Gut instincts and Stomachs for the fight.
The battle in the bowels of the ship, the cursed manifestation of some purgatorial hunger reaches its crescendo.
Fenis still bravely battles with a flaming firebrand, a beacon of hope in the otherworldly hell. Unfortunately his blistering attack peters out and he ignites nothing more than the wrath of the lemures.
Rene chooses cold steel over enhanced shafts and stabs away, inflicting a minor wound on his larvae-like opponent. Sickly yellow ichor spurts in a streak from the gash but begins to close up in a coagulated scab almost immediately.
Zoggrot whirls a dance of blades, cutting and slashing in '
Matrix' style motion. One lemure gets decapitated, another cloven but the regenerating diabolical maggots gain new energy even as their life blood eeks out on the gut floor, absorbed into the stomach lining with a noise like a child slurping through a straw.
Alderhay copies the experienced buccaneer but only a dagger at close quarters finds a mark.
Rexlin and
Fishy fight back to back but their attacks are in need of going 'back to basics'.
Pocc and
Stubble also hack with tenacity and power but both still short of an accurate blow.
Szmodics ducks and weaves, trying to draw attention away from his fallen colleague, his swing of the axe an air shot.
Ferrol grabs
Old Plighty by the legs, a foot in one hand and wooden stump in the other. He begins to drag the stricken pirate away from the line of lemures towards the cleric.
Goldie, and
Geoff, try to aide their companions but in the flailing of arms and stumps, the pair stagger backwards under the press and their weapons go unbloodied.
Van de Poel, struggles as the lemures wrestle with him in their attempts to get to the spell users.
Leo the leopard, severely reduced after losing energy to the wights touch still snarls and claws. He pounces upon a lemure intent on feasting himself but is thrown off a back handed slap. The mage
Siggard grasps the wriggling, crawling claw. Freed from the locked cage after a smash on the lock with the golem spear. He places it upon a bloody handprint with a command to stay as
Iggway spreads the chopped digits of severed fingers and thumbs on imprint marks that stain the skin scroll. The shaman utters native words, spiritual tongues as she reads from the scripted writings of
Padre Claude. Calling forth divine aid and blessing to atone for the savagery of the cannibalistic slavers who haunt this place and to trigger a release of the slave spirits who huddle in a choir, their choral chants a deep bass tone of rhythm against the background noise of intravenous throbbing and painful shrieks.
Goldie and Geoff attack lemures [1d20+1] = 12+1 = 13 [1d4+1] = 2+1 = 3 [1d20] = 9 [1d8] = 1
Van de Poel uses golem spear [1d20+2] = 3+2 = 5 [2d4+2] = 8+2 = 10
Leo the leopard [1d20] = 4 [1d20] = 1 [1d3] = 3 [1d3] = 2
The lemures, repetitive in their 'feed me now' speech, continue to bludgeon the party. Around the gut cavern, the burning lemures spawn from fiery cocoons and begin to slither as re-born to join the fray. They launch brutal bludgeoning bashes upon the heads and torso's of the group. The line of defenders weakens and staggers under the onslaught and one cuffs the mage across the back of his head. The dead lemure, dragged over for inspection and experimentation suddenly sits upright, a slobbering dribble of pus and juice drips from his fattened trout pout lips that he licks with a grizzled brown tongue. The collective strikes are thus:
Lemures attacks on Van de Poel [1d20] = 16 [1d20] = 13 damage [1d3] = 3 [1d3] = 2
Lemures attacks Leo and Siggard [1d20] = 1 [1d20] = 19 damage [1d3] = 2 [1d3] = 2
Lemures attacks Rex and Fishy [1d20] = 11 [1d20] = 8 damage [1d3] = 2 [1d3] = 1
Lemures attacks Alderhay and Stubble [1d20] = 7 [1d20] = 4 damage [1d3] = 2 [1d3] = 1
Lemures attacks Fenis and Goldie [1d20] = 11 [1d20] = 9 damage [1d3] = 3 [1d3] = 3
Lemures attacks Szmodics [1d20] = 18 [1d20] = 15 damage [1d3] = 2 [1d3] = 3
Lemures attacks Pocc[1d20] = 2 [1d20] = 20 damage [1d3] = 1 [1d3] = 3
Lemures attacks Ferrol[1d20] = 5 [1d20] = 2 damage [1d3] = 2 [1d3] = 1
Vdp -5, Sig -2, Fishy takes -1, Fenis -3, Goldie -3, Szmo -5, Pocc critted for -6 For
Fenis his light goes out once more, knocked prone and unconscious. He is followed by
Pocc who gets overwhelmed and knocked out by a vicious uppercut that cracks skull and shakes brains.
Iggway, escapes the melee, finishing her reading without interruption, the calligraphy fading from the scroll she holds aloft, kneeling in supplication over the skin parchment to plead her righteous cause.
For a few tense moments nothing happens. Did anyone hear your prayer? Does a heavenly retribution manifest? Your
"Amen." seemingly not applauded or acknowledged. You begin to wonder, but not in awe or amazement. Perhaps you remain excommunicated or unfavoured. You question your piety and devotions in these moments of silence and questioning expectation. Did the mummy rot disenfranchise you from casting your prayer of deliverance correctly? ... you look up to view the demonic lemures rising and relentlessly assailing your companions. Regenerating eternally, cursed to live a never ending hunger, famished to feast upon your mortal flesh and then to famish once more. You contemplate your own impending death, questioning if your spirit will be whipped to sing lamentations or will you spawn a maggot form of your own death shroud cocoon ...
to be fair, casting the spell from the scroll had a % chance of spell failure. This one stands at 10% for the difference in experience levels between your present ability and being able to cast it naturally. Your low roll doesn't look good but I am using the same principle as when you cast the spell previously upon wolf child Eric, where you also received a spell failure with the Remove Curse after rolling 98%. So my adjudication results are in ...
... the skin scroll, textured rough and wrinkled in your hands begins to ashen. The blood stains resolve into tear drop blobs and drip out of the papery fabric, shrivelling and decomposing. Dust to dust, all the parchment fades away. There is an empty sighing as the enthralled spirits enter their celestial rapture, fading in a last gasp of sorrow and release.
A sound of rushing waters, as a flood or the bursting of a dam, echoes loudly down the intestinal passage. It erupts with brute force into the cavern, a rising tide which tears at the very fabric of the dimension you are in, peeling away and overwhelming the edges of the skin tunnel into a decreasing environment with every heartbeat. A raging maelstrom of angry waves swirl over your ankles
(or OP's head since his ankle is in the air), Rene's[ /b] knees the first to be swamped.
next actions ... maybe last actions ... please everyone. ![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)