In-Game Date: Mansday, Disander 13, late night.
The week of Horfang.
The party has staggered perhaps seventy feet from the alley when they here a low and sultry woman’s voice call out to them: “Hey, heroes!”
The party turns to see a tall, powerfully built woman in loose chainmail. She blows them a kiss from the mouth of the alley she stands in, perhaps 30 feet away from the party. Then with a complex twirl of her fingers, she blows a cone of cold at them as well. Laughing, the woman skips backwards down the alley, not taking her eyes off the stunned group as they shake off the pain and freezing chill of the spell’s effects. She draws a greatsword from it’s sheath on her back as she moves.
Badger takes off after the woman, with Grumble right behind her. Audric cries for Badger to wait, but charges in after her nonetheless. Nialia gives chase as well, leaving Rowan out on the street. Rowan draws her bow and fires several shots at the woman, none of which hit. Sighing, the ranger heads into the alley as well. The moment she does, a wall of purple and red fire erupts behind her, completely cutting off their retreat.
While that goes on, the woman has turned to face Grumble’s charge, as he’s pulled ahead of Badger and Audric. Her free hands move again, and suddenly Grumble feels as though he’s known this woman forever. She’s a close friend! Surely this is just a misunderstanding. Curiously, his other friends are trying to attack her! This can’t be right! As gently as he can, Grumble restrains Badger from attacking the woman, and argues with his friends, wondering aloud why they’re being so unreasonably hostile to this friend of his. The woman tells him that she has healing supplies just around the corner, and if he just follows her she can fix the wounds from that little accident at the mouth of the alley. Grumble thinks this is a good idea, and is confused by Audric, Nialia and Badger all trying to hold him back from following her. He shakes them off, and heads around the corner. The woman’s voice shouts “Take them!”
From the rooftops around them, snipers unleash a barrage of crossbow bolts at the party. Grumble snaps out of his mental haze and realizes that he’s been duped. A second flight of crossbow quarrels descends through the night air. Badger activates her slippers of spider climbing and scales the closest wall, while Audric grabs a nearby drainpipe and climbs up after her.
A figure materializes in front of Grumble. It is the woman, but in her true form of a nine foot tall ogre mage. The first stroke of her greatsword catches the dwarf off guard and wounds him badly. However, now Grumble has something he can attack, and the two of them begin to trade devastating blows. The she-ogre goes down under Nialia’s bite, Rowans’ swords, and Grumble’s axe, but Rowan knows that it’s only a matter of time before the ogre’s regenerative powers restore her. In the meantime, Audric and Badger have their hands full with the snipers on the roof. All Badger has is her Kukri, and all Audric has is his longknife, but they’re slowly making headway, and are providing a decent distraction for the snipers. This proves to be useful, since two assassins who’ve become invisible take this opportunity to strike at Grumble and Rowan. The heroes battle doggedly on, bleeding and bruised, but fighting for their lives in the dark warren of alleys. Miraculously, the party manages to take down all of their assailants without dying themselves.
As Audric and Badger send the last sniper tumbling off the rooftops to smack wetly on the flagstones below, Audric quickly sheathes his blade and grimaces. Like everyone, he is stuck and bleeding from a score of wounds. Badger has been hit once or twice, but not seriously, though her kirtle may now be a total loss. Audric takes her in his arms and flies her towards and up over the curtain of fire blocking the mouth of the alley.
Down at ground level in the alley, Grumble, Nialia and Rowan notice a cloud of ink blackness has spread across a nearby alleyway. Grumble, who is in the throes of his barbarian rage, runs yelling into the darkness. Rowan has emptied a flask of lamp oil onto the head and torso of the ogress and has set her alight. She keeps a close eye for any signs of the ogress awakening while the fire hopefully does the trick of putting her down for good.
Grumble can find no enemies to fight within the blinding darkness, but something is in there with him, for he can hear mocking laughter as some unseen weapon opens wounds on his body. Soon Grumble’s rage will be over, and Grumble will be grievously wounded as well as suffering the fatigue from having used his rage ability. His knows his only chance is to keep swinging and hope to strike the thing attacking him before Grumble is too weak to carry on the fight…
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