casablanca ♔ i've signed this contract with my blood

[pickyourbattles]

WHO ||Willow, Paige, Aurelius, Nathan, Cora, Allison [Closed]
WHAT || The Knights travel to Casablanca to track down a vampire unleashed by Strahd into this world
WHERE || Casablanca, Morocco
WHEN || Fall 2016 [back dated]
HOW || Actionspam. Single thread, don't worry about maintaining tagging order.

It's been well over a year since an unexplainable phenomena occurred - the usual mist that hails the momentary gap in the Veil between worlds hung around in Romania, and actually seemed to work two ways for a time.  A time long enough for the Knights to wander into the realm of Barovia, where they discovered a people terrified by the Vampire Strahd of Castle Ravenloft.  Confronting the vampire, they managed to be reunited with their lost leader, Sir Dovan, but they drove an increasingly irritated Strahd to send something else back along with them - an ubervampire of his own creation, one of his bizarre experiments, which he unleashed upon their home world.  There had been no clues as to where the creature had ended up until now.

Six disappearances in Casablanca across the last six months have turned up no bodies, but sightings of a creature that matches the description.  The Knights travel to the last location of one of these sightings - near one of the piers.

Comments

[olreliable]

Look out!

[Willow jumps and yelps in surprise. Despite the fact that they have been looking for this exact thing, it's still spooky to see it up close and personal. And it's charging. At them. She brought her best spells but in the moment, she doesn't shoot fire or lightning at him. All she can see is him tearing her friends apart, so instead, she raises a hand and fires of a ray of enfeeblement (ranged touch: 22, 6 str damage for 5 mins)]

[pickyourbattles]

[ the coruscating light intercepts the vampire, blasting into his side and causing him to unleash a howl as it saps his strength away. he turns from aurelius to reroute towards willow, although that breaks his charge. one hand reaches out to grab her by the throat (atk 19, grapple 17, 1 dmg if it succeeds + another effect but we'll uh... get into that if he does). ]

NO! [ aurelius goes pale and he raises a hand, shooting a scorching ray of fire at the vampire's back (atk touch 14, dmg 12). shockingly, it seems to have very little effect on him, beside burning a hole in the back of his clothes. ] UNHAND HER!

[olreliable]

[With a crit fail, willow is not having a good day and feeling super drained. She flails and gasps for air, grabbing onto his arm and attempting to shock the shit out of him (shocking grasp - melee touch 12, damage 11)]

[impetere]

[Yeah, Cora is not fond of this either, so she's going to also charge the vampire, this time ready to dig in to his back with her claws (attack 32, damage 16, attack 34, damage 15).]

[risked]

[It does seem to happen all of a sudden, but Allison draws her bow (quick draw) and tracks the target before firing off her first shot (atk 21 | dmg 13) and draws quickly for a second hit (atk 28 | dmg 10). Once she fires the second hit she glances around to take inventory of anyone that she might need to step in front of (during her next turn)]

[herebemonsters]

[ the vampire recoils from the electricity in willow's touch, as cora digs into him from behind, shredding part of his armor. she would, however, notice that the wounds begin to heal over slightly. allison's first arrow whizzes right past his ear, but the second buries in his shoulder. he, however, evinces no reaction to it whatsoever.

at that moment two gigantic wolves come flying out of the woods: one pounces on allison, snapping its jaws at her (atk 9), while another does the same to nathan (atk 17, dmg 9 if it hits). ]

[autorevive]

[it does not hit him thank u very much!! he manages to slide out of the way just in time. but then he is faced with a problem. he has a grenade in his hand ... but if he sets it off right here, everyone will get mad at him. he has learned this from experience. but still wanting to do SOMETHING, he tries to hit the wolf with the grenade in his hand like it's a rock. it uh ... goes about as well as you'd expect. (atk 13 and atk 12, 3 and 4 dmg if those actually hit ... lmfao ... )]

[somepagesturn]

[There's an alarming amount going on right now and Paige can only do so much. The best anyone can hope for is that the fighting ends quickly.

She turns her focus to the vampire, expression gravely serious as she clasps her hands over her chest, drawing on the resolve of both her god and holy symbol of Ravenkind from Barovia.]

I've been waiting for this moment.

[She unleashes Holy Smite which hits every evil creature in the area with 30 holy damage to every evil creature in the area and causes them to become blinded for one round. A will save of 17 halves the damage and negates the blinded effect.]

[pickyourbattles]

[ those... do not, nathan. he is just flailing his grenade around. with a will 20 kavan flinches away, hissing, from the bright light. it's not enough, however, and chunks of skin begin dissolving off from his cheeks. he drops his weapon, as his hand begin to sift away into ash, followed by the rest of him as his armor hits the ground, all that remains.

the large wolves howl and retract from the light, but aren't felled by it. aurelius crit fails a will save and uselessly slides next to willow to check on her ] Are you alright?!

[olreliable]

[Willow grips Aur's arm with one hand, nodding in response to his question, but unable to offer much more reassurance than that. With her free hand, she musters up a pair of magic missiles to fire off at the wolves (4 and 5 damage). It's not much, but it's the best she can manage while she tries to catch her breath.]

[impetere]

[Cora's a bit flabbergasted for a moment when the vampire she was fighting just ... disintegrates in front of her, because damn, but after a second she regains her focus and turns on the rest of the wolves instead.

She can't get to all of them, but she can at least try and intimidate them into heeling until she gets there (intimidate 21).]

[risked]

[It's weird to see anything living simply vaporize into dust in front of her, but she is more aware of the wolf that's still within arms reach of her. She knows that she won't have the distance for another shot, but she knows that she needs to continue the attack. She improvises (-2 atk) and grabs an arrow. She holds it tightly in her hand and drives it toward the neck of the wolf (ATK 14 ).]

(( ooc: I'm almost positive that's not going to hit since her first attack at 18 didn't hit in the prior tag. If she does hit - it's only +2 damage anyway ))

[herebemonsters]

[ it does not, and the one squaring off with allison is also the one that doesn't cower away from cora's snarl, snapping its jaws at her again (atk 21, dmg 6) ]

[autorevive]

[because he has no better ideas and definitely is not a smart hero, he decides to LUNGE AT THE WOLF (the one nearest cora? the one he hit last time w/e) WITH THE PINNED GRENADE AGAIN. only this time he hits extra hard and with purpose (atk 24???!!!) for a whole 7 dmg. uhhh if it hits anyway. his second attack was like 8 so with that penetration he probably hit so hard it uh ... got stuck in the wolf ...]

[somepagesturn]

[As the vampire dissolves before her eyes, Paige looks momentarily relieved, but focusing on her victory is short-lived as she immediately turns her attention to Willow and casts Restoration on her to help her cope with whatever the hell Kavan did to her.]

[pickyourbattles]

[ willow is filled to the brim with a warm sensation as her strength fully returns to her indeed. nathan's grenade does indeed get jammed in the side of the wolf, who lets out a howl, but isn't going down. relieved as the color returns to willow, he draws his short sword and goes to try to help nathan. however, he's clearly not well trained with the sword, despite edain's best efforts. (atk 10) ]

[olreliable]

[Thanks mama Paige! Willow will give you the biggest hug once this is all said and done! As cute as it would be to also pull out a sword and fight the wolf, Willow knows that her little noodle arms wouldn't be any good at that, so she will stick to magic. Magic missiles to be specific (11 damage)]

[behindcloseddoors]

[ that's enough to fell the one aurelius and nathan are attacking! ]

[impetere]

[And she'll turn towards the two remaining wolves, knowing she has them scared. She can't take two wolves at once, so she tries to see if she can just scare them off for good (intimidate 21).]

You can either stay and take me, or leave these people alone and never come back. Your choice.

[risked]

[After missing the wolf with her close strike Allison takes a step away from the wolf just as he tries his attack (AC 21). She hears Cora and even though she knows her, she's still a little startled by the intimidation. She draws her bow and aims (intimidate 4) at the wolf that had most recently tried to attack her, hoping that the threat of her arrow and Cora's vocal authority helps. (because clearly she's too distracted to actually be intimidating right now apparently)]

[pickyourbattles]

[ the wolves snap their jaws at first, but the more cora growls, the more they start to bend their necks and cower, finally backing off, whimpering into the bushes.

/init ]

[impetere]

[Cora exhales slowly as she shifts back to a normal girl again. The vampire's dead and the wolves are gone - she's slowly running down the mission checklist in her head and there's only one thing left.]

I can try and track back to where the vampire may have been keeping the missing people?

[It's a long shot they're still alive but maybe there's a chance. And if not, they can at least answer the question for their families. Maybe even give them something to bury.]

[somepagesturn]

[Paige nods, the shock of the battle finally catching up to her.] We'll follow your lead, Cora.

[Her eyes fall on the dust that used to be Strahd's manufactured vampire and lays her hand over her two holy symbols, murmuring a prayer for Barovia and apologizing that she might never get back there. But at least their interference in that world beyond the Veil no longer has consequences in their world. Once she's finished, she turns to the rest of the group, looking them over one by one.]

Is anyone else badly hurt?

[olreliable]

[To Paige:] I'm okay now. Thanks for earlier, though. You always come through when we need you.

[She takes a deep breath before turning to Cora.]

We definitely need to find where he was keeping them. The last thing we want is to go home now and find out there's a group of baby vampires roaming the streets in a couple weeks or something.

[pickyourbattles]

A possibility I hadn't begun to consider yet. [ he shudders ] Do you think you can pick up a... scent from a vampire?