Meet the Fisherman
Log Info
- Title: Meet the Fisherman
- Emitter: Solar Flare
- Characters: Delilah, Donna, Ashes, Elyanna
- Place: Alexandrian Sewers
- Time: Monday, January 24, 2022, 8:43 PM
- Summary: The Valethor gang ventures deeper into the hole, after wasting some time shaking down the goblin. Ashes, her ears injured and her balance off, falls over the side. Donna dives after an manages to cushion her fall, which is on Elyanna. Elyanna and Sirri made it down safely. They continue exploring and come across a cave full of rotting sealife. Sirri explains that they may have stumbled upon the lair of the Fisherman, a half-ogre, half abomination. They attempt to sneak by, and fail miserably. It's time to Go Fish.
It isn't long before there's an absolutely ear-splitting explosion; a thunderous blast that shakes the sewer walls, sprays debris and muck and dust everywhere, and leaves everyone blinded and deafened for a few moments in the aftermath. As it dies down, the goblin is the first to pick himself up off the floor; and after taking a moment to dust himself off, he looks back down the tunnel, assessing the damage that is obvious from here.
"IT WORKED!" he proclaims, throwing his hands up in the air triumphantly. "The Under-Rock Goblin Gang will have a HOME AGAIN! We can build our fortress in this hole and it will be PERFECT!"
He pauses, and looks around. "I hope you all wanted to go about... four levels down. From here. 'Cause now you can."
Once the flash leaves her eyes, and her ears stop ringing, Donna begins to lever herself up to her knees. Blinking rapidly, shaking her head, the brawler takes a moment to clear the last of explosion-fueled disruption from her head, then raises her head to glare over her shoulder. "Motherfucker *are you actually out of your mind?!* Rrrrgh...
Sitting back on her heels, then hauling herself upward, she leans against the wall to collect her bearings. "You fucking well *better hope* we need to go down buddy, cos otherwise I'm'a bounce you off the bottom of that godsdamned hole."
"We're deputized. We can arrest him." Ashes says, unexpectedly loudly. She's unhappy her ears are ringing. She may need to get some advanced healing for this. There's a squirming in her armour, her familiar and friends aren't coming out. "For destroying evidence."
The Mourner looks at Siri, checking the gnome over, "Are you ok?"
Elyanna is actually a little fuzzy on the status of summary executions amongst this 'deputization', but given the times the Guard have sent mercenaries specifically out for her or her immediate companions, there may be enough wiggle room for her to still be within the rules.
She glares down at the goblin, dusting herself off with her shieled hand, "Your day will choose from several colorful options depending on her answer." she remarks in the wake of Ashes' status check.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Appearing -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Delilah 5'4" 106 Lb Human Female A golden haired human girl in white robes. Donna 5'4" 106 Lb Human Female A black-haired human girl in black robes. Ashes 5'11" 177 Lb Hobgoblin Female A somber arvec in grey clothes with a skull face. Elyanna 5'11" 153 Lb Half-Orc Female A grim, Arvek-blooded woman in raven feathers. -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=
The Goblin bristles visibly, drawing himself up to his full height (which isn't really all that impressive) and making a loud 'Harrumph!' "Well I never," he proclaims. "Arrest me?! We're living down here! And this part of the sewers isn't heavily used. You'll note, afterall, that you're not swimming up to your nostrils in shit." He humphs, looking up at Ashes, "And you can't arrest me anyway, you big green weirdo, I haven't destroyed any evidence! Just some walls nobody was using." He pauses, as there's a sound of something collapsing in the background. "Nobody was using *much*."
Sirri, meanwhile, is sitting on the floor, legs out in front of her, with her goggles up on her forehead as she blinks an drubs her eyes. "I... think I'm okay," the gnome replies, speaking a bit loudly in a far-away sort of voice. "My ears are ringing... and it hurts when I move my jaw." She proceeds to make several funny faces, shifting her lower jaw all the way over to the right, then the left, then back again. "But I still have all my teeth. Well, except the gold one in the back, but that isn't new, and I still have the--"
"You have a GOLD TOOTH?!" the goblin interjects.
"...No," answers Sirri, before she looks back up at the taller folk. "But we do need to go several levels down. Just, here isn't entirely ideal, since I'm not quite sure where we'll end up, but I'm confident we can get to the cistern. We could go the long way around, but that make take..." She pauses, and scratches her head. "Could take hours. Like, twenty of 'em. Or more. Maybe less. Depends on who else is in the sewers, making a mess."
"'Not ideal,'" Donna repeats, rubbing a gauntleted hand over her face. "Ain't that a fact. But, we work with what we got." Turning back to the goblin, Donna clears her throat. "Sorry for the interruption, but since we're trackin' down a murderer's hidey-hole... This wasn't exactly th'greatest timin'. Now we gotta hope that blast didn't wreck nothin' that'll clear my sister's name. An' since jawin' with you ain't gettin' us there faster..."
A large coil of rope is dug out of the brawler's pack, and she nods to Sirri. "Hey Sirri. You okay onna rope? Cos if not, you can hang on my back."
The ash coloured hobgoblin stares at the goblin, not surprise so much as a weary expectation of life among goblins. They will 'tik' with their tokens, then you must 'tac', and then they will 'TOE'. "So you admit to destroying the evidence so thoroughly that it's impossible to say there was even evidence there to start."
This time Ashes gets to TOE! Or is that her 'tac'. It depends who had the first move.
She turns to stare at Sirri, then nods. "Ok."
Elyanna glances amongst the others as they speak, deferring to their legal expertise as it were, while she keeps an ear out for signs of imminent collapse, or alerted creatures of some kind.
Luckily, the goblin seems to have known what he was doing, and the place doesn't seem to be in imminent danger of collapse. There's just a big hole around the corner from where everyone is now, and there's rubble all over the place. Also, the air retains the hazey quality of smoke, but luckily remains just as breathable and foul-smelling as before.
"I'm okay on a rope," Sirri replies airily, as she pulls herself back up to her feet, immediately sticking her arms out to either side as she wobbles to one side, then the other. "Just... give me a moment. I feel that two-headed Ogre from the Black Fox hit me in the head with both fists."
The goblin sputters and throws his arms up in the air. "Well if there were *evidence* or something around here you oughta *SAID SO.*" He folds his arms, "Can't tell me I'm guilty'a blowing something up that I didn't know was there t'begin with! What do you think this is? Bludgun? That shit'd never hold up in court and you know it, so why don't you all run along and--"
"We can climb down," Sirri interjects, raising her voice to talk over the goblin until he stops yammering. "With any luck this'll be a shortcut."
"Be a nice change," Donna mutters, then rests a hand on Ashes' shoulder. "He ain't worth the time, Ash. We got more important stuff t'deal with, let's just move on an' leave him be for now."
"I'm letting you off with a warning." Ashlee says, with no inflection yet sounding surprisingly authoritative. This isn't Bludgun, true; the warning didn't include a nightstick to the knee. She's lets herself be turned and then lines up at the rope.
She could use a spell... She considers what she has on hand.
Ashlee lines up at the rope. "One at a time, right?"
"To your fortune, this is -not- Bludgun." Elyanna returns, allowing more of her natural Bludgunni accent flow through her words. She closes her unshielded hand into a fist to quell the itch for Maidenhead's hilt and moves to consider the potential climb down.
"I can go first." she remarks. She hasn't heard of any giant spiders living beneath the city, at least....
GAME: Ashes rolls athletics: (1)+0: 1 (EPIC FAIL) GAME: Donna rolls athletics: (1)+10: 11 (EPIC FAIL) GAME: Elyanna rolls athletics: (14)+7: 21 GAME: Delilah rolls 1d20+10: (7)+10: 17 (Sirri Athletics) <OOC> Donna says, "Can I Reflex to catch Ashes and turn her away from the ground?" GAME: Donna rolls reflex: (20)+8: 28 (CRITICAL SUCCESS)
Ashlee watches Elyanna climb down. It seems basic enough, although she hasn't had a lot of athletic training. Her military experience, being in the cavalry, was mostly with falling off horses.
When she can see Elyanna has reached the bottom, Ashes steps up and leans down to pick up the rope. As she does, the world swirls and swirls. Her head seems above her feet, then her feet above her head, and the ceiling where the floor should be. Wind bends her aching ears, the explosion did some internal damage. "I think I hurt my balance button."
Ashlee plummets. It is just like falling off a horse. She's a natural.
"*Shit,*" Donna breathes, hearing Ashes' complaint just before her fall. Dispensing with safety, she grabs the rope with one hand, tips over the edge, and just starts *running* down the hole.
The problem is, explosives do not exactly carve even walls. And Donna's foot snags a piece of sundered pipeline.
And now she is tumbling through the air. But her downward momentum brings her within arm's reach of the falling, armored hobkin. Without a thought, Donna reaches out to snag Ashes, curling herself around the Vardaman, and pointing her back toward the ever-closing ground.
Squinching her eyes shut, she prays that she'll survive being caught in the makeshift juice press she's built around herself...
ELyanna's descent is, by and large, uneventful. The trip quiet and the Keeper well and truly out of trouble until she reaches the bottom, when a subtle sonic cue from above lets her know that things are going wrong above her in time to catch the bad news.
GAME: Delilah rolls 3d6: (14): 14 GAME: Delilah rolls 6d6: (21): 21
- * W H U D D *
The impact forces air out of Donna's lungs in a sharp, coughing groan, and her arms tighten around Ashes as she struggles to reclaim her breath.
Finally, she draws in a long, loud gasp of air to her lungs, and just... uncurls, releasing Ash and letting her hands flop against the cold, hard concrete. "...Well that sucked... Y'okay there, Ash?"
Ashes is still disoriented, convinced that she's floating upwards and will smack against the top of the sewers. Which are far, far away.
- >>WHUDD<<
She lands, cushionned by Donna, a hammer of armour coming down on an anvil of ground, like the point of a juicer. The air is knocked out of her. She can't tell if there is a trickling inside her armour, or it's the tickling of her stunned menagerie, flopping about.
"I'm not ok." She answers, the truth in monotone. "I'll live."
"Shit!" Elyanna exclaims as her friends' closing speed is much higher, and less controlled, than they were all hoping. <goblin-talk>
The Keeper's frame locks up as assorted instincts and behaviors vie for dominance, but it's only after the floor eats the doubletap that she is able to take any meaningful action.
This, she does, by circling and crouching down to check them for injuries as she as asks, "Do you feel any burning, anywhere?"
"Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod!" Sirri repeats the same words (word?) over and over again as she descends the rope, until she lands with as heavy a thump as gnomish feet in soft boots can possibly make. She runs up beside Donna and Ashes, hold her hands up in front of her mouth and skittering back and forth, like she's trying to figure out what to do. "Are you okay? Are you alive?! Are you in one peace? That was awful!" She pauses exactly one second. "I have one healing potion, just... just the one, but you two can TOTALLY HAVE IT. It's big so it might do for both of you if you're careful. I don't know if healing potions work that way, I mean... maybe you can have a healing portion?"
While Sirri is busy being frantic, from up above, the goblin leans over to look down. "Mind the step!" he shouts, before retreating.
<OOC> Ashes says, "I'll do a channel, 1 of 5, 5d6 healing" GAME: Ashes rolls 5d6: (18): 18
The ashen arvec rolls off Donna onto her hands and knees, and then stands. She gazes at Sirri and says, "The Feiu of the Tears will heal us. We don't need the potion."
"No burning," She tells Elyanna, then looks Donna over. She holds out her hand to help her stand, "Thanks."
She touches her holy symbol, "Feiu of the Tears, make us feel better."
"...Better than what almost happened," Donna croaks up at Ash, then lets her head fall back, the knock bringing a pained grimace to her face.
When Elyanna attempts triage, the brawler snorts out a laugh, then immediately regrets it. "...might shit crooked for a week," she says. "But it's jus' bruises for me, I think."
Carefully, as Ashes rolls off her, Donna sits up, leaning forward to place her hands down between sprawled legs, and hangs her head until the ringing goes away. "We're alive, Sirri, an' no, potions don't work that way; all'r'nothin'. You hang on to it, ain't *none* of us want you to be needin' a cure an' not havin' one."
As the healing of the grave washes over the group, the brawler rolls her head, and nods, climbing to her feet. "...So that's one for the bar. Which way?"
Please to ignore the clicking sounds Donna's spine makes. It's totally all right.
GAME: Elyanna rolls heal: (15)+2: 17
The Keeper helps them up as she's able, doing what she can to make sure things are in the right places as Ashes invokes the Grey Lady's deferral. She sighs, looking to the gnome and nodding, "As they say."
She looks up as the goblin quips and dips and she grumbles something between her fangs in goblin about ogresses, and his face, then Donna's query brings her back to business and she cocks her head a bit to listen to any sounds of activity nearby.
"I don't think that's anatomically possible." Ashes answers Elyanna, then takes a moment to think about it. Ogresses. Maybe it is possible. Her white skull blanches. Best not to think about it. "Let's go."
Sirri's panic drops from a high boil down to a simmer as the two women sit up, and as the channel is performed she breathes out a grand sigh of relief. "Thank *goodness*," she pronounces. "I'm so glad you're both okay. That was horrifying to watch! I'm so glad you're okay!"
For a moment, it might seem like Sirri's heart is about to burst; but then the question gets her back on track. "We're actually still a ways from the cistern, so we don't have to worry about-- Wait, what? What about ogresses? I only started learning Goblinese a couple weeks ago. Are there supposed to be ogresses down here? I hope they're friendly!"
Sirri takes a moment, once again getting back on task, and she looks about, thinking for a moment. "This way!" seh declares, popping her goggles back into place and heading off down a tunnel, that seems to be mercifully free of the usual sewer contents.
"And back to work," Donna says around a sigh, patting her friends' shoulders before jogging off at Sirri's heels. Now she's back to fighting form, it's time to be ready to be the wall again.
"With proper tanning..." Elyanna begins in retort, but, seeing the expression shift in her friend's face, she lets that hang with a light clap to her shoulder.
Instead, she looks to Sirri, "Ogresses rule Bludgun."
With Donna's advance, the red woman crosses her arm across her waist to draw the coils of Maidenhead from her belt, "Be careful, I expect some trapwork lay ahead of us at some point."
GAME: Ashes casts Find Traps. Caster Level: 12 DC: 16 <OOC> Ashes says, "Duration: 1 minute a level, so 12 minutes, or one Dungeon exploration turn"
"With..." Ashlee lets it drop. She adjusts her armour and the pats about herself, feeling passengers return to their safe nooks. She takes out her parasol, unfurls it and shortens the haft so it's more like a shield. It still protects from droplets from above.
Or falling rocks, small and not-too-large.
"Feiu of the Tears, let me see Traps." The Mourner prays, touching her breastplate. Her eyes glow on the edge of the visible spectrum. "It won't last long."
Sirri takes the group down a winding path; there are twists and turns, and lots of branches off the main tunnel, which sometimes have to be taken to avoid debris from tunnel collapses here and there. There's one detour that isn't taken -- largely because only Sirri would fit, and that would be, as the gnome puts it, "Counter-productive."
It's a fair trek onwards, but eventually, there comes a whiff of air much... not specifically sweeter, but saltier.
"We're near the ocean, but I didn't think we'd *smell* it from here," Sirri muses. "But then I haven't actually been down this particular tunnel before, I just know the sewers well enough to know that it'll--"
Sirri stops cold as she rounds a corner, and walks straight into something hanging from the ceiling with a bit of a wet, fleshy-sounding impact. She gasps, and backpedals a step, looking up at what turns out to be the disemboweled carcass of a large, grisly looking shark, dangling off a meathook hanging off a chain. Peeking around it reveals more; sharks, groupers, other large fish and even a squid are similarly displayed and inexpertly gutted.
"Oh no," Sirri whispers, as she walks forwards, edging down the tunnel carefully, without touching any of the carcasses. "Oh no. I think we've found someone... some*thing*... we didn't want to find."
"More like something that don't *wanna* be found," Donna whispers in turn. "An' if we know what's good for us, we'll let it keep thinkin' it ain't been." It's for times like this, that Donna has done the un-warriorlike thing of training for stealth.
...Okay being honest, *mostly* for times like 'you've crashed a party and want to get to the buffet table before you're tossed out,' but times like this too.
Is it a black-market fishmonger? A Sahuagin colony? A sentient being with a rare skin disease that makes him look like a crocodile-man? Right now, the aim is 'never learn the truth in case you have to punch it.'
GAME: Ashes rolls stealth+3+5+2: (7)+23+3+5+2: 40 (+3 for Chippen, +5 for Shadowy Enchant, and +2 for Creeping Enchant) GAME: Donna rolls stealth: (5)+12: 17 GAME: Elyanna rolls stealth: (8)+6: 14 GAME: Delilah rolls 1d20+8: (8)+8: 16 (Sirri Stealth)
The Mourner nods. She's used to moving in the darkness, and picks a nice deep looking spot. She might as well be invisible the way she vanishes. Her familiar has taught her well, how to move silently on her feet, creeping up, or in this case creeping past.
Sometimes she frightens even herself. It is always startling when she bumps into her back.
Elyanna takes the cue to walk softly, and the red woman does so with less aplomb than her countryman, but she might manage to slip past the average turnkey. Fortunately her equipment is reasonably light and wrought for a reasonable facility of stealth.
Sirri pulls her goggles off her eyes and extinguishes the light they give off, as she continues to walk forwards, creeping her way amongst the carcasses very... very carefully. (Afterall, occasionally, one of them twitches.) "I hope we didn't find it," she whispers, as she rounds a corner, only to reveal another stretch of corridor lined much the same way; and here the smell of fish, and particularly rotting fish, intensifies. It's becoming a struggle not to gag.
Still, the little gnome presses forwards, after pulling a cloth out of a pocket and holding it over her mouth and nose. "This is awful," she whispers, as she peeks around a corner, and immediately darts back.
"We found him," she whispers urgently. "It's him. The *Fisherman*."
GAME: Donna rolls fortitude: (12)+8: 20 GAME: Elyanna rolls fortitude: (16)+3: 19 GAME: Ashes rolls fortitude: (17)+8: 25 GAME: Delilah rolls 1d20+2: (1)+2: 3 (EPIC FAIL) (Sirri Fort)
"Who's the Fisherman?" Donna hisses into Siri's ear, as she sneaks along the fish-lined 'alleyway.' The smell had her shutting down her sinuses and breathing through her mouth, which... well, barely an improvement. The reek is getting strong enough to taste.
Still... by the sounds of it, better that they not alert him to their presence, and *where the hells did Ash go?!*
Ashes is just a little bit over there, behind a fishy carcass, hidden by the smell and the slowly peeling pale muscles. The reek is terrible, and she has to cover her nose and mouth with her sleeve.
The gnome appears to know who they've found; the hobgoblin has no clue. The Fisherman? Merek? He has some secret side-life as the terror of the underdeep? Hinted at, by his oft comments regarding his love of fishing. Where he re-enacts the terrors he's suffered in the Iron Hells on... fish?
Ashlee derails her train of thought for the moment. That one really wandered. These are strange thoughts to be having about her mentor and ex-boyfriend.
The sewers are really getting to her.
The Keeper glances at gnome as she notes a profession as if it means something important, particularly as Donna seems just as in the dark on it as she is. Hmmm.
Her stomach does the tremulous wiggle dance at the smell, but she soldiers on, parting her lips to breathe through her fangs instead of her nose.
"He's... the *Fisherman*," Sirri hisses back, as if that explains everything. "He's... an ogre? Maybe? Nobody's quite sure, but he's big, and he catches things, guts them, and puts them on hooks. Mostly he gets fish, but if you cross his path he'll do it to you too. He's not... a picky eater. Some say he has a big... knife, with a demon bound in it, telling him what to do. But that might just be a story."
Rounding another corner, the group enter a larger space; an atrium, lit with a few oily torches and smelling of fish guts, salt, and smoke. The opposite end of the atrium is wide open, bordering onto a yawning cavern full of salt water; and though there are hooks with all manner of carcasses, it's clear that someone lives here, with pieces of half-rotten furniture and an array of dilapidated fishing tackle.
In fact, someone *is* here; a tall, very fat being, naked but for a hide covered in barnacles and coral growths, stands with his back to the ground, over a wooden table, almost altar-like in is bearing. Upon the table he's holding down some large fish, with its tail squirming urgently.
A few steps closer and it becomes clear that it is not a fish, but a mermaid, making desperate screams muffled by the large hand covering her face. The Fisherman's other hand raises high, holding a large, rusty blade.
About that moment, Sirri can't hold it in any longer; she doubles over and retches, losing breakfast, butter tart, and all.
And then the Fisherman pauses, and his flesh creaks audibly as he turns to look over his shoulder.
"Fish..." he rumbles.
"Oh good," Donna breathes, pausing to try and scrape the smell off her tongue. "An ogre."
His Ogreness is... debatable. He's at least *part* ogre. What the other half is... giant, perhaps? Hard to tell.
As they round the corner, and take in the sight of the Fisherman at work... Donna's shoulders slump. "For fuck's sake," she hisses, as she clocks the being on the table as a mermaid. "Always with the fuckin' distractions."
And then Sirri loses the battle with her stomach, and Donna snaps up straight. "Okay," she says, stepping out into view to capture the whole of the creature's attention. "How 'bout you swing that at somethin' what swings back, shit-for-brains."
A fish... no a mermaid, who is not enjoying her dinner date.
"Blood Crow or Web?" Ashlee asks from the shadows, facing Donna who can't see her at all. She blends in with the whalebones. She always was a little bit of a dork.
"I'll stand back." The Mourner usually does.
Glancing once at Sirri as the Ogre shifts positions, Elyanna lets Maidenhead uncoil to start looping over her head in preparation to start the themesong to this new obstacle's end.
It's to save a presumed innocent as she moves forward to stand alongside Donna and she declares, "You're outnumbered, mongrel." a word she probably doesn't use lightly, as her tone is firm and resolute, "Surrender or die." <Jotun>
The Mourner's question is novel, as she's only ever heard of the one, and so she votes, "Crow."
