The Harbinger of Ferocity

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

I meant more that we are stumbling on to other random people who so decide to join us on this adventure, @ihinka. Sort of, "Where do all these people keep coming from? They're everywhere!"

Dungeons and Derps - The D&D Experience

They were furious, @Metadude. They knew appearances to be deceiving, but it was one of those moments where reflecting they could not help but wonder... did they get the right route? The right truck and cargo? Was the rock it or was it in the other unopened crate? No time to think, the police are coming in a few minutes. Then they drag this petty little not-so-precious stone back to their hideout and keep prodding it, all the while not able to figure out what it does or how it does until the specialist arrives. Even then they are all skeptical about the rock he can't prove does anything. Cue the next story involving dream sequences and dealing with memory tampering, oneiromancy, dreamwalking, and nightmares, but that is a story for next time.

Dungeons and Derps - The D&D Experience

Another grim tale from days gone now, that same urban world where the unnatural and strange lurked just within reach but out of sight for most. This one is perhaps just as strange, maybe not as amusing, but it was a crucial point for an extended period and lives up to the mantra of, "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong." It begins simply enough with the players, some of whom I have noted are quite dangerous people in reality and others not so, receiving their mission.

A private security agency was preparing to move a high value asset, believed to be a supernatural artifact, from one location or another. There was virtually no way for them to acquire it head on - both facilities were too heavily guarded, had too many security measures, and would attract far too much attention if attacked. Sneaking in wasn't an option either, given the storage facilities for valuable goods were, as one imagined, designed to protect their client's most valuable items, some worth millions of dollars each. The weakness they found through research, between probing everything from the blueprints of the vaults and the like to attempting to feign being prospective members who wanted to keep their assets safe, were that the armored trucks were their weakest point.

Three armored trucks, three routes the couriers were going to take. No one would know which was which; they had no way of knowing what was loaded into each because the cargo was sealed in impact resistant containers. That made things bad, worse was that the only had so many people to complete their mission. They had the aforementioned ranger, another ranger, a specialist, a psychic, an occultist, and an actor. As one can imagine, they quickly determined which route the actual truck was going to take by observation, but the deadline was cutting it close; they near missed it. Thinking they had this in the bag, they installed remote hubs that tapped into the traffic lights and could control them along the route the truck was going to go.

Their plan was simple, force the truck to divert from any of its routes until it had to make one, one where less people were around, then hijack the truck. Simple, right? They even managed to wiggle their way in to the company and replace one of the security agents and a driver of the truck, leaving only two bad guys; the actual driver and the other guard in the back of the truck. They even pooled all of their money together to buy an identical armored car and paint it to match. But when they arrived with their crew for their day of work and the armored car they bought, the occultist had a brilliant idea when the actual driver told her to go let them know they were ready to load the truck.

She went and knocked on the high security door, not using the intercom everyone had noted was important.

She was then, in very short order, put in handcuffs by all of the guards who did not know her and replaced, carted off by the police who were summoned to figure out who in the hell this was and how she got in here or why. This left the one alternate driver with three bad guys. Fortunately the alternate driver was the psion, also the same one who hacked all the lights and would be able to trip the signals and carry out sending messages via his very expensive, very rare mess of wires he hid on himself to do it.

But it got worse.

He failed every single roll to hack he made, despite having a +10 or so to the associated skill. Nothing but terrible luck and now the truck was on the highway. But they had three lucky breaks, one which was the form of a police car they had stolen a few weeks back, as well as two other vehicles, all so they could try to drive the truck off the road and encircle it after. Solid back up plan, but the bad luck did not end there. When the ranger attempted to pull the truck over and stop it, the ranger and the actor showed up at the same time. The guards knew this was wrong, fast. The psion attempts to short circuit and seize up the truck with an hidden electrical outburst.

The next thing that happened was, was that the ranger got peppered by automatic gun fire and the second car hit the truck as it came to a sudden shutdown. The psion, using his psychic abilities, knocked out the two guards in the back, but the driver witnessed something clearly unnatural happen and the psion do it. Now this one guard is fending off enemies from everywhere, all of who are shooting him, but cant hit to save their lives; the actor isn't a prime tier shooter and the other ranger can never roll. The psion is trying to get out of the truck and sneak up on the driver, but of course fails his Hide check.

The other ranger and actor attempt to breach the containers in the truck, only to realize they're impact resistant and weigh a ridiculous amount. So between being shot at by the one (un)lucky guard holding them all off, they are in their futility fumbling with the cargo. Eventually the truck catches fire, they eliminate the guard, and save the original ranger who had nearly died on the side of the road. In the process they blew their cover, lost tens of thousands on the armored car, narrowly avoided two members dying, and barely escaped the police. All for what you might ask?

An unassuming pink quartz crystal the size of a palm. Of course a very plot relevant crystal, but at the time they legitimately broke open the correct crate at last (the others had all been empty and decoys), recognized it, and snatched it. That moment of, "We did all of this for a rock?"

If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. That was how their game played, no matter how well planned it ever was.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

More random surprise guests? This might end well, rather, perhaps not at all. Let us hope they do return soon enough.

D&D 5e - Hoard of the Dragon Queen

While the woodsman wasn't certain of what at all was taking place now or how it fit into the plan, he complied with the guard's almost humane order. Driving the crude, wooden shovel back into the churned, sickly earth with one great hand where it gave a just as ghastly sound, he looked the guard over once and issued a casual, but most realistic response.

"You needn't tell me twice."

Plainly said as it were, the distraction dealing with the enemy prevented him from largely knowing what was taking place with the crestfallen sailor and his druidic outbursts. It was not for lack of hearing, the wilder's ears were one of the most sensitive things of his person in terms of observation, but processing it among attempting to feign knowing nothing of his allies just within reach. So he was left little option but to shrug the great mountainous shape that his shoulders made and step forward, bindings swaying. Off again were they to all disperse, but at least something of great use had been passed on beside the deadly bone he had been gifted with and its crude, vicious edge.

The old man had taken a plunge into the deeper, darker side of his being again, almost as though he were so utterly lost in it. What bits of the conversation he overheard as he kept in line with his captor told him very little, as cryptic and as bizarre as ever, but that something had inflicted him personal harm and brought up this other side of him once more.

Effects

Brannor follows the guard, not wanting to raise suspicion and having no real interest in doing meaningless work if it endangered the ruse.

@Hekazu@Ryonara@Lucius Cypher@Gordian Nought

D&D 5e - Hoard of the Dragon Queen

I myself will have a post out some time this evening.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

At last all the unpleasant business with the Roleplayer Guild's outage has mostly ended. Moved and preparing to hurl angry insects at the bad guys, @Guardian Angel Haruki.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

At this point things seemed to be better? Worse? The woman wasn't certain, especially not as she caught bits of the conversation the man pleaded with, at least enough to know she made a good choice. Or so she thought, then again, only Jamil of Azalorn really ever had any opinions come to think of it. Most other folk gave her a wide berth, perhaps because she wandered about with a panther, or was it because she wandered around at all and they were just distrustful? Most mortals were strange, especially the more short lived ones. Either way, she made up her mind with a simple command.

Looking to her companion, she more or less gave him a directive, though not quite, petite lips parting as she spoke in a tongue only the cat could truly understand, "I need to go help them. Keep him company!"

She started off, bounding through the woods with only the natural fleetness an elf could carry herself with. That wasn't the end of it however, as she used a hand upon a tree to maneuver around and avoid a branch, she yelled back to the man-sized feline, "And do not hurt him! I forgot that part!"

The husky, black furred jaguar wasn't a murderer, a killer certainly, but she wanted to be sure. They needed him alive, the bandit that was, and this little girl assuming they could find her in short order as they needed to! That noted, the druidess began to call up a swarm of insects that drifted between the trees, some glinting and glittering, bringing both her hands together at the end of her run. Preparing to almost hurl the building swarm, she needed a target; the men captured in the ensnaring field of grasping plants were a good target. Taking cover behind a tree, she started muttering the incantation for the bugs to do her bidding. After all, that seemed a lot less harmful than bathing them in burning moonlight or any other number of things be them bolts, arrows, claws, swords.

Effects

Shaedra Galandoel tells Jamil of Azalorn to remain and protect the captured bandit, then moves her maximum movement, including a Dash, until she can take cover behind a tree within range to use the Infestation cantrip on her next turn. While moving and in cover, she continues to concentrate on Entangle, which will again attempt to restrain any creatures that enter its area or are in it, all while continuing to make it difficult terrain.

@Guardian Angel Haruki@JBRam2002@Pennydumb123@rush99999@ihinka@Cu Chulainn@0 Azzy 0

D&D 5e - Hoard of the Dragon Queen

The hunter shared a tenuous stare with the orc-blood who had him by the head. He was not much an actor himself, having neither the natural talent for it nor the performing troupe, but he was cunning enough to go with it, especially when it was expected. Orchid was both simple and not simple minded, enough so that one could never really be sure if he were serious or not, but that assumed the enemy in the cult had even known much of who they were; nearly all of them they met that night died in some fashion, some more violently than others, especially where the raging warrior was concerned. At least it created an air of much needed ambiguity, further accented by the fact that orcs were not known to be particularly kind captors - their brutish, nasty, and cruel demeanors of the worst of them being examples.

When released, he shrugged back, spitting at the ground beside him and only giving a slight rise to his lip and clenched jaw in restrained menace. "We will see." He said upon receiving the order to begin mucking the informal stable, to which several men on what could only be described as not-guard-duty, questioned Orchid. Brannor in the meanwhile, simply began about his work, only willing to stop should the guards have gone to intervene. After all, a slave, even a defiant one, does what it is told, do they not? To obey was not something the wild heart had in his interest, but this endeavor was another trial put before him, to temper and test that it seemed. Everywhere the outlander went he was trapped, unarmed at that, and with only his guile and natural talents to guide him through it, though the crude wood shovel at the "stable" was a welcome weapon, if only a primitive cudgel.

It was not his sword of course, neither was it his hunting bow or the associated knife, but it was something, and it was work to learn with by observation of the world around him. Being sure not to intrude on his captors' apparent argument, he went about his work, at least for the moment, being rewarded with seeing that the old man, the apparent druid as it were, was still very much alive. Though, as Orchid put it, the man was "playing in the mud".

Despite himself being tied to nature's will in irresistible ways, those which at times overcame and consumed him, the young, albeit powerfully built man had not the faintest of what the druid was up to. The man had always been cryptic, bizarre even, weaving strange stories, possessed of some old spirit, taken by words and language from a far away place. It all made it far more confounding, but whatever it was that took place with him, it seemed Brannor was not the only one who thought it slightly worrisome; the half-blood, in his own unique way, went about acknowledging the strangeness.

@Hekazu@Ryonara@Lucius Cypher@Gordian Nought

I'll Show You Why I'm at The Top of the Food Chain

Despite the show and method of the display the lost figure put forward, the menace of the crude, pointed spears, the apparent observer turned stalker was not dissuaded. If anything the act of burrowing incited a sense of attentiveness to it, the to point it dropped to a low creep, even at a distance and at a skewed angle. It was neither directly from behind it neared closer yet nor was it from the side; the motion was not conscious, rather an instinctual understanding of the blind spot most prey things had. Unbeknownst to it, the quarry was no conventional prey item who had a wide field of view, but this method would not have varied much either. After all, most anything short of the large porcupine or glyptodon, was most vulnerable at such a point.

Slinking along, pausing only now and then to observe, it came closer still almost to the base of the snow shrouded tree, but mere feet away. With no moonlight through the obscuring environment, not that it would have helped much, it was a ghost in the darkness which balanced upon delicate albeit broad feet. Both ears now sleek to its leonine head, it held its position for a few tense moments as the snow continued to build into a mound around the dug out, backed by the shield. It was then, creeping about the side of the tree, it launched its attack from behind the shoulder.

The round base of the large, old pine prevented a direct attack from the rear, but as with any lion or its relatives this meant very, very little. If anything, it changed nothing at all in fact. The first thing the prehistoric felid did was drive its head around, jaws first toward the side of the neck, but turned it back inward so it was hooked and straight toward the throat; this was measurably timed with the outer paw reaching in to try and find purchase upon the chest. This method of biting would tuck itself to beneath the prey item's chin, shielding the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of the hunter while giving the defending beast little means to do anything but attack the thick, muscular neck or incredibly dense skull, if it even had recourse at all. Several millions of years of evolution had refined this tactic which naturally kept the cat away from what were usually crushing forelegs' hooves or spearing horns and led directly to their usual method of killing by suffocation.

The paw however had a different purpose, to act as an anchor and cement a hold, splaying with terribly vicious talons that were curved like fishhooks; the moment one should catch, the cat could clench and drive them in with a tensing. At such a point one of only a few things tended to happen, either they were affixed to the flesh, tore violently free by the ensuing struggle and creating deep wounds, or at times became stuck - much too hooked or sharp for their own good and often at the hands of an inexperienced cat. Regardless of the ultimate case or outcome the only more dangerous weapon were the teeth punctuating the bite; not that the claws which could flay hide were not bad enough, but the crushing, piercing jaws were unmatched.

Teeth, with nearly two-thousand pounds of bite force per square inch, put their pointed ends to the outsider they held in peril; more than enough to pulverize a femur in one single gnash, aimed at what might well have been the most vulnerable point of an entire human being.

The rest of the cat, seemingly somewhat lost in the snowdrift at the base of the tree were it not for the fact it was pushing aside the cold mounds, balanced upon its three remaining legs and weighed its mass out with its long tail. Already balanced to drag back the moment paw and or jaw found their mark, it was not about to let its quarry dig deeper into its burrow to escape. Most things that tended to do so were unpleasant, often biting at the cat's paws or worse, inflicting a painful quill or jet of burning, stinking chemical odor to drive it off. If it were going to eat, its prey drive having been sufficiently stimulated, it intended to act fast, something even the grace of winter in this odd place could not stop. After all, the sole thing more powerful or talented than it was more a finesse hunter with a far more fatal bite...