Session #10.2 – Rematch
The crowd cleared out and the inn keep and staff brought a stack of blankets to the back room for the group’s use and bade them good night. They locked the windows (one both facing out the side and back of the inn) and then hung a heavy blanket over each. Rurik cast a Glyph of Warding upon the door, imbuing it with a Hold Person spell. He had considered using a blast Glyph, but feared for the safety of the inn’s staff should one of them try to use the door. With the room’s table pushed up against the door and the chairs stacked in a corner, they laid out the remaining blankets and tried to get some rest. Watches were, of course, set.
The rain continued through the night and thunder and lightning were frequently in the mix. If the group had expected some sort of problems from the “other” group that had arrived at the inn earlier in the day, they were not disappointed. About two hours after they had holed up in the room, they were awaked by the sound of breaking glass. Four flasks of oil with burning wicks had been hurled through the windows – one pair through each. The presence of the blankets slowed their flight path into the room, causing them to drop to the floor near the windows and break open. The floor, walls, and hung blankets ignited quickly.
Having expected trouble, everyone was still dressed in armor and had their weapons and gear readily at hand. The fire was something they hadn’t quite anticipated, though, and several had their clothes set on fire. Zalman initiated the response by launching a ten foot wide lightning blast into and through the inn’s side wall. The wall literally exploded outward from the force, showering a pair of thugs with splinters.
Taking advantage of the moment’s worth of confusion, Nigel leapt out the hole in the wall and engaged a half elf wearing chain and wielding a wicked looking dagger. Amblin paused for a moment, batting flames out of his clothes. While Rurik grabbed for his shield and axe, Zalman (whose robes were also burning) leapt through the hole he’d created to get into the rain. His jump through the hole was not nearly as swift as Nigel’s, however, and he snagged his foot on a jagged piece of lumber. He landed face first in the mud where another waiting rogue (human) poked him with a rapier.
Rurik finally got his gear together and jumped through the hole, engaging the human that was over the prone Zalman. Amblin, knowing that there were likely other assailants around the backside of the inn, jumped through the hole in the wall, raced past Zalman and Rurik, and turned around the corner. He spotted a lone human armed with a longsword standing near the back window. As he engaged the man in a furious fight, a crossbow bolt thudded in the inn’s wall, missing him by a fraction of an inch. Making a mental note that there must be another goon out in the dark yard of the inn, he pressed on with his foe.
Nigel found his foe to be moderately skilled. In spite of only having a dagger to his longsword/shortsword combination, the half elf wasn’t faring too badly. The half elf nicked Nigel in the arm and the searing pain of acid burned behind the cut. Nigel returned the favor with a deft slash of his flaming longsword that hissed menacingly as raindrops boiled off it.
Just as Zalman finally regained his feet and was turning his attention to the human who had stabbed him, a fireball erupted. Targeted squarely between Nigel, Zalman, and Rurik, all three were singed badly by the blast – Nigel only slightly less so. The rogue Zalman and Rurik were engaging managed to avoid being caught in the blast radius by using Rurik’s wide, armored body as a shield. Zalman, who had been burned by the Molotov cocktails, stabbed, and torched in the full brunt of a fireball, was in very rough shape. Unable to see where it had come from, though, he continued to work with Rurik on the rogue at hand by blasting him with a volley of magic missiles. When a second fireball hit in roughly the same spot, Zalman finally dropped unconscious in the mud.
Amblin was having only modest luck in dealing with the rogue around back. The rogue was having a tough time hitting the monk, but Amblin had only managed to land a couple ineffectual punches in return. The crossbow shooter had grazed his shoulder once, but had not yet landed a solid hit. When the fireballs erupted around the side of the building, Amblin began to worry about how his friends were faring. As it was, though, he figured he was keeping two of their assailants busy and that was good enough for the moment. The rogue, in an unexpected move, leapt back from Amblin and quaffed a potion that he’d kept palmed in his left hand. Amblin had little experience with potions and retaliated with a stunning blow that left the rogue reeling.
Rurik, with a couple well-placed swings of his axe, finally dropped the human with the rapier. Given his dwarven darkvision, he could make out a burly half orc further back in the yard as the one who was responsible for the fireballs. The half orc was now readying a large shield and drawing his bastard sword. Rurik countered with a Hold Person spell that stuck. He then turned to Zalman and cast a curative spell, returning the wizard to consciousness.
Nigel’s fight with the dagger wielder was turning decidedly in the ranger’s favor. The half elf, seeing his one companion drop followed by the dwarf healing the wizard, decided it was high time to make a break for it. He fled from Nigel toward the front of the inn and turned the corner into the darkness. Nigel pursued and, as he rounded the corner, had no difficulty in spotting the half elf trying to hide deep in the shadows behind a pair of barrels on the front porch of the inn. The half elf, realizing he’d been spotted, jumped up to flee but was run through with Nigel’s flaming sword.
Amblin’s foe, having taken several hard hits from the monk by now, was starting to look worried. The crossbow bolts were still coming, though, so he didn’t abandon his fight. Instead of trying to hit the nimble monk with his sword, he tried to touch Amblin with his bare hand. Suspecting some sort of magical attack from the potion the man had just quaffed (and rightly so…it was a potion of Ghoul Touch), Amblin merely danced and weaved away from the man’s attacks.
While Zalman regained his senses and peeked around the corner to see what was happening in the back yard, Rurik casually walked up to the held half orc and lopped his head off. Amblin finally knocked his opponent to the ground and noticed that the crossbow shots abruptly stopped coming. The monk figured that the shooter had probably fled into the night.
Nigel, having just finished off the half elf, turned to go back to help his friends mop up the rest of the rogues around back. Quite abruptly, the bitterly cold bite of an enchanted rapier pierced his stomach. A shortsword stabbed Nigel in his right arm. Then, as the rapier was pulled back and thrust forward again through his lung, Nigel could see the Shadow materialize from out of invisibility before him, grinning madly. With blood bubbling up his throat, Nigel collapsed. (Fate point.)
The Shadow lifted his rapier and prepared to run it through Nigel’s neck, just to make sure the job was complete, when Kisty leapt off the inn’s porch roof and jammed her dagger into his back. Shadow roared in outrage and turned to face her, rapier and sword flashing in a whirlwind of steel. Kisty, armed only with a dagger and sensing she was outmatched, focused her complete attention on parrying and dodging his blows. Hoping that the others had taken care of the rogues by now, she yelled out: “Help!”
Over the drone of rain and thunder, the others could just make out the halfling’s cry. Recognizing her voice, though, they raced around toward the front of the building, leaving the fallen bodies and burning corner of the inn behind. Shadow, meanwhile, had failed to land a single good blow on the nimble halfling and was beginning to worry. He had fought the others just a week before and had little interest in facing them when outnumbered. So, he stepped back from Kisty and dropped a sphere of Darkness. Kisty, not wanting to risk fighting blind, tumbled back out of the dark and right into Amblin. Rurik and Zalman were close behind.
“Shadow,” she said. “Dark elf, nasty bugger.”
The others noted that she knew the guy by sight, but didn’t question her for the moment. “Yeah,” Amblin said. “We’ve met him.”
“He took down Nigel,” she explained. “I don’t know if he’s alive still or not. His body is in the darkness, right up against the inn. I think that Shadow might have fled the other way.”
Amblin, desperately wanting a piece of Shadow even at great personal risk, went around the darkness and brought his Continual Flame enchanted wristband out to give him a bit of light. Rurik summoned a pair of celestial lions and instructed them to follow. Zalman, meanwhile, had pulled Nigel out of the darkness and Rurik paused long enough to determine that Nigel was barely alive but stable. He left him and joined the pursuit with Kisty and Zalman.
Amblin, having a healthy lead over the others, proved to be too attractive a target to the Shadow. The dark elf dropped out of invisibility once again and attacked the monk. Blows were exchanged, but when the celestial lions rounded the corner, followed closely by a pack of dogs that Zalman had summoned (on the assumption that they could pursue the invisible elf by scent), Shadow decided to return to invisibility and flee once more.
The dogs picked up the trail and slowly followed it between a pair of buildings. Amblin followed, focusing on his sense of hearing to pick up any hints. Zalman followed from a distance, cautious and waiting for any target to cast a spell upon. Rurik paused long enough to cast Invisibility Purge – a spell he’d been saving exclusively for his next encounter with the Shadow – and then raced to catch up with the dogs.
The Shadow had been moving cautiously, trying to stay ahead of the dogs without moving so fast as to make noise or reveal himself with splashes in the mud. In spite of being unusually quick, the Shadow had seen how inhumanly fast Amblin could run and he didn’t want to give the monk a chance to spot him. When Rurik got close to the summoned animals, however, his Invisibility Purge’s range caught the dark elf and startled him greatly. Amblin pounced and landed another hard hit. The lions and dogs, when they finally noticed their quarry, all charged to attack.
The Shadow gave up any pretense of fighting and fled at full speed back around the front of the buildings. Amblin gave full pursuit. With some luck and help from a bit of lightning, Amblin spotted the wet boot prints from his quarry along the porch of a neighboring building. At a full run, he charged, vaulted the closest railing, tackled the dark elf, and bowled him right through the far railing and into the mud. Amblin, sitting on top of the flustered Shadow, punched again and heard the satisfying crack of ribs breaking. Sensing victory at hand, Amblin cocked his fist to punch again when the dark elf muttered a word under his breath.
“Tarak,” he said. The dark elf, wearing the disoriented look of one fighting off unconsciousness, disappeared from underneath Amblin. He wasn’t just invisible this time, Amblin noted, because the feeling of the body departed as well. Amblin, frustrated beyond description at losing their enemy when victory was at hand, let out a cry of rage. The others, along with the horde of summoned animals, arrived but found no trace of the dark elf.
Bitter at losing the Shadow again, they returned to the inn to further heal Nigel and to check on the burning inn. Rurik’s Glyph spell had been triggered by one of the servants who had gone to investigate the fire. He was retrieved with only minor smoke inhalation damage. Within a few short minutes, most of the inn’s staff and guests, as well as many of the town’s folk, had gathered and were working to extinguish the blaze.
The group, meanwhile, gathered up the bodies and scanned their possessions for magical loot (of which they found a modest amount – weapons, rings, cloak, armor). Kisty identified the thugs by name, recognizing them as members of “The Guild.” The inn keep was quite upset with the group for the damage to his inn, let along the very fact they had been party to bringing about a fight. Kisty informed him of the identities of the rogues as well as the fact that they had been working with the Shadow. The inn keep blanched a bit at that. He declined to let them stay there for the night, but didn’t press them further for damage compensation when they offered to let him have the remainder of the thugs’ gear. (They had already removed anything magical.)
“Come on guys,” Kisty said. “I know a place we can stay tonight. Besides, I think we have a few matters to discuss.” They agreed and followed her into the rainy darkness.
Next session: Kisty's story and the Thunder Guild.
-Rybaer
