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Hearing no objection to her proposal, Lidia kneels down to give her cat a little rough scruffing under the chin and says a silent goodbye, then goes to the wall and shinnies quickly up one of the poles to the top. From there she looks left and right before throwing up a leg, slipping over the top, and dropping down into the water of the moat.
From there she swims underwater to the grate and looks it over quickly before coming up silently for air. At this point she pulls out the hammer, realizing that she'd never actually talked to Ulretha about how to use its powers. But bearing in mind her lessons about the wands, she begins simply communing with the weapon, willing it to do what she wants.
As Lidia feels herself growing, she finds herself grinning a bit drunkenly at her newfound power and size. She turns to the grate and gives it one good yank before starting to belt it with the magic hammer.
While the others are gone, Ben sets himself the task of waterproofing his gear. A soggy bedroll is no fun. After that he waits for a sign to make the dive, though getting the animals to dive an enter is going to be a real chore.
"What do you think, Ulretha, can you get your pack to swim underwater? Maybe we will have to rig up a harness and drag them under. Or maybe we will have to go over the top in spite of all the work put into breaking the grate."
Thyste tags along, arrow resting on the string as she keeps an eye out.
It's nice to see the orcs are more concerned with important things, like a flood. A stealthy wildwoman and a tiny fox are hardly worth noticing!
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Ulretha looks at the Pack, who are barely paying attention to what's going on. Onnikka is watching the orcs with an apparent mixture of wariness and hunger. Fazingar is sitting next to Ulretha alternately looking up at him and out where the gnoll is looking. Crezobill is scratching his ear in a way that suggests he might remove it in the process.
"Not sure, honestly. It's a hard concept to convey. Most animals that don't do it all the time aren't really interested in fully submerging themselves and I don't know if they'll follow.
"And since I'm being honest, I'm much more worried about getting myself across than getting them under the water. I've never seen much need to learn to swim and my skills are not going to be helped by wearing this armor and carrying this sword."
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Lidia whispers to Thyste.
"Hey, sneak back over and tell them if they need help getting their animals ferried over the moat, I can help carry them over. When I'm this big I can pretty much walk the moat back and forth."
"And if they want, I can come back over and help pull down a few logs of that palisade. But that will likely draw attention, so I'd rather not."
"Anything you say, giant lady!"
Thyste slips over the wall, back to the party.
"Hey nerds. So, Lidia says she can carry people if any of you are poor swimmers. It occurs to us that the closest we've come to waterfaring was that time Ulretha fell overboard."
When he sees the all clear sign Ben heads towards the grated area with Little Buddy in tow. When he gets to the area he uses an enlarge person ability, grabs the dinosaur and attempts to shove him through the aperture, not seeing a better plan.
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"It's not very stealthy, but it's our best option," Ulretha says.
When Lidia comes back, he holds up his arms like a toddler for her to pick him up.
He looks down at the water warily when they're halfway across.
"Uh...I just want you to know...if I've ever offended you, I am completely and utterly sorry. Has anyone told you how smart and pretty and strong you are, lately?"
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"Ugh, what a remarkable *smell* we've discovered!"
"Hey, what's this?" says Lidia, as she spots the skeleton in the depths of the latrine water. "Looks like we aren't the first people to venture here." She dives under for a closer look, and comes back up with a signet ring. "Probably the general. Saw things were going bad and tried to swim out by the toilet." She puts the ring on then holds her hand out to look at it.
"Either that or a giant flushed him," says Thyste, nice and disgusted.
"Wish we'd flooded this with clean water..."
"Reminds me of the compost heap we used to keep while I was in training. It was my job to tend it. anyone got a spell for this?"
Little Buddy sniffs at it and takes a bite. he seems to like it.
”And try to do it without staring,” she adds.
Ben chuckles at Thyste's suggestion. Though he had not intended to look, her having said it, it was suddenly a temptation, though Ben remains polite even if he is strongly suspicious the little lady would not mind.
Funny how the mind works!
"Up you go!"
Ben also gives detect magic and detect poison a try after Thyste is up. Just in case.
Thyste keeps her ears low as she peers over the lid, wondering why on Golarion she's not... anywhere else right now.
"If you want me to bash this open, you might want to pass me that hammer."
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The Pack is also tempted by the treats. But it is Lidia's dumper diving that really tests Ulretha's intestinal fortitude.
"I didn't know you liked jewelry that much," he comments.
Thyste didn't say anything to him about not staring, so he does.
Although, to be fair, she's where all the action is at the moment, too. If anything was going to attack them from out of the filth on the floor, it probably already would have and he's wary about the potential lunar eclipse above that would mean the impending addition of more filth.
"Bash what open? You thinking we won't fit through the hole? Maybe the seat comes off?"
"Thinking we won't fit through the-- Ben, what kind of taverns do you go to? You see a lot of toilets big enough to squeeze through with your armor on and everything, big guy? If so, remind me not to let you recommend the next inn we stay at. Any toilet big enough for you to wiggle up into is serving patrons big enough to gobble you up."
"So yeah, I'm gonna give it a few whacks with the fancy Hammer of Plus Five Smashy-Smashy and bust it open!"
Thyste braces herself and lowers her spear for Kioshi to pull himself up, figuring him to be the lightest, and then Lidia. She leaves them to help with the others, and surveys the area.
"Does anyone else feel like they're never gonna be clean again?"
Ben raises his hand.
"Kioshi, please tell me you have a cleaning spell ready to go?"
Ben readies the makeshift harness he used on Little Buddy to lift him out and then gives him a treat. Something that smells better than what he just ate.
"I feel like I asked him a while back and he said he wasn't that kind of witch," grumbles Thyste.
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"I didn't know you liked jewelry that much," he comments.
Lidia's slight shrug momentarily lifts her shoulders above the surface of the muculent ooze she's standing in. "What? He wasn't using it any more." she grouses. "It's not like the water is grosser down deeper."
Once she climbs out of the toilet, she takes a moment to pull off her boots and dump out the filthy water, and wrings her hair out as best she can. She takes back the hammer from Thyste and helps haul the animals out of the loo.
"This place doesn't look like it was built by orcs." she says, noting the tiles.
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Thyste braces herself and lowers her spear for Kioshi to pull himself up, figuring him to be the lightest, and then Lidia. She leaves them to help with the others, and surveys the area.
"Does anyone else feel like they're never gonna be clean again?"
Kioshi is disgusted but keeps it to himself.
“I hope this will not be how the world remembers me when they find me crushed by giant and smelling like sh**t!“
He casts detect magic and looks around.
Ben shrugs and replies, looking around, "They usually don't. Orcs don't usually build things. They much prefer to let other do so and either take it from them or destroy it and live off the loot. Of course the end result is the same. Crude, but effective, or they would all be dead."
Not seeing Kioshi volunteer a cleaning spell, Ben follows Lidia's example and tries to clean himself as well as possible.
"Kioshi, CAN you memorize a spell that cleans us? Tomorrow, maybe, if not today? If we have to stay like this things are going to get pretty bad, not to mention that it is going to be dang hard to sneak around smelling like this. I thought all wizards could do that?"
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"Point taken," Ulretha replies to Lidia with a nod.
"At least none of you have fur," he comments. Gnolls have a fondness for filth, or at least a tolerance but enjoying being smelly so that things can't catch your true scent and too lazy to clean up after yourself is a far cry from wading through other creature's waste.
"I knew we should have charged the gate. " he clamps his mouth tightly closed before any further declarations can escape him.
"At least none of you have fur," he comments.
Thyste looks at him quizzically, gesturing toward her only-a-little-bit-poopy ears and her definitely-poopy, once-beautiful fox tail... not to mention her long, blonde hair.
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"Come on, let's get out of here. It's not like smelling bad is going to make us stand out all that much in a fort full of ogres and orcs anyway. We can tidy up later." says Lidia as she pulls her boots back on and gets her bow and quiver ready for action. She moves to the door and listens.
"Agreed. Staying here is doing us no good."
Ben heads to the double doors and cracks them from a look outside (into K29).
Thyste, spear and shield in-hand, hmms as she listens.
"I think they want to get in here, but they're too tall," she explains. "If we leave that way, we'll have to fight."
"I say we go for it. Prep some spells and surprise them in a rush. Hopefully we can surround them before they know what hit them."
"Yea, like Thyste said they are arguing about breaking the ceiling because it is too low for them. Good thing is that they would not think twice about the 'throne' being dismantled. Bad news is that giant bodies are hard to miss, so if we do get into a fight they will know we are around. But we age going to have to deal with that anyway. One more thing, they mentioned that Grenseldek would be mad so maybe she is above us."
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Ben enlarges himself and debates within himself who he should cast his strength spell on.