Nautkia, and the South

As we play, occasionally we'll close a thread and open a new one to keep the size of threads (and relative complexity) down to a dull roar. Here's where we store the closed posts from the history of Errant Road.
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Graybeard
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Graybeard »

"ROSE!" Brother Miguel shouted, abandoning all concern for getting the decoy through the forest, not even worrying about the armored presence, and simply sprinting at top speed for the shelf of land where she stood sobbing.

By the time he got there, Sister Rose had pulled herself together -- slightly. Lillith's comforting hug had helped a great deal, and her military training (Kenny) had helped too (Kenny); after all, this wasn't the first time (Kenny) she had witnessed the death (KENNY!) of someone she'd been close to. It wasn't even the worst ... obviously ...

Mainly, though, she was thinking about Egbert's last words. Bad decisions ... nothing all the priests of Luminosita can do anything about ... say that you forgave me ... pray for me ... Well, that last, she could do -- and the prayer for Egbert's soul helped immensely. Now, if I only knew why ... And I don't know, but so help me Luminosita, Egbert, I will!

"He jumped," she said dully as Miguel arrived, horror on his face that probably mirrored her own. "I thought we'd set up enough barriers to at least keep him where he was, but he did something I hadn't thought of."

"An accident?" Miguel said, hoping for the best. "He was in a weird state, for sure, and even after a nap, he was probably fatigued from his spellcasting. Could he--"

Rose interrupted him, and the mild irritation she felt at Miguel's attempt to sugar-coat the tragedy helped her collect herself. (That hadn't been his intention, but hey.) "No, Miguel, he jumped. He polymorphed into some kind of jumping animal, an antelope I think. I tried to stop him, but he went right over me, and very deliberately, consciously bounded off the edge. I -- watched him carefully." She wasn't going to say anything about his change back to human form or his Dispel, not yet. "There can be no doubt that it was a conscious, willful act. And above all, before he did it, he started to tell me why -- even if I don't understand a word of it."

Miguel and Lillith both started to say something, but before they got a word out, they were cut off by a low, unearthly rumble from the forest; Argus' magic to get the decoy down to the river was starting to take effect.
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Drannin »

Argus started to run after Miguel.

"No can do, Boss."

Argus froze. He turned back to Harker, who was standing on the deck of the ship with a grim, sympathetic look on his face. "You know that."

"She could be-" Argus began, then stopped. No. It was a scream of shock. Horror. Not pain. Something terrible had just happened, but probably not to Rose. Miguel was already on his way at top speed, and Rose could certainly handle herself. He wondered if Lillith would help her... he certainly hoped so.

But Harker was right. There was nothing he could do. Nothing at all. Except continue on as planned.

Cirella. Addon.

Again.

"Boss..." Harker said, and by the Weave, there was true compassion in those eyes. "She's gonna be alright. But we don't have any time to waste." He paused. "It's not like back then, and you know it."

You mean when I kept working like a machine even though my wife and son had died. When I managed to alienate my daughter for all time? The thing is, Harker was right. And this time, he really didn't have a choice. Argus sighed. "Harker? How the hell did you become my conscience?"

The familiar smiled gently. "Someone had to." After Cirella died.

Argus barked a laugh and looked in the distance, where Sister Rose's yell had come from. He sighed... and focused his magic on the ship. I'm sorry, Rose. Please be alright. What had to be done, had to be done. Focusing his magic on the ship and the terrain, Argus pushed... and the mock smuggling vessel sank into the ground with a low, muted roar. In its wake, wards sputtered and died. The vessel drifted, with surprising speed, towards the river...
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Graybeard »

A loud splash announced the arrival of Argus' decoy at water level, and broke the dark mood at the cliff's edge. Brother Miguel and Sister Rose looked down at the cove and liked what they saw; the decoy looked convincingly boat-like, and if nobody unwelcome was watching, the ruse looked like it would have a good chance of working. As they watched, a small figure jumped overboard, splashed through the shallow water, and sprinted for the trail; Harker, presumably.

"Everybody back from the edge!" Miguel called. "Argus, it's there! Do it!" He and the women took three large steps away from the cliff and turned to watch ...

... Just as a lone figure climbed out of the wagon bearing the half elves and dashed for the decoy.

----------

"Ledos! NO! The SECOND boat!" Leofric bellowed, but it was too late...
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Drannin »

As soon as the boat sank into the ground, Argus spun and ran for the river. Beneath him, the earth trembled slightly as the boat phased through the ground. Got to hurry.

Argus made it to the ravine and fell over, gasping for breath. Beneath him, he saw the boat seamlessly melt out of the rock wall and fall gently into the water, drifting slowly downstream, and then with greater speed. Good piloting, Harker. Speaking of whom, Argus saw Harker dive into the water, away from the ship.

Right. Argus placed his hands on the ground, and felt towards the cliff edge, for cracks and grooves into the ground. Found them...

"Argus, it's there! Do it!"

Argus squeezed.

And a huge chunk of cliff, from a precarious-looking precipice, broke loose and fell towards the boat. Onto the boat. Destroying the boat.

Argus didn't see the splash. Didn't see the debris fly every which way. Didn't notice the small figure belonging to Ledos. He was already passed out on the ground, his magic totally exhausted.
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Graybeard »

"Argus!" Sister Rose shrieked, and she ran to where the mage had collapsed. Not another death... But no, dead men didn't snore like a freight train. He'd obviously just overtaxed himself with the spells. A good nap should do the trick. Rose permitted herself a relieved sigh and a wan smile, for the first time since what happened to Father Egbert, as she knelt to put a pad under his head.

Meanwhile, Brother Miguel was peeking over the edge, inspecting the wreckage down below. Damn ... it worked, he thought. The half elves down below were shouting to each other, probably cautioning each other to stay out of the way, but he couldn't be sure what they were saying. Anyway, they were ready for the ship that was standing off, out in the channel. And here came Sasha, wearing what looked like elven armor; might she have ... dealt with ... the elf in town? Finally, some things are starting to go right. That left one item of business to address. Turning to Lillith, he started to ask, "Are you planning on going with --"

"FORCE BOLT!"

Special-ops reflexes took over again, and he pulled Lillith down and out of sight, just as a green blast of magic roared past their heads from somewhere down below.

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Miguel couldn't see, and therefore couldn't know, what had happened down by the river, just moments earlier.

"Ledos! No!" Leofric had shouted, as the half elf approached the boat that had magically appeared from nowhere. "Get back! That isn't our --"

But Ledos couldn't hear him over the racket of nearly a thousand tons of rock crashing into the decoy and shattering it to splinters. He was outside the lethal radius of the bombardment, and almost outside its effect altogether, but not quite. Pieces of rock, wood and something he couldn't identify (Argus and Harker had been creative in mocking up the "cargo" that their vessel might carry) flew past him, one rock catching him squarely on a wrist and probably breaking it, another glancing off the side of his head; an inch in the wrong direction, and he'd have been dead. He had looked around as the debris settled, mad green light rising in his eyes.

Leofric had sworn under his breath. Ledos didn't have the same kind of overt disability -- and aberrant magic -- that his partner did, but he was a potent spellcaster ... and more than a little on the excitable side. Dangerously excitable. As a matter of fact, "berserk" wouldn't put it too strongly. And ignoring Leofric's shouts, he had scanned the cliff where the rocky barrage had come from. There they were: the girl who'd claimed to be "saving" them, a man in the robes of the Veracian Church ... and what looked for all the world like an elf.

"There they are! Traitor! You have betrayed us to the elves!" Ledos had yelled at Lillith, but the distance was too great, his voice too strangled by the pain in his wrist and his head, and the general commotion too loud; she hadn't heard a word of it. But when he screamed his spell, and tried to incinerate those who were now going to kill him (or so he was convinced), it had been heard just fine ...

As Leofric gaped open-mouthed and the people above sought shelter, Ledos gathered energy for another spell.
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Sareth »

"No," Lillith whimpered into the dirt, tears in her eyes. "It's all going wrong. It's all going wrong again." She squirmed and struggled to get out from under the much larger man, but found herself unable to get free.
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Graybeard »

"What in Luminosita's Name is happening now?" Sister Rose groaned, as a Fireball exploded overhead. (Argus was in no position to answer; he was still snoring peacefully.) She was far enough from the center of the blast as to be in no danger from it, but were Brother Miguel, Lillith and Sasha all right? She noticed with relief that the answer appeared to be in the affirmative; Sasha's armor would bear some interesting scorch marks, but after all, that was what it was for, and nobody appeared burned beyond what simple Healing spells could cover.

But what was going on? Whatever the answer, Rose decided that there wasn't much to do at the moment, at least until Argus woke up, except ride it out; their positions were safe and secure, and their offensive options limited. She settled back to wait, softly reciting a prayer.

--------

Leofric swore again, and turned to one of his party. "Antoni, you've got to stop him!"

"Y-y-yes, s-s-sir," the errant stuttered, and set off in a stumbling run -- stumbling, but not indecisive. He's seen Ledos like this before. It was a frightening sight, but he knew just what to do about it, painful as it was...
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Sasha had a natural degree of immunity to magic... direct magic... like the energy of the sword, or spells being cast directly upon her... but a fireball spell created real, actual, non-magical fire... and that hurt. Her hair, now scorched, was just a thin layer on the top and back of her head, leaving her ears completely exposed.

After a considerable tumble down the hill so that she was much closer to the water than before, Sasha took stock of her situation... She was well under the blast range of the scorched forest resulting from the fireball, but said fireball had one good thing to it - it'd done a wonderful job of clearing the brush, so now Sasha could see the fullness of the hill, including Rose and Lillith's position. She could also now see the caster clearly... and he was charging for another huge blast, by the looks of it.

"You could kill him." A voice said from her shoulder.

"Compassion." Sasha hissed. "Glad to see you're back. Errand go well?"

"Concern yourself not with my errand story." Compassion said. "You've got to do something. It's your-"

Sasha sighed. "Don't say it. 'destiny', right?"

Compassion shrugged her tiny shoulders. "I was going to go with 'duty', but I suppose destiny works too. Don't get mad, Sasha. In times of crisis, it's important to stay calm and do-"

"CALM!" Sasha shouted, loud enough the others probably heard her. "That's it! Compassion, you're a genius! Where'd those gems go..." Sasha stooped to pick up the bag of emotional control gems she'd swiped the night before and pulled out a large greenish-blue one. "This will do nicely."

"You're not going to... you are, aren't you?" Compassion let out a tiny sigh. "It'd be so much easlier to just kill him. Oh well... since I can't effect you, at least let me cast featherfall on the armor so you don't bash it on the rocks on your way down. It'd be a shame to waste such nice armor."

Now slightly magically empowered, Sasha shot out over the remaining canopy covering the hillside, running along a dead tree branch towards the waters below, brandishing the gem in front of her. She reached the end of the branch and, drawing on all her training, leapt into the air aimed straight at the half-elf in the water. His attention had been diverted, but the sound of her coming caused him to look back up... as she collided with him head-on, planting the gem straight in the middle of his forehead... the two tumbled into the deep waters. The last thing she saw before the wall of water was the momentary look of shock and confusion on his face, which would haunt her for some time if she survived this stunt.

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"This is what we're doing now?" The tiny male fairy asked, looking over at his equal-sized companion Compassion, as the chaos unfolded down below. "With all this power at our disposal, we could be doing so much more than prompting idiots to leap to their deaths."

"Eggie, you have an advantage over me in that you were a part of this... all... before you ascended. But you're new to this particular phase of the plan. If you can't trust me, trust what the man said. Direct action would be too noticable... our role is to move the pieces in such a way that they don't realize they're being moved. Sasha might never have fought the elf if I hadn't distracted her long enough to give the elf woman a chance to find her... and I could only drain the elf's life essence to aide you in your transformation if the elf was already in a weakened state."

"But what of the girl? Won't her death alter our mission?"

"Sasha's been on the cusp of this group that's been chasing you most of the time... if she lives, she'll have proven herself, and it'll be all the easier for me to infiltrate and control their movements. If she dies... then nobody knows that she even saw me, and I can start my routine in on one of the others... Lillith, maybe, or that Cit that shows up from time to time." Compassion fluttered her wings and rose of the branch. "Coming, Father?"

"Contrition." The sprite formerly known as Father Egbert said as he took to wing. "Trust the man, right? He said that my name was now 'Contrition'. Father Egbert is dead."



(OOC Note - Quick infodump for those of us who weren't in the other storyline... the Farrel one... when Compassion was introduced - she was a mage-for-hire named Sherry that was currently in the employ of Neverinal, an old lich-like elf who specilized in the blacker aspects of magic. She died, but a magical - and yet unnamed - force resembling a kindly old man snatched her spirit from 'passing on' and condensed her into her current form, renaming her Compassion at that time (to match the naming scheme of the "official" Poe-created fairies. The same has now, obviously, been done to Egbert.)
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Graybeard »

[OOC:

*Blinks*

Sasha just landed on the berserk half elf after jumping off a tree branch ... and then a five-hundred-foot cliff? And everyone remained alive and conscious? Well, if you say so... /OOC:]

Antoni continued his shambling run over to where Sasha and Ledos were entangled and splashing in the water, the light of madness still glowing in the latter's eyes. He was starting to cast another spell (or so Antoni thought, having no way to know what Sasha's gem did) when Antoni raised the object he'd been carrying: a large rock. This he brought down, hard, on the back of Ledos' head. The half elf collapsed in a heap as Sasha spluttered the water out of her lungs.

"S-s-sorry, m-m-miss," Antoni said as he held Ledos' head up; the water was deep enough here that an unconscious man could drown in it. "He g-g-gets these s-s-spells... B-b-but who are you?"

Meanwhile, Leofric was watching the scene with growing bewilderment. Someone wearing what was plainly elven armor had just made an extraordinary jump from the top of the cliff to intervene ... but that "someone" was quite manifestly not an elf. She'd certainly come from where the half elves' benefactors had been, so she was probably on their side... Could she have taken care of the elf herself? Either way, Ledos' behavior made one thing clear, and he was going to have to deal with it.

"Lillith!" he shouted back to the top of the cliff. "When Ledos gets in one of these states, he's dangerous to deal with. Incredibly dangerous. It would be unsafe for you to travel with us now. But I swear, on the Goddess' sacred grove, that we will send someone to rescue you from this hell hole when we get home!"

He turned back to the water, where the boat, the real one, was now coming in to shore.
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Re: Nautkia, and the South

Post by Sareth »

Lillith, still struggling to get out from under Brother Miguel, blinked at the shout.

"Send someone? But why would you..." Then she realized what he was saying.

The errant is dangerous. He doesn't believe you. He'll try to kill you. Lillith collapsed, no longer struggling. You can't go home. Not yet, at least.

She began crying softly.
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