D&D 5E Spell & Crossbones

[Quickleaf]

[SBLOCK=Barrington]The steely confidence Barrington exudes would be unnerving to a lesser sea dog, but the pirate who just menaced Barrington stands his ground even after a solid slug to the gut causes him to stagger against the nearby house, pressing his fist to the bloody wound with a snarl. Before they can react, Barrington cooly advances and his rapier is whistling toward the scrawnier sidekick pirate who jerks backward only to receive a devastating shot that rips thru his pistol arm and buries in his chest, his pistol falling to the ground. As the pistol smoke clears, the sidekick pirate curses and scrambles thru some barrels, "Sod it! I'm not getting paid enough for this!" He takes off running.

Pushing himself off the wall, the menacing pirate fires his pistol at Barrington point blank, but the rum makes him miss his target wildly. Swearing, the menacing pirate steps back, dropping his pistol and drawing his cutlass, casting the sheath aside savagely.

"James! Look out!" Polly screams out not a moment too soon. A shot rings out from the rooftop, landing near Barrington's feet. A faint trail of smoke from the rooftop and a form moving under the moonlight hint at the hidden pirate's location, but he soon slinks back and resumes hiding. Polly rushes to the side of a building and presses herself against it, hoping to go unnoticed.

OOC: Menacing Pirate, DC 13 Wisdom save 1d20+1=20 succeeds. Sidekick Pirate, DC 13 Strength save 1d20+1=2 fails. Sidekick Pirate uses cunning action to disengage, then takes the Dash action and moves to run a total of 60 feet. Menacing Pirate shoots (with disadvantage) 1d20+4=23, 1d20+4=8 and misses. Hidden Pirate shoots (hidden advantage & drunk disadvantage cancel) 1d20+4=10 and misses. Then moves and uses cunning action to Hide. Condition Tracker Menacing Pirate AC 12; HP 27 15 Sidekick Pirate AC 12; HP 27 8; disarmed and fleeing Hidden Pirate AC 12; HP 27

[/SBLOCK]

OOC: Queenie, no worries When you say "whispering" but don't use a SBLOCK, I assume that means you're speaking such that nearby party members can hear but keeping your voices low so that NPCs would be hard pressed to eavesdrop. Kobold Stew, I am pretty sure you can use superiority dice on bonus actions. Nothing in the rules seems to indicate otherwise.

 

[Queenie]

"On de contrary," Nia assured Kat, still smiling that 'cat's got the canary' smile. "It is to our advantage. You must trust ol' Steeleyes, Captain. Leave de curse to me. But use it when you speak wit' Blackbeard to take ownership. Let him tink he is takin' advantage of YOU, sellin' off a ship dat none dare use."

"We'll be havin' de last laugh, when we sail it away."

Katerina tries to keep her eyes from popping out of her head while still keeping her voice low. "Blackbeard? THE Blackbeard?" She rubs her forehead. "I was thinking more of acquiring a ship without spending money on it. But, I suppose this could work." She seems to retreat into her thoughts for a bit.

When she returns to reality she looks at Nia critically, sizing her up. "Well milady, not only are you beautiful but it seems you have some secrets too. We can discuss that more later. I can't put my finger on it but I trust you more than I trust most, I have a feeling you are meant to be here, apart of this adventure with this motley crew." Kat gives her one more long glance before turning her attentions to the arm wrestling.

 

[Queenie]

Kat excuses herself and saunters over to the arm wrestling. Varlock is looking to have the advantage but she wants to size this Gvido up.

"So Sailor, have you have enough of my strong man yet? Perhaps before you lose you would like to make this interesting and test another of my crew? Good old Hugo here is just fantastic at these sort of things." She waves an arm toward Hugo, who does not look like any kind of obvious arm wrestler.

 

[Quickleaf]

After much grunting and swearing, Gvido and the Doctor seem about evenly matched. However, just as Katarina begins to engage Gvido Berzins, a drunk sailor bumps the table, disrupting the match to an uproar of cursing. Cracking his thick neck, Gvido takes a long drink of curiously foamy ale while the other Latvians push the drunken sailor off the table. After some heated debate, the crowd decides the match was a draw. Gvido keeps his eyes locked on the next unlikely challenger: Hugo Van Haan.

"Your Dutchman, eh? Your Doctor has brawn to hold his own, but that's not enough to beat old Gvido! Us Courlandians aren't made of cheese and wooden shoes, after all. Hahaha... So, what say you Dutchman, ready to put your hand where your mouth is?" Gvido asks with an underhanded smirk, stretching out his hand and settling his elbow on the table again in arm wrestling pose.

 

[Kobold Stew]

[sblock="Barrington, round 2"]

Barrington is pleased that one of these ruffians has taken off, but the other still remains out of his sight. "Polly, stay back," he proclaims, "There is another."

He swipes with his rapier at the figure he can see (knocking him down?),* and then whirls around with his pistol, pointing to the roof, ready to fire if he sees a target.

[[1d20+5=17; if it's a hit 1d8+3=10]] plus superiority die [[+1d8=6 and a DC 13 Wis save or be frightened, but I think that's him.]]

If he does, he fires [[bonus action, not yet rolled]]; if he doesn't,he moves so his back is against the wall (and under an overhang?) of the building he thinks the pirate is on.[/sblock]

 

[Quickleaf]

[SBLOCK=Barrington]Barrington's rapier drops under the menacing pirate's guard, sticking him viciously in the hip. Yowling in pain, the pirate stumbles backward in the face of Barrington's advance, slumping against the side of the building and sliding down with a groan as the cutlass drops from his fingers.

Having no shot against the pirate hidden on the rooftops, Barrington ducks under the overhang of the house as Polly does the same a few buildings up the hill. She has drawn a small holdout pistol from her purse, steeling her nerves. While Barrington cannot see the pirate, from her vantage point slightly uphill Polly appears to have spotted him, pistol extended shakily before her. The shot narrowly misses the pirate, who Barrington can hear scramble around on the rooftop to the other side, a single unspent bullet dropping off the eaves at Barrington's feet followed by cussing. After a couple seconds pause, Barrington can hear the pirate running clumsily across the rooftops away from them. Polly has ducked behind the house uphill terrified.

OOC: Polly shoots at pirate with 3/4 cover (total AC 17) 1d20+1=15 and misses. Then moves back behind cover herself. Hidden Pirate uses action to reload, then bonus action to Dash and moves across difficult terrain of rooftops, covering a total of 30 feet. No longer hidden, but probably has half cover (+2 AC). Condition Tracker Menacing Pirate AC 12; HP 27 15 0; unconscious Sidekick Pirate AC 12; HP 27 8; disarmed and fleeing Hidden Pirate AC 12; HP 27 ; fleeing

[/sblock]

 

[Queenie]

While Kat is there watching the arm wrestling mayhem, she takes a long moment to size up Gvido's associates. Sure, they were drunks, but could they be useful otherwise?

 

[Kobold Stew]

[sblock=Barrington]

Hearing the retreating rooftop steps, Barrington sheathes his blade and rushes to the unconscious soldier, and attempts to stabilize him if needed.

1d20+1 vs DC 10 Medicine=14

He rolls him over so that he won't choke, and then rushes to Polly's side, reloading as he does so.

"Are you alright?" he asks, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You've got a nasty little stinger there. You'll have to keep me safe from now on." He smiles reassuringly. "You did well. Thank you."

Barrington returns to the pirate, holstering his pistol. He picks up the two dropped cutlasses, and does a quick check on the pirate's body for a coin purse or anything that might indicate who "she" is. [/sblock]

 

[Shayuri]

Nia returns the captain's frank assessment with an enigmatic smile. Katerina was not in a position to know just how calculated Nia's appearance here was; how it was not simply a matter of random happenstance but the culmination of months of work on her part. It was natural, perhaps, that in a natural attempt to find order in apparent chaos she would attribute it to destiny or providence. That was fine by Nia. She only benefitted from the otherworldly aura of seeming to be a 'chosen one.'

And as for secrets? That almost made her laugh. Of course she had secrets. She was a magician, and magic was precious little other than secrets. Without secrets magic wasn't much more than a pistol at your side, or a jerkin of chainmail or an array of tricks. Its' true power was never what it COULD do, but in what people thought it MIGHT do. It functioned best when no one else was quite sure what it was.

With Katerina now overseeing the armwrestling, Nia's attention wandered from it for a moment. Was it time, perhaps, to send word to her cohort in all this? He might appreciate some advance warning, so they didn't catch him in an awkward moment. Yes.

She wove through the crowd to the door of the inn and went just outside to scan the street for some likely young lad. On spying a passing ragamuffin, she went to his side, holding up a coin so as not to scare him away. To him she said, "A copper to take a message. Come back to me here and tell me to my face it's done, and you'll get anudda. Go to da old house dere on da hill just outside of town. Knock on de door and say aloud dat Steeleyes is bringin' a crew soon so be ready. Undahstand? Steeleyes is bringin' a crew, so be ready."

The coin went into the urchin's hand. "Off wit' you now."

 

[Quickleaf]

The gathered crowd laughs a bit at Katarina putting forward Hugo Van Haan as a viable competitor against Gvido. Pound for pound, Gvido has Hugo outmatched. After all, the dwarves of the Netherlands are not known for strength of arms like the dying breed of Spanish mountain dwarves. But when it comes to wit? If they could have eyes to see such a things as clearly as one sees bulging muscle, it would seem Gvido the one who is outmatched.

[MENTION=6777934]Maldavos[/MENTION]

OOC: You are up! Go for it

[SBLOCK=Katarina]Katarina eyes the eight mercenary compatriots of Gvido Berzins. They have the hardened look of other pirates Katarina has sailed with, a cut above the usual sailors and lacking the usual gruesome injuries of other old salts their age. Either this means they are good at fighting or they've had very few fights where real injury was at risk. Judging by their well maintained cutlasses and pistols, Katarina would put her money on the former.[/SBLOCK]

[SBLOCK=Caillou]Young Samuel Sawyer murmurs a faint prayer as he approaches the house on the hill overlooking Nassau. The lad has jogged most of the way and is out of breath, visible to Caillou thru the windows of the ramshackle structure. If he had known it was this house, the abode of the Tengu King, the Creole woman was sending him to, Young Sawyer would have asked for more. Still, a silver in the hand is worth two in the bush. During the day the structure is only a bit foreboding, but at night with a storm brewing off the bay it is downright ominous. 

Creeping forward, alert to signs of skulls on pikes, gruesome traps, or man-eating zombies, Young Sawyer knocks on the door nervously, repeating the message. "Message, 'sah. Steeleyes says she's bringin' a crew, so be ready." Usually he'd wait for an answer and the hope of a tip, but the aura around the Tengu King is too much for the lad. When he hears a creak of a door, he takes off running.[/SBLOCK]

[SBLOCK=Barrington]A bit of salt or mud and a bandage improvised from the pirate's shirt are sufficient to keep him from bleeding out to the gunshot to his gut. When Barrington rolls the pirate to his side, a groan escapes from the man's lips suggesting he won't be unconscious for long. Besides the two cutlasses, Barrington finds the pistol dropped by the pirate. The pirate's coin purse contains only some shot and powder, and a tiny silver icon of an unusual looking beetle-insect.

His hand upon Polly's shoulder seems to reassure Polly, whose shoulders slump and she releases her white-knuckle grip of her holdout pistol. She gives Barrington a reflexive embrace, and he can feel how rattled the encounter left her. Releasing him, a bit embarassed, Polly smiles at Barrington's compliment, "Ai, me pa gave it to me, to keep the debtors at bay. I've only ever fired it as a warning shot a'fore... I've never seen a man fight like you, James...not even a scratch upon ye..." Polly's eyes are wide as she follows Barrington like a lost puppy as he searches the pirate. "What did they want? Money?"

OOC: Treasure: 2 scimitars, 1 pistol, powder and shot (11), silver icon of an insect.  A Nature check might identify what sort of insect the silver icon represents, and a follow up History check might discern what or who that insect is meant to represent.

[/SBLOCK]