Inside. Inside my, my head - the pain! A thousand thousand spears, a host of daemons in my ears. I must get away.
Desperately leap forward, jab staff backwards as I run forward. Keep running, ignoring all sensory input, veering back to the water.
You attempt to leap forward, but the scream left you so disoriented that you can't tell for certain which way was forwards before you were on the ground. Regardless, you charge forward from your current position and thrust backwards as hard as you can with your staff. Not pausing to take stock, you keep running, blind in the truest possible sense.
Realising this isn't fun anymore, draw my knife with my left hand to dissuade my attackers. Also try to work out what the scream was.
[Char: 1+1-1, Crit 2]You attempt to draw your knife as menacingly as you can to really drive the point home that you are a big scary man with a big scary knife and these lads are in for a shivving if they keep at it. As you reach for it you decide to show off a bit of your knifesmanship and give it a scary little twirl as you draw it. However, you fuck it up completely and the knife ends up jumping out of your hands and into the air,
[Dex: 1, Crit 3] and you try to grab it out of the air as a cartoon character would try to grab a bar of soap, cutting your hands several times in the process. The knife ends up on the ground at your feet. Luckily everyone seems distracted by the scream. Speaking of, what is up with that?
[Int: 3-2, Crit 3] You think about the scream. You think really hard. You think till your head hurts. Then you think some more. Your brain, grossly underprepared for this kind of hardship, begins throwing up nonsense to protect itself from the painful work your conscious mind is forcing on it. You, however, are not aware of that, and happily accept the answer of "whomst'd've screameth'd'st" as the source of the scream.
As you smile at your own genius at having figured it out, you notice that in the distance there are two nude men sprinting at you from the direction of the mushroom. They are fairly distant but you hear a sudden noise behind you and glance to see another two nude men charge at you from out of the darkness, along the shore. One has a skull-face and a spear, the other has a big cleaver-thing. But suddenly a tall, pale, helmeted man spastically rises from the ground and lands a very solid backwards jab in the spearman's kneecap, then begins flailing his way shorewards while the spearman goes down.
Figure out what's causing that unearthly screaming.
[Int: 1-2, Crit 6-2]The poorly-oiled gears of your misshapen mind whir into what might be considered action by certain plants as you try to figure out the source of the scream. Under intense duress and time pressure, your immense logical faculty concludes that the scream must have been from the time you killed the guy who was staring at you, because you don't remember him saying anything when he died, and the reason the scream sounded so spooky is that it's his ghost who realised that he forgot to scream when he died and came back to sort that out. Satisfied with your answer you watch as two figures charge at you from out of the darkness, along the shore. They're extremely pale and rather short, with lean, corded muscle and an overabundance of scars. They are both practically naked, save for a few scraps of bone and metal around their respective waists. The one is wearing a skull-faced mask and carries a short spear, and has a long white beard knotted with small bones. The other is wearing a metal visor and carries a short blade made of a flat piece of metal crudely lashed to a pipe. A tall, pale, helmeted man on the ground that you hadn't previously noticed begins flailing wildly as the pair charge past, leaping up and jabbing backwards with his staff, clearly in blind desperation. However, by sheer luck he does this just as the pair are running past and the staff connects hard with the spearman's knee, and he lets out a cry of pain in a familiar-sounding voice as he crumples to the ground while the cleaver-carrier pauses in confusion. As you take this in, you hear rapid, distant crunching behind you and glance over your shoulder to see two similarly-outfitted men sprinting past the mushroom, still a fair distance away but closing rapidly.
Turn around and jump in fright at the screams while scrambling away out of fear
You turn around and jump in fright and begin running towards the mushroom, only to see two extremely pale, very thin men sprinting towards you, with crude weapons of some kind raised.
Attempt to regain control of myself so I am able to retaliate.
[Will: 5]You snap out of your terrified stupor and get ready to defend yourself, and not a moment too soon! Two figures are sprinting towards you from the mushroom your left while another two figures are charging out of the darkness to your right! Your mind races, trying to calculate your odds, when suddenly the helmeted man you saw earlier rises from a fetal position on the ground and hits one of the figures, hard, before beginning a weird, stumble-running journey towards the shore. The one he hit goes down while the other pauses.
If I managed to escape, stop and inspect the surroundings.
You gradually slow to a jog, then a walk, and finally stop. You look around and listen intently. You can't see much of your immediate surroundings; it would appear that you're in the dark space between the light of three different mushrooms: two on the shore, and one further inland. However, even in this dark spot, you can see a little thanks to a grid of pale, hazy yellowish lights somewhere far, far above you. Much further inland there is a very distant glow, past a few more mushroom-y lights, that looks very different to that of the mushrooms. On the edge of the light from the mushroom you just ran from, you can make out a fight developing: two figures are charging away from you towards another group of about three or four people when one crumples to the ground, and another figure runs off shorewards. You think you can see two more figures also charging in, but from the other direction.
Continue hiding and observing the situation around me. Get up and run away if something dangerous approaches me.
You see two figures sprinting away from you and towards the glowing mushroom. It looks like some sort of fight is about to happen and they're rushing towards it, but you can't make out the details. Nothing dangerous seems to be coming towards you.
Hit it's ridge with my cane. If that doesn't kill it, poke it's eyes out.
You decide to eliminate the creature as a threat. You're certain the ridge is a weakpoint but you can't be sure that you're right about it being defensive and leaving you alone if you leave it alone. Acting decisively, you move to strike it with your cane.
COMBAT
[Corvald: 4+1 (Understands creature stance), Creature: 1You quickly and sharply raise and then bring down your cane, striking dead and true in the ridge on the creature's back before it can understand that the situation has changed. You hear and feel something crunch and crack as your blow lands, and shards of a chitinous substance break off and float in the water. There is a series of loud thudding noises as it writhes around in the shallows, blood spraying from its back as its mouth convulses open and closed. It finally ceases movement aside from a few twitches as the pool of its blood spreads to about four meters in diameter, mingling with the blood seeping from the nasty gash on your left hand.
Something feels dangerous about your current situation.
Taking a quick look back at the beach, you see that the ambush has been sprung: four men are closing rapidly on the gathering from both sides. However, you see one of the four go down as the man in the snazzy helmet gets up and jabs backwards with his weapon before beginning an awkward run towards the water.
((New rule: from now on, please put your character's name in bold and underlined above your actions. It will make things a little clearer for me and means I can remember characters rather than forum names))
Author
Topic: Kill the Mayor - Exposition! (Read 31599 times)