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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jkason" data-source="post: 6440772" data-attributes="member: 2710">The road curves drastically ahead of them, so none of the party hunkering down can see anything. With Wilmorn's warning, though, their now-directed attention can catch the traces of agitated voices filtering through the trees. From their current position, none of the trio left behind can glean any further information than their scouts already knew: someones further around the bend are talking. Who, what, and where are beyond their senses to determine.Erin slides into trees and underbrush, her otherwordly flesh tones helping her melt into the lengthening shadows. Wilmorn rushes to follow her. The trio waits, tense. They hear the voices stop a moment, then pick back up with a sharp gutteral command.[sblock=Erin & Wilmorn]The pair move through the trees to get a view of the road beyond the bend, and it's immediately apparent the source of the voices. Standing in the crossroads ahead are a trio of goblins. One of them holds a piece of parchment, as it and another of the goblins point and gesticulate, first to the paper, then to different directions out of the crossroads. They spit out harsh gutterals at each other. Only Erin understands their words. The slightly larger third goblin pulls out a vial of something, waving it about as he bellows at his slightly smaller fellows, who cower obligingly. He draws his blade and starts to launch into some kind of invective when Wilmorn, trying to shift himself for a better view, manages to step in an unseen rabbit hole. He keeps his balance, but at the cost of some fairly blatant rustling of foliage and snapping of branches. [sblock=goblin tranlation for Erin]G1: "I'm telling you, we should be going East!"G2: "You're an idiot. You can't even read paper scribbles!"G1: "Neither can you!"G2: "I don't even think this is scribbles of here. We should have taken a left at Alb'k Erkee, I say." Mean Gobber: "You're both idiots, and if you don't shut it, I'm drinking this thing and ripping your heads off to give to the new boss, if we ever find him, now... what was that?"[/sblock]The bigger goblin stops his tirade, pointing his blade in the direction of the two scouts, who freeze, holding their breath. The smaller goblins turn, as well, growling under their breaths and drawing their blades. It seems the jig is up.Until, that is, Scuttle crashes through the branches near the road, flying into sight of the goblins. They seem to relax, until the bigger one points his blade at the seagull and grunts something out. The smaller gobbers sheathe their swords and draw their bows, taking a bead on Scuttle. [sblock=Erin Translation]G1: "Just a bird"Mean Gobber: "That thing's all meat, you idiots! Get me my dinner!"[/sblock][/sblock][sblock=Kepli] From Scuttle, Kepli at first feels the curiosity and interest that she associates with the bird considering meal options. There comes suddenly, however, a more panicked response. Danger / predator / flee.[/sblock][sblock=crunchy bits]Despite Wilmorn's bad roll, the regular goblins rolled worse even than he did. Unfortunately, the guy with the attitude beat him. But then GlassEye gave me the most awesomesauce "It's just a cat" narrative setup ever, and how could I resist that? Wilmorn effectively gets a second chance (make a second Stealth roll, using Scuttle as your distraction), but the goblins are also ready to attack Scuttle. I'm not going to put you guys in official combat rounds just yet. The goblins effectively burned their action putting away and drawing new weapons, but Scuttle has a full round of actions with which to evade them, so whether this turns into combat from here is still up in the air. The three others are off the top of the map. Assume that, between the bend in the road and difficult terrain, either direction you took to get onto the map takes you one regular move action to get there (appearing either at the top of the road, or in the forest just above Erin & Wilmorn). If you're trying to stealth, it'll take longer, since you halve your movement. So, two move actions, and you'll need to give me a stealth roll.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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