CH. 11: The Show Must Go On

[djhyland]

"Monster breathing fire?" Arulia wonders. Maybe it is a good thing that she's here in the forge. She just hopes that the army can handle it before it causes too much damage to the town, however grudgingly she does so. "I hope that nobody gets hurt, but I suppose that's not realistic when a fire-breathing monster is involved."

[JadedDM]

Haahqae, Kendra, Tulbas and Gobax (Grand Market)
Gobax readies himself to paralyze the baaz when they return. But it takes a full minute for them to draw water from the well, so they won't be returning for a little longer. Nevertheless, Haahqae scurries after them in hopes of helping.

The blind elemental slams its fist down on the concrete again, Kendra tumbling aside to avoid being hit. Her elven sword starts to become hotter and she feels her hand burning while clenching it. She ignores the pain and slashes again, the magic sword harming the elemental further.

Tulbas puts another stone in his sling and aims for one of the baaz. Luckily, though, he is a terrible shot and the stone actually flies in the wrong direction, breaking a window behind him. If he had actually hit, the baaz surely would have noticed him attacking them, even in all of this chaos, and would have quickly turned on him.

Kendra takes one final slash at the elemental, and the creature suddenly dissipates leaving behind a pile of ash and scorch marks on the ground, but nothing else. For some reason, though, her sword continues to grow hotter despite the elemental's demise.

Initiative
Haahqae (1d10): 8
Kendra (1d10+5): 6+5 = 11
Tulbas (1d10+6): 7+6 = 13
Gobax (N/A)
Baaz (1d10+5): 6+5 = 11
Elemental (1d10+6): 4+6 = 10

Round 4!

Gobax prepares a spell.
Haahqae hops off the stage and jogs 120 feet toward the well, leaving the map.
Elemental swings its fist at Kendra while blinded (-4 hit) [TN 9] (1d20-4): 2-4 = -2, miss.
Baaz continue attacking, but do no damage. Baaz 01 and 02 draw water from the well.
Kendra takes (1d4): 1 damage from her heated sword. She slashes at the blinded (+4 hit) elemental with her elven (+2 hit/dmg) long sword with great skill (+1 hit/+2 dmg) [TN 15] (1d20+7): 12+7 = 19, hit for (1d12+3): 3+3 = 6 damage. Elemental is now critically wounded.
Tulbas slings a stone at Baaz 52 with no skill (-5 hit) [TN 18] (1d20-5): 19-5 = 14, miss.
Kendra slashes at the blinded (+4 hit) elemental with her elven (+2 hit/dmg) long sword with great skill (+1 hit/+2 dmg) [TN 15] (1d20+7): 13+7 = 20, hit for (1d12+3): 4+3 = 7 damage. Fire Elemental is destroyed.

(OOC: End of combat, unless Tulbas wants to take more shots at the baaz. He needs a 20 to hit one, though.)

Arulia Seroth (Thoron's Blacksmithy)
"I wonder how it got into the city, much less the market square, without being noticed until now," the customer wonders aloud, rubbing at his chin. "Whole thing seems mighty suspicious to me. Probably more going on than some random monster attack."

Felran, Ne-Chanz, and Shima (North Haven Sewers)
"They aren't going anywhere," Felran says. "Let's continue on, and we can come back and deal with them later. Dwarf, go scout ahead and see what's further down."

(OOC: Actually, spyguy was NPCing Felran. But whatever.)

[HorizonsDream]

Kendra lets out a sigh of relief as she switches her sword to her off hand, and then she finally drops it to the ground. She looks down at her hand in confusion, then shakes it a bit as she tries to ignore the pain that her sword actually caused her. "Is it because that thing was made of fire?" she asks herself.

[Chris1234]

"Sure," Shima replies and does exactly that.

[TristenC]

Gobax hustles over to the scorched earth, looking at it in shock... over so quickly... it hardly even got any of them... At least he had made some progress himself... Hey, you ok? he asks the fighter, noticing the burn. I can bandage that up for you, if you like. he offers. Have you ever seen anything like that before? he asks as he tries to wrap his head around the whole ordeal.

[BishGada]

Tulbas quickly close the distance to Kendra and asks her is she is OK, but immediately looks at the baaz in suspicion and dislike, ready to go away if they become hostile. 'Pity it didn't had the chance to kill few more of them.' He thinks to himself.

==============================================================
(OOC: No, no... I don't want to break any more windows )

[Haahque]

Haahqae almost can’t believe his eyes when he sees the giant fire creature crumple into ash.

Well that was certainly something. What’s immediately clear is that Haahqae has to address the Baaz and everyone else assembled in regards to the attack. It was during his performance, and it might have messed up his day more than anyone else’s here, but soldiers had just died for why? That part was unclear. Who attacked, why they attacked, why did they have to pick Haahqae’s show? All things that he had no idea the answers to.

He makes his way back to the stage, figuring out what he needs to say on the way. There’s a part of him that’s glad to see so many Baaz die after his life when to shit when they arrived, but saying so about soldiers when their friends have just died is a good way to die. Protocol says, in the places where he went that had such a protocol, it says that he should have a moment of silence to morn for the heroes who fell in battle. He can work with that, even if he doesn’t fully believe it.

As Haahqae gets on the stage, he pulls out two torches and bashing them together, he amplifies the sound with ghost sound to make a thud loud enough to get everyone’s attention.

“Can I get everyone’s attention please! Quiet down, quiet down!”

“I have no idea how a giant fire creature of doom managed to get into the city, and I might be rather peeved that it decided to pick my performance to attack, but this speech is not about me. It’s about you. I have just witnessed, first hand, the bravery, strength and courage that I put on this show to celebrate. In the face of a terrifying monster far beyond the ability of a civilian or local hero like myself to combat, you banded together and kept our city safe. If it wasn’t for your efforts that creature could have set entire districts on fire, causing unimaginable amounts of damage. Today was a great victory for the safety of the city. But it came at a cost.”

“Look around you and see the bodies of the heroes that fell in battle. Death in battle is always part of a soldier’s life, but that doesn’t make it any less sad than any other death. I would now like everyone to have a moments silence to honor the heroes who fell to defend our fair city.”

Assuming that people are going along with Haahqae this far, he’ll count out ten seconds in his head for a silence in the market square, before breaking the silence with a poem. It’s a gnomish contraption that he’s adapting to fit the situation as best as it can, and maybe not the most appropriate for the occasion, but he’s only got so much to work with.

“
The heroes that today shall be sang,
The grief in my gut gives a pang,
They may turn to stone,
They’ll never be alone.
At least they went out with a bang.
”

“However today was a victory, and just as important as honoring the dead is celebrating the living. Which one of you was the hero who struck the final blow and slew this foul creature?”

[djhyland]

Arulia realizes that Bear is probably right...monsters don't just appear in the middle of town for no reason. With a sinking feeling, she also realizes that this kind of attack will likely make it far less likely for her father to be freed any time soon.

[JadedDM]

Haahqae, Kendra, Tulbas and Gobax (Grand Market)
Kendra drops the sword to the ground, which gives a clatter. She watches as the sword grows even hotter still, until it's actually glowing red, like when it was first pulled from the forge. It takes several minutes, but then it cools down and is eventually cool enough to touch again. Had she not dropped it early enough, it would have likely done considerable damage to her hand.

The baaz with the water arrive too late to be of any help, but they dump the buckets of water onto the ash anyway, just to be safe.

Haahqae gives his speech and his poem and this seems to fire up the baaz. "He's right! Our weapons were useless against that thing." They all turn toward Kendra. "She was the only one who could hurt it! If it weren't for her, things would have been much worse!"

The baaz start all talking among themselves. A number of civilians have started to creep back toward the market to see the aftermath and they start talking, as well. Words get thrown around like "Hero of Haven" and "Blessed by the Dragon Queen herself!"

Arulia Seroth (Thoron's Blacksmithy)
The excitement outside seems to have died down. Things are quiet again. But then the door suddenly swings open with a bang. It's none other than Camilla, eyes blazing. "That was amazing!" she proclaims. "A monster made of fire just attacked the show I was watching in the market!"

Felran, Ne-Chanz, and Shima (North Haven Sewers)
The three head south back to the two doors. Felran and Ne-Chanz remain here while Shima continues south, stepping over the dead giant rat.

After a few feet, Shima turns to the west and enters a very large chamber. An assortment of pipes jut out of walls, ceilings and floors that gurgle as waste and water are transported through them. There are also numerous spiderwebs all over the place, but largely concentrated in the corners. On the far end of the room it looks like there is another two passages, but one is completely blocked by webbing. The other appears clear, though.

[Chris1234]

Shims goes back and gets the others, "Spider webbing left and right corners of a large room. Right, it's time you pulled your weight, Felran. Take this and go set fire to the webs, left one first." The dwarf asks Ne-Chanz for his most used torch, lit of course, and keeping another lit one and then passes the older torch to Felran with a gentle encouraging shove to 'get on with it'.

[HorizonsDream]

Kendra absently holds out her hand to Gobax, but she is clearly paying more attention to what is going on around her than she is to what he is saying. "Uh, no," she says in answer to his question. "Ohh, I'm not sure I like this," she says softly to herself as she notices how everyone's eyes are on her.

[TristenC]

Gobax bandages her hand carefully, speaking quietly so only she can hear. Oh? Why not? I'd think fame and glory was what being a soldier is about. You defended the dragon-queen's troops quite expertly. Nobody else could lay a blade on that thing...whatever it was... he listens carefully to her odd response, suddenly unsure of her motives.

[BishGada]

"Better being liked by them then hated." Tulbas says.

[Haahque]

At the Baaz response, Haahqae slowly becomes aware of who it was that killed the elemental. “Kendra did it? Figures. I always knew she was a good fighter.” He whispers to himself, probably too quiet for anyone to make out the words. Then he withdraws into thought for a few seconds.

He should give the hero some sort of reward, but there’s no freaking way he’s going to part with any of his hard-earned coin. Given how much the show cost, he barely earned any in this endeavor. And for his plans… he would have to do dozens more shows like this to even afford one of the things he’s been working towards for weeks. Meanwhile what else could he give her? He doesn’t have any trophies on him, that would be ideal, but who plans for something like this? He’s pretty sure she doesn’t want any sort of book, not that he wants to give those up either and when they were working together before she got a much better weapon then anything Haahqae’s found before. She has a magical weapon! She doesn’t need any sort of reward Haahqae can provide. Maybe a half-drunk bottle of invisibility, he could part with that and she might like it, but what sort of reward is “here have a drunk bottle! I promise it’s really good stuff.” That sounds like the sort of thing to give a girl after half a night of drinking, not as a reward for a ‘great’ service to the city. Besides, if he wants to pull off a heist later, like he would like to do, he might need all the invisibility he can get.

Instead when Haahqae raises his voice and addresses the crowd, he offers Kendra no material reward. “It appears that it was hero Kendra who slew the creature. "Bravely done Kendra, you’ve earned the gratitude of all of us. I would like to propose three cheers for Kendra’s deeds this day!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!”

And with that order of business out of the way, there was one more thing that needed attending to.

“Now with what has happened today, I can understand if any or all of you are no longer in the mood for a performance. But I came here tonight to give a demonstration of my skills, and I plan to continue doing so now. I have many more wondrous feats of juggling to show off for anyone who wishes to stay and see them.”

[djhyland]

Whereas Arulia had been unwilling to leave the furnace untended for even a little while when Bear described the commotion outside, she thinks nothing of ignoring it when Camilla bursts into the shop. "What? What happened?" she exclaims as she rushes to her sister, and follows it more urgently with, "Are you hurt? Are you well? Did you get burned?"