Dramatis Personæ

Brother Mendel (Herodian)
Dane Sardock (Winston)
Gabriel Auditore (Rigil Kent)
Gestlin the Unpredictable (CommJunkee)
Magnifico the Clown (Feste)
Merasiël Alethmist (Melissa)
Rainald North-Hammer (Gigermann)

Of Victory and Loss

13 May 2014

Continued… About the time Rainald and the leader of the strangers, called Dicey, began to close with each other to duel, the other Heroes arrived at the scene and joined those already present. Rainald jogged forward intently, while Magnifico, Brother Mendel, and Radskyrta followed a pace or two behind; Dicey only took a few steps before standing still to receive. Brother Mendel caught sign of invisible footfalls in the dust near Dicey—that of Salren, their wizardess—and brought it to the others’ attention. At the same time, the rest of the enemy crew emerged from their hiding places behind the broken pillars of the “Pantheon”; Radskyrta squared himself before the black-clad Finn, a master of the Sahudese fighting arts by the look of him; Hargin, the broad-shouldered, axe-wielding dwarf, dropped back behind Finn and maneuvered toward the front of the ruined structure where Dane, Gestlin and Merasiël approached. Alfio, the elven archer from before, distanced himself from Dicey toward the middle of the floor, next to the hole they had excavated, and was immediately surrounded by a dome of impenetrable magical force; Gabriel found himself on the far side of the building from the rest, and approached the archer’s position behind the cover of the columns there. Just before Rainald and Dicey would meet at arms, Magnifico let fly an insult so devious and unexpected that Dicey and Salren momentarily lost all focus; Rainald took the advantage and swung Gramjarn at the leader.

• Rainald and Dicey exchanged many attacks, though little damage was done to either as they both expertly blocked the other’s strikes while maneuvering around each other. Dicey backed toward Magnifico and turned from Rainald long enough to deal the Clown a grievous blow before returning to Rainald; he avoided Brother Mendel’s attempt to disarm him of his sword with his staff. However, Rainald had managed to circle almost behind him, and after feigning an attack to the fore, struck Dicey at the back of the skull with such force that he was felled in one blow, all but dead.
• Dane, Merasiël and Gestlin scrambled to get into position. Dane loosed an arrow at Alfio, in his protective dome, but although the magical arrow passed through the dome without resistance, it immediately reversed itself and struck Dane instead—Gestlin recognized the Return Missile spell and informed Dane that his efforts were in vain. Hargin, on the run, without stopping, threw his axe at Merasiël, who narrowly vaulted over it; upon striking the floor beyond, the axe returned to the dwarf’s hand at speed. He took an arrow or two from Dane upon his shield, and Gestlin cast a spell to levitate him off the ground that ended up seizing his shield instead; the dwarf struck his shield with the now-returned axe, and the enchantment was broken, and he continued his charge anew, bearing down now upon the wizard. As Dane continued to loose arrows, Gestlin called upon Smil-Blam once, and it fizzled in a shower of multi-colored sparks, and then again: the dwarf was teleported high into the air, to fall to his inevitable death. Still-invisible Salren had approached, and had narrowly failed to bend the will of Gestlin and Dane to hers; upon seeing her dwarf companion falling, she managed to teleport him to safety, to some place only she knew, just before Gestlin cast a Sleep spell that caught her off her guard, and so she collapsed into an invisible heap, fast asleep.
• Radskyrta and Finn each challenged the other to attack, just before Merasiël joined their duel. Finn, armed with a pair of sai, fended off all attacks from the two with seeming ease, using the strange weapons to disarm them both in turn, though Angrist would return to Merasiël at her command. Now free of the charging dwarf, Dane began to loose arrows at Finn, but he evaded them all while maneuvering such that none of the Heroes could attack him from behind. Merasiël and Radskyrta were both wounded, but were unable to land a blow upon the exceedingly-nimble fighter; Radskyrta had defended himself furiously, but had fallen from one of the blows, and again after he got to his feet, after which Finn unsheathed his katana in the blink of an eye, and in a fluid motion, stabbed Radskyrta through the heart, slaying him. Gestlin had joined the effort, casting Flame Jet which Finn easily dodged, and upon seeing Radskyrta so slain, chanced a Sleep spell, to which the enemy surprisingly succumbed. Merasiël ensured Finn would not rise again.
• Gabriel abandoned stealth and broke into a run, still using the columns as cover from Alfio’s arrows, and after a pause, believing he could in no way penetrate the magical defenses, charged toward the Dome of Force anyway, leaping and tumbling; none of the elf’s arrows could find their mark. Gabriel rounded the hole in the floor and joined Brother Mendel, who had been struck with one of Alfio’s meteoric arrows, which ignored his Deflect Missile defense. As another was loosed, Gabriel threw himself in front of it, and was struck in the leg such that it was crippled. He rose on his remaining leg, with help, as Brother Mendel spun up a spell to dispel the dome, and again, Gabriel threw himself in front of the arrow, which failed to penetrate his cuirass. Brother Mendel’s spell failed to dispel the dome, so he tried instead to heal whom he could.

Meanwhile, Rainald, having just slain the enemy’s leader, brazenly approached the dome and began looking for a weakness, and finding none, began to taunt its occupant. Safe within, Alfio responded by loosing an arrow at Rainald’s face, which Rainald caught with his hand, having let go his shield. Again Rainald taunted the elf, who then loosed two arrows at once at Rainald’s face; but as he raised his shield, one of them was deflected by the rim such that Rainald was struck in his right eye. Rainald staggered but remained on his feet through sheer stubbornness, and the elf loosed arrow after arrow at the Northman’s face, and Rainald was struck twice more as he fell back to help Gabriel protect Brother Mendel, who was trying to find a weakness in the dome’s defense.

As Finn had finally been felled, now Gestlin and Dane were able to turn their attentions upon the elf as well, being the last that remained of the enemy. There existed a stalemate: Alfio had used the loosed the last of his meteoric arrows upon Brother Mendel, and knew that any others would be subject to the Heroes’ magical defenses, but he could not dismiss the the dome to leave it, and would have to defend himself as he could as he waited for it to fall of its own. No longer hurried, Gestlin retrieved a few of the elf’s meteoric arrows that had been deflected or dodged from a nearby column and handed them to Dane, who readied to aggressively return them to their former-owner, while Gestlin powered up a Windstorm to prevent any more arrows leaving the dome in a dangerous attitude. Alfio knew he had no chance to survive; he loosed a few arrows anyway that were easily deflected by the casters or caught by the wind as expected. As Gestlin launched an Explosive Fireball through the dome, Alfio dove over the edge of the excavation to the bottom of the protective force sphere, shielding him from the full force of the blast. As he climbed back up, singed but still healthy, Dane returned his meteoric arrows through his back. And it was over.

All had been wounded save for Gestlin, and Brother Mendel began to heal them. Rainald’s eye was lost, though Brother Mendel was certain it could be regenerated later. But there was no celebration in victory, as they saw that Radskyrta was dead; Brother Mendel insisted that they should take him to a church, that he could pray for his resurrection.

Notes

• This fight took up the entire session, and was easily the toughest this group has ever faced; we lost an NPC for the second time (in the last 4 years prior), and Rainald had to make Death Checks for the first time ever. Again, the enemies were PCs from the GM’s face-to-face group, three of which were 400+ points, with some long-established and thoroughly-tested tactics and procedures that the GM recreated here to deadly effect. If not for some lucky breaks (bad resistance rolls, etc), it could easily have been much, much worse for us
• The Red-Shirt, Radskyrta, joined the party so long ago, finally did his duty, though he may be returned through resurrection
• Along with the enemies’ superior natural capabilities, they had some nasty magical gear; through (Pyrrhic) victory, this gear is now ours
• The dwarf still lives, as far as we know, and will not take it well that we have killed his fellows, I think; one of the magic items found on their persons is one of a pair of magical earrings that act as two-way communicators—the dwarf undoubtedly has the other