Sigil

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: K13 -> I11 Action: Casting Minor Illusion Bonus Action: Bardic Inspiration (Kosara) Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Kosara!" Victoria screamed with disbelief. If she weren't holding one of her prized violins, Victoria would have facepalmed. In the chaos of the moment she might even have committed to something similar, were she positioned for it. But Victoria was a little better fortified for close combat than a pure spellcaster. A little. It was either brave or deadly foolish and she couldn't tell which, but it was the circumstance of the moment and they had to work with it. If she got herself flattened by the mismatched jumble of wererat parts, Victoria could at least keep her alive from a distance. Ever the versatile one, she had a spell for that. Marita was obviously better suited for thorough and divine healing, but she was also one of the minority of people potentially capable of standing in front of one of these creatures and not being turned into a fine, semi-gelatinous paste on the immediate, and thusly might have other things to handle.

At least Victoria had personal backup, if it came down to closing into melee. She had a bright, shiny, silvered sword and her Morty to give interference or assistance. Was it cheating? Probably. Dishonorable combat? Sure, if you believe in that sort of thing. But this wasn't a duel and stakes were more than honor were up in the air. Not that it really mattered to her so long as the results leaned to their victory and the Cecily, Lizbeth, Lea, and Daisy were safe. Maybe even the fisherman. He seemed like he was okay. Why he was insistent upon grabbing his fishing pole in the face of his own impending destruction was beyond Victoria's ability to guess, but it didn't matter much. If she felt so inclined, she could have her undead, porcine servant nudge it a little closer after they covered the distance. With Kosara now a viable target, she needed to move forward and act quickly to minimize their disadvantages. Morty had standing orders to accompany and bodyguard, so all she needed to do was advance and it would follow.

Then Marita happened. "...Jas damn it..." she muttered, powerlessly invoking the name of a deity with influence over magic, the dead, and law alike, as Marita's own godly invocation bore significant power - though only against her animated assistant. Morty was repulsed in the wake of this divinity, moving as far away as it could without bringing itself to harm. "And here I thought you were finally opening up to the little guy!" she uttered sarcastically in the Cleric's direction. But no, grand scheme of things, Victoria got it. It revealed a useful piece of the puzzle and prevented her from attempting spellwork with the same assumption that the Rat Abominations were undead. Because of her area of expertise, this did limit her effectiveness in this fight.

So Morty was out of this for a while. This also limited her effectiveness, unless she could find something else suitable for animation. There was no time to look for that now. Instead, Victoria took up the attitude of what a typical True Bard might do in in an adventuring group, and moved to assist her party in a more conventional manner. First, she moved to stand next to Marita, casting her a wry smile as the stepped into place. Her violin was rested upon the edge of the fountain in the move, to allow her hands better freedom - one to lay upon the hilt of her rapier and the other to gesture in the direction of the rat-thing next to Kosara. Her hand moved as to shape the air while Victoria whispered out melodic, timed notes; a song to herself but for a greater effect: The image of Constable Cavendish clarified into the air in front of the cage holding Lizbeth, like unfocused eyes righting themselves after being rubbed a bit too hard. It was most of him, anyway, covering the damage already done to the cage, disembodied and floating without his lower portions, waist-up with a hand held in a HALT gesture. Purely two-dimensional, but subject to scrutiny from the monster's point of view.

Now for their Celestial Warlock who intentionally put herself in harm's way. "You have the blood of Devils and favor of the Holy with you, Kosara! It is nothing before you! We've got you, girl!" A little support never hurt anyone.


@Remipa Awesome Kathryn is up next.
@rivaan Kosara now has a 1d6 Inspiration die. Yay!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Guard 1

Location: ??

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Given the lay of land and advantages forthcoming from the fog, conflicting light sources, soft cover, and the Wererat's own inate gifts of sneakiness, the the leather-clad Town Guard (turned wretched therianthrope) took the opportunity to lower its open profile considerably.

This might be the result of planning, as it was obvious that there an overall strategy to this setup. On the other hand, perhaps Kathryn's words had an impact after all. Rest assured that the Guard knows, and keeps any offensive action to itself for right now.

@Dragoknighte Marita is good to go for the round. Huzzah!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Opportunities were abound to get a swipe in as the twisted flesh of the abominations moved to perform their primary task, and swipes were had. Each fell heavily upon rodent-like grotesques who barely seemed to notice the attacks and resulting damage. Weapons sunk into stolen flesh, partly crushing it in places and penetrating in others with varying levels of effectiveness. One fact could be easily gleaned from this initial exchange of blows - the creatures were not even attempting to evade the attacks.

Meanwhile, the flaming pitch barrels which stood between Constable Cavendish gave some concealment, thanks to the conflicting levels of light and thick fog abound; this effect was magnified to the point of brilliantly blazing soft cover. The positions of the three members of the constabulary on the map represent where they were seen last, not necessarily where they are as of this point. Any guesses as to the nature of the fire flaring up or where the Constable and his Guards are located, or even the particulars of the large, rat-ish shaped creatures will require specific investigation or reflection on the party's part (which means rolls and actions, accordingly).

New Round

@Arty Fox Baronfjørd is good to kick off the new round. Roll them math rocks.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

X2

Location: I11 -> G14

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The various degrees of damage inflicted upon the creature did absolutely nothing to change its disposition, nor indeed even demonstrate a solitary trace of annoyance. Red eyes gleamed and flickered in the chaotic, encompassing glow of the many fires around them, and fists clenched into ham-sized bludgeons - still not indicative of an emotional response more than a basic reaction to environment and readying the most efficient action for the task to which it was ordered. With a speed unexpected from its lumbering form, it righted itself and pushed it legs up, regaining full, towering height.

The stitched-together beast grasped its hands into one huge shape, and swung this meaty thing like a horizontal pendulum at the most recent person to do it harm - Kathryn. A loud, hollow THWACK followed solid and painful connection with her armor, but the force of this blow penetrated too deeply for the mail or shield to be of much assistance.

It might have made another retaliatory strike, but a clear path to its original target had just opened up. The great rat-thing continued its lumbering path toward the nearest wooden cage and let another attack loose - this one near to destroying one of the thick, wooden beams which formed the enclosure. Lea, Daisy, one of the women of the Honey Barn as well as others within the cage screamed in absolute terror.

Kathryn has taken 13 points of bludgeoning damage.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cavendish

Location: C10

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Far be it for the good Constable to keep himself out of the fun generally, but this instance had him grinning a bit in anticipation of what was likely, in his mind, to occur in front of his eyes in the net minute or two. If he had a paper sack full of popped sorghum, he'd be munching on it right then. Then again, it is difficult to pick out a smile on the face of a hybrid form Wererat, which might just demonstrate the amount of glee he possessed at the time. Truly, there was something rattling about in the back of his skull; an idea formed but not quite realized. Yet.

At the same time, these people had the benefit of ranged attack magic. This was noted during their first encounter and was learned from, hence part of the reason to play about with the multiple light sources amid dense fog at night. Spoils darkvision as well as normal sight past a certain distance. And if you played with it just right...

The fire directly in front of Cavendish suddenly roared higher and brighter. The good news was that the field of combat was more brilliantly lit toward the northern section of the square. The bad news was that little to nothing could be spotted behind it. Even the reflective red eyes of the Myanthropes were encompassed by this sudden shift of light and dark. The change was heralded by a short but dramatic, chanting exclamation from the Constable. Once the flames obscured, he was quick to follow up with, "I wish you the best of luck with my new pets, interlopers. You might recognize pieces of them, depending upon how long you've been in town. I'll be back to scrape what's left of you in a bin when they're done." Laughter which bordered on the maniacal sounded from behind the flames.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

X1

Location: I10 -> I8 -> G7

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The creature did not beam with a light of intellect, nor even one of careful planning. However, it was big, strong, and dedicated to a single purpose as outlined by the one which gave it orders: Dismember the prisoners alive. A pause could be taken to do awful things to anyone trying to stop it, which looked like (for the most part) that curious Dragonborn with the glowy, semi-disembodied arms. As it turned out, this monster was capable of taking part in a little bit of both.

One event gave the sewn-together abomination something of a pause - or at least what might be considered a pause if it was sapient and mindful - was the sudden flareup of the pitch barrel. It averted its gaze for less than a half-second before resuming the gruesome work of wholesale slaughter which was its intended purpose. The astute observer might have noticed the same from the creature which had already found its way to the cage.

In any case, its red but passionless eyes locked with Baronfjord, and it threw a particularly devastating blow that resembled a sloppy haymaker. The attack hit the Monk with a brutal slam that might have been a LOT worse, had it not glanced off at a crucial moment. Nevertheless, with this attack out of the way, it resumed its primary order and stomped in the direction of the prisoners. It gave the party a berth as it plodded to the cage and launched a second, splintering slam upon the wooden enclosure. It took visible damage which surpassed the cosmetic. Denizens of this cage, which included but were not limited to Cecily and the fisherman, cried out in chilling alarm, the former shrinking back as much as possible against the onslaught and the latter still desperate to claim his pole.

Baronfjørd has taken 10 points of bludgeoning damage

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Guard 2

Location: ?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The sudden flare of the pitch barrel and subsequent magical change in quality of light, complete with ambient environmental difficulties did wonders to provide visual soft cover for this compromised Town Guard. To wit, nothing could be seen of his activities from the glaringly relative brightness of the makeshift arena. One could take a little comfort in the fact that a crossbow bolt did not fly, seeking a fleshy target from the general area of his last previously known location. The state of readiness, but not direct action, continued as far as anyone could tell on the other side of the fire.





@rivaan Kosara is good to go. Please tag me at the end of your post, so that I may set up the map and get the top of the round going. Thanks!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: K13 -> Action: Casting Shatter (10 dmg each) Bonus Action: Bardic Inspiration (Kathryn) Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Aw, you used his name!" exclaimed Victoria, her face a vision of faux doe-eyed appreciation while getting in a little, good-natured dig at Marita's expense. If ever there was a time to appear frivolous, or at least reckless, it would be while facing down a pair of eldritch abominations commanded by a Wererat Warlock while surrounded by fire. And the fact that she half-heartedly insinuated that the Law Cleric might be starting to get sweet on a lesser undead manifestation gave her an internal giggle. Not that she expected anyone to take the implication seriously. It was just funny to her.

Jocularity aside, the Bard was here for serious work, which she set about to with the utmost of dedication. Dedication to her craft placed her with a compulsion to perform, even in these circumstances, and so she did. Her rapier was quickly replaced with a violin bow, the instrument itself resting beneath her chin like it belonged there. A single shrill note issued from the movement of hair across string, amplified and given complexity by the body of the violin and the dexterous fingers of the Half-Elf playing. The note grew in intensity until it seemed to separate from Victoria's immediate area, echoing in a location behind the Abominations and becoming a violent force in the air. The radius of this circle of growing calamity found the creatures at its edge, positioned as to barely leave out Victoria's teammates. A sharp sound then issued, like the splintering of a great slab of ice, as cracks of damage formed instantaneously across the skin of those monstrous creatures bound to cause the prisoners harm.

Yes, she had risked a spell. But if the Guards were about to fire on someone, logic dictated that they attempt to target someone harder to hit, like a Bardy type who was difficult to target because of the other people in the way.

The single note continued, though without the color of evocative magic upon it. Instead, it transitioned into other notes, one building upon the other, and upon the other, until after the first few quick ones a song could be picked out. It was a trifle of a ditty she had picked up some long time back, not ordinarily useful in her work but perhaps with some merit now. It was titled, to those familiar with it, "Daughter of Arcanaple". Kathryn had mentioned that she was from there, and also looked ready to inflict something potentially very uncomfortable upon the bad guys. It made sense to give her a mote of Inspiration, as only her kind could do. Victoria began to away and step in line with the song, pacing a bit while music flowed freely from her.

Morty, to his continuing credit, kept to Victoria's heel, operating under the last standing order given to it.



@Remipa Awesome Kathryn is up next. And has a 1d6 Inspiration die. Huzzah!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Guard 1

Location: B9

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The first Guard wasted no time in shifting his form, mixing elements of rodent with his original Human form. The change originated with his master's, though the latter seemed to pour into his form with greater ease then the former. The shift into its hybrid form did not appear to affect worn clothing, armor, nor equipment, seeing as it was not an appreciable increase in bulk; nevertheless the Guard's ability to menace seemed to have gotten a boost, as well as its powers of perception.

This observational increase would come as a boon when it got around to the fray, but this was not quite yet to be. No, even as the uncertainty of the Guard's actions were before (tiny details of body language that remained even in this monstrous form), ground was held and the crossbow in hand loaded. Said weapon was readied as dull red eyes reflected firelight, darting about in apparent search of something or in wait of some cue to utilize the gifts of its martial training. Action Readied, the Wererat Guard bid its time, set to react to something as yet unrevealed.

@Dragoknighte Marita is up! Get ye to Clericing!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Sigil@Arty Fox

Initiative:

Baronfjørd (23)
Guard 1 (22)
Marita (21)
Victoria (20)
Kathryn (18)
X2 (15)
Cavendish (13)
X1 (12)
Guard 2 (11)
Kosara (6)

And this means that we have officially moved into initiative order! Yay! This also means that Baronfjørd is up first, so... Your move. The post can be as elaborate as you need or as simple as a decent paragraph. Remember to put your rolls in the open in our Discord OOC Lounge, and also please remember to tag the next person in line. You have 48 hours from this post to finish up. Aaaaand GO!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Sigil@Arty Fox

Ladies and gentlemen, theys and inters, onlookers and participants alike; welcome to Thunderdome! Yes friends and associates, we are rolling into the wonder and mystery of unknown opponents of formidable strength, against which you would be wise to employ sound tactics. yes, these are new additions are similar to something in the basic Monster's Manual, but per usual, do not assume that the stat block will align. (I seem to recall an incident of this from a previous fight here that led to some confusion.)

To summarize, we are now entering Initiative Order. Please make your rolls in our Discord OOC Lounge and tag me there. Once a rotation has been established, posting rules change. To remind, the 7 day rule is temporarily suspended. When your character is up in the rotation, you have 48 hours to post or you will be skipped. Your character will automatically take the Dodge action, and we will move on. If you are skipped twice you are removed from the RP. At the end of your post, TAG THE NEXT PERSON. This process will continue until, however it ends, we drop out of Initiative Order.

I will post our Initiative Order here in the OOC Tab after everyone has rolled and then we can get underway. Best of luck to you all, and remember, this IS a winnable battle, but there ARE consequences for inaction and/or failure. It's time to roll some dice.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Battle Map

What little of Cavendish which can be glimpsed from above the flames takes on an arrogant posture, complete with smug, knowing expression on his face. He snorts out a derisive laugh, this being the only attention he paid to Kosara's taunts. His voice flares once more with authoritative glee as he otherwise ignores the Tiefling and addresses the bearer of his hammer, though not exclusively. The Constable's speech carries to all present. "You are sadly mistaken. I was very clear in my letter. Not only are refusing the conditions, you are acting like disrespectful children. And like children, you shall be punished."

The bestial, reddish light reflected from the eyes of the guards with Cavendish made lateral movements toward each other, as if their owners shared a glance between themselves. Their already indistinct forms stepped back a foot or two into further obscurity, and while crossbows were raised, a touch of nervous uncertainty played about their collective movements.

"NOW," boomed the Constable, his voice unnaturally augmented to carry far and assault the ears of those in close proximity, "I shall show you what the MY Option B entails!" A hollow, syrupy clatter sounded from behind the party as one of the flaming pitch barrels upended, spilling its contents in an arcing path across the thoroughfare the party had just crossed. Cavendish's features contorted and dissolved into the red eyes and coarse fur, teeth elongating into something rodentlike yet dire and monstrous, his face pushing itself out into a wire-whiskered snout. Wiry hands gripped a vicious looking shortsword, which he now pointed directly down the center of the square, not in a threatening manner at anyone, but oddly toward the murky and fire-reflective surface of the fountain. "The culmination of our work in this depressing hole of a worthless township! RISE! RISE AND DISMEMBER THE PRISONERS ALIVE! DESTROY ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT TRIES TO STOP YOU!"

Screams erupt from the cages as voices once silenced by shock or fear break open in utter, discordant terror surpassing that which could have been inflicted by a mere lycanthropic transformation in their presence. From the cage opposite of the one holding Cecily and the fisherman, the familiar voices of Lea and Daisy from the public house (among a handful of others) join the horrific chorus. Some begin babbling incoherently, weeping and throwing themselves against their cages on the side opposite of the one facing the square. The fisherman himself continues, now frantically, to reach his pole just out of reach through the his cage, more fervently yelling, "G'mornin'!"

The reason for their hysteria is obvious:

Two great beasts rose from the now fetid water of the fountain; creatures of corded muscle and sinew built from close but mismatched pieces, stitched together with waxy strings. The components which comprise their physicality look to have come from the corpses of many massive anthropomorphized rodents; humanoid rat pieces fused together with magic and crude sutures to form a grisly, musclebound, grotesque creature with sharpened, rat-like teeth, dripping with water as they place gnarled, taloned feet upon the edge of the fountain en route to their intended targets.

Roll for initiative.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Exterior B&B -> Town Center Action: Casting Minor Illusion Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

In solid truth, Victoria would have greatly preferred stealth. Part of a grand performance was making a grand entrance, after all. Or a memorable one, at least. Even for those wishing to rush in before their antagonists could properly raise defenses and overwhelm (which Victoria considered a fine tactic as she was not great in prolonged hostilities), arriving unnoticed was, objectively, preferable. But here they were, embarking upon what might very well have been a fool's errand, led by a dancing Tiefling who left a trail of arcane sparks in her wake.

"In for a penny," she mumbled, shouldering her violin and bringing its bow up to replace her sword. If surprised with something that required her defense, this still left her able to cast a spell. Being a Bard had its benefits. Besides, she had a song to finish. She shrugged and summoned up a wisp of arcane power as bow met strings, a single note cascading into several as the illusory sounds of rhythmic accompaniment complemented the strength and melody of her preferred instrument.

As she fell into graceful, dexterous step, dancing with flowing footwork in the direction of their coming conflict, Victoria let the violin pause, allowing dulcet lyrics to replace with their own melody. She did, after all, have that song to finish:

"Only a sword in our hand but
We enter the lion's den;
We're not waiting for a war -
We bring the war to them."

The violin resumed, its notes precisely building with rising action before a sudden cut and the emphasis of a last lyric:

"We bring the war to them."

All the while, Morty kept to her heel, looking especially animated and even rather optmistic for a dead swine, dutifully bound to its bardic mistress. Remarkably, nothing sought their demise on their walk to the town square. The remaining instrumental portion of the song grew and came to a dramatic finish, shortly before the fog was parted by pitch barrel fires and the sudden openness of their destination.

The expectation coming into this was battle, and as Victoria was not the first choice of front liner unless the situation was a touch non-standard, the Bard kept sharp eyes about her, listening to the Constable speak. She mentally prepared to fit the jigsawed pieces that she and her animated companion represented into the party's overall puzzle that was to be this skirmish.