BBeast

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

Not a ghost...

@Kangutso

My apologies. I was over-abbreviating/not paying enough attention.
My decision stays the same, though.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

I prefer the first option. We already have a spirit person (Emily), and being able to create ghost armour/weapons/tools on will sounds cool.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

Meanwhile, I've been very busy with uni stuff. Which means I constructed my post in such a way as to not have to post again for a few weeks with good cause.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

Torrens gave a salute and started to leave when the altercation with Athinar began. Torrens stayed at the edge of the town square for a few moments to see how the events fared, interested in seeing how this encounter turned for Athinar. A few seconds later, after Athinar had made his response (whatever it was), Torrens turned again and sprinted down the road and out of the town. He found a road which didn't lead to a village they had already razed, which Octavius wasn't covering and which hadn't been thoroughly blockaded by the orcs, and sprinted down it. While he could not match the pace of a galloping steed, Torrens could maintain a full sprint indefinitely, which should be adequate to overtake any villagers fleeing on foot.

After maybe half an hour of travel, he saw the light of torches appear from over the horizon. From that torchlight Torrens could tell that they seemed to be ordinary people travelling away from the town, and lacking any notable luggage, and he inferred that those people must be the refugees he had been sent to hunt down. Instead of charge straight in, however, he left the road and ascended a hill. The undergrowth around his feet burst into flame, although he figured that he was far enough back for that not to be easily noticed. From the top of the hill he had a far better view. The numbers in this group of refugees was quite large- it looked like it must contain several full households' worth of people. To simply charge them, being incandescent as he is, would have them all scatter into the night, meaning he could easily lose some of them. Although he grinned as he noticed that ahead of them, another few kilometers away, was the beginning of a forest. He would wait for them to be in the middle of the forest, then strike.

So Torrens returned to the road and continued to follow his prey, keeping as far away as he could without losing track of them, although even that could be too close, considering that he had no means of concealing his fiery glow. Still, he continued, and as the villagers entered the forest Torrens changed from a walk to a sprint in order to catch them before they left the forest. When he himself reached the edge, he immediately got to work on starting a forest fire, blocking off the way they had came. Torrens spent a good few minutes cultivating the inferno and feeding on the flames, building a ferocious wall of fire which would eventually grow and consume the forest.

However, Torrens could not trust this bush fire to expand fast enough to overtake the villagers before they escaped. He needed to fence them in. So Torrens gathered up some of the energy he ahd gained from this fire and unleashed it all in a ferocious jet directed from his feet, rocketing him high into the air, soaring across the forest to the other side in mere seconds. To land, Torrens did not bother to rocket to a gentle landing, for rocketing is horribly inefficient. Instead, Torrens crash landed in a tree, which exploded into flame on impact. His return to the ground was far from graceful, involving him falling face first into the dirt, but he picked himself up and got to work on setting up a second wall of fire, sandwiching in the villagers.

Torrens cackled with glee, for forest fires were his favourite type of fire. The ferocity, scale and destruction were unmatched by anything else on this world. Sure, other fires might burn hotter, and some things such as lava are hotter again, but none of those span many hectares at any given moment or leave whole swaths of countryside a charred wasteland. His only regret was that he couldn't be in all of it at once, to enjoy every bit of the fire.

He did eventually find the villagers, but by it was already too late for them to escape, as the fire was closing in much faster than they could hope to go around and escape. Given the apparent surety of his victory, Torrens didn't bother to kill them on sight. Instead, he chased them deeper into the forest, although none of them lasted long before they succumbed to the heat or the smoke. Torrens stayed for some hours more, basking in the flames to bolster his strength, and also scouring the rest of the forest and the surrounds to see if he could spot any survivors. While the chances were remote, a villager or two could have escaped his trap and fled into the night. Torrens was counting on that being exceedingly improbable, since he had no hope of finding them if they did successfully escape as they would be employing stealth and could be anywhere in the countryside. For official purposes, he would assume he had caught all of them which had been taking his route.

It was not until the sun had already been up for an hour that the fires started to wane as the forest burned out. Only then did Torrens begin to make his way back to the Dungeon. He would probably get there sometime around midday or the afternoon, and he would seem noticeably brighter and hotter thanks to that forest fire.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

When the Keeper appeared, Torrens bowed towards him in as sincere a manner as he could muster. As imps poured out of conjured rifts he stood around and waited until the Keeper was ready to make his address. When it was done, Torrens gave some thought as to how he might be of further service. Governing was not something he was trained to do, or something he wanted to do, so that left chasing down the fled villagers. While he had no tracking skills, he realised that the villagers would be fleeing towards the nearest towns, which would be easy enough to find. He could outrun people fleeing on foot, and if there was a forest, or even thick ground cover, between them and refuge...

"I also volunteer to stop those who have fled. They would be heading towards the nearest settlements, so I can work to intercept one such route."

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

@Athinar, Well, the main thing Torrens noticed was that Athinar had not been turned into many gory chunks or vaporised completely, which is the expected thing to happen when a meteorite explodes on you.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

@BBeastDid you fail to notice the meteor that Athinar blocked with his hands? His armor is tough.

@CycloneNo, none, really.

@Athinar

I assumed that said meteor had exploded, as they normally do. If it was going to strike gently enough to be caught without exploding, it would have been a useless meteor.

And @Cyclone, go ahead and wrap it up.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

Torrens, walking into the square and seeing the devastation, managed to come to the same conclusion as Athinar. Torrens himself had taken out what must have been the only fire priest here powerful enough to pull a stunt like that. Even if there was another, as a pyromancer himself Torrens would have used a highly concentrated fire bolt to kill a single target like Athinar, not a massive explosion causing severe collateral damage. Whoever had cast that spell wanted to kill most of the people in the square, and had the power to do so. That smelt of a Keeper. The Master clearly did not shy away from sacrificing his minions if there was benefit to be gained.

Although perhaps more incredibly was that Athinar was standing in that shattered square almost completely unscathed in some new eldritch armour.

"Balothiss the Half Giant is raiding the manor," Torrens answered, gesturing towards the manor, "As for the others, I have not seen them. Although, I have not looked for them either."

Torrens looked around again. The human forces had been shattered by that explosion. It appeared that anyone who had survived had made themselves scarce before someone could pick them off. Torrens' brow furrowed as he thought.

"Was there anything left for me to do? I was originally meant to be outside, so I haven't kept track of our objectives inside the town."

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

<Snipped quote by Athinar>

Force is velocity plus mass. I'm letting Xahillion get away with it because I figured, eh, a draw is a plot point, and it's some magical mind shield. Against someone without powerful magic protections, she's strike with killer force and precision. Fast doesn't necessarily mean weak.

@Lugubrious

Plus, a well-placed rapier stab (especially Clotho's rapier) would kill Athinar just as easily as anyone else.
Although I'll make the pedantic point that force is mass times acceleration (acceleration being the change in velocity with time). Velocity times mass is momentum, which is also force times time.

The Horde of Evil - Tresspassing through treacherous tribes' territory! (RP closed)

Of the small volley of crossbow bolts fired at Torrens and Balothiss, only one had either the skill or the luck to actually hit Torrens in the leg. The bolt, of course, did not penetrate Torrens' surface, but instead bent about 45 degrees, the blow liberating a shot of bright fire and momentarily unbalancing him. Before he could return fire, though, the men had retreated further inside, and lacking a clear shot Torrens refrained from attacking. In his view of the situation, the inhabitants of the manor would only be able to put up a paltry resistance, and the manor almost certainly contained valuables which would be destroyed if he were to enter the house and burn it down with his presence.

"I think you can take them from here," Torrens said to Balothiss, "If I go in there I'll just burn all the loot. So if you have no problems, I'll find somewhere else to help."

As he turned to leave, his eyes were drawn to a large burning object falling from the sky. A flaming meteor, crashing from the sky into some point in the middle of the town. An earth-shuddering shockwave and a spectacular fireball followed. Torrens was left awestruck, unable to do anything but gape for a few moments. When he did eventually regain composure, he exclaimed, "Where in hell did that come from?!"

If Balothiss had made no objection, Torrens dashed off to the impact site, to inspect the damage and maybe pick off any survivors and feed off the burning wreckage.