Close to the Heart (Astarte)

[Tassadar]

Spoiler

Laelia: HP = 16/61, PP = 47, EP = 45/56, Status = Fine, 8/9 bullets loaded, 29/30 AV, Glasses at 7/10 EP, Wounded, Weakened, 26 EP spent this fight, Transformation X = 13, Upkeep = 8 EP. 47/52 Temp HP, Whirling Death

Things
Weapon cache along the road (three dozen crossbow bolts, five sabers, four hatchets, a heavy crossbow) hanging from a tree branch
Old unmarked grave beneath the crab apple tree

NPCs
Raeglynn, innkeeper
Thomas the Younger

Raenan the Bandit currently deceased

Aegen: Spent 12 EP, Taken 67 damage.
Wall: 52/101 HP


NOT FRIENDS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>:3 Every post will add additional eyebrows until his return! Or I get bored. Or forget.
Knight-Thing: Wants to "cuddle." Possibly THIRST. 80 Body, 18 dodge, Sword is +10 attack/damage and has an extra damage die and vampirism 8, taken 74 damage.

Rolls

Spoiler

Golem Grab! Attack: 87 vs 98, miss but at least gives a decreasing dodge number.

Laelia activates Whirling Death, which costs HP as soon as you gain benefit from it, and attacks.
Attack: 122 vs 93, hits.
Damage: 77 - 39 = 38, 38/2 = 19 damage, bring its damage taken up to 53.

Aegen uses SLAY again.
Attack: 129 hits.
Damage: 96 - 39 = 57, 57/2 = 29 damage. Brings total up to 82.

Then it gets to swing again, first with sword on Aegen.
Attack: 157 including 10 10 10 on the base dice for an auto hit.
Damage: 75 - 55 = 20 damage. It regains 8 HP and goes to 74 damage taken.
Then d3 = 1 tentacle attacks. Which targets Laelia.
Attack: 50 vs 86, miss.

Laelia timed her strike carefully, and the gun attached to her weapon barked to give it the force needed to get her blade through the chain mesh and leather at the joints in its armor. Her animated golem had distracted it enough, and the shrieking, monstrous knight seemed wholly focused on it and Aegen as he was preparing another mighty swing. She managed a solid hit, and more of its blood-mist erupted from where she hit it, but the thing just kept roaring and swinging. One of the tendrils flailing around it suddenly paused and oriented towards her, like a spear aiming beneath a shield, but Laelia saw it soon enough to roll aside as it lunged for her, so fast that had she not moved it might well have left her disemboweled, or even split in half entirely.

Even as she landed her hit upon it, however, the unholy thing focused upon Aegen, who roared in challenge and swung at it with all his might. The two were brawling more than fencing now, and while Aegen might be apparently mortal compared to the monster it seemed - at least for now - that he was trading blow for blow. The monster hammered its sword one handed but with immense strength into the fully armored man, and while blood erupted to be siphoned off to feed the creature and bone and metal audibly buckled under the blow, Aegen still stood strong and solid to counterattack. His answering swing was launched with all of his strength and weight behind it and hacked right through the monstrous knight's leg, armor and all. For a moment it seemed like the writhing horror might simply topple over with the loss of the limb, but the blood mist coalesced and dragged falling limb and falling body together to make it seem as if the break in armor and the wound had never even happened.

Around them the ghostly melee continued in a grisly but muted display of unrivaled, sickening carnage. The horrors backing the walls of men kept the lines of the defenders from breaking as they plucked man after man from over their own lines, uncaring for the wild melee taking place between Laelia, Aegen and the thing that had arisen as if from the very ground to confront them. Ghostly arrows sailed through the air, and while the beasts shrugged them off some landed on the knight that Laelia and Aegen were fighting and she saw more of the nearly gaseous blood that it emitted erupt momentarily only to grey out and fade into wisps of a phantom equivalent to the blood mist that the abomination opposing them seemed to emit when injured and manipulate.