With Vast Love (Part 2)
Log Info
- Title: With Vast Love (Part 1)
- GM: Carver
- Place: The Vast
Skyler's countersong is more bold than skilled but surprises the 3-Mouthed aberrant enough that its compelling voice had falls quiet. Which leads to an intense stare off between the massed, huddling vast-wrought former caravanners and the adventurers, before either side explode into motion. When things do? It is sudden. A breath is taken and then a great howl rises from the mass of bodies who flow forth, even as the low-hanging sun bathes the scorched earth of the campsite in the last rays of an evening's sun.
The scream breaks the very brief peace. From one of the wagons, a small figure peeks out, holding a bleached white sansin against his hideously mana-ravaged body and begins to play.
3-Mouth almost glides forward, their movement so unwordly graceful as to not leave footsteps behind. As it does so, twin sabers are drawn. Sharp and oily black with an unknown substance, already weaving in a hypnotic manner. It seems to be casting a spell that originates on itself, and darkness creeps around it, embraces it, and in the low-lights, it disappears even from one's dark vision.
GAME: Harshad rolls stealth: (3)+13: 16 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+7: (1)+7: 8 (EPIC FAIL)
Harshad suddenly moves, sprinting for the large fire. "Shitshitshit..." he mutters to himself, as he skids to a halt before kicking part of the fire -- throwing up a gout of smoke and cinders, hoping it'll give him some cover before he can move in on... well, where the three-mouthed thing was. His knuckles whiten on the hafts of his sickles; this is way too much like why he left Myrddion!
GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1+2: (14)+16+2: 32 GAME: Skyler rolls damage1+2+7: aliased to 1d6+8+2+7: (5)+8+2+7: 22 GAME: Skyler spends ONE use of CHARMED LIFE. GAME: Skyler rolls fort+4: (16)+4+4: 24
Speaking of leaving Myrddion..
"This is what I get for leaving Myrddion." Skyler sighs, as the mass of tentacles and lucht siuil focuses on him. His eyes cut towards the wagon with the pitiful wreckage of a person in it, shakes his head, and charges forward. As he nears the creature, he tosses his sword into the air and catches it in an underhand flick even as he spins his whole body so that the blade snaps at a tentacle in a blow designed to severe a tentacle, "Not the children, you bastard!" He bellows.
Because sometimes, when he can't see the feet? Skyler gets a little confused by the difference between lucht siuil and children. Even when they swarm and bite and scrape at him. "Ow! Bad kids! No pudding for you! Respect your elders!"
GAME: Cuemoni casts Summon Nature's Ally III. Caster Level: 6 DC: 17 GAME: Harshad rolls perception: (9)+9: 18 GAME: Cuemoni rolls Perception: (2)+13: 15
The roiling darkness speeds past where Harshad crouches, a more intelligent foe than perhaps the dancing hoard, recognizing that the druid is left exposed. As they race past the fire, the bright light briefly exposes them before they disappear once more. As they close upon Cuemoni, both disappear.
Dancing blades in the dark and golden eyes that are suddenly blind.
"Aya!" Cuemoni cries out as things get hectic. Her golden eyes go over to Skyler, who is in the thick of it, and she decides to support the Warrior, whose skin she has blessed already with her magic. She reaches into a pouch on her bag, drawing out a tiny bead of tree resin, which she sets aflame.
- "Huacax I call,
- Huacax I coax,
- Huacax I confine
- Hueliti!"
The resin starts smoking in her hands, and it is clear she is trying to summon... something.
GAME: Harshad rolls 1d100: (83): 83 GAME: Harshad rolls weapon12+2: (5)+9+2: 16 GAME: Harshad rolls weapon12+2: (3)+9+2: 14
Then out of the smoke comes a half-orc. Perhaps the three-mouthed abomination isn't as smart as it thinks, because Harshad suddenly slinks in behind the thing. Without a word, his sickle lashes out, only to be caught at the last second by the monster's saber. Even in the darkness surrounding them, Harshad grins fiercely. "Keep trying, asshole. I'm not afraid of the dark -- I thrive in it."
GAME: Skyler rolls ranged+2: (19)+13+2: 34 GAME: Skyler rolls 1d6: (6): 6 GAME: Skyler spends ONE use of CHARMED LIFE. GAME: Skyler rolls fortitude+4: (8)+4+4: 16
"Holy fuck!" Skyler squeaks as he's mauled by little people that may or may not be children or simply children sized. He jerks back, kicking one leg as he does so. "Dammit, these are designer boots!" One hand snatches at his coat, pulling a vial of something red and fiery looking that he tosses at the monstrosity, splashing it with liquid napalm.
He's not paying much attention to the rest of the battle. Sorry. Little people clawing at him, folks. "Gods, please tell me they aren't really children!"
They are not. Their little fingers might be the size of childrens, but every little scratch and bite and slams sends Skyler's skin tingling. The Vast is wrought with mana, and these lingering wounds continue to build up on Skyler, as one climbs on his shoulder and starts trying to rip out the hair in little fistfuls.
GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+7: (4)+7: 11 GAME: Cuemoni casts Heat Metal. Caster Level: 6 DC: 16 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+6+4: (2)+6+4: 12 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+6+4: (10)+6+4: 20 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+5: (1)+5: 6 (EPIC FAIL)
Cuemoni tries to step away from her assailant, but much like wisdom tries to chase those who have it, so does her enemy. She hisses in discontent, whipping around as her aurochs tries to gore the gibbering mass of flesh. "This one heats!" she says, working her magic.
The figure's armor warms. Not yet fiery-red to scald, but... Soon.
GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+9: (15)+9: 24 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+5: (11)+5: 16 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+5: (16)+5: 21 GAME: Carver rolls 1d8+4: (6)+4: 10 GAME: Carver rolls 1d8+4: (2)+4: 6 GAME: Cuemoni rolls Fortitude: (20)+8: 28 (CRITICAL SUCCESS)
3-Mouth's armor begins to glow, but other than a brief look down, it hardly seems alarmed. Just a few embers in its cloak...
The oily black blades find angles through the scales, and the seeping poison clings to the wound, lathering in a fever-filth that Cuemoni can feel boiling but also one not potent enough to find purchase in those veins.
GAME: Harshad rolls 1d100: (4): 4 GAME: Harshad rolls 1d100: (52): 52 GAME: Harshad rolls weapon13-2+2+2: (12)+9+-2+2+2: 23 GAME: Harshad rolls damage13-1: aliased to 1d6+3-1: (3)+3+-1: 5
Harshad wades back into the fray, pursuing the shadow-shrouded monster as it chases after Cuemoni. The darkness defeats his attempts to sink a blade into a vital spot, but the magically-sharpened edge still slices into the horror. "Cuemoni, we need some light here, I can't see well enough to hit him properly." He tosses a glance at Skyler. "You hanging in there, Skyler?"
GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1+2: (15)+16+2: 33 (THREAT) GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1+2: (3)+16+2: 21 GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1+2-5: (19)+16+2+-5: 32 (THREAT) GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1+2-5: (6)+16+2+-5: 19 GAME: Skyler rolls damage1+damage1+7+2: aliased to 1d6+8+1d6+8+7+2: (5)+8+(1)+8+7+2: 31 GAME: Skyler rolls damage1+14+2: aliased to 1d6+8+14+2: (2)+8+14+2: 26 GAME: Skyler rolls 1d6: (1): 1
"I.." Skyler does a sort of shrugging roll, dislodging the kid clawing at his hair, "...want..." He turns the shrugg into a roll that sends his blade slicing through flesh, "... A BATH!" He follows up with a downward punch of his sword, skewering a little person and tossing it away from him, wincing slightly as he rubs teeth marks, "Gods, getting hickies from kids feels just wrong."
GAME: Skyler spends ONE use of CHARMED LIFE. GAME: Skyler rolls fortitude+4+2: (10)+4+4+2: 20
Greenish blood runs free, mixing with more common red. It's slimy trail steams and it smells of ozone. And of... sulfur. Scars of old wounds, from wars long passed. The cohesion of the vast-wrought is quickly beginning to break as they stumble and trip over the bodies of their companions.
GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d4: (2): 2 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+6: (20)+6: 26 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+7: (19)+7: 26 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d8+9: (4)+9: 13 GAME: Cuemoni rolls weapon1: (14)+7: 21 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d100: (18): 18
The auroch works in concert with Skyler's heavy blows, goring the collective mass with none of the (valid) complaint Skyler has to offer. Meanwhile, Cuemoni, seeing her armored three-mouthed assailant with Harshad behind him, elects for war. "This one will not so easily fall," she says, slashing out at the three-mouth--and missing, but her magic takes hold, scalding him just a little and making him more visible.
GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+9: (7)+9: 16 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+5: (7)+5: 12 GAME: Skyler rolls perception: (18)+12: 30
3-Mouth's three mouth begin to open and scream off-key from each other. One masculine, one high, one garbling demonic filth. The blades continue their mesmerising dance, but as its own flesh begins to steam, it cannot seem to find purchase again against the druid. It gives a quick look behind them to Harshad, an then its gaze flicks past him, measuring potential escape.
The music stops.
GAME: Harshad rolls weapon12+2-2: (13)+9+2+-2: 22 GAME: Harshad rolls weapon13+2-2: (10)+9+2+-2: 19 GAME: Harshad rolls 1d100: (98): 98 GAME: Harshad rolls 1d100: (50): 50 GAME: Harshad rolls damage12: aliased to 1d6+3: (3)+3: 6 GAME: Harshad rolls damage13-1: aliased to 1d6+3-1: (5)+3+-1: 7
"Boy, you are really enjoying that bit of shadow around you, you little bastard." Harshad's sickles hack into the monstrosity, one, then the other, tearing into it. "Hold still, I'm gonna give you a Bludgun smile!" Harshad grins savagely as he keeps the freakish thing sandwiched between himself and Cuemoni.
GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1: (13)+16: 29 GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1-5: (17)+16+-5: 28 (THREAT) GAME: Skyler rolls weapon1-5: (20)+16+-5: 31 (THREAT) GAME: Skyler rolls damage1+14: aliased to 1d6+8+14: (4)+8+14: 26 GAME: Skyler rolls damage1+damage1+7: aliased to 1d6+8+1d6+8+7: (4)+8+(4)+8+7: 31
"Fuck!" Skyler squeaks as he feels the sorcerous song stutter and stop. He turns, "Hey, you guys! Stop playing around in that darkness! There's a throat slicer!" He yells, even as he turns back to his foe and with the sort of daring insanity that's his trademark he slices, he dices, and he julians the mass of tentacles and other nastiness, ending with his sword slicing a head off.
He turns to the others, "Don't worry! I'll ride the bull over and save you!" He says, turning to the celestial auroch with a decisive nod of his head...
Only to see it dead. "Dammit. It'll be a little bit longer."
GAME: Cuemoni rolls 1d20+3: (6)+3: 9 GAME: Skyler rolls reflex+2: (11)+11+2: 24 GAME: Carver rolls 3d6: (7): 7
The Vast-Wrought's compelling magic is shared across them. As they are Skyler'd down in numbers, they lose cohesion and eventually control. The sound that roils out as their blood bursts is of a thousand year-past battle, the cries and clamor of a apocalyptic war who left time-rending scars across this land. Their blood stains terribly. Skyler will never get that out of the coat.
GAME: Cuemoni rolls 2d4: (7): 7 GAME: Cuemoni rolls weapon1: (2)+7: 9
The auroch fades away, and Cuemoni hisses. "This one gives gratitude for your presence," she says of the summoned bull. Then she looks back to the three-mouthed one, glowing a bit brighter thanks to her magic. "Come here and this one shall heal you, Warrior Skyler!" she calls, even as she cuts out with her scimitar at her enemy--and misses entirely.
GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+9: (6)+9: 15 GAME: Carver rolls 1d20+5: (5)+5: 10
3-Mouth falls silent, its eyes cutting to the wagons. All 3-Mouths smile in unison. Even as their blade fail to find blood. "She is beautiful." She is beautiful. She is beautiful. She is beautiful. She is beautiful. She is beautiful.
GAME: Harshad rolls weapon12: (9)+9: 18 GAME: Harshad rolls weapon13+2-2: (10)+9+2+-2: 19 GAME: Harshad rolls damage12+3d6+damage13-1+3d6: aliased to 1d6+3+3d6+1d6+3-1+3d6: (5)+3+(15)+(2)+3+-1+(13): 40
"Nobody cares!" Harshad snarls. He hooks one of his sickles into one of those gaping mouths, tearing, and then gets his other sickle in the corner of another mouth. His rangy muscles flex, and he pulls... and the thing's horrid flesh rips apart, as Harshad's blades reduce it to a gory ruin...
GAME: Harshad rolls Reflex: (1)+9: 10 (EPIC FAIL) GAME: Cuemoni rolls Reflex: (5)+4: 9 GAME: Carver rolls 5d6+5: (16)+5: 21 GAME: Harshad rolls reflex: (9)+9: 18
Something about the words that 3-Mouths speak triggers something in the swashbuckler. At first, he looked horrified by the goo splattered on him ("... my coat!") but when the wreckage of gristle and flesh starts chanting 'she is beautiful', something snaps.
Skyler's lip lifts in a snarl, and his eyes go flat and hard. "This? This isn't beauty." He snarls as he storms over and without a moment's hesitation lifts one foot and stomps the creature hard on the face, "Beauty?! I'll show you beauty!" And there's another stomp. Followed by another, if no one stops him. "Is this beauty?!"
3-Mouth does not get to explain. Harshad rips him apart. The warping mana expands and toss his blackish blood abrupty everywhere alongside scarring arcane heat. It sizzles on everything it touches. Skyler's stomping foot smushes what remains to the smoldering earth.... and they all notice in unison they are not alone, as another halfling stares at them from around twenty-feet away. Her eyes are covered by long greasy black hair and her pale, pallid form is wrapped only in bloodied rags of a half torn pink cloak with little flower stichings.
She holds the strange bone skeleton samsin in one hand. The other holds a ghostly blade warped with mana-ichor.
GAME: Cuemoni casts Cure Moderate Wounds. Caster Level: 6 DC: 17 GAME: Cuemoni rolls 4d8+12: (20)+12: 32
Cuemoni draws closer to Skyler, a soft rumble in her chest--the kind that nesting mothers make for hatchlings to calm them. "Warrior," she says gently. "Hold a moment. Let this one heal you." Even if she cannot fully heal the harm that has caused him to react this way, she can at least mend the wounds he has received.
She draws forward, a prayer to the spirits given for healing the flesh, and when she touches Skyler's shoulder with a soft-handed set of claws and scales, the magic leaves her and flows into him, warmth stitching together wounds to make whole.
The shifting, pallid form of the halfling glides forward ten steps, bloodied dagger still in hand. The hair shifts and two angry red coals for eyes peer out from the greasy strands, considering them all with an expression that is impossible to read. All of them smelling of ancient war and fresh blood. Except Harshad.
Harshad takes a step forward, then pauses. "You!" he says roughly. He's untouched by the gore and the flame, and his sickles still drip with foul ichor from the monster he killed. "I saw you. You were the one that warned me about the music." He doesn't raise his blades, but he elbows Skyler to get the man's attention, keeping his eyes on the horrid specter. "What do you want?" he says bluntly.
GAME: Harshad rolls diplomacy: (20)+1: 21
"Ow!" Because for some reason Harshad got more of an reaction than the tentacle monster of children. Talk about bony elbows. The swashbuckler, dripping gore from his foot, turns to glare at Harshad with a hard coldness to his eyes that is beyond anything anyone has seen from him. It's almost deader than the creature that he head-stomped. His eyes turn towards the indicated direction, and he says flatly, "She murdered the performer that was assisting us."
His entire body trembles with the force of will exerted to bring himself back into the hear and now, and out of a world of pain and pleasure in equal parts that's tantalized his dreams... "Speak quickly, and speak clearly. We were sent by the sister of whatever flesh you're wearing." Because clearly that's not their target, right? At least, not upstairs.
GAME: Skyler rolls sense motive: (1)+12: 13 (EPIC FAIL) GAME: Cuemoni rolls Knowledge/Nature: (4)+11: 15
Cuemoni's golden eyes nictate as she observes the halfling in front of them. The eyes are the thing that is most troubling for her. No softskin should have eyes like such while they live, not unless they are touched by great and terrible magic, great and evil magic.
"Whatever it is--the thing that is holding the body--it is not an aberration, not of the fae. It may be undead." Then Cuemoni's turquoise tail almost rattles as she murmurs softly to her companions. "This one is nearly certain it is undead of some kind."
The burning coals for eyes shift between the voice, before the long dark hair veils them once more chin touches her throat.
Clang. Clang. The bleached skeleton samsin is tossed. Its strings break as it rolls to Harshad's feet, hissing in the vast-wrought puddling brackish blood. It disappears.
It reappears right in Harshad's face, floating eye to eye, its bloodied rags a mess and its body almost-see through.
It disappears before his reflex can kick in and cut her.
It reappears near the wagon, mid motion, almost crawl-scuttling on all fours but not leaving tracks. It disappears.
It does not reappear.
Harshad recoils as the samsin lands at his feet, and then he shouts out a particularly ferocious oruch curse as the creature appears in front of him. Before he can bring his blades to bear, though, it vanishes again. "What the shit..."
When it vanishes near the wagon, Harshad slowly lowers his sickles. He's not surprised to see they're trembling slightly. "Or just dead." He looks around, checking the others. "Let's check the wagons, and then get the hells out of here."