In which there is a hot mess...and my dice betray me...
After the encounter with the gods, there was some discussion regarding who should carry the newly acquired Nimbus Bow. It was decided that Skald should use it as a loaner, since he's a ranged specialist and thus would get the most use out of it. Urol apparently had some reservations about this, but since he didn't say anything and only Bliz noticed...too bad! In looking around the beautiful room, Jo noted that without the dangers, you wouldn't have the wonders. Spoken like a true adventurer.
We moved on, following a hallway frequently traversed by skinwalkers (according to the tracks). After noticing from the tracks that someone had tried to steal treasure from one of the 10! mummified Olman and then had promptly been attacked and then dragged off by someone else, we chose NOT to steal any of the at least 10,000gp treasure in that room. Yes, we have the power to turn our backs on mad treasure. We made up for it in another room by stealing some items off a small altar to a god that clearly wasn't Olman...and thus shouldn't have been there anyway.
All was going well when we hit a patch of hallway where the skinwalker tracks suddenly changed pattern in some fashion. Not being able to figure out what they were doing, we searched for traps to no avail. It was only when Jakara ventured out behind Jo and Bliz that the floor suddenly collapsed beneath us, dropping all three of us into a room beneath. This room turned out to be a interrogation chamber, now flooded with 4 feet of water. There was a block of 6 cells beyond and a hallway past that, but we decided not to pursue this course for the time being. We climbed back up and got everyone to the far side of the gap. Proceeding up some stairs, we realized there was fire ahead. Oh boy. Having made a huge racket, anything up ahead would know we were coming.
As Bliz snuck down the hall, two skinwalkers popped out on either side of the far door. They couldn't see her invisble gnome glory, so they popped back out of sight and had a brief conversation. And then...the battle was on. The 10 ft wide corridor we were in emptied into a huge room, with a giant firepit in the center and lit by a large skylight directly above the pit. Two sets of stairs on the far side of the room led to balconies to the left and right with doors leading off them. There were 4 skinwalkers already on our level who moved to engage. There were 4 skinwalker archers on each balcony with almost full view of the doorway we were coming through. It should be noted that these guys don't go down in one round, so while we were hitting fairly easily, it was by no means short work. And meanwhile, the archers were totally free to send barrages of arrows our way.
Then, as we slowly worked our way into the room, Jakara suddenly howled and started attacking mindlessly. Urol was able to heal the Feebleminded spell, but it was only a few rounds later that we discovered that the doorway we came through was in the form of a giant mouth...belonging to a carved stone face...and there was someone hiding behind it, just visible in one of the eyes. Clever skinwalkers. As we started to tear up the sw's within reach, a couple archers jumped down to join the battle up close and personal. Then they made a bunch of noise as part of some kind of signal and two more figures came out of one of the balcony doors...another spellcaster and a female all decked out with feathered, ceremonial gear. Uh oh. Bliz got feebleminded too before we got a Silence into effect on the one in the eye. This really crippled her in combat as she could no longer go invisible, spring attack or sneak attack--thereby removing a potential for 40-50 damage each round. Blarg!
Meanwhile, things were looking really ugly, and Urol was having a hard time just keeping everyone alive. Adamant feebleminded the two spellcasters (don't you love using their own tactics against them?), but those guys are hella hard to hit even without spellcasting abilities. Jo got tied up with one in the hallway. Then the chica decided to jump down and wade into the fight. She pulls out a giant flaming weapon, and readied her shield. Arrows are still raining down on us, and no one can get free to go after her, so she waits for the right moment. As she charges at Jakara, Rishitok steps in front of him to block her attack...and she promptly kills the SHIT out of him. Like whoa. We knew it would be bad; turns out, it's VERY bad.
Now without even Rishitok's healing, and with everyone else engaged, Jakara is looking at taking the full brunt of her might next round. Urol's been trying to work his way over to Bliz to Heal the Feeblemind, but hasn't made it yet. He sees what's going to happen and turns the floor under the Chief and several of the sw's to mud, it momentarily stops her and she gets super pissed and orders all the other sw's to kill Urol. Jo finishes off the spellcaster and moves up to stand next to Jakara. The Chief points at Jo and says she'll send that one to the Prince, but Jakara will become a member of the tribe. Unable to charge, she can only make one attack, but it still hurts. Jo and Jakara lay in as much damage as they can with a Heart Shot crit from his spear and an Abdominal Rupture from her cutlass, but the bitch is still up with 40 hp next round. (Did I mention she has favored enemy: humans?) Knowing that she's done for, she does everything in her power to take Jo with her.
And rolls for about eleventy billion attacks, one of which is from a flaming burst weapon, and two of which are confirmed crits. Turns out she's named, so James draws from the crit deck for both. I have a really, really tense eternity of waiting for him to roll up, calculate, subtract my DR 5, etc. I'm ready to hear the worst at this point. Her first crit tears a gash in my mithril breastplate and the second one shatters my jaw, all total does 100 HP of damage. Taking me down to 4. Yes, four. If I hadn't had the DR (which soaked 30 HP)--Jo would have been D-E-D, dead. Everyone else is completely occupied and out of reach for any aid whatsoever. Jakara lights into her but by my turn, she's still standing with 14 HP left. Only 14...but with the SHITE rolls I've been getting off my dice, I could conceivably wiff all 7 shots and then the next round be D-E-D dead. Decision time. Jo activates her new Boar tattoo (giving her Diehard for 10 rounds) just in case, and goes for it. And...
The dice give me enough love to drop her below zero. Jakara goes for the coup de grace, and Jo pours a potion over her ruined jaw, drinking being nigh impossible. Meanwhile, Adamant's taking out the last archer standing, Bliz is finally laying out sneak attacks, etc. The last sw tries to run out a hall on the other side of the room, but Skald takes him out with 8 arrows in two rounds. As he's running he's calling out for "Master". Broken and bloody, we loot the bodies and teleport the fuck out of there, back to the other side of the lake.
Jibbety. It was a narrow miss. Points of note: Bliz took Leadership when she levelled, so now Coriander is a super badass awesome blink dog with class levels...who still can't take much damage, but hey. I'm really happy we didn't have to run before finishing the fight and only lost one NPC. It was definitely set up as a tactical challenge. There were so many and they were so spread out that even without the feebleminds we would have had a hard time with it. But, all's well that ends well...not that it's even close to ending.
All told, the battle lasted 13 rounds, and took us hours to run (maybe as many as 4 or 5--I didn't see when we started). A hot mess, indeed. Next up, we lick our wounds and head back in for more abuse. Adventurers have to be some seriously fucked up people.