April 29, 2017
I've noticed a tendency in my previous posts to detail out the combats, but without much personal information about the characters. I'm making a change to the style of these posts that I hope will make them more entertaining to read. I'll be focusing on the viewpoint of my character, Asami the wizard. Sometimes Asami won't be able to see what's happening to the other player-characters. I hope this won't make it seem like no one else is doing anything. That certainly isn't true.
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From her vantage on the stairs Asami could only see a small
portion of what was happening in the room at the top. Irabeth was standing in
front of her near the head of the staircase. She could glimpse a little of
Jiro and several of the mongrelfolk who had accompanied them, and she could see Runa’s head above the heads of the cultists who had emerged
from side rooms to attack her. Of Aegron and Zosta she could see nothing at all.
Suddenly more people entered the main room from side doors,
and Asami saw Runa fall, vanishing behind the swarm of cultists. Asami raised
her wand, directing two missiles from it at one cultist near where Runa had
fallen, and a third missile at another figure standing near her first target. A
wave of energy spread from where Jiro stood, which Asami recognized as his
healing hex. Then a figure appeared in the midst of the cultists, standing over
what Asami assumed must be Runa’s prone form. It was a white-furred creature
that looked like Jiro’s spirit animal Bohgong, but it was much larger than the
diminutive monkey. The unusually large monkey also appeared blurred. Asami saw
the giant-sized Bohgong lift Runa off the floor and then leap out of sight
toward another room that lay above the stairs and behind Asami’s current
location.
Relieved that Runa had been taken to a safer place, Asami
sent more missiles from her wand at a cultist who stood directly in front of
Jiro. Just after she did this another figure appeared between Jiro and the
cultist. It was a ghostly form dressed in the style of apparel common in Tian
Xia, which led her to assume that Jiro must have summoned it – or perhaps Bohgong
had, as Asami suspected there was more to the white monkey than a mere spirit
animal. This spirit guardian standing before Jiro did not bear any offensive weapon, but used its staff to
block attacks by the cultists that were aimed at Jiro.
Asami did not know what was happening to most of her comrades at this point,
as she could only see Jiro and several of the mongrelfolk. Irabeth had run up the stairs and disappeared into the other room. Asami climbed up to the
top of the staircase but still could not see anyone else. The rest of her
friends were behind her on the other side of a wall as best she could surmise. Because Jiro and his spirit guardian were facing a
large number of cultists, Asami pointed her wooden sword at several cultists in
the corner of the room she faced and a wave of energy in the colors of autumn
leaves spread out from the sword’s point. She had targeted four enemies, but
the magic affected only one, the other three managing to resist its power. The
fourth cultist’s eyes rolled up and he slumped to the floor.
Asami heard Irabeth shouting fiercely from the other room in
the language of the orcs, which Asami was not able to translate. She shifted
around the corner behind Jiro to see what was happening in the next room. Her
gaze immediately fell on Runa, who was on her feet but did not look well. Runa
appeared to have withdrawn from the demonic goat-horned creatures that
Irabeth was fighting in order to heal herself. Asami stepped up behind Runa,
laying her hand on Runa’s shoulder, and said in a low voice, “Accept the magic,” into Runa’s
ear. Runa nodded slightly in acknowledgement. Asami held the flat of her wooden
blade toward Runa and moved it from Runa’s head to her feet as she murmured the
words of the spell. An insubstantial shape of green energy formed around Runa,
surrounding her completely at a foot’s length from her body. The energy took
the shape of a sturdy tree. It would protect her from the attacks of evil creatures, and creatures summoned to this place by magic would not be able to approach her. When the spell was complete, Asami took a potion
vial from her pouch and handed it to Runa, telling her, “Drink this.” It was
the strongest curative potion she had in her possession, and Runa needed it far
more than she did.
Now that she had entered the second room, Asami could see
that Aegron and Zosta were also there, at the opposite end of the chamber. She watched over Runa’s shoulder as
Zosta tripped one of the goat-horned beings and knocked it to the floor. A
moment later the creature got back on its feet and stepped backward through
another doorway. Zosta followed it and it attempted to gore her with its horns.
A second creature of the same kind was engaged with Irabeth and Aegron, who was
using his ranseur to fight it. Runa and Irabeth both turned to look toward the
wall to Asami’s left. Asami sensed that they had seen something, but before she
could get a glimpse of it, the entire room was plunged into impenetrable blackness.
Asami heard the sound of bowstrings twanging, and something wet spattered the
floor nearby and Runa made a small exclamation of disgust. Then there was the
sound of a door closing from the opposite end of the room where Zosta and her
opponent had been. Kirara could see no more in the darkness than Asami could, but the cat poked her head out of Asami's pack and whispered in Asami's ear, "Smell no enemies near."
Behind Asami, Jiro said, “I’ll try to dispel the darkness.”
She waited as he recited the words of the spell, but when he finished nothing
happened. Asami felt slightly foolish that she hadn’t thought to do so first.
She spoke the spell herself, gesturing with her sword to encompass the room
that she couldn’t see. As she pronounced the last syllable, the darkness
vanished and the room was visible once more. But she hardly had time to draw a
breath before the room went black a second time! She heard a sound like
something spitting and felt the burn of acid on her exposed skin. A large shape
approached, causing Kirara to hiss fearfully, and then something bit her painfully in the arm.
Asami heard the sound something being dropped on the floor
followed by the metallic grating of a sword being drawn from its sheath and
guessed that it must be Runa, as Irabeth was already wielding her longsword and
Aegron did not customarily use a sword. Behind her there was a rustling as Jiro
moved, and she heard him murmuring. Light suffused the room, driving away the
unnatural darkness. Jiro held up his lantern on the end of its pole. The
lantern’s magical, never-ending illumination had overcome the darkness. In its
glow Asami could see that in the room with her and her companions were two
creatures that resembled flies but were as large as men and wore man-like
faces. Asami raised her wand. Three missiles from the wand slew one of the
fly-like monsters. Aegron killed the second one. But there was a third
fly-creature in a narrow hallway that led off from the left side of the room,
and this spat on Irabeth, Runa, and Aegron. One of the goat-horned creatures
was also still in the room, and it used its halberd to slash past Irabeth, aiming
at Aegron. Irabeth thrust her sword into the creature and it dropped.
Jiro called out to Bohgong to seek Zosta, who was nowhere in
sight. Asami moved to the end of the small corridor and stroked her sword,
drawing green lightning from the wooden blade. The lightning shot down the
hallway at the third fly-monster and another of the horned demons that stood
behind it. But to her disappointment both creatures appeared unaffected by the
lightning. Runa put a hand on Irabeth, who seemed unsteady, and murmured a
prayer to Iomedae to heal the paladin’s wounds. Irabeth was still weak and
withdrew from the area where she might be threatened by the demonic creatures’
attacks. Runa handed her a potion and Jiro used one of his hexes to provide her
further relief from her injuries. Asami pointed her wand at one of the demons
that remained in the room, but the tiny missiles of magical force bounced off
its hide.
Zosta emerged from a room at the far end of the chamber,
tripped another horned demon, then slashed it with her bladed gauntlets.
Several of the mongrelfolk archers, who had been busy eliminating the last of
the cultists in the other room, now aimed their bows at the fly-thing and
brought it down. Aegron charged past where it had hovered to get to the demon
in the hallway. It was close enough to where Asami stood that she could stab at
it with her spear, but her blow failed to connect. Then Aegron broght his
greataxe down on it and nearly cleaved it in two. After it died it vanished in
the manner of a creature that had been summoned from another plane. There were
no other cultists or creatures sharing the space with the attacking force from
the Eagle's Watch.
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