*they shrug their shoulders*
"We don't deal with darkspawn, most of them are in the deeproads, and the ones up here are likely forming for a blight. We mainly deal with affairs of things we can get paid for."
*you always feel them, you just don't feel them nearbye, and you have strange dreams of a demonic dragon leading the hordes of darkspawn*
*you make camp, eat, get ready to go, sticking to the road or seeing the path?*
To the path. I guess that this darkspawn sense works somewhat opposite as my equipment sense, in that I can sense how close they are, but not what direction. edit: These dreams. Are the surroundings mountainous, forestal, flatland, indoor?
*The dreams are indoors, you see hundreds of thousands of darkspawn in a chasm, a lot of carnage and stonework*
*You walk through the forest, and you walk and you stop inches short of an arrow to your face, and you catch 20-30 such glints out of the corner of your eyes*
"Hold traveler, you enter Dalish lands, what is your business here?"
*GE roll 12 better than expected*
Not a moment"s hesitation and the response, "Hail, sir, we are a neutral exploration party out for an adventure. We mean you no harm, unless you are darkspawn."
*They lower their bows slowly*
"We don't let many visitors here of late, what do you seek in our lands."
*you see elves, much like Geli, have to be 3 dozen in trees, behind you, ahead of you and around you*
"The real concern would be if you were darkspawn you'd be dead right now."
((Persuasion check 7, success, Willpower check 4, success))
"Well said. We seek adventure and wealth, and the common good."
*They consider for a moment*
"Through the Bracilian Forest, there are old Elven ruins, if you clean them out, we can reclaim them for our own. The treasure and monsters inside are yours."
*They step aside*
I nod, and continue onward. Sounds as good a place as any for my search.
*You head off through the winding path through the forest, you pass through a temporary elven settlement, you could buy good if you had money, and you continue down the path to the deep forest, and you feel them, a lot of them*
*You hear fighting ahead of you and to the side, as there are two paths. What can only be described as a battle royal between the forces of the forest and the darkspawn, easily 30 werewolves, treants, bears and wolves vs an equal number of Ogres, Orcs, shrieks and Goblins (They are renamed collectively as darkspawn in dragon age, but you can tell what they are). They are coming closer to you, and from the side path behind you*
((Ouch GE Roll 25, this online dice roller hates you Kyler: http://dicelog.com/dice))
*dies* Unless my comrades are running, I'm standing to fight. Style up, momentum, backstab someone hopefully.
*Jennah grabs you by the shoulder and pins you in place and shakes her head*
"Let em fight it out, then we take whatever is left when they are wounded, just go back to back and watch our flanks." *she whispers*
*the others do a diamond back to back*
*Are you letting this happen, or continuing to attack?*
They're right, of course, and I'm right to listen to them.
*the battle rages for about 5 minutes, the Darkspawn used to fighting flesh and blood, not doing so great against the trees, at the end, 5 Treats, 3 Werewolves and 2 Bears remain, and then they turn their eyes to you and charge*
*Cass casts a Sleep spell, catching them all in the radius and then a another spell, they seem to be sleepwalking, attacking each other standing there, a few come over to attack as normal but they are not a unified unit with their friends attacking them from behind, Jennah knocks down the first tree with a shield bash, and the next hits it three times in the trunk with her shield, splitting it horribly, but it still is up, The tree swipes back, hitting her for a decent amount, a lot of which is healed back before the end of the round. Do you wish to try to get behind with Geli, knowing you will be yourself will get flanked by the others if they wake up?*
((Lots and lots of rolls
No, I'll fight from here in style for now.
*the batch goes as smooth as it can, your team and yourself all getting good strikes, and the enemy striking back, cept for the one who went after Geli, it swung and went in a spin*
*content to continue through to the end?*
((many many rolls, you dealt a good 10 damage, 6 intensities+4 fire, and took 5))
Sure, we'll see it through to the end.
*Jannah keeps hitting things hard, using several special abilities, and fells 3 of the enemy, Geli is doing the same, felling the same amount. Cass is having a hard time hitting, and the enemy has no hope to hit here, but she is keeping multiple entertained, you get some good shots in and fell 2, but got nicked for more damage. The remaining bear and tree have no chance*
*8 enemies down 2 remaining, everyone hurt, you were healed 4 last round and took 7 this time, so you at 8 going down to 4 at the beginning of next round when the other two get pounced on*
*The girls looking around to see that everything is dead, and who isn't dead of the group and are content to do looting*
*The loot is 10 gold sovereigns, 82 silver, 50 copper, 3 Rubies, 2 Garnets, 3 Greenstones, 2 Diamonds, 4 Emeralds, a set of Plate Boots, a Leather Helm, Cloth Gloves, and a Rather Nice Staff, Cass looks at it and says, pretty nice staff, Does cold damage when aimed, and has a cold damage in radius, pretty nice if I didn't have the sword and shield you got for me*
I'll wait for them to divvy up the loot. I have no real interest in any of that, and unless they offer me one of the diamonds, I say "no thanks"
*They toss you one of the diamonds*
"Keep up the good work and we'll see about increasing your pay>"
*Jennah jokes*
*You head further into the woods, lots of paths, you get lost and turned around a lot, but the path is clean now, and eventually you get to a forcefield in the pathway which no one can pass*
*Cass looks at it*
"It needs a key of some sort"
A forcefield.. hmm... "What sort of key?" What to do, what to do... first I'd better figure out exactly what's goin on. "Any idea where we could find one?"
*Cass shrugs*
*If it's a magical forcefield, might need a magical key, just like a normal door needs a normal key.*
*Jennah and Geli are quiet since magic is not their area of expertise*
*Cass shrugs*
*If it's a magical forcefield, might need a magical key, just like a normal door needs a normal key.*
*Jennah and Geli are quiet since magic is not their area of expertise*
"Hmm... any idea where we might find a magical key?" If not, we're going to start walking around the perimeter of the field, feeling for an opening somewhere, until we either have an encounter or make it all the way around.
*Cass says*
"The key usually relates to the object it is opening, a metal key for a metal lock in a door."
*she seems to be thinking on that*
*If you still want to work your way around the paths, let me know*
We're going to try to find if there's a way to get around this force field and double back to where we were, but first we'll give Cass a couple minutes to think.
*she thinks about it but cannot figure it out, and you end up doubling back to where you were, there was a side path and numerous paths that you didn't deviate from in your travels from this point on*
((Difficult Int check 33 failure))
Alright, sounds good. My traditional way of solving dungeons is to follow the left hand path and try to get as deep in as possible, but I'll bear in mind where this was.
*you wander around the forest for hours, not finding much of interest, following the left hand method, is hard when there aren't walls, it's time to setup camp and sleep for the night, who is taking what watch?*
I'm last watch; I have trouble waking up in the morning.
((Back at work))
"The night goes great, everyone sleeps well, and everyone wakes up, and there is a huge tree in camp, not moving not attacking, it seems to have the staff you got off the Darkspawn and wrapped up some stone like bark on it. No one saw it walk into camp, even those on guard, it just seemed natural to be there"
((7 GE roll, seems you got some luck))
"Umm... thanks? You guys think that may be the key to the force field?"
*Cass thinks on it*
"Might have needed wood from that "tree" and it saw your staff and instead of yanking one from it's limbs it just augmented that one with it's bark."
*Do you head back there with the staff?*
yes... let's find out.
*You work your way back to the barrier unmolested, you hold the staff and the barrier falls away. Heading through the path your danger trap sense is tingling*
I'll put my hand up to stop everyone and turn to Geli. "Traps?" I ask, and hopefully working together we can find them and disarm them.
*You and Geli spend much of the next football field disarming a whole bunch of traps, bear traps, wire traps, pressure plate traps, and eventually you are led to some elven columns, with a tombstone in the center of them*
((Geli 60, Kyler 70, successes))
Whew. That's a relief. I'm not really one for disturbing the dead, so I'll follow my comrades' lead in this case.
*Cass warns them off*
"There is probably great treasure buried with the body, but the body becomes a reverant, and you could have been the Grey Knight commander and her party, and those things are still deadly, I would say pass, especially since they raise other undead with em. Not worth a dirt nap in my opinion*
*The rest nod, not wanting to mess with Cass in that area*
*Geli points up the path*
"Ruins are that way, expect the tough things inside, as well as traps, hidden rooms and the staples."
*You head toward the enterence, do you take any special precautions?*
((17 Int check, Cass successful))
No... we won't just walk in blindly, though. We'll be searching for traps and taking it slow every step of the way; the tortoise won the race because the hare ended up someone's dinner.
*You make your way in slowly, you enter what was once a grand hall with stairs down to a main floor and three doorways, there is a tree trunk for stairs, there are broken stones and debris everywhere. You are on a 10 by 30 ledge with two walls with arches on your left and right, some old vases and pots, some smashed, some not, on the left and right of you. Down in the center there is a Tree growing about 15 feet wide, and light comes in from the ceiling, and that is what you can see from where you are. You check for traps immediately in front of you and the sides, but find nothing.*