HLoM: The Firebird, Chapter 2

[NeoTiamat]

Somehow, this was not what Lena had expected. There had been a grim and uneasy part of her that thought that Isolt may be in for it (she reminded herself that these were all memories or ghosts of some odd tragedy), but Craig?!

No matter. Lena hesitated for only a moment, and then she was after Marcel, murmuring under her breath an old Forfarian song that came to mind. "There by Brunanburh / Brake the shield-wall, / Hew'd the linden-wood / Hack'd the battle-shield..."

Move Action to follow Marcel, Standard Action to Inspire Courage; +2 Morale bonus versus Charm and Fear effects and +2 Competence bonus to Attack and Damage Rolls.

Something tells me we're going to need it.



Clearly, Renhalt was the token human here with a brain. Ushka approved, and then as everyone else was getting ready to fight the terrifying monster, she scuttled underneath cover and prepared to cower there until the shooting stopped. Being the guiding light and mascot of the operation she may have been, but attempting to fight monsters when you weight ten pounds never ends well.

Stealth +27!

[dice]0[/dice]

[Isabella]

"Quickly," Nuray said a little hoarsely, her bow up and ready for anything else that might attack. "Inside, shall we? Rescue the dommra?" 'Rescue' was questionable, of course.

"Let-let us move to the side of the gatehouse," Richard said, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the downpour. "But I-I would not go inside just yet. We seem safe in the-the courtyard from men."

He reached down and picked up one of the grisly wolf heads, careful in how he held it in case it decided to bite.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Vasili shares Richard's preference for the gatehouse. "We need information before we commit further. Let's get closer, but stay in the courtyard."

Leila, meanwhile, slips down to small size, preparing to do a little scouting.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Renhalt and Dundee carry out their plan to perfection, and the two zombie wolves on the far side of the door are dispatched before they can cover the distance between the ground between themselves and their quarry. Hurrying forward into the long hallway now revealed, Cattia comes to a stop before a heavy door, barred on the outside.

"Here?" she asks, looking down at Ushka.

The fox's nose informs her that there's a human woman within--one who smells like an ApBlanc. At her nod, Dundee throws the bar down and opens the door to reveal a spartanly furnished room--low bed, one shelf with two books, a everburning torch with a cloth cover, a wooden plate with a few crumbs and a cup.

The young woman inside rises from her knees and stares at you. "Fath...who are you?" Her eyes settling on Dundee, she says, with a little more assurance, "Brother druid...what...how did you find me? Has my father relented?"

At about this point Ushka becomes aware that something Very Bad is happening upstairs, to judge by her mistress's emotional state.



Marcel tries the door, but the laird took the precaution of locking it; momentarily stymied, he looks back at Lena and Avram, then his gaze shifts behind them, to where the seneschal Colin and Rojan are hurrying down the hall toward you. With surprising speed, given that he's obviously terrified and angry, Colin gets past the cleric and gets his key in the lock.

A moment's struggle, and then he throws the door wide.

The setting sun, partly but not completely over the horizon, throws a vivid red light through the room, tinting Isolt's white blouse the color of new blood and making the laird's shirt a deep crimson. He has covered his face with his hands--hands which have grown talons--and continues to scream hoarsely. Isolt is screaming as well, pressing herself against a window, her hands at her mouth and her eyes wide with horror.

Craig reels and falls back, seized by a fresh spasm, revealing his face and neck, covered with raised purple veins. His eyes are red, his mouth is a nest of fangs. Seeing you in the doorway, he rips his claymore from its scabbard and leaps forward.

Initiative rolls please!

[NeoTiamat]

Well this was a relief.

No, really, it was.

Ever since Lena had arrived in Castle Tristenoira, she had been expecting something to go horribly wrong. She had been expecting for everything to end in blood and death, for the monsters to come out of the woodwork, for something dreadful to happen. Now that it was finally here, Lena quietly shoved her incipient terrified hysterics to one side and focused on the matter (and monster) at hand.

"Isolt, run." Lena said sharply, and then she raised her hand and pointed it at Craig ApBlanc. She then declaimed in a loud and cold voice, all the while taking a rather sharp step backwards. "And death shall have no dominion. / Dead men naked they shall be one / With the man in the wind and the west moon; / When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, /They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane, / Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; / Though lovers be lost love shall not; / And death shall have no dominion."

And slamming a Cacophonous Call at our patron. Will DC 20.



At this point, the fox went berserk. Ushka started yipping like mad, running towards the stairs and then pausing to see if the others were following. Every line of her tiny form quivered with panic and excitement. Less talk, more following!

[Nerit]

Nuray was too strained to frown at Richard, but it was clear enough he had some sort of strategy. "Very well."

She padded by Leila as silently as she could; in truth she didn't seem eager for more conflict.


Stealth +18
[dice]0[/dice]

[Nathan of the FoS]

The wolf's head Richard takes up shows no signs (at present, anyway) of biting him. The three of you gather by the wall of the gatehouse while Leila reconnoiters, working her way up to a window and then down to the great hall.

She finds no sign of the ranger or the monk. Tara is sitting at the table in the great hall with her hands placed carefully on the table in front of her; she looks a little tense but may be the calmest person in the room. Colin is seated across from her, cleaning his nails with a dagger while he asks her questions; another mercenary stands a few feet to one side, holding a crossbow on her. Two other mercenaries are watching the doors, weapons in hand; a tall woman in her forties in a black and red tartan stands in the far doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, staring intently at Tara and Colin as they converse.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Craig ApBlanc convulses in pain--whether because of Lena's spell or because of the strange transformation he was already undergoing. Marcel skirts the room to reach Isolt, cowering in a window ledge on the far side of the room; Rojan moves to interpose himself between the enraged laird and Lena and Avram, tapping his quarterstaff's end sharply against the floor and causing its hidden blade to appear.

mechanics to come. Vacation! Too many fun things!



"Something's gone wrong up there, it seems," Renhalt says quietly. "You must be Brangain ApBlanc? I think you'd better come with us, freyin."

Brangain seems about to protest, then looks at Dundee and around the room. "Yes, all right," she says. "Let's go."

[NeoTiamat]

"And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

Lena had no idea if her spell was working, so she did the rational thing and threw another hex at Craig apBlanc. She held her ground behind Rojan, and kept ready to run like all the Legions of the Night were after her if Craig got too close -- or more likely, put on an invisibility spell.

Because there's no such thing as too many save-or-lose spells, lobbing a second Cacophonous Call at Craig (Will DC 20).

Also, maintaining Bardic Song all throughout this, so everyone gets Inspired and all.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Vasili closes his eyes to better share Leila's senses, but allows her her head when it comes to choosing their hiding places. As they get inside the Great Hall, Vasili strains hard to listen to the discussion.

Listen checks for both, and any appropriate Knowledge checks for Vasili--the woman's tartan, perhaps?
Vasili's Perception +5
[dice]0[/dice]
Leila's Perception (including Scent) +16
[dice]1[/dice]
K: Nobility +11 to recognize the tartan
[dice]2[/dice]
He'll take 10 on whatever other Knowledges are appropriate.

[Nathan of the FoS]

"And why did ye leave the south tower, again?" Colin asks, glancing at Tara.

"We were bewitched," Tara says, patiently. "You saw the ghost just now. One of them. Obviously they can go anywhere in the castle."

Colin shrugs, then switches tacks. "You're an Ap Cullen?"

"I told you, my patronymic is Kolyana. I'm not Forfarian."

"Ye've a look of Forfar, though. More than most. Certainly more than any of the others with yer band."

Tara shrugs in her turn. The woman in black and red says something too low to catch to the mercenary nearest her, who laughs.

"If ye're not bewitched any longer, then the others shouldn't be either," Colin notes. "So why haven't they come back in? Get out of the rain, away from the ghaisties?"

[DeepShadow of FoS]

"If ye're not bewitched any longer, then the others shouldn't be either," Colin notes. "So why haven't they come back in? Get out of the rain, away from the ghaisties?"

Vasili relays Colins words to the group as he hear them, then opens his eyes and looks to Richard and Nuray. "That's our cue. They want to know why we aren't back yet? Let's tell them."

Vasili stops sharing his senses with Leila, and bid her stay hidden where she is until she can rejoin the group.

If anyone asks, V recommends we were all bewitched until Flora disappeared.

[Isabella]

"If ye're not bewitched any longer, then the others shouldn't be either," Colin notes. "So why haven't they come back in? Get out of the rain, away from the ghaisties?"

Vasili relays Colin's words to the group as he hear them, then opens his eyes and looks to Richard and Nuray. "That's our cue. They want to know why we aren't back yet? Let's tell them."

Any further discussion on the matter was likely interrupted by the sound of metal clicking on the gatehouse floor, the footsteps echoing, precise, followed by the dragging sound of water-soaked wool. They paused; a moment later the rotting wolf's head flew across the room, tumbling across the floor to come rest at Colin's feet. The sodden mess snarled up at the mercenary, yellow eyes glassy and long dead, rimmed with bone instead of fur and flesh.

"We were... detained," Richard said, from where he stood in the doorway, his dark cloak plastered to him by the rain. His mist-grey eyes were hooded, framed in black by his soaked-straight hair. He lowered his head slightly, ignoring the others, leveling his gaze straight with Tara's. "I-I-I apologize, for the trouble."

[Nathan of the FoS]

As you hurry up the stairs from the dungeon to the main level you hear howling from outside the towers, and then a scream from somewhere closer at hand.



Craig falls to his knees, dropping his claymore, then stands, retching. Rojan moves forward and strikes at him, bringing his quarterstaff crashing through the laird's knee and causing him to fall again. Staring up at him, Craig begins to laugh.

"Kill me, peasant!" he rasps. "Kill me!" It almost seems he is changing as he speaks--becoming not only more monstrous, but younger, his hair growing lighter and his shoulders slightly less broad, years dropping from him as seconds pass.

Isolt screams, her eyes fixed on her husband, her fingernails carving bloody trails down her cheeks. Marcel grabs one of her hands with his right hand and grasps her around the waist with the other, but she wrenches herself away from him and falls to her knees.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Colin's reaction is all Richard could hope for. Swearing sulfurously, he jerks away from the wolf's head at his feet. Tara gives him a look of mixed amusement and exasperation.

The other mercenaries edge forward, fingering their weapons uncertainly; only the middle-aged woman remains composed, though even she looks a bit askance at Richard's grisly trophy.

"What...what happened to you?" Colin finally gets out. "Where did you get that thing? What have you been doing?"