conversation except for her interest. Once that concludes, she walks on over to where Father Zastoran is looking after Team B, who she's never actually officially met before. "You know," she says, "I don't really know these guys from any others of your kind or... whatever the heck kinds they are. But if there's anything I can do to help make 'em alright... Maybe Julius can figure it out after talking to Haidar? I feel like I have a lot to meditate on today. It has been a strange time out there... But! I wanted to make sure, you don't think me or Anapa could catch whatever it is Haidar's got? 'cause he tore into us pretty good." She pauses and adds, "And maybe Julius's eye could get looked at. I accidentally ran my forehead into his face." She lets out an awkward chittering laugh.
"Huh? I mean, yeah, he's dangerous... but he knows so much about the place we visited. We're sure there's no recourse for a guy like that? Seems like a fate worse than death to lose yourself and become a monster." Sarala puts her hands in her pockets, looking over towards Julius, nodding as he suggests to go get food and mouthing the words, 'One second.' "At least we need to give Julius the chance to extract information from the guy, could save our butts somewhere down the line, or keep us from meeting this kind of fate." She shrugs to Father Zastoran, "I don't know much about this sort of thing. I've never seen one of my kind turn into a weremonster. I woulda thought that a cleric or something would be able to appeal to their deity to help out, but if we can at least bind him and get info... Seems like it could be handy."
"That's some kind of crazy hobo who turned into a cat monster and we only know that we beat him into submission and dragged him across a desert, and that he had a fight with the other team... Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, Dashki died in the fight before we got there." Sarala bows her head slightly in respect for the dead, saying a small prayer to her tribal gods. "We figured we should bring Dashki back so you could attend to his burial. The rest of Team B looks like they got roughed up. Seems like hobocat might know some stuff about the area and the place we found him in, and maybe he can get some kind of help with either the crazy or the cat thing... Either way, we're going to need him to be tied up and closely watched," says Sarala, glancing over towards Haidar. "But I don't know much about that... That's for our brainy folks to figure out. I do know that I'm tired, hungry, tired, thirsty and tired." She waves at Father Zastoran and says, "Do you know if anyone around these parts can uncattify someone? Because we have a guy in serious need of uncattification."
"You know I like hearing you go on about stuff. It's adorable!" says Sarala, ruffling Julius's hair, "Everything just looked weird for a little bit there. It was like that time when I drank that bottle that I thought was full of fruit juice." The Vanaran climbs back up onto the ship to take a last little look around, noting, "Let's come back here tomorrow and check out that other path. Or maybe the day after... we still have to find Felliped's buddy, our fellow Pathfinder." She picks up the saddlebags to check if there's anything inside and then does a last lookaround for anything of interest.
"Yeah, well, how can we be sure that Anapa and I aren't affected now that we have these weird catcut wounds and this is our werecat way of eating you all back at the monastery?" replies Sarala, "I'm sure someone can help them out there even if they do have inner panthers waiting to spring out. We only need them well enough to walk, but not so well that a punch to the face won't make them go back to sleep."
"Yeah, Napper, though make them feel better one at a time... this place can make reality look... different," says Sarala, rubbing the back of her neck and saying towards Julius, with a bit of a sheepish tone, "Sorry, buddy, looks like I bumped into you pretty hard... We'll get someone to look at your eye back at the monastery."
"Dashki's dead... but the rest of these guys are alive. We need to get them back to the camp right away, though, or else... well, nothing really, doesn't seem like they're dying or anything. Eventually they'll wake up, but I'm not sharing my food. So let's get them out of here!" says Sarala, gesturing towards the door. "I guess I'll have to get them down, huh, 'cause you guys are the worst climbers ever? Give me a second, I will get them down." She puts down her equipment, taking what might seem like a comical amount of shuriken out of her sleeves and clothes, piling them up on top of each other before topping them off with her temple sword. "You wouldn't believe how heavy these are," she comments, "Maybe when we go back, I should pick up some fancier shuriken than these old things. Haidar barely seemed to feel it when I nailed him with them and I've got a pretty good arm." Her backpack goes down next, adjacent to her pile of clanking shuriken. One by one, she picks up the B team, hauling them down the rope carefully, zipping back up Narkû's rope to get the next. She finishes by hauling Dashki down, commenting grimly, "They might want to give him a proper sendoff or something... Looks like he died instantly." Sarala climbs back up the rope a last time in order to gather up all her equipment again, tucking everything into their proper places. "Narks, Anapa and I can carry our living allies back, 'cause we're super fit... As for Dashki, I dunno, any of you think you want carry him? If you need to wrap him up and drag him, he's not getting deader..." She looks over to Haidar and says, "I dunno what to do with kitty kitty now that we've got him. Maybe we tie him up and a couple of us can drag him by his feet. Let me know if he starts stirring at all, I have some techniques good for subduing guys."
Sarala rubs her brow and then quickly scurries up the dungeon wall back onto the barge to peer at Haidar. "That dagger thing looked sharp and painful. It's dangerous when the pointy end gets into you. I found Team B, though, I think ... not looking so hot... but maybe I'm hallucinating." She rubs her forehead and tries to check for vital signs on Dashki, Khasra, Khatijah, and Sami, as well as try her meagre healing skills on anyone she can who seems like they can be saved.
Sarala can't quite push the confusion out of her mind, but even through the fog she can see what's happening on the barge above her.
Sarala snaps a couple of shuriken out of her sleeve, tossing them both towards Haidar. "Things he might know! Alive him to take we need!" Unfortunately, the confusion still manages to jumble her speech a little.
"Special technique: Grooming session!" says Sarala as she attempts to kick Haidar in the chest, then gripping her temple sword in both hands she attempts to give Haidar a shave. Unfortunately, it seems a shave is all that she gives.
"I guess you just don't appreciate my hard work. I'll go." She steps off the boat and falls back down.
Sarala blinks a few times and feels her forehead where it impacted Julius, blinking in recognition of what she's just done. She shakes her head, "Something is affecting me! Forgive me! I'll stand somewhere else!"
The monk runs forward and jumps off the ground, feet easily clearing her own height with the leap. She grasps onto the side of the barge and draws her sword with her tail to put it in her right hand as she makes it over the edge, taking a couple steps and using an open hand strike with her left, "Meow meow, you psycho! Special technique: Aggressive petting!"
Sarala turns with with furrowed brows to look right into Julius's eyes, since she wanted to listen to him try and talk Haidar down. He's much better at negotiating than she is. However, when her eyes make it to her friend, they seem to lack any sense of recognition. She then leans back and then gives him a headbutt.
"Snakes about you and in us! Us Julius way we were. So were our cucumbers, something, guys," is what the Vanara says to justify this action. "Boring bottomless buddy."
"Huh? If you're concerned about Anapa saying something, we can just swear him to secrecy, but I'm pretty sure none of us get what's going on here..." says Sarala, glancing about, "So really, what can I say? Something beyond my understanding is going on! I don't really care-" Sarala stops, mouth clamping shut with a clack as something that Haidar said didn't sit quite right, and her tone becomes less flippant. "The last ones that tried? Care to elaborate? Are you talking about our friends?"
Sarala takes her hands out of her pockets and puts her palms forward to demonstrate that she hasn't drawn a weapon. She says, "Whoa! Whoa! Desert guy? You were acting kind of strange out there and I'm not entirely sure if I was concerned about you or for you. It seemed like you weren't telling us something. Then we found this place, and my friend is pretty interested in Nethys, so he's been all salivating all over this place. And then some kinds of creatures attacked us, and then we got attacked by snakes so... I dunno, seems like a bit much to handle for one desert guy?" She shrugs helplessly and says, "So at least on my end, suspicion turned to concern. Maybe something was going on and you were worried about us getting in harm's way and we could help. What the heck is going on here?"
"Not to worry, Narks! My muscles are pretty incredible," says Sarala, giving a mighty flex. "Though I'm getting kind of anxious for a nap. I was up pretty early for my morning routine!" She looks down to her feet and says, "I wouldn't have minded a treasure trove, I guarantee you that, but spooky mist and corpse smells are fine too."
"I could have noticed that too," replies Sarala to Thurrios while she stows her temple sword, "If I wasn't busy murdering some snakes! Did I ever tell you how much I hate snakes?" She approaches the rear wall, putting her hands against it and starting to push. While she puts her musicle into it she continues, "Seriously, they're a garbage animal that deserves nothing but contempt. Why have legs when you can just be squirmy and disgusting? That's what snakes probably asked before they became a thing. If I were to give my opinion on creation itself, I would dock it some points for snakes. 'Snakes. Unoriginal design. Blight upon creation. Teeth too sharp. Eyes show a certain deadness in their soul. I would recommend if creation tries again, snakes be removed and replaced with more cucumbers. Cucumbers are successful at everything snakes are somewhat good at. Being long, green and STUPID. But cucumbers are useful in other ways.' In a choice between befriending a snake or letting Julius fall into a bottomless hole... I'd probably save Julius, but he'd owe me big time. Also, what's with their forked tongues? Is one tongue tip not enough? Are they that greedy with their taste? Probably, 'cause sometimes they eat way too much and get really fat in the middle!" She stops pushing, turns around and says, "Snakes." Then makes a show of giving an exaggerated thumbs down.
Sarala steps forward and climbs the wall at the corner, this time taking more care than usual. She ascends ten feet and then wall-crawls over top of the asp to land on the opposite side of it.
"Come on Narks, lets make a sandwich out of this thing, and you're the top bun! And it's... the meat I guess? I'll just imagine it's cucumbers though. I feel better about it that way."
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