Sigil

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Laurent Farmland Action: Casting Healing Word, Skills (Nature, Survival) Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

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

As the last Ankheg fell, Victoria cast her gaze back around the farmer's field-turned-battleground to make sure there wasn't another one (or two) approaching their location. Of course, from what little she knew about Ankhegs they would rather snatch one up from underneath the ground rather than approach in the open. Then a sobering thought hit her - from what little she knew about Ankhegs, they shouldn't be active right now. They should be sleeping off the colder weather and reemerge ravenous for fresh meat with the coming of springtime.

The revelation was concerning, as it made Victoria's mind go through a waterfall of possible cause-and-effect scenarios. But in the end, everything was just a jumble of maybes and half-invented conjecture. The more important issue of the moment was that streak of acid that seared the skin of her arm from thirty feet (thirty godsforsaken feet) away. A few years ago this would have had her rolling on the ground in agony, unable to do anything through the blinding pain. But she had been through much since then, and this was mostly an annoyance. Lucky for Victoria, she had a quick way to fix it. She allowed her mind to focus on the flow of the world around her, isolating a string of the Weave of arcane energy. She began to hum softly with it, changing the pitch slightly to harmonize with it, bringing about the single syllable effect of magic with reversed the damage on her flesh. When her skin finished knitting, the Bard kept the note going out of the sheer joy of doing so, and strode in the direction of her one and only kill.

Harvesting the Ankheg's carapace was her goal now. Absently, she drew her dagger - a favorite piece of sharpened steel of hers which had been with her since the beginning of her adventuring career; in and of itself without intrinsic value past its reliable craftsmanship but quite serviceable at a tavern table, a work area, or a closeup fight in equal amounts - and approached the recently dead creature. Its corpse, or the parts of it she wanted, was almost fully intact. She could work with this. Just before she committed herself to the task, she turned around to the others who were injured in the fight, inquiring, "Let me know if any of you require supplemental healing. I'm no medician, but I have minor ability to knit wounds and a little more magical presence left to potentially do so." It was probably lucky that they had Kosara on the team for this purpose; her ability to heal far outpaced Victoria's own.

When the steel first parted chitin from more fleshy binding within the Ankheg, Victoria was amazed at how readily it came apart, like the differing densities of once-living material gave a sort of channel to pass the blade through. There were a few things she wished to procure from this creature. One of them, for the rest of the party if nothing else, was the meat. But first, to preserve this meat properly, she had to remove the larger parts of the carapace intact. But before that, there was a little matter of the...

"Gods damn it all!" hissed Victoria. She had opened a slice in the creature's belly where the carapace was weaker and inserted her dagger farther than she had initially intended. The result was a split severance from which acrid ichor spilled in one moderately proportioned gush. The liquid connected with the trampled chaff upon upturned soil with a hiss, and a small amount of black smoke. It could not be saved, regrettably. But the rest of it was safe and it was now an easier harvest.

Before securing the larger sections of good meat from the beast, Victoria saw to its carapace. She was careful to remove the larger and tougher sections intact and split along seams, as it were, to keep any amount of reworking minimal. The segmented, overlapping pieces were given careful attention, with connective tissues sliced through with slow deliberation. Victoria piled like with like and, with a level of outdoorsy organization that might have been surprising from a self-proclaimed cosmopolitan socialite, set to harvesting a respectable amount of chitin from the downed creature. She was, as it turned out, more cleanly successful at this endeavor than retrieving the relatively suppler meat underneath. It looked quite like she had done this exact task before.

Kosara's query as to the nature of the Ankheg's sudden bout of fear left Victoria puzzled. "That wasn't one of your new tricks, Kosara, dear?" asked Victoria, wiping her forehead with the back of her sleeve. She spared a glance back at the L'Rose wagon wagon and gave its occupants a warm, meaningful smile. To the best of Victoria's initial ability to reason, she had figured that the sparky Tiefling had prevented the monster's attack against their hosts with some technique or magic unknown to her. The fact that Kosara was not the source of this reaction gave Victoria a sense of curiosity. Not enough to cease her labors, however.

Instead, the Bard focused her thoughts on her necromatic beast of burden, Morty. Perhaps she might need its assistance, and that of her errand cart, before this day was out. Her smoky, porcine companion reacted to the mental summons, coming to observable animation for its mistress. Victoria checked the position of the sun in the sky, then looked back to Cecily and Lizbeth. She was hoping to gauge any level of impatience they might have with this detour, as to intuit any impact it would have on getting to the Vineyard in a timely manner. In the end, no one raised a fuss so she just kept working.

As she worked, the vibrant Half-Elf regarded the long dagger in her hand. "Always use your own blade," was the popular, roguish maxim that Victoria's father had taught her, and were indeed the very words repeated when the man gifted her this item. Even if it was a little morbid (considering his former occupation), he had said that one always needed a good knife for any number of occasions and this particular one was good for every single one of them. The look in his eyes was darkly nostalgic and reminded Victoria of the stories told about her family prior to her birth. Some were more flattering than others.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

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

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

Weather: Partly cloudy, cold. Winds stir the grass and pushed-over grain stalks.

Time: Afternoon, still. The battle didn't take a whole lot of time, though the time dilation of combat may make it seem like longer.

Ambience: Two of the wagons stood facing back the way they had entered the area, manned by Mosswater & Co. and the L'Roses, respectively. The party's wagon remains as it was. Highlighted against the side of the hill are the curiously calm(ish) beasts of burden who were still attached to the wagons. There was a bit of nervous movement, but nothing that gave extreme concern of a runaway wagon. The field itself lay slightly more trampled than before, but now littered with the forms of three dead Ankhegs. The dead stillness returned to the land, punctuated by the odd, chilling wind.

*****

Victory!

Barbal and Tarace broke the shocked silence with approving applause, though admittedly started by Tarace, who was also the more enthusiastic of the two. The gruffer Barbal climbed down from his place at the reins and moved a little closer to the fence, most likely to get a better look at the aftermath. "Good show; good show indeed!" proclaimed Tarace, continuing, "That was excellently done!"

In contrast, Barbal Mosswater gave a rather monotone piece of advice, "Might've used turpentine. Mmm, pine. Messes with their heads some." He gave an accepting nod, relenting in a small way, "Fine sight, though. I shall tell Monsieur Laurent the tale in full. Fine sight, yes."

The L'Rose wagon remained quiet to begin with. Cecily stared over her young niece, apparently examining her to make sure she was truly alright. A shocked expression had her features just as much as concern for the girl; parental even if she was not her actual child. Oddly, Lizbeth's expression appeared strangely neutral. Her face showed an almost colorless pallor with darker notes beneath her eyes as if she hadn't slept well in days, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. Slowly, her color returned and she found within herself the wherewithal to speak. Cheerfully, even. "That was amazing! With the hammer, and the big arms, and that magic! And that one that just fell over after she sang at it! Wow, that's just... You people really are heroes!"

This was enough to break Cecily from her immediate worry, who added a little calmer, "Oh, and did you just see how Mademoiselle Kosara tried to ride it like an unbroken horse? Would you like to do that, Lizbeth? Ride an Ankheg into town and scare our vendors?"

The answer was an immediate, childlike, "Ew. No, Ceecee. But it looked kind of fun."

The Ankhegs that were taken down with physical damage gave the occasional twitch, slowing to lazy, inelegant motions over a couple of minutes before settling into utter stillness. The one which saw its end by psychic and necrotic damage remained fully inert, as if the formerly vital nervous system simply switched itself off, even to involuntary pulses.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

And here we are, our characters standing in a gore-spattered field of triumph. The good news is that they've figured out what's been going on with Mssr. Laurent's sheep. The bad news is that one can never be sure if you got them all. Time has a way of telling these things, and hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. When and/or if another session of sheep slaughter comes around, you'll know.

But those are depressing thoughts. Victory is at hand! Huzzah! Of course, even victory seems to come with a series of questions attached when you live thenlife of an Adventurer, and this is no exception. Something does seem a little bit off here.

In any case, we are out of Initiative order and back into Narrative. Standard rules apply for posting moving forward, and feel free to have your characters move/act independently (within reason). There is still a bit of traveling necessary before you get to the Vineyard, but luckily there is daylight left in which to do so.

Oh yes, and one of those feelings that something is off? Roll me a Nature check in the Discord and tag me. Best of luck!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

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

Battle Map

And onward to Round 3. Let's see what we're working with:

X1 is dead. The last thing that went through its mind, prior to expiration, was Kathryn's hammer.

X2 is also dead. Victoria wracked up enough psychic damage to override its vitality with the world's worst headache.

X3 has been hurt and is still suffering from the Frightened condition.

As we do not have any changes in the map aside from locations and no additional issues have been raised, I'm skipping an OOC post. Up next is @Arty Fox, as Baronfjørd gets to open up:

Round 3

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

Ankheg (X3)

Location: M12

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

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

The Ankheg's want for fresh meat had taken a backseat to a firm and far reaching desire to not have an angry Tiefling on its back, nor a really, really big woman continue to assault it with a block of enchanted metal on a stick. Even more than this, however, was the intense gnawing fear which gripped its guts with icy claws and threatened to yank them out at any given moment. This was not a tenable situation by any means, and it had to escape. The deeply rooted instinct to flee had taken over, and it wasn't going to get very far above ground. Below the surface there was greater protection. In the dark, it could still navigate. And it could scrape off its unwanted rider. It might have simply rolled over to crush the young woman mounting it, and indeed would have were it just the two of them. But the Ankheg instinctively knew that it may open itself to further attack from the other enemies around it. This was for the best.

It first lashed out at Kathryn, hoping to injure the new threat to its safety. Between the effects of its frightened condition and the woman on its back who made the free movement of all of its limbs somewhat more difficult, this was not an easy task to perform. The impact of mandible and claw upon armor was significant, just not enough to cause any pressing damage to Kathryn. So it proceeded to do what it did best: DIG.

Its other appendages began moving earth away from itself; still with profound difficulty as its main dirt-movers were occupied with other things, but if it could hang tough for a little bit longer, it could regain the upper hand in this fight and get a much more advantageous position. Or just escape. Either way, in one short moment the Ankheg managed to burrow backwards enough so that only two thirds of its abdomen remained above ground. It was raised in a defensive posture, with fresh ichor glistening about its mouthparts as if readying one last gambit for success.

NOTE: Creature is Frightened.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 30 / 33 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Laurent Farmland, J8 Action: Casting Dissonant Whispers at X2 Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

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

The burn was unpleasant, but nothing like what Kathryn must have been going through. Armor or not, she took that acid point blank and Victoria's growing irritation at the more minor injury upon her person wasn't comparable. Still, she would have to get her clothing repaired - again - and she really liked this jacket. A magic-tinged syllable or two from her would be enough to soothe her acid-damaged flesh, and if she was lucky it wouldn't even leave a scar. Well, it was coin toss, possibly. Acid and fire didn't always leave without a trace, in Victoria's experience. Maybe it was because she wasn't exactly a dedicated healer. Her nature was, with a few notable exceptions, to dabble. And with their present situation being in the middle of a battle against really big bugs, she needed to utilize one those notable exceptions.

The Ankheg nearest Kosara was curiously in a state of dysfunction, and curiouser still had the pale Tiefling astride it. Not quite as curious was were the actions of Kathryn, who just got finished battering one of the Ankhegs to death and moved on Kosara's impromptu mount. Also, she was still frigging huge. The situation looked fairly well handled; or at least enough that Victoria felt comfortable ignoring (what she really hoped was) a suggestion from Baronfjord to give Kosara assistance. On the other hand, the Monk was within mandible distance of his own chitinous foe and it was still sluggish from her earlier psychic and necrotic assaults, not to mention the very expert holes left in the front of its carapace by Baronfjord's shortsword. It looked like all it needed was one more solid push before it tumbled off the precipice of mortality, and that was a service that Victoria was pleased to provide.

Victoria interposed this recent incarnation of Morty between herself and the fight going on between Kat, Kosara, and the Ankheg to the south of her. Then bright, crystal blue eyes shot back at the Ankheg she had damaged just a moment before. Shadow painted her face as she gathered music within her thoughts and willed it to manifest, the blackness surrounding her eyes and spilling downward like an expression of necrotic grief. It made the contrast of her eyes seem even brighter, perhaps a bit colder, as she began to whisper. Echoes of voices which were not hers joined, but quietly. So quietly as to make one believe they were imagining it, mishearing, experiencing something caught in the wind.

But the Ankheg heard them. It heard everything. It couldn't not hear them, even if it lacked the capacity to understand. Words, whispers, verbal jabs persisted for what seemed like longer than the small moment it was afflicted by the cacophony of voices crawling around the inside of its psyche, invading its mind, stressing it from within until thought, even primitive insect survival thought brought it agony. The Ankheg took two faltering steps backwards before albuminous blood leaked from behind its eyes and it collapsed upon the soft earth. It shuddered sickeningly and breathed its last.

Victoria's mouth curved upward on one side, the start to a satisfied smile which she held back from fully forming. She didn't get the kill shot very often and she had plans for the carcass. As many of them as possible, point of fact.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

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

Battle Map

So let's recap.

X1 isn't in the best of shape, presently damaged and Restrained by Kathryn "I'm not really a Giant" Pyke, rather ironically using Rune Knight abilities. So there's that.

X2 is likewise not in the best of shape, thanks to a little stabbity-stab action from Baronfjord combined with some psychic and necrotic assistance from Victoria. The beast seems rather dejected about the whole thing.

X3 is physically undamaged, but is presently suffering from the Frightened condition, rather unexpectedly.

Anyway, best of luck. It's time for...

Round 2

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

Initiative:

Baronfjørd (23)
Kathryn (19)
Kosara (17)
X1 (16)
Victoria (13)
X2 (8)
X3 (1)

Congratulations for surviving the rigors of one entire round of fighting (alleged) Ankhegs! Huzzah! It's just so gosh darn exciting I could soil by finest of manly undergarb! But let's look forward, shall we? There's a Round Two to suffer through, and not all of the tricks have been pulled yet, by either side I'd wager.

SO! A couple of things - I have altered the map juuust a hair to account for the large size of the Ankhegs and the new, large size of Kathryn. For a reliable accounting in the headers, I am labeling their location as the upper-left square that they occupy. If this sounds a little weird, just compare what I'm listing to their place on the battlemap and it should be apparent. To wit, when Kathryn's header calls for a location, please use the above format for as long as she's Large.

Remember to put your rolls in the open in our Discord OOC Lounge, and tag the next person in line at the end of your IC post. Then your 48 hour timer begins. So once again, Baronfjørd - you're up. Go be a hitter.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

Ankheg (X2)

Location: F10

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

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

The fate of this creature, now stabbed a couple of times and psychically assaulted, not to mention its well-being chipped away by spreading necrosis from an unknown (to it) source, it not an extraordinarily pleasant one. Not quite at the level of mortal desperation as its companion, which was presently held down by fire chains, it nonetheless wished to press the issue for meat. The Ankheg didn't remember eating a bipedal reptile before, and this new potential source of meat intrigued its insect-brain. Be it at disadvantage, it attempted to latch onto the Dragonborn Monk and draw it closer to its corrosive mandibles.

Unfortunately, everything had taken a toll on the creature. Neither decent slash nor passable grapple was to be had, and it was left with no alternatives but to move away, or press the fight. It was still hungry.

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

Ankheg (X3)

Location: M14 -> M10 -> M12

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

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

This Ankheg sensed much of what was going on around it, be it not due to sharp eyesight as much as a sense of reading vibrations from the ground around it. Even if it wasn't as effective as its antennae, it could stil tell that there were things, larger and slower things which might not fight back quite as hard - just outside of the loose soil of the field. If it were able to catch a clear look, it would have known that it was targeting one of the three wagons present; specifically one which held two female humans that was trying to maneuver for an escape.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of disorganization between the L'Rose and Mosswater's wagons, denying either wagon a speedy withdrawal.

Kosara, in full blown RAGE, was between the beast and its intended target. Well, it didn't mind an a little something light to start its meal off. The fully instinctual thought process had this beast rushing to intercept the L'Roses' wagon, not even slowing to snatch up the raging Tiefling and deliver a vicious snap of its mandibles to her torso, digging in with its chitinous appendages and oozing acidic ichor onto the wounded area. The ride didn't stop there.

The creature took scampering but determined steps toward its intended victims, dragging the wounded Warlock along. It brought her just about back to where she started her charge before inexplicably halting. The horse-sized insect began to shiver wildly and dart its head around, as if to look for someplace to run. It is usually a very difficult thing to tell if a giant bug is afraid of something, but this one was showing all of the signs.

Kosara slipped from the Ankheg's grasp as it trembled, every one of its eyes now focused on the L'Rose wagon. It took a couple of shaky steps backward, now pawing at the earth with its back legs. It was trying to dig back into the ground, but made painfully little headway with an escape burrow as its senses were focused on the wagon in horror.

Kosara has taken 13 points of Slashing damage.
Kosara has taken 2 points of Acid damage.
Kosara has been moved to M10 on the battlemap.
NOTE: Creature is Frightened.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 30 / 33 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Laurent Farmland, J8 Action: Casting Vicious Mockery Bonus Action: Harming Beat Reaction: N/A

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

The facepalm that Victoria would give herself after the adrenaline of the moment wore off would be epic. She honestly thought that there had to be a better way to flush out and/or avoid a possible ambush from underground than to cause a localized earthquake. On the other hand, it might have been confusing enough to make them show themselves, rather than start things off with a surprise attack. All the same, it didn't matter now. This grand ball had started and she suddenly felt like dancing. There was a moment of distraction when she witnessed the previously mundane (but notably powerful) Kathryn grow to a size proportional to their new adversaries and swaddle the one in front of her with burning chains. "That's what those runes meant..." she mused to herself, before refocusing on the fight. In truth, Victoria was a little jealous there wasn't a bardic equivalent to the new magic. It was visually impressive.

But back to Victoria's love of dance. It proved to be invaluable in that moment as an unforeseen jet of giant insect ichor streaked out from Kathryn's position; an attack from which the tall Knight likely caught the lion's share. The agile Bard dipped low and spun away like a transitional step in a lively folk dance, the briefest smile crossing her face. The expression was sort lived, however, as a feather-light arc of acid made contact, searing her leathers and opening a streak across her coat, dissolving down to burn the flesh beneath. Victoria cried out in surprise and pain - even in distress she was absolutely mellifluous of voice - but counted herself lucky it was only that minor.

The bitter sting of acid clarified her intent. She reached into her repertoire of spells she might cast. Shatter was still her most directly destructive area spell, but a thought came to mind that stayed the investment of her voice and talent in this way. It would cause widespread damage to its body and that was not her angle. Dissonant Whispers was another option, and more reliable of damage against a single target. But that bit of sorcery might make it flee, and she wanted them to stick around. Another option came to mind; one mastered only recently. It would harm in a way that did not physically damage and distract or befuddle the already dull creature to make it easier for the front-liners to finish the job with less fuss. "After all," she mused internally, "my role in a battle is to support."

She took in a deep breath and began to speak rhythmically, almost a chant, in proper and well enunciated Elvish. Even to those who did not speak the language whatsoever, there was a hard and wiry edge to it that left the shadow of a hurt more emotional or mental in nature. Like an echo of empathy for someone verbally cut to their core, or the second-hand embarrassment one may feel for a person humiliated in a room full of their peers. But the thing which was the obvious target, the Ankheg squaring off with Baronfjord, suddenly cringed as the psychic assault slammed into it. Its vigorous attack stance dropped into something sloppy and its clacking mandibles grew despondent, slowing their movements. Thin lines of dark fluid oozed from behind its compound eyes.

The flow of Elvish was cut short by an abrupt change in Victoria's speech. Harsh, not quite whispery, and deepening of tone as another voice layered atop hers, no less harmonious but potentially very unnerving. This short burst of dark speech resulted in previous wounds flaring with black, bubbling fluid, and localized veins of darkness spreading across the shell of the great beast, pulsating as they grew. The Ankheg wobbled as it took this renewed attack poorly, unable to even detect where the source of the pain originated.

Victoria held her position. So long as nothing got too close, she was in a good spot to contribute to this fray in a manner with which she was highly proficient. Morty finally complied with the task set to it and took its place by its master's side, awaiting further command.