Lydia approaches closer, aims her crossbow, fires, and hits it dead on. Unfortunately, the bolt passes right through the openings between the branches that make up the creature. Sunedilar watches it, seeing nothing on it that looks like it consists of anything other than dry wood, but at this distance, it’s hard to be sure. Alicia slowly, and painfully, backs away from her adversary, towards the party, while Gwyn wonders if his arrow would be any more effective than Lydia’s crossbow bolt..
[Lydia’s crossbow attack rolled 18+4-4(assuming she’d avoid hitting Alicia)=AC 18, hit, but did no damage. Sunedilar and Alev are delaying and still 100 feet away from it (as is Gwyn); Lydia is 80 feet, Alicia is 30 feet. I stopped on Gwyn in case he changes his mind about the bow attack.
Characters by initiative, damage:
Gwyn, HPs: 6/18
‘Stick Puppet’, hurt
Lydia: HPs: 12/20
Sunedilar, unhurt
Alev, HPs: 13/19
Alicia, disabled]
Upstairs at Madame Brie’s, Loni smiles and escorts Accalon out of the room, first looking down the hallway to see that no one is around. As they pass one of the voyeur closets on the way to the stairs, Loni whispers “Um, I don’t know if you’d want to know, but since I guess it involved you now… Valasia’s in there. Brie said she had to stay in the closet till she was sure the authorities wouldn’t come back.”
[Note-if Accalon would want to stop and converse with Valasia for some reason, we can do some backtrack roleplaying. Otherwise…]
A short trip further upstairs, to the third story, Loni opens one door, steps inside, and motions for Accalon to follow. Inside, Accalon sees that this bedroom isn’t as nice as the ones on the second floor, with more typical (and cheap) bedding instead of the ultra soft and comfortable stuff the clients expect. There are two beds, a single and a double, a wide wardrobe closet, and two large dressers with small mirrors and make up, brushes, and other grooming tools. There’s a window facing the east wall, and standing in front of it, looking out, is a young woman of striking beauty, with almost black hair and dark eyes. She turns to see who has entered, and Accalon senses that she was very startled by their arrival for some reason. Upon looking at Accalon, she says “Loni! What’s going on now? Brie will have herself a fit if she finds a man in one of our bedrooms!”
Loni says to her “Clara, it’s OK. Accalon just needs to, um, rest here for a bit. A nosy jerk is downstairs, and Brie wouldn’t want Accalon found here. There’s already been enough fighting in the house today.” Loni looks at Accalon, clearly not knowing what all he wants Clara to know. Clara says “What jerk? Who’s here now? Jovana said the fight was with some monster. Maybe I should just go downstairs and see for myself.” Accalon gets the distinct impression Clara doesn’t want to be here now that he is too, and is just looking for an excuse to leave.
[Accalon rolled Sense Motive 16+6=22.]
