The Mysterious Evil

[Slartibartfast]

The five of you (Including the NPCs) ride into Curasedna Village (pronounced "CUR-ah-SED-na"). Dismounting, you look about. It seems to be an average village, the main road extending throughout, merging into the little town. Various huts and houses can be seen down side passageways, and there are the few necessary commodities of a general store, a blacksmith, and a few other small shops and businesses. Although it is a sizable town, there seems to be an amazingly low amount of people roaming the streets.

Many people look at you with glaring stares, piercing into your mind as best they can, wary of trouble. You feel shunned.

Then, a scream breaks the silence and many people point behind you. Whirling, you see a small group of rats with a strange green cloud about them. One of them has jumped up and is hanging off of Ronald's arm by its teeth. Nobody heard or saw them coming, and Ronald falls to the ground in a struggle with the beast. The fall was probably due more to Ronald's surprise at being bit and his own efforts at trying to remove the vermin than any strength of the rat's.

The remaining three rats are looking at you with glinting, hungry, ravenous eyes.

Map:

Spoiler

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Map Key:
R = Renaud
R = Ronald
R = Rat
H = Heredoth
T = Taquar
S = Shia
K = Friar Krispen
C = Commoner

COMBAT! *dorky animation plays!*

{table]Initiative:|
Name|#
Ronald|21
Rats|19
Renaud|18
Friar Krispen|16
Horses|15
Shia|9
Heredoth|8
Taquar|8[/table]

Ronald: continues to grapple with the rat. Failure; the rat stays on top of him and will not let go.

Rat1: The rat on Ronald bites him again. 1 damage.
Rat2: Attacks Shia; misses
Rat3: Attacks Shia's horse; misses
Rat4: Attacks Ronald's horse; misses

Renaud's turn.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

The halfling scrambles down from his horse and moves to help Ronald.

Spoiler

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Krispen will dismount (a move action) and moving to the square west of Taquar (another move action), drawing his sickle as he goes.

Are these squares 5x5 or 10x10?

Does Krispen notice anything unusual about the rats, other than they're attacking creatures much larger than they are and are surrounded by a strange green cloud? Knowledge (nature) (1d20+8=13). Not so great, but maybe good enough.

[Slartibartfast]

Krispen takes three move actions (dismounting, moving, and drawing his sickle) and knows nothing about this strange affliction of the rats.

EDIT: Friar PMed me a link with the new rule in it. Apparently a BAB of +1 or higher lets you draw a weapon for free as part of a move. Maybe I have an older version of the PHB? Probably just trusted Thrune about the rule and he was wrong again. Oh well.

[Krursk]

Renaud dismounts and draws his sword, prepared to fight the rat in front of him

[Slartibartfast]

MAP EDIT: I just remembered horses are 5x10 ft, or 1x2 squares! I moved you guys around a little to accommodate the extra space the horses are taking up.
I also added in Renaud's dismount. Tell me if you wanted to go to the other square.

IN THE FUTURE: Alert me which square you are dismounting to.

ALSO FOR RENAUD: Roll Handle Animal.

When Renaud does that, Taquar will delay to just after Heredoth as he does not have any standing orders and has not been personally attacked.

[Firesong]

Heradoth mutters something mystical under his breath, then turns to his tame skeleton, to which he says, "If you see a rat, do your utmost to destroy it." However, before acting on his own, he waits to see whether or not engulfing the rats in fire would be a good idea. It's probably not a good idea to cause the combustion of one's companions.

[Slartibartfast]

Map:

Spoiler

Show

Map Key:
R = Renaud
R = Ronald
R = Rat
H = Heredoth
T = Taquar
S = Shia
K = Friar Krispen
C = Commoner
IF THE MAP DID NOT UPDATE, REFRESH THE PAGE!

{table]Initiative:|
Name|#
Ronald|21
Rats|19
Renaud|18
Friar Krispen|16
Horses|15
Shia|9
Heredoth|8
Taquar|8[/table]

The Horses have their turn. Ronald's horse starts from the combat and runs clean off the field into the blacksmith's shop. The others stay, but look uneasy.

NPC Shia dismounts and draws his sword.

Taquar dismounts, pulling out his own blade, and approaches the three rats. He makes his DC 20 Ride check and dismounts as a free action! He then attacks a rat.

The Rat dies.

Ronald seems to look strange, but he strangles the rat on top of him.

The remaining two rats attack Taquar, and one of them hits. It does 1 damage.

Renaud's turn.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

Magically transported back onto his horse by some strange supernatural force, the good friar dismounts once more, and approaches the rats while drawing his sickle. Again.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh sorry Friar. Just didn't update that on the map. The move still counted.

EDIT: Taquar's DR renders him immune to the rat's bite.
The map now shows where Krispen started this round. He may make his move for this round, as he had clearly announced his dismount previously.

To clarify: It is Renaud's turn, and Krispen has not announced a move yet.

[Krursk]

Stupid exams and their not allowing me to go on computer...

Handle Animal: 1d20+2=18. Should pass.

Renaud moves (hard to plot so I'll describe it) two diagonally to the bottom left and one diagonally to the bottom right, putting him next to Taquar

To Hit: 1d20+1=3. The Dice gods laugh.

BTW, I'll be away for the weekend, so NPC Renaud until Monday

[Slartibartfast]

Acknowledged. Waiting on Friar now. If nobody guessed it, Renaud missed.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

The good Friar moves southeast one square, slipping past Renaud (I think), then moves one square east, taking up a flanking position with Shia. He then tries to harvest a rat with his sickle.

1d20+4=11 I'm pretty sure that's a whiff.

I almost hate to mention it, but in 3.5 horses (and every other Large creature) take a 10'x10' space (they were 5'x10' back in 3e). All critters have a square base now, regardless of size, height, etc. I think they did this mostly to simplify the minis. Unless the horses are going to try to fight, it's not really an issue here, though (IMO).

[Slartibartfast]

But-But-...DAMN YOU! It took so long to make those horses right (about 5-10 minutes!)! I'm going to leave the horses as 5x10 for this battle because rats suck anyways and will all die soon. And yes, the horses are probably going to fail their morale checks and run away long before they fight anything.
Also, you do indeed miss.

Map:

Spoiler

Show

Map Key:
R = Renaud
R = Ronald
R = Rat
H = Heredoth
T = Taquar
S = Shia
K = Friar Krispen
C = Commoner
IF THE MAP DID NOT UPDATE, REFRESH THE PAGE!

Initiative:

Spoiler

Show

{table]Name|#
Ronald|21
Rats|19
Renaud|18
Friar Krispen|16
Horses|15
Shia|9
Heredoth|8
Taquar|8[/table]

Horses turn. They all stay, muscles taught and ready to leap away at any moment.

Shia leaps into intelligent action and stabs a rat. (eeek! *dodge*) Shia misses painfully. But that rock there on the ground is TOAST! Well, technically it is now rock-dust.

Heredoth's turn.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

The good Friar keeps swinging.

Attacking with the sickle: 1d20+4 = 17
Hey, that might actually hit.
Sickle damage: 1d4 = 3

Krispen can take a 5-foot step to the east or the northeast to gain flanking in Shia moves away before he attacks. (You said we should post out-of-order, so I did.)

[Krursk]

Krursk, rembering he's actually a functioning member of the party, drags himself from the Book of Useless Spells on the Wizards forum and rolls his attack roll

And scores a 1d20+1=13

Assuming that hits he does 1d8=6 6 damage to a rat.

[BurntOfferings]

*poke*

*poke poke*

[Slartibartfast]

Ok, skipping Heredoth for right now.

Blah Blah BLah the combined attacks finish off the rats. YAY!
The people seem to have a more open attitude towards you. A few commoners come and and thank you briefly for slaying the rats before continuing on their tasks. On of them mentions you should probably have the village healer take a look at Ronald's hand. As he says this, Ronald's rat bites begin to give a of an eerily green gas, almost identical to the clouds the rats had. Strangely, the rats bodies no longer give off the green smoke.

Someone wearing gloves takes the rat corpses to the blacksmith. The horses are retrieved to make things faster. I guess you should take a look around maybe, or figure out what to do with Ronald.

It is late afternoon, around 3:30.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

"Let me take a look at that hand, Roland. Hmm...."

Heal check to evaluate the wound: (1d20+4=6)

"Well, I guess it's probably a rat bite, since you had a rat hanging off of your arm from this spot. Also there's the green smoke, not unlike the smoke from the rats. But it could also be the burning plague." You can even hear the font change in his voice.

Krispen then casts cure minor wounds, healing Roland by one hit point (but it's a really important hit point).

"Now you'd best go chase down your horse. I believe it ran into the smithy over there."

[Slartibartfast]

Eerily, although the wound heals, the cloud remains. It almost seems like it's getting slowly bigger... The Friar's knowledge of healing arts also tells him (PMed!). Ronald retrieves his horse. By the time he gets back, he glances back down at the cloud. As you watch it makes a sudden spurt and covers his entire hand, spreading halfway up his forearm. At this rate, the cloud will cover him in about 3 hours. As I said, it's 3:30 now, so by nightfall... He'll be covered. 6:30 is when that happens, so for him, what will happen then?

[Firesong]

"The Burning Plague, you say?" Heradoth glances at the speaker, singularly unimpressed, despite the fact that normally calm voice has taken on the same menacing overtones, apparently without him realizing it. Realizing that his mental hyperlinks aren't functioning properly and, as a result, he has been reacting slowly to things around him, he resolves to pay closer attention to his surroundings instead. "I can see two reasons for calling a plague that. One is a description of the symptoms. The other is a cure."

[Krursk]

Wow, so there's a fair chance we need to burn the entire town to the ground. Where was this revelation when we were discussing options with the king? Maybe someone could have brought it up instead of us being caught with no burning preparation to save an entire town from the Burning Plague?

Renaud is smirking slightly with the revelation he might have been right about the whole "burn it to the ground" philosophy

[Firesong]

Heradoth dismounts, which he probably should have done a while ago, but keeps a firm hand on his horse, giving his skeleton the order to slap Renaud... gently, as he probably needs all his teeth. Whether or not this is accomplished successfully, he then hands the reigns to his skeleton and tells him to try and keep the horse from wandering away but that the horse shouldn't be hurt.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

Watching the smoke spread up Roland's arm like an amorphous monster from a bad sci-fi movie, the Friar comments, "Well that's weird. Very un-burning plague-like." Approaching the nearest villager, he calls out, "You there! Our companion has been wounded in the defense of your town, and seems to have contracted a magical affliction. What can you tell us about it?"

[Slartibartfast]

"You mean he got bitted by a Plague Rat dontcha? Yer friend thar seems mighty doomed now. If I twas you I'd ask Doc Durma bout it. Not much hope though."

The commoner leaves you this cryptic message and directions to the Doc and continues on his way.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

Herding Ronald along like a small boy herding a very large goose, Krispen urges him forward. C'mon, c'mon, let us see if you'll be dead by sundown or not. I have an idea that might help, but I want to hear what this 'Doc Durma' has to say first."

(( Ronald is 100% NPC now, right? ))

[Slartibartfast]

100% NPC Ronald follows complacently.

((I'll wait a bit for others before bringing you to Doc Durma.))

[Krursk]

Meh, I'm just too lazy to post that Renaud blindly follows the Friar. Wait, no I'm not, I just did post that. Damn, I outwitted myself.

[Slartibartfast]

Heredoth and Taquar may or may not be following but I am too damn lazy to wait and find out which. I'll say they followed for simplicity.

To Doc Durma's!

As you walk up to the log cabin, it doesn't look like anyone is home. Yet the door is open, and when you look inside you see a crotchety old man shaving in front of some badly polished brass. He turns, and sees Ronald. Dropping the razor he pulls a loaded crossbow out from under a desk and points it pointedly at Ronald.
"How long since he was infected? HOW LONG? Oh this is bad, VERY BAD! Step away from him so I can get a clear aim! QUICKLY! BEFORE IT ACCELERATES!"
As the Doc speaks the green smoke makes a break for it and covers all of Ronald's limbs, and most of his torso.
"Crap! He's almost turned! move so I can shoot!"

Shia uses paladin-fu to jump stupidly in front of Ronald, sword drawn.

"No you fool! It's too late now!"

Doc Durma runs away deeper into the cabin. The smoke covers Ronald's head.

Now what? Round-by-round has been activated! 1 standard and 1 move action!

[Slartibartfast]

Heredoth and Taquar may or may not be following but I am too damn lazy to wait and find out which. I'll say they followed for simplicity.

To Doc Durma's!

As you walk up to the log cabin, it doesn't look like anyone is home. Yet the door is open, and when you look inside you see a crotchety old man shaving in front of some badly polished brass. He turns, and sees Ronald. Dropping the razor he pulls a loaded crossbow out from under a desk and points it pointedly at Ronald.
"How long since he was infected? HOW LONG? Oh this is bad, VERY BAD! Step away from him so I can get a clear aim! QUICKLY! BEFORE IT ACCELERATES!"
As the Doc speaks the green smoke makes a break for it and covers all of Ronald's limbs, and most of his torso.
"Crap! He's almost turned! move so I can shoot!"

Shia uses paladin-fu to jump stupidly in front of Ronald, sword drawn.

"No you fool! It's too late now!"

Doc Durma runs away deeper into the cabin. The smoke covers Ronald's head.

Now what? Round-by-round has been activated! 1 standard and 1 move action!

Party:
Renaud
Friar Krispen
Taquar
Heredoth
Ronald
Shia X

*an X means they have moved.

EDIT: I will have a map up, but I forgot my photobucket password. I will try to hack me later.

EDIT AGAIN: This is Finals Week. *GASP* Do not expect me to post. At all. Until Sunday. Because Saturday I will be dead. Sunday too probably. I'll try to get you an update or at least check on Monday.

[BurntOfferings]

Krispen

(( Is that list the initiative order? ))

"Oh well, I tried." The Friar lifts his hands, and cleansing flames erupt from his fingertips, engulfing Ronald and the foolish Shia. Never liked paladins anyway...

Spoiler

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Casting burning hands, and trying to catch only Ronald and Shia in the AoE. He'll then move away from them to make room for his more martial allies, drawing his sling as he moves.

Burning hands (2d4=5)