NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1217196" data-attributes="member: 227">Some half a dozen men, brigands clad in crude leather armour or chain shirts and wielding an unpleasant array of hand weapons, rushed from either side as a few more arrows zipped inwith desultory effects, merely burying themselves into the soil and scaring the horses. The four archers could now be seen, lurking back and preparing to launch another volley as their comrades charged.And then, ahead of the band in the direction they had been heading, a single man stepped out onto the path. Clad in elaborate and ornamented red scale mail, a conical helmet on his head which fully enclosed around his face such that merely two slits allowed the warrior to see out, he held a mighty bow he raised, a barbed arrow already notched and ready to be fired.As the bandits closed in, the armoured man carefully raised the bow, took a moment to aim, and loosed the arrow. It arced through the air towards Wolf, and the mercenary raised a metal-bracered arm to try and protect himself from the projectile. It bit straight through the metal of the bracer and sunk deep into the warrior's flesh, and he gasped as if he had been dunked in ice cold water, the blood draining from his face as he nearly dropped his sword, fumbling clumsily to block the hatchet of one of the bandits.Gritting his teeth in an attempt to bite down the numbing pain of the arrow in his arm, Wolf slashed downwards twice from his saddle at one of the bandits who had charged him, the metallic blade of the bastard sword glinting crimson as both strikes bit into the man and sent him tumbling down with a spatter of blood. Then the veteran, temporarily freed of any assailants, reached over to try and pull the barbed arrow that had punched deep into his arm. Through the agony, he thought it might well have shattered the bone from the sheer force of the impact.The battle began to swirl in the now-familiar patterns of melee as shouts and cries, the sound of metal on metal and the alien noise of arcane syllables, heralded the beginnings of the real combat. Burl struck an impressive figure in his dark clothes as he drew the Fire Serpent rod and activated it; from the air ahead of the group sparks coalesced from nothing, quickly igniting into the serpentine firestorm of the elemental as it broke back into the material plane. This time it seemed to be more quickly aware of the situation around it, immediately whipping out its head to try and bite a bandit who was threatening to engage Burl. As the flame-wreathed snake dove in the man, witha fearful cry, deflected the strike with his crude wooden shield, but nonetheless the sudden appearance of the elemental in its coruscating glory seemed to shake the bandits, making them falter in their footsteps with sudden cowardice.This was only compounded when Melisande let loose bolts of brilliant sapphire which tore through the intervening gap between her position, elevated on her horse, and the armoured archer, the magic missiles impacting with force and sending the warrior a step backwards. What was perhaps truly mroe amazing than the display of arcane power was that the sorceress managed to keep control of her mount despite its sudden fear, staying in the saddle.Despite the band's show of magic the bandits were not so cowed as to flee already, and now that the gap had been closed they picthed in to melee battle with wild abandon. Clearly men from the fringes of civilisation, the unkempt, disorderly scum yelled and shouted to try and bolster their own morale and intimidate their victims, one bearded man caught Kale with a glancing flesh wound with a jagged, short blade and another managed to hit Wolf in the leg with a hatchet, drawing more of the ranger's blood. Cord too suffered minor injuries from the assailants, though doubtless the blind dwarf that almost danced to gracefully dodge the unskilled hacks of his foes was unnerving to the bandits, who clearly disliked the idea of fighting those with unnatural powers as they shirked back from the fire serpent. Heeding the cries of their allies the archers in the bushes turned their bows against the elemental, arrows adding more to the confusion of the melee as they buried themselves around the fiery creature, one biting through tis ashen body to draw a hiss of irritation from it.Sebastion loosed one of his own arrows, the enchanted missile followed by a stream of blue and white sparks as it arced to strike true into the archer. He staggered as it discharged into him with a crack, leaving a smoking crater in the centre of his chest where it had bitten through the scale mail, but the red-armoured warrior quickly recovered with the manner of a skilled warrior, watching Sebastion carefully in an attempt to avoid being struck by another of the Myrmecian arrows.Ebri struck out with her fists, not landing a solid strike but sending a bandit reeling back in shock as he suddenly realised the woman before him was far from defenceless without a weapon; his face became truly fearful as he saw the glint of a silvery kama appear in one hand which had just pulled back from a feinting punch, and which hacked out like a serpent striking to bite into his chest, straight through his crude leathers. The man collapsed as blood spurted from the precision puncture, internal organs fatally speared.Then with the scent of a sea breeze Wyshira brought forth a wind wall to hamper any further attempts by the bandit archers to rain down arrows upon the party. Nearby Kale quickly brought down another of the bandits with sword and flail, smashing the man to the ground and then stabbing him to finish him off, the brine blade eagerly corroding a wound through the warrior's meagre metal armour.* * *Clutching at the wound that Sebastion had inflicted on him, the red-armoured warrior watched the tides of the battle, face hidden from view by his visor such that he seemed like an impassive sentinel watching the vagaries of fate. As more bandits fell so that only three now stood against the combined might of the travellers, and the archers were rendered ineffectual by the genasi priestesses magic, it seemed that now was the time to release the second part of the ambush.He waved one gauntleted hand in a signal, and then reached for another handful of arrows from his quiver, stabbing them point down into the earth by his foot. His actions now more pained and less smooth than before as the arrow-wound smarted and blood continued to flow, the archer nonetheless was able to bring his prowess to the fore, unleashing arrows at an incredible rate. Unlike the bandits, he was not hampered by the wind wall.The first one tore towards Wolf, who once again managed to bring his already shattered arm round to fend it off, and with an unpleasant thunk it too buried itself deep in his flesh; followed mere seconds later by another one which caught the now reeling ranger in the stomach with a spurt of blood. Coughing up gore in shock, Wolf simply slid off his saddle to hit the brown earth with a thud.From the side of the path another red armoured figure slipped from cover; clad in the same crimson scale mail, this warrior spun a bladed staff confidently from hand to hand, each end tipped with a slightly curved shear of metal, as he closed in to melee to support the bandits. Heavy boots thudding on the ground, he charged towards the archer who had fired upon his comrade, nearly introducing Sebastion to just how keen the edge of the double-sword was as he struck with an upswing towards the mounted man.Even as Wolf was tumbling to the ground, the red-clad archer had turned his head for a moment, drawn by a faint sound from behind him, where the path led on. A mounted figure was approaching at high speed down the valley trail, the sound of hoofbeats upon ground becoming more clear as every moment passed...</blockquote>

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