The door continues to open beside Sootstepand opens quickly to reveal "magic man".
Sootstep tries to pretend to be a new guy working for the Redbrands. He starts to act scared because it must be a boss man, starts a report about the attack at the bar, and he's been sent to pass on the message. Performance check (16). The guy doubts and then in a step of recognition, goes back into the desk, grabs items and shoves them into Sootsteps hands. "New people are proving more difficult than black-spider expected"
Sootstep runs back to use and says, "I met the boss", looking scared, holding lots of scrolls and stuff. Sildur-Hallwinter looks to the camera and looks all frustrated. Daran, "we're here now, may as well make a good fight out of it". Daran wants the fight; Sildur-Hallwinter doesn't care.
Sootstep stands on the bridge and pretends to be scared of the Nothic, the rest of us hide in the raven. The man appears at the tunnel door. His rat is on his shoulder, and a staff with a twisted glass ornament.
Guy walks into Sootstep and tells him not tell worry about the Nothic.
Sootstep turns around and kicks out a bridge support, the magic man falls, takes 7dmg. His items have dropped into the crevasse
The Nothic goes straight for Sootstep achilles, does 6dmg, goes down. Sootstep is stuck underneath the Nothic and is slowly passing out
The mage is prone on the floor in front of Yucca, she sneak attacks, pulls out an axe and goes for his neck (double nat 20 to hit), does 18dmg as the neck goes and gets slowed down by a blue shimmering force field. She goes again with the axe, 2dmg, the shimmer of blue continues to deflect, cutting the skin. He is bleeding heavily from his neck.
Tehazysh looks at the scrolls, one is scroll of charm person, scroll of fireball.
Tehazysh cast fireball down the corridor just missing Sildur-Hallwinter and Daran, hit 8 idiots. Does 20 dmg/10 dmg to those who saved. Kills a goblin, kill the guy near Daran and Sildur-Hallwinter, kill the guy at the front of the corridor. The rest are pretty dead. The Bugbears bodies are singed away. I then move down a bit away from the Nothic
The Nothic creeps up behind Yucca, taps on her shoulder, its eyeball appears to quadruple in side, she ignores it and turns away and ignores it.
Yuccauses cunning action to escape, goes up and helps Sootstep, unable to help as the Redbrands are pulling away.
Magic man disappears into a puff of smoke, and reappears next to Tehazysh, it was teleportation. He grabs me on both shoulders and paralyses me. This pins the magic man in place. He then walks away down the corridor.
Redbrands runs up an tries to stab Yucca with a knife and stabs her in the side.
The last thing that all of us remember is being in the losing fight
We find ourselves awake in a cramped room in what looks to be the same building, with rough chains on our hands and feet. The magic man is at the jail doors, looking disappointed. There are two Bugbears and three humanoids hiding in the corner in a separate cell on the other side.
As soon as one of us appears lucid, he leans up against the bars "You put up a good fight, I understand why he's scared of you"
Tehazysh looks at the people in the back. All human, two tweens, one woman. Match the description of the missing people from the woodcarver
Magic man commends us, and says it needs to end here
Yucca blows it off as "as if you had it under control", he looks over and says "". Looks over at Tehazysh and says "and only one spell caster who hasn't taken on the family resemblance"
Sootstep looks at me and goes "omg, is that your ex". As to why you're alive, we'll be long gone and your dwarven companion has left you to your own devices.
Glasstaff whistles, the Bugbears look unhappy but eventually follow
Daran starts yelling at the bars, yelling that he's a coward. Then shrinks into himself "I guess my adventuring carrer is really ove"
Yucca uses Sootstep tail to light the lock to unpick it. It's a simple lock, and it unlocks it easily. Then does the other door.
The others are wearing dirty clothes with short blonde hair. The girl runs up and hugs Yucca and goes, "It's been so long, have you seen our Dad?". Lies that she's seen them. Offers to try and help.
Sootstep tries to motivate us by saying "if we hadn't got caught, we wouldn't have found these people". The woman is thankful and says she's been there for weeks.
Daran springs up and is checking the walls, looking for anything. He comes over to Tehazyshand asks how she's doing. She says "yes, I'm ok", stands up shakily, brushes herself off and pretends nothing happened. He then does his best impression of rallying us, "Well, they clearly have some other agenda".
Sootstep "They said they were leaving, we wanted them out, so we succeeded"
Daran "yes, but this seems bigger than just, they seemed to know we were coming"
Sootstep comes over to Tehazysh and uses tail as an interrogation light, "Why does the boss man seem to know you?". "I..., my family has a reputation"
Sootstep walks through the door and goes into dusty-looking crypt with three sarcophaguses with three skeletons.
Tehazysh investigates the skeletons. I spy two things: one skeleton is wearing a shiny signet ring. Each of the sarcophaguses has the name of an ancient elvish empire Illefarn. Functionally humanoid.
Tehazysh in her shocked state, doesn't think and goes to take the ring, and as she does, the skeleton begins to move.