Quarrel in the quarry - RPLOG

Participants

• Jera
• Rogna
• Saibh
• Selena

Date

2/2/476

Log

Just outside the quarry stands a hippo dressed in a grey and gold outfit, swords at his side as he speaks to an almost equally large elephant. He waves his pick to and fro as he frantically explains the situation, which to those approaching the scene might sound something like this. "WEll we were down there doin our job you know, all them ores for the taking and then out of nowhere Jim takes a dagger to the back. So I turns around and there they are, standing there clad in black with menacing all over their faces, carrying bags weapons. They force us out, they kept JIM! He's still in there as security they say, but he's not gonna last without that medical knowhow. You gotsta help us!" The hippo nods and draws his sword, saying "I will assist in this matter, and do my best to secure Jim before he bleeds out."

Jera sighs as he treads into the clearing, looking at the deep shafts of the quarry. "Far too many bandits nowadays, and too few thieves. At least thieves have some sort of finesse." He waves to a familiar-ish hippo, even if they all do look the same to him, although the bow he's carrying looks like a giant, wood-metal amalgamation of a monstrosity, almost taller than he is. "My bow is yours."

Selena drops down from the air, scattering a small cloud of debris before she approaches the pair. "...Rogna, isn't it?" She asks the hippo. "And Jera. Nice to have you with us." the wolf comments with a subtle twinge of bitter sarcasm, looking across the quarry. "Where and who." She asks Rogna and the miner simply.

Saibh stifles a yawn as she arrives last. The entire time she's walking up, she's poking around in her coat, seeming to fish for something before finally giving up. Looking ahead, she spots the other figures, offers a sleepy wave and makes her way over without a word.

The elephant turns to Selena and says "I just told yah! Weren't you listenin?". It seems he doesn't know who was even present for the explanation. "Bandits at the bottom of the quarry! Go get em!" he cries and waves them off with his pick, almost running in himself before he looks down at his leg as though something were wrong with it. "Get goin help Jim!" he says again. Rogna draws his other sword and starts off into the Quarry after a brief nod and wave to the others. "Let's be swift." he says as he briskly moves along.

"Hmm. Acquaintances well met, I guess." Jera grins and decides to sling his large bow behind him, gusts of wind making his cloak flair up as he does for added flare. Other way round. "Well. We don't have all day. I hate the quarry though. No real place to hide for me. And we don't have Kilsa...Zevvy or even Kiyasai even to take the front lines." He elbows Rogna slightly. "Hope you're good at taking the frontlines, prince."

Selena rolls her eyes, looking rather unimpressed by the elephant as she grumbles something under her breath - she wasn't within earshot for the explanation - though she wastes no time in following behind Rogna without another word or backwards glance at Jera's antics.

Saibh leans to the side to peek out and check out the situation at hand seeing as how she personally missed at least part of it. Better to keep things quiet anyway. As they start to move out, she falls in behind them as she digs out what appears to be a bowstring. Those close might notice she's muttering about cleaning her coat out one of these days

Rogna laughs. "I have no issues taking the front line, you can depend on me." he says as he sheathes his swords to decend down a ladder, watching and listening carefully. As a rock shifts and falls a dagger comes flying at the hippo, his armor deflecting it with a mighty 'thwink'. The hippo drops off the ladder and draws his swords again, gazing around for his attacker.

Jera hears the thunk and gets rather upset over that. "That's my job!" He growls, ignoring the dagger and instead choosing to drop straight to the ground with zephyrs under his feet, trying to land with grace and precision so that he can quickly roll into a shooting position, nocking an arrow into his bow as he lands and taking a blind shot.

Selena sighs as she hears the dagger ricochet off of Rogna, flicking a flame into being using a section of the ladder as a wick. For a moment she seems unconcerned about leaving the ladder to burn, though after a brief moments she douses any residual fire on the ladder at the expense of a little light.

Saibh waits at the top of the ladder for now, pulling her own bow out and watching for movement further out. Two reasons for it too, watching for anyone trying to sneak up on those below and to avoid cluttering the base of the ladder. While she's up there though, a quick look for an alternate way down or different approaches would probably be in order

The flames bring light to a previously dark quarry, a figure can be seen and heard cursing as they hold their hand, another dagger on the ground. A thin graze of blood can be seen on the ferret's hand, it was clearly grazed by something. From atop the ladder Saibh can see a perilous set of rocks that might offer another way down if they were spry enough. The hippo lunges forward and attempts to cleave the ferret's arm, pushing deep but not deep enough as they back away into a run, yelling "HEY WE GOT SOME COMPANY!"

"Bloody caves. Stale air all over." Jera grumbles at having missed his shot, the large, hand-crafted compound bow taking a painful time to nock and for him to pull the bowstring taut. This time though, he has sight from the fire to guide him, although there's an additional hippo in the way now. "Hey, you two, get down here like. Now!" He shouts, before taking his best aim for a pinning shot, if only cause he's not too confident of going for a kill with royalty in the way.

Selena doesn't change her pace down the ladder, arriving quickly enough. The wolf walks up behind the pair and readies herself for assault.

Saibh peers at the rocks for a moment then grimaces, dextrous or not, she doubts she'd make it down without breaking something. With one last glance around, making sure there aren't any patrols up topside, she swings out over the ladder and descends as quickly as she can once people have spread out a bit more. Once firmly on the ground, she begins to try and head towards the edges of the fight, mostly to prey on the other side's skirmishers and stragglers.

Jera's arrow goes awry, missing it's hasty moving target and settling to the ground after a collision with the wall. A single musket shot can be heard, briefly before Jera starts to bleed from their shoulder, and a second assailant flees into a portion of the quarry high above the rest. Rogna chases after the ferret warily, wishing to catch them before they can regroup but at the same time unwilling to rush into an ambush. "Bandage yourself." he says as he moves off. He is soon engaged by a graceful clan robin, who's blows are barely a match for his armor, and is quickly felled by his blade.

Jera grips at his shoulder with a yip and immediately presses himself against the wall to take cover from further fire, and then rakes roughly once with his hand, tearing flesh and scattershot right off and keeping the blood flowing in the right direction with a little patch of wind blowing hard enough against his wound to try to make the wound dry faster. "Hmm." He pauses for a while, and then pauses to take aim, firing a set of three padded arrows down the hallway in succession to make them sound like footsteps.

Selena mutters something under her breath, pacing behind Rogna with the obvious signs of a spell being readied, opting not to speak to preserve Jera's ruse.

Saibh keeps quiet when she gets in position, settling down with her bow at the ready, aiming for anything hostile. She's still being on the quiet side of things..

As the false footsteps are made the figure who had the musket reappears, a readied crossbow aimed downward. He looks slightly confused, but takes aim at the frontmost Rogna as he has no other targets. 'Plink' can be heard as he lets it go, the hippo's armor once again subjected to trial. It glances off of a very grateful Rogna's chest, but almost as soon as it does the hippo bursts into flames. Try as he might Rogna cannot extinguish all of them.

Jera watches the fires come alive, but can't do much to help Rogna and insteads mumbles an equation in his mind to blast the musketeer with slicing winds.

Selena flicks her spell back to nothing, freeing herself to douse the burning hippo - maybe a little too successfully, though the excess water should keep him from getting set on fire again, proceeding down the tunnel behind him and Jera.

Saibh isn't really in a spot to do much else than fire a shot at the crossbowman, so that's what she does. She let's that shorter arrow loose and immediately begins reaching for another arrow to notch. As she's doing so she takes another cautious look around

The fires go out, and the hippo laughs and says "I'm grateful, now let's proceed!" as he readies himself to run further. Jera's cutting winds dice up the musketeer crossbowman enough to make them drop their weapon, which falls to the ground harmlessly. They spout profane insults as they reach for their musket, only to be shot by a ready Saibh, a glancing blow but enough to cause them to lose balance, and topple to the ground below. Rogna runs past, stepping over them in pursuit of the other bandit.

Jera tumbles from the exertion of his skill and leans against a wall. "You guys go ahead, alright?" He seems visibly winded, eyes closing.

Selena nods, pacing ahead of the Windrunner. "You did good." She comments in passing, readying another spell in her hands as she continues ahead after Rogna, silently cursing his rush ahead.

Saibh moves to keep up with the rest, pausing only to check on fallen weapon. Hey, always the opportunist, maybe she can actually use it to punch better holes in the badguys. Really, anything would be better than the cheap thing she's using now though. She does offer a cheery smile to Jera on the way by though

Rogna and the party leave poor Jera to tend to their wounds as they proceed. "We must hurry, there is an injured miner we must rescue." he says softly and readies his swords. Two rather big guys push forward to block the way, a mace and a flail in hand. They sneer at the proceeding group, the flail lashing out and striking Rogna across the chin with quite a bit of force. The hippo lets out a cry as he charges forward, lopping his hand off and readying himself for their retaliation.

Selena growls for a short moment, pivoting around and lashing at a lurking figure behind her with a spray of razor-sharp squalls that dig into them mercilessly. The mage glares dangerously at the skulk, directing one last burst of razor wind to their throat.

Saibh hurries to keep up, moving to arm the newly stolen weapon, trying to hurry and find anything wrong with it before it just snaps in her face and she loses an eye or something silly. The whole time of course, she is trying to keep up

Selena gouges their stalker with wind magic, they drop to the ground as they start to lose more and more blood. With a glare the croc does a faceplant, dropping his a mining pick. Rogna is struck with a mace to the back by the second large bandit, but almost unphased, he uses the impact as extra purchase when he thrusts his sword into the now handless and flail-less bandit who attempts to engage in one armed combat. He pulls free with a shove of his foot after doing so. Saibh manages to load one of the few bolts they can gather into the device without issue.

Selena gestures at one of the hippo's attackers with a hand, suddenly engulfing them in a pillar of immolating fire. Once the inital burst clears, the mage pulls a little of the fire aside to help light the noble's way.

Saibh crouches down and uses her knee and arm as a stabalizer, watching the fight carefully, watching for an opening before she depresses the firing mechanism on the crossbow, aiming for the center of mass, though it may be a bit too late for the intended victim seeing as how there's fire everywhere now!

Rogna smiles briefly as he turns to face the burning attacker, who's misery is only begining. The crossbow bolt makes them drop to their knees while they quickly burn alive. He waves the other two onward, backing up as he realizies he's passed a tunnel containing a hostage situation. Two shadow veiled beings stand on either side of a bound and gagged mole. In the present light a dagger can be seen shimmering, held close to the hostage. "We're leaving, now." one of them says, a couple of blood drops trickling to the floor. Rogna frowns, his weapons at ready as he says "Let us negotiate." as he adjusts his cape, making a veiled gesture as he does so towards the two following him to prepare themselves for an attack.

Selena watches the shadowy beings passively, preparing herself to deflect an oncoming projectile with a spell and keeping herself silent. Her tail twitches in anticipation or irritation, though it's difficult to tell.

Saibh fishes around inside of her pack, leaving the crossbow on the ground for now. A close look would show her fiddling with a slug from a musket, maybe debating on a few things before finally pocketing it. She really highly doubts she's got the accuracy she'd need for it. So, with that said it's all up to the big talky one

Rogna says "I'd like proof that they're indeed still alive." as he watches the bandits carefully. One of them fidgets, removing the gag and from the darkened figures a familiar voice, not unlike one hearad in the quarry before calls out "Please help me!". With that the gag goes back on and a rather large hippo squints at the two. Something is amiss here, and Rogna takes a few steps toward the two who raise the knife to the hostages neck, one of them throwing a knife at the approaching figure.

Selena bats the dagger off course with a sudden burst of wind. The wolf waves a finger back and forth in a patronizing manner, allowing the hippo to proceed unimpeded.

Saibh mutters to herself again and begins to slowly creep forward to get a better look at the two, using her bow once more for the time being. The crossbow is brought along, but she doubts she'll see another bolt any time soon

The two bandits are beginning to look a little worried. As the group approaches they can clearly see the hostages throat has already been slit. Rogna scowls and calls upon his soul gem, dark math beginning to weaken the bandit with the shimmering knives body as the bleeding one scrambles to get past Saibh and Selena. Rogna's eyes upon the weakened bandit he raises his sword and strikes them without mercy, his blade cast with dark mathematics drains their vitality and passes it to the hippo.

Selena As the bandit passes by her, Selena grabs their arm and shakes her head, growling in an ominous voice, 'You shouldn't have done that." Before she sets the bandit ablaze, flicking a little water over her had to snuff out the fire she brought upon herself.

Saibh sees the bandit making a run for it and quickly rolls her snare out, hooking the far end on whatever's convenient. For now, it'll be easier than trying to hit the moving target without accidentally hitting the others. Besides, a living prisoner is better than a dead body in most cases. Especially since there's not much from keeping them alive if it is a problem. Then again, fire works too and she quickly moves out of the way, ready to dodge a potentially panicked fire hazard

The now flaming bandit sets fire to the snare in their panic, the flames spanning it's distance. The weakened bandit slumps and curls up, and Rogna decides they can wait, inspecting the hostage to see that they are dead, which they are. He shakes his head and sheathes a sword, lifting the downed bandit up.

Selena shakes her head and mutters something under her breath before pacing to the ladder in disappointment, possibly a little anguish. She takes none of the bodies with her, leaving the burning ones to burn and the other bandit cadavers to rot.

Saibh is a little more practical in trying to scrounge anything useful, though she doesn't linger too long seeing as how most people probably aren't particularly happy at the moment. Herself, she's not particularly thrilled, but she's not going to let herself get hung up on it. A little bit of a pragmatist's look really

Rogna carries the bandit with him, leaving the flames behind him and calling to Selena "Would you mind putting those out, so that miners need not worry about smoke?" He hurries to catch up to the mage in his heavy armor, dropping the bandit in hand and moving to take a hit for the as a large hammer weilding bear rushes towards her, pushing Saibh aside as best they can.

Selena's retaliation comes quickly, a piercing gale of wind to the attacker's throat, puntuated with a splatter of blood as it connects.

Saibh stumbles and yelps as she's knocked to the side. She actually says something finally, an aggravated, "This is why I stay away from this!" as she comes to a stop. Shaking the disorientation from her head, she scrambles to her feet and checks to make sure she didn't leave too much of her pockets' contents on the ground before reaching for her bow to notch an arrow to pepper the bear with

THe bear is sprinkled with arrows as he bleeds out, Selena's spell far too much for him. He falls to the ground and sighs, moving to pick up the downed bandit and bring them with him. "I believe we should get out of here and tell them what happened." he says. THe party departs the quarry, coming up to a saddened elephant. "Where's Jim!" he cries out before Rogna explains they were dead before the partys arrival, and the elephant starts to cry to himself. "You..." he says to the bandit before turning away, trodding off saddened. Rogna carries the bandit back to firmament, where they are taken to be held accountable. The group recieves a half hearted praise for their efforts, sure they cleared the quarry but they didn't rescue the captive.