Evacuate This, part 4

Log Info

• Title: Evacuate This, part 3
• Emitter: Whirlpool
• Characters: Dirk, Eztli, Gramarye, Magpie, Nemori, Robert
• Place: On the Road to Alexandria
• Time: Thursday, June 30, 2022, 10:13 PM
• Summary: The caravan continues a short ways followed by an unseen onlooker.

Last time:

"We should spread out a little more, though, to avoid being caught in a group?" suggests one of the military men, glancing towards the others. "... could be what whoever put this here wants us to do."

"..ugh."

Still, there's no difficulty clearing the road, the statue-goats are put to the side where they can judge you with their weird creepy goat eyes. Rock goat eyes. You begin to pass over where they were when there is a distant clucking sound.

Chickens? Perhaps. Cockatrice? Maybe.

Or it could be that Gramarye found a rooster looking to mate. Either way, *something* is out there in the darkness.

Gramarye: "Please do not mate with me."

"It seems odd to go to the trouble of teleporting these here," Bob muses as he shifts the stoned goats out of the way. "At least one of us would've had to see through an illusion." He grunts, voice echoing, and again pauses to consider the wilderness stretching out on either side of the road.


Bob says, “It's rather exacting detail for it to be some sort of stone shaping..?"

The artificer considers some of the townsfolk, walking closer and opening his helm. "How often is this road used? Could these have been here for some time?" He's running thin on ideas.”

<OOC> Dirk says, "Would K/Geography let Dirk now if this road is well-traveled?"
<OOC> Whirlpool says, "Dirk, roll it."
GAME: Dirk rolls knowledge/geography: (1)+8: 9 (EPIC FAIL)

Then:

Fighting recalcitrant Oruchificers is *exhausting.* Being annoyed at same, doubly exhausting. Surely there'll be lots of yelling and probably screaming if there's a problem, right? Wagons aren't perfectly comfy, but they're good enough for a nap.

Now:

"ZZZwha-huh?!" With a little bit of flailing, a touch of wiping drool off one cheek, and a lot of sleepy blinking, Magpie bolts mostly upright at the call of goatly statuary. Digging the sleep out of one eye, she leans against the slats keeping the luggage in place, and peers at the obstacles. "So uh... We're gonna move, right? Cos I only know a few things that hunt through petrification, and, like, *none* of them are healthy to be around. Real quick, has anyone else made a chicken-crossing-the-road joke yet? Cos if it's a cockatrice, I get first dibs."

Nemori still refuses to get off the wagon. She hasn't been asked, probably couldn't lift a goat anyways. But she may have ideas. "What of the vegetation growing under their feet? If they were once real, and there are tracks, it may tell us how recently this happened." A pause. "As would tracks of another beast."

"I have already made a chicken crossing the road joke. It is my favorite joke," Gramarye replies. "You should have been here for it. I will not repeat the joke, as I am told that jokes repeated again lose their potency."

The golem looks around. "Especially as making the chicken noise again may attract unwanted attention." Most of the goats can be cleared away, set aside. The military officials are *extremely* uncomfortable and want to get moving again. This is just too weird for them.

Too weird for the civilians by half. What's with the bunch of goat statues in the way? What did that?

Most of them have the look of someone who doesn't want to know.

"There aren't goat tracks," Bob answers Nemori, pausing to wipe sweat with a corner of his cape. "Or tracks from whatever did this." Which is why he'd wondered if the ground were shaped-- but the detail was too fine for that to be likely. And why Jay posited a teleporting accident. Which followed with the artificer wondering if the road weren't well-traveled and the statues had been here for some time.

And now here we are.

And now the road's cleared.

The Cerenzan starts ahead again, keeping his eyes darting about to consider the world beyond the road and whatever might be hiding in the brush and shadows.

Dirk glances around, furrowing his shaggy white brows as he thinks and ponders hard. "I sure -thought- this were one o' the main thoroughfares leadin' from Alex," he says. "But... wait a tick... yes? No?" He looks at Lulu. "What d'you think, lass?" The owl headtilts and flutters her wings. "Hooo! Hoo-hoo hooooo!" Dirk shakes his head with a sigh. "Och, an' here I thought owls were -wise-," he grumbles. Lulu fluffs up her feathers, click-clacking her beak. "Hoo!" Dirk harrumphs. "Well, yer just as lost as I am, aren't ye? Aye, -here's- a fine how d'ye do, innit? A woodsdwarf who went an' got -lost-. We're doomed fer sure."

"While I would very much like to continue on my way, this is an entire group of goats petrified, or something like that." Eztli sighs. "If it can do that to goats, it can do that to a whole caravan of civilians, So I don't want everyone being ambushed as we try to make our way through. Especially if it does in the horses, then nobody is moving." Eztli sighs as she manages to move a singular goat on her own. It was helping! Sort of. "I just wish there was some better signs of what we might be dealing with, is iall."

"Damn," Magpie says, snapping her fingers at the missed opportunity. Hopping up onto a crate of something that can probably hold a gnome's weight, she stands on tiptoe to peer behind the wagon train. "But yeah, we really wanna move. Like, quick. Cockatrice or basilisk, we are *not* gonna be happy refugees if we let them jump out and go 'bleah!'"

<OOC> Whirlpool says, "Perception rolls, one and all, as we search/move along. :)"
GAME: Magpie rolls perception: (3)+6: 9
GAME: Dirk rolls perception: (7)+10: 17
GAME: Robert rolls Perception: (9)+9: 18
GAME: Nemori rolls perception: (1)+9: 10 (EPIC FAIL)
GAME: Gramarye rolls Perception: (9)+2: 11
GAME: Eztli rolls perception: (20)+5: 25
GAME: Dirk rolls 1d20+6: (13)+6: 19
To (Eztli, Dirk, Robert), Whirlpool pages: So, you get on your way again (as my emote will show), but you asll have the distinct impression you're being followed
To (Eztli, Dirk, Robert), Whirlpool pages: SO lemme emit and then respond accordingly.
To (Eztli, Dirk, Robert), Whirlpool pages: You don't SEE what's following you, but it's a definite 'feeling of eyes on you'.

... on your way again. Many of the civilians look on to the passel of statue-goats with concerned expressions. It's weird, you know, and then there *were* those clucking sounds.

Still, you're on your way again, and nothing more appears to be stopping you. For now.

...for now. Slow going is slow, of course....

Dirk has swung back up into Thistle's saddle and hooted through his fist to call Lulu back to his shoulder. He clucks his tongue, and the sturdy pony starts plodding forward along with the rest of the caravan. All the while, he has his thunderbelcher in his grip, his gaze sweeping hither and yon. "Damn it," he grumbles quietly. "I dinnae like bein' out in the open like this. There's eyes on us. I'd stake me beard on it. All the hairs on me neck are standin' endwise." Lulu's head twists from side to side, here golden eyes wide and staring as her wings flutter. She hoo-hoos quietly, echoing her master's presentiment.

Gramarye is back in the wagon again with the moving forward. Her obsidian eyes, inert while not speaking, seem to be focused intently on the road ahead.

"Maybe we missed it?" Magpie says, eyes still on the road behind them. "I mean, it's got plenty of... uh... stone? Goat? Stoat? Stutton? ...to munch on anyway, why would a predatory petrifier pursue a paltry platoon of imperiled passengers?"

Nemori isn't happy about the unsolved mystery either... but the idea of remaining there out in the open pleased her less. So she adjusts her hat and settles back, keeping her gaze focussed beyond either side of the road. Her knife has made it out into her hands, and she is running her thumb along the flat of its edge.

Eztli sighed and hopped back in the back of the wagon, taking the crossbow she had earlier and setting it down in her lap, this time loaded with a bolt as well. She reaches into her robes, and pulls out a large bottle of alcohol, which she pops open and takes a small gulp of. Followed by a long cough, as maws weren't conducive to drinking. She sets down the bottle far away from herself. "Most creatures petrify most of the things you have on you when it happens. So, be a shame for that liquor to stoned.

The small makari sighs, and looks out on the way behind her. "Keep the civilians to the middle of the caravan. Something's following us. They're keeping an eye on us, and keeping up. Might be able to lose them if we can get to clearer road, though."

"It's behind us," Robert agrees with a nod. Nothing about the big artificer is subtle. When he half-turns to look back it's over a powder-black pauldron trimmed in polished brass and fine, straight-lines of copper catch the sunlight. He slows, falling a few steps behind the caravan as he pulls the boxy contraption off his back.

The deathray unfolding from its collapsed, boxlike state is also far from quiet with its whirring, ratcheting, and clanks. Then the whinning hum as the capacitors gather power.

Squinting into the brush, Bob gives a shake of his head and grunts. "Is it hidden by magics?" He looks for a tell-tale shimmer, wondering at what sort of Predator this might be. Then he's walking on, keeping not-too-far from the back of the procession.

Magpie's alliteration gets them a couple of bemused looks from the guards. The speculations of Eztli and a Robert have some sighs arise.

But now that it has been pointed out, you all feel it, the distinct impression that something is observing you in the fading daylight from some vantage point. If it's there, though, it may definitely be hidden by magic. There's nothing any of you can see.

"... now I'm kicking myself for not finishing that gadget," Bob mumbles to himself. He carries the deathray in the crook of one arm and carefully wipes at his forehead with one massive, plated thumb.

The Cerenzan is presenting a big target lagging a few paces in the rear. He makes a point to glance over his shoulder and scan this way and that every couple of paces. It hasn't been fruitful yet but he's unwilling to let his guard down in the undead-choked wilds.

"Suggestion: I can reveal what is unseen, or determine what is being hidden from us, master artificer," Gramarye says in regards to Robert's words. "I am capable of casting a spell to detect magic."

Nemori pulls her hat down over her eyes as she gives up trying to spot whatever it is that may be tailing or shadowing them. Instead, she settles back as if to take a rest, settling her knife in her lap as she leans back in her seat upon the wagon.

GAME: Nemori rolls bluff: (13)+7: 20

Eztli was happy to keep back on the cart, but that didn't stop them nervously looking between robert and the road and forest all around them. "Yeah, I can do something like that, too. If it is hiding with magic, which I'm not sure. Not a lot of animals can do that, so whatever we're dealing with, if it can petrify things too, is probably dangerous."

"Still, if push comes to shove, maybe I can at least throw some fire in it's general direction? Might scare it off, or at least, I could hope that it might."

"...What?" Magpie says to the guards, clambering further to the backboard of the wagon, as more and more reports crop up of the group being shadowed. A small crossbow is unlimbered from her back and loaded, just in case. Stupid artificer taking up time and energy...

"Look I'm nervous too, okay? If we're being followed, we're gonna have to be ready for a fight, and fights are *scary.* But even so, they're our job, right?" Deep breath in, deep breath out.

GAME: Magpie rolls diplomacy: (14)+4: 18
GAME: Gramarye casts Detect Magic. Caster Level: 3 DC: 14
GAME: Gramarye rolls Spellcraft: (3)+10: 13

Gramarye casts the magic detection spell, her eyes lighting up a brilliant blue. "Magic identification made," she announces. "Illusion school is present all around in the local environment in trace amounts. Margin of error: high. I believe there is more magic I am not able to detect at this moment."

Magpie is at least able to calm down the restless guards and people. It helps. The adventurers here, after all, have talents and the military presence has to count for something. They seem to be less scared.

Still, murmurs at Gramarye's words have people casting glances around as if they themselves could ID the source.

... but that magic was much closer than any of them imagined.

GAME: Magpie rolls will+2: (18)+5+2: 25
GAME: Magpie rolls bluff: (19)+9: 28
GAME: Magpie rolls bluff: (11)+9: 20
GAME: Magpie casts Message. Caster Level: 2 DC: 14

"Wait, all around the environment?" Magpie says, leaning over the backboard to get a better look at everything, somehow. Narrowing her eyes, the sorceress looks left, then right, screwing up her face. "But if that's true, then--" The cart rolls over a pothole, and that's definitely, totally what makes her hand slip and interrupts her sentence, but when she regains her footing she *definitely* said what she means to say next. "--there's probably some illusion beast or something leaving figment poops all over the place. I did a thesis on them in school, it was awful."

Stroking her throat in what is absolutely just a thoughtful tic, and not at all part of casting any sort of magic, she stares hard at Eztli, for a moment, then clears her throat.

And as clearly as if Magpie were whispering into the Makari's ear, Eztli hears the gnome say; ((please don't react please please please we've been hijacked by fae. I'll try and spread the word, but this is bad. Don't let on that you know.))

GAME: Eztli rolls bluff: (14)+9: 23