Adventurers In Sheep's Clothing [LOG]
Summary: Dinah is in the sort of mood that involves stabbing things repeatedly. She and Cyrus decide to turn this negative energy into something good, and head to the beach. Somewhere along the way, they find a Valentine. The trio then spring a trap, and kill some Leviathan lovers.
It's a lovely day for a stroll on the beach and stabbing things. Which is what Dinah is dressed for. While there was a definite predatory stride to her walk, once they reach the sand her steps change. Daggers are covered up. A grin is flashed, briefly. "Let's go fishing for fools."
Cyrus nods to his wife and says, "I'm going to be over near those woods. Not paying any attention to the beach at all." He gives her a quick kiss and strides off towards the treeline.
Valentine waves cheerfully at Dinah, and follows Cyrus off towards the trees.
Dinah waggles fingers to the two men and continues along the beach. She whistles a tune, and manages to look like she has no idea where she's headed.
The sharp-eyed might notice bubbles on the surface of the gently-rolling water past the shore. It's too bad that none of the three people on the beach this day is paying any attention to it.
Cyrus points at a tree and beckons Valentine towards him. "Look at this," he says. Then he peers further into the woods. "Hey, what's that?" He moves into the trees.
Valentine wanders along behind Cyrus. "Do you want a serious answer? Because I have entire books on trees. Some of them borrowed from your house." He fails to look back behind him towards the beach as he follows.
Dinah fails to obviously notice the bubbles on the water. She starts to sing softly instead of whistle, some horrid lovesong. Seeing something of interest in the sand, she bends down and picks up a spiraled shell that looks like a horn. "How pretty."
Cyrus is no longer visible from the beach. He is, no doubt, discussing the local flora with his cousin.
The bubbles stop entirely and are replaced by five misshapen Leviathan cultists. They move witn an unnatural silence. Two of them have the tetacled lower bodies of Gailes. The other three are Rebmans of the two-legged variety. Each of them carries at least one wicked-looking weapon. They move into a semicircle formation and close in on Dinah.
Dinah gives the new arrivals on the beach wide eyes. Like she's horrified and can't quite manage to get her scream out. She throws her shell at them like...well. Like a weak girl. It doesn't even manage to hit one of the five villians.
The apparent leader of the small raiding party grins as the shell skitters across the sand. He moves closer to Dinah and sheathes his rusty sword. He makes a couple of quick gestures for the others to form a circle around the woman as he reaches forward to grab her. He says something in a gutteral language.
Dinah's body moves just enough so that the leader doesn't manage to grab onto any of the places she has her blades hidden. "Let me go!," she says, shrill. She kicks up some sand and looks to those starting to surround her.
The other four raiders move towards Dinah as the leader grabs her leg and begins to pull her towards him. Two of them begin speaking in unison. Like a sort of chant.
The fall of blonde hair hides the roll of Dinah's eyes. She's pulled, and makes more sounds of protest that are mostly lost to the cultist's chant-talking. She claws at the man dragging her. "Hands off of me, you fiend!" It's not until she's very, very close that the dangerous storms in her eyes show.
The leader bends down and grabs Dinah's hair. The others chant and close in.
Dinah finds a grin, suddenly, that's all teeth. And then the leader finds a dagger in his chest, hilt-deep. It's hidden from the other cultists, as is the second dagger that's in her other hand. She twists the one buried into the leader. Slowly.
The leader's eyes widen and he coughs as he lets go of Dinah. He slumps to the ground silently. One of the other cultists senses that something is not right and raises his nasty-looking knife. Before he can bring it down on Dinah's head, however, the cultist sprouts the business end of a crossbow bolt from his throat.
Cyrus remains behind a tree and reloads his crossbow.
"Surprise," Dinah says, chipperly. She leaves her dagger in the leader's chest as a memento and turns her attention to the three still living cultists. Her odds are considered, found favorable in her opinion, and she charges one of the Gailes, slim blade in hand.
Valentine whistles to himself, eyeing the distance between the trees and the cultist, and picks up a smooth beach stone that's been knocked into the trees. He skims it out through the air like a skipping stone, if one that's trying to skip on to its next bounce off the eye of a Gaile instead of the surface of the water.
One more cultist goes down thanks to Valentine's rock which opens a nasty gash in the back of his head. The remaining two continue chanting and lunge for Dinah at the same time. The one on Dinah's left catches her blade in his lung for his trouble. The other one stops chanting and emits an ear-splitting howl.
Dinah's slim dagger is jerked out of the lung and she narrows her eyes at the howling cultist. "Shut.The.Fuck.Up," she hisses with a wince, before taking advantage of his opened mouth and slamming the blade into it with force.
The waters around the beach begin churning and roiling as more than a dozen shrieking cultists erupt from the sea in a cascade of foam and spray. The exact number is difficult to determine as they are all running about, seemingly in different directions. They seem to have no plan other than to rush the beach and wipe out the three non cultists.
Cyrus steps out from the treeline to get a better look at the water. "Oh, crap," he says, aiming his crossbow.
Valentine raises a hand. "I vote for running. Who's with me?"
RPG: Dinah challenges a difficulty of 7, using her Resolve plus STY-PI. Dinah succeeds.
Valentine chucks another rock at the swarming mass of cultists, gives them a cheerful wave, and then flees with equal cheer off through the trees. His path includes a bounding leap over a patch of ground that looks very much like every other patch of ground beneath the trees.
RPG: Cyrus challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Wits plus STY-DF. Cyrus succeeds.
"Look, dears, they decided to even the odds!" Dinah does not raise her hand in favor of running. She does, however, raise a long knife in favor of killing. Her grin is wild and she wades into the cultists like a woman on a mission. She stabs, slashes, and does a bit of soft laughter.
Cyrus fires a bolt which bounces off a well-placed bit of cultist armor. He curses and runs in a different direction from the one his cousin used. Four of the vile creatures are hot on his heels.
Two cultists peel away from the group attacking the scary woman with the knives to follow Valentine into the trees. The gaile at the front drops through the ground into the pit trap with a slithering THUMP as she goes head over tentacles into the hole. The sharpened wooden stakes at the bottom make for harder to transcribe noises, especially when the second cultist at her metaphorical heels topples in after her.
Cyrus dodges around trees and leaps patches of underbrush as he desperately attempts to reload his crossbow. He finally gets a bolt wound back then he turns and fires at the nearest cultist. And misses. The bolt hits a large tree instead. In fact, it hits a rope which was tied to that tree. The rope, now severed, whips up into the foliage and releases the tension on the netting that was holding several logs and heavy rocks which rain down upon the cultists.
Valentine doubles back towards the beach, ducking a spray of blood from the direction of the drop. "Nice one, Cy!"
Cyrus nods to the wailing noises from the pit. "Cibola was very educational, wasn't it?" He moves around the debris and runs toward the beach.
Valentine runs after Cyrus. "It gave me a new appreciation for the uses of gravity."
Out in the water there are more bubbles which are followed by a small cadre of raiders who fall in to assist their brethren.
Cyrus says, "Where do these assholes *come* from?!?"
Valentine draws his rapier. "When a mommy tentacle monster and a daddy Rebman love each other very, very much..."
Cyrus sighs heavily and moves to a new position as he loads another bolt.
Dinah has gotten blood and bits of cultist all over the once-peaceful beach. "Oh, hell," she utters as she sees the increased presence of cultists. A few steps are taken away from the waterline.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Grace plus STY-SW. Valentine succeeds.
RPG: Dinah challenges a difficulty of 9, using her Resolve plus STY-PI. Dinah succeeds.
RPG: Cyrus challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Wits plus STY-DF. Cyrus succeeds.
Valentine waves his rapier at a cultist, and backs up with a grin at the following lunge from her trident. "Closer, closer... Very good!" His blade sinks into the undine's chest, and he skips back a few more steps, slowing to make sure two Rebmans with tridents can catch up with him. Flanked and threatened on both sides, he ducks to a crouch, hamstringing one man as their weapons aimed at where he /was/ standing clash and lock. A quick roll away across the damp beach leaves him with sandy hair and a blade planted in the back of the cultist still standing. "Hey, Cy! We should do this more often."
Cyrus nods to Valentine, "Beats whist." He fires a bolt into a gaile then flings the entire crossbow at a second one. The bolt strikes its target in the chest and the crossbow cracks the second gaile's skull. Cyrus dances backwards away from the mass of things trying to kill him and flips a throwing knife from each hand. One of them barely scratches its victim but the other now protrudes from a cultist's eye socket.
Valentine leaps to his feet, and flicks a fast parry at an approaching knife. "I don't know, Cy. I've had some great games of whist."
Dinah unsheathes her cutlass and brandishes it off to the side. "Very nice technique, Tine," she calls out as she sees the display out of the corner of an eye. She twists and avoids a few thrusts from a cultist's crooked dagger and headbutts one viciously as it attempts to sink its teeth into her. A bit of blood trickles out from beneath her bandana, but she pays it no care. She severs a Gaile's head with a stroke of her blade and it continues into the arm of a Rebman cultist.
Cyrus spares a glance toward his wife and his eyes flash.
There are now fewer cultists left but they advance on the Dinah, Valentine, and Cyrus as if they believe that a mere numerical advantage is all they need. There are no further bubbles from the water.
Cyrus begins to back away. He has a blade in each hand and strikes a purely defensive posture as he moves. "Sweetie," he says to Dinah. "There's too many of them." He sounds really convincing.
Valentine slides his eyepatch off with the back of his hand, backing slowly towards the trees again as he parries most of the attacks aimed at him. "What, you don't want to go down in a futile, heroic battle? This what the best songs are made of."
Cyrus begins to look nervous. "But who's going to *write* the song if we're all dead?" He tosses his main-gauche at a cultist but it is swatted out of the air.
Valentine retreats a little faster. "We don't have any poets in the trees recording the battle? I /knew/ we forgot something in this plan."
Dinah finishes the stabbing of one Rebman and looks up at her husband. Then Tine. And then back to the cultists. "But I was having such a *good* time," she bemoans, tossing a dagger and landing it in a tainted Rebman's eye. "I suppose we can kill them all in the song." She takes steps backwards, towards the two men.
Cyrus furrows his brow and begins to search his pockets with his free hand. He keeps his sword out in front, of course. He pulls a cigar from a pocket and puts it in his mouth. The trio backs over an area that is a bit crunchier than the other parts of the sandy forest. "Darling," he says around the cigar. I can't spare a hand to light this. Could you be a lamb and help me out?" He also nods to Valentine.
Valentine takes a delicate glass flask from his belt, and throws it into the face of the cultist in the lead of the advancing pack. It breaks into a shower of clear liquid. "Oh no," he says cheerily. "We're doomed."
"Hmm? Oh, of course, Sweetie." Dinah holds her blade in one hand and pulls out a matches with the other, striking one. "Oh, the horrors. What shall we do?" She does not light Cyrus's cigar. Instead, the match is tossed into the leaves.
Cyrus looks shocked. "Butterfingers," he accused both Valentine and Dinah. He also looks as though he is preparing to turn and run.
A broad path of bright flame erupts between the cultists and the three brave souls who oppose them. The ground nearby gives way and the lead cultist bursts into flame as the accelerant Valentine covered him with catches. The gailes and undines and Rebmans nearest the flames fall into the pit of fire and perish instantly. The remaining cultists flee back to the water which is a good thing for most of them since they are on fire, as well.
Valentine watches the flames. "I forgot the marshmallows. Must have left them with the poet."
Dinah tsks. "Shame. Cyrus might have cigars to share, however." She steps back from the flames, looking quite satisfied.
Cyrus nods and offers a smoke first to his wife and then to his cousin. "We'll just have to plan better for our next family outing."
It's a lovely day for a stroll on the beach and stabbing things. Which is what Dinah is dressed for. While there was a definite predatory stride to her walk, once they reach the sand her steps change. Daggers are covered up. A grin is flashed, briefly. "Let's go fishing for fools."
Cyrus nods to his wife and says, "I'm going to be over near those woods. Not paying any attention to the beach at all." He gives her a quick kiss and strides off towards the treeline.
Valentine waves cheerfully at Dinah, and follows Cyrus off towards the trees.
Dinah waggles fingers to the two men and continues along the beach. She whistles a tune, and manages to look like she has no idea where she's headed.
The sharp-eyed might notice bubbles on the surface of the gently-rolling water past the shore. It's too bad that none of the three people on the beach this day is paying any attention to it.
Cyrus points at a tree and beckons Valentine towards him. "Look at this," he says. Then he peers further into the woods. "Hey, what's that?" He moves into the trees.
Valentine wanders along behind Cyrus. "Do you want a serious answer? Because I have entire books on trees. Some of them borrowed from your house." He fails to look back behind him towards the beach as he follows.
Dinah fails to obviously notice the bubbles on the water. She starts to sing softly instead of whistle, some horrid lovesong. Seeing something of interest in the sand, she bends down and picks up a spiraled shell that looks like a horn. "How pretty."
Cyrus is no longer visible from the beach. He is, no doubt, discussing the local flora with his cousin.
The bubbles stop entirely and are replaced by five misshapen Leviathan cultists. They move witn an unnatural silence. Two of them have the tetacled lower bodies of Gailes. The other three are Rebmans of the two-legged variety. Each of them carries at least one wicked-looking weapon. They move into a semicircle formation and close in on Dinah.
Dinah gives the new arrivals on the beach wide eyes. Like she's horrified and can't quite manage to get her scream out. She throws her shell at them like...well. Like a weak girl. It doesn't even manage to hit one of the five villians.
The apparent leader of the small raiding party grins as the shell skitters across the sand. He moves closer to Dinah and sheathes his rusty sword. He makes a couple of quick gestures for the others to form a circle around the woman as he reaches forward to grab her. He says something in a gutteral language.
Dinah's body moves just enough so that the leader doesn't manage to grab onto any of the places she has her blades hidden. "Let me go!," she says, shrill. She kicks up some sand and looks to those starting to surround her.
The other four raiders move towards Dinah as the leader grabs her leg and begins to pull her towards him. Two of them begin speaking in unison. Like a sort of chant.
The fall of blonde hair hides the roll of Dinah's eyes. She's pulled, and makes more sounds of protest that are mostly lost to the cultist's chant-talking. She claws at the man dragging her. "Hands off of me, you fiend!" It's not until she's very, very close that the dangerous storms in her eyes show.
The leader bends down and grabs Dinah's hair. The others chant and close in.
Dinah finds a grin, suddenly, that's all teeth. And then the leader finds a dagger in his chest, hilt-deep. It's hidden from the other cultists, as is the second dagger that's in her other hand. She twists the one buried into the leader. Slowly.
The leader's eyes widen and he coughs as he lets go of Dinah. He slumps to the ground silently. One of the other cultists senses that something is not right and raises his nasty-looking knife. Before he can bring it down on Dinah's head, however, the cultist sprouts the business end of a crossbow bolt from his throat.
Cyrus remains behind a tree and reloads his crossbow.
"Surprise," Dinah says, chipperly. She leaves her dagger in the leader's chest as a memento and turns her attention to the three still living cultists. Her odds are considered, found favorable in her opinion, and she charges one of the Gailes, slim blade in hand.
Valentine whistles to himself, eyeing the distance between the trees and the cultist, and picks up a smooth beach stone that's been knocked into the trees. He skims it out through the air like a skipping stone, if one that's trying to skip on to its next bounce off the eye of a Gaile instead of the surface of the water.
One more cultist goes down thanks to Valentine's rock which opens a nasty gash in the back of his head. The remaining two continue chanting and lunge for Dinah at the same time. The one on Dinah's left catches her blade in his lung for his trouble. The other one stops chanting and emits an ear-splitting howl.
Dinah's slim dagger is jerked out of the lung and she narrows her eyes at the howling cultist. "Shut.The.Fuck.Up," she hisses with a wince, before taking advantage of his opened mouth and slamming the blade into it with force.
The waters around the beach begin churning and roiling as more than a dozen shrieking cultists erupt from the sea in a cascade of foam and spray. The exact number is difficult to determine as they are all running about, seemingly in different directions. They seem to have no plan other than to rush the beach and wipe out the three non cultists.
Cyrus steps out from the treeline to get a better look at the water. "Oh, crap," he says, aiming his crossbow.
Valentine raises a hand. "I vote for running. Who's with me?"
RPG: Dinah challenges a difficulty of 7, using her Resolve plus STY-PI. Dinah succeeds.
Valentine chucks another rock at the swarming mass of cultists, gives them a cheerful wave, and then flees with equal cheer off through the trees. His path includes a bounding leap over a patch of ground that looks very much like every other patch of ground beneath the trees.
RPG: Cyrus challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Wits plus STY-DF. Cyrus succeeds.
"Look, dears, they decided to even the odds!" Dinah does not raise her hand in favor of running. She does, however, raise a long knife in favor of killing. Her grin is wild and she wades into the cultists like a woman on a mission. She stabs, slashes, and does a bit of soft laughter.
Cyrus fires a bolt which bounces off a well-placed bit of cultist armor. He curses and runs in a different direction from the one his cousin used. Four of the vile creatures are hot on his heels.
Two cultists peel away from the group attacking the scary woman with the knives to follow Valentine into the trees. The gaile at the front drops through the ground into the pit trap with a slithering THUMP as she goes head over tentacles into the hole. The sharpened wooden stakes at the bottom make for harder to transcribe noises, especially when the second cultist at her metaphorical heels topples in after her.
Cyrus dodges around trees and leaps patches of underbrush as he desperately attempts to reload his crossbow. He finally gets a bolt wound back then he turns and fires at the nearest cultist. And misses. The bolt hits a large tree instead. In fact, it hits a rope which was tied to that tree. The rope, now severed, whips up into the foliage and releases the tension on the netting that was holding several logs and heavy rocks which rain down upon the cultists.
Valentine doubles back towards the beach, ducking a spray of blood from the direction of the drop. "Nice one, Cy!"
Cyrus nods to the wailing noises from the pit. "Cibola was very educational, wasn't it?" He moves around the debris and runs toward the beach.
Valentine runs after Cyrus. "It gave me a new appreciation for the uses of gravity."
Out in the water there are more bubbles which are followed by a small cadre of raiders who fall in to assist their brethren.
Cyrus says, "Where do these assholes *come* from?!?"
Valentine draws his rapier. "When a mommy tentacle monster and a daddy Rebman love each other very, very much..."
Cyrus sighs heavily and moves to a new position as he loads another bolt.
Dinah has gotten blood and bits of cultist all over the once-peaceful beach. "Oh, hell," she utters as she sees the increased presence of cultists. A few steps are taken away from the waterline.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Grace plus STY-SW. Valentine succeeds.
RPG: Dinah challenges a difficulty of 9, using her Resolve plus STY-PI. Dinah succeeds.
RPG: Cyrus challenges a difficulty of 9, using his Wits plus STY-DF. Cyrus succeeds.
Valentine waves his rapier at a cultist, and backs up with a grin at the following lunge from her trident. "Closer, closer... Very good!" His blade sinks into the undine's chest, and he skips back a few more steps, slowing to make sure two Rebmans with tridents can catch up with him. Flanked and threatened on both sides, he ducks to a crouch, hamstringing one man as their weapons aimed at where he /was/ standing clash and lock. A quick roll away across the damp beach leaves him with sandy hair and a blade planted in the back of the cultist still standing. "Hey, Cy! We should do this more often."
Cyrus nods to Valentine, "Beats whist." He fires a bolt into a gaile then flings the entire crossbow at a second one. The bolt strikes its target in the chest and the crossbow cracks the second gaile's skull. Cyrus dances backwards away from the mass of things trying to kill him and flips a throwing knife from each hand. One of them barely scratches its victim but the other now protrudes from a cultist's eye socket.
Valentine leaps to his feet, and flicks a fast parry at an approaching knife. "I don't know, Cy. I've had some great games of whist."
Dinah unsheathes her cutlass and brandishes it off to the side. "Very nice technique, Tine," she calls out as she sees the display out of the corner of an eye. She twists and avoids a few thrusts from a cultist's crooked dagger and headbutts one viciously as it attempts to sink its teeth into her. A bit of blood trickles out from beneath her bandana, but she pays it no care. She severs a Gaile's head with a stroke of her blade and it continues into the arm of a Rebman cultist.
Cyrus spares a glance toward his wife and his eyes flash.
There are now fewer cultists left but they advance on the Dinah, Valentine, and Cyrus as if they believe that a mere numerical advantage is all they need. There are no further bubbles from the water.
Cyrus begins to back away. He has a blade in each hand and strikes a purely defensive posture as he moves. "Sweetie," he says to Dinah. "There's too many of them." He sounds really convincing.
Valentine slides his eyepatch off with the back of his hand, backing slowly towards the trees again as he parries most of the attacks aimed at him. "What, you don't want to go down in a futile, heroic battle? This what the best songs are made of."
Cyrus begins to look nervous. "But who's going to *write* the song if we're all dead?" He tosses his main-gauche at a cultist but it is swatted out of the air.
Valentine retreats a little faster. "We don't have any poets in the trees recording the battle? I /knew/ we forgot something in this plan."
Dinah finishes the stabbing of one Rebman and looks up at her husband. Then Tine. And then back to the cultists. "But I was having such a *good* time," she bemoans, tossing a dagger and landing it in a tainted Rebman's eye. "I suppose we can kill them all in the song." She takes steps backwards, towards the two men.
Cyrus furrows his brow and begins to search his pockets with his free hand. He keeps his sword out in front, of course. He pulls a cigar from a pocket and puts it in his mouth. The trio backs over an area that is a bit crunchier than the other parts of the sandy forest. "Darling," he says around the cigar. I can't spare a hand to light this. Could you be a lamb and help me out?" He also nods to Valentine.
Valentine takes a delicate glass flask from his belt, and throws it into the face of the cultist in the lead of the advancing pack. It breaks into a shower of clear liquid. "Oh no," he says cheerily. "We're doomed."
"Hmm? Oh, of course, Sweetie." Dinah holds her blade in one hand and pulls out a matches with the other, striking one. "Oh, the horrors. What shall we do?" She does not light Cyrus's cigar. Instead, the match is tossed into the leaves.
Cyrus looks shocked. "Butterfingers," he accused both Valentine and Dinah. He also looks as though he is preparing to turn and run.
A broad path of bright flame erupts between the cultists and the three brave souls who oppose them. The ground nearby gives way and the lead cultist bursts into flame as the accelerant Valentine covered him with catches. The gailes and undines and Rebmans nearest the flames fall into the pit of fire and perish instantly. The remaining cultists flee back to the water which is a good thing for most of them since they are on fire, as well.
Valentine watches the flames. "I forgot the marshmallows. Must have left them with the poet."
Dinah tsks. "Shame. Cyrus might have cigars to share, however." She steps back from the flames, looking quite satisfied.
Cyrus nods and offers a smoke first to his wife and then to his cousin. "We'll just have to plan better for our next family outing."