Curse of the Witch King Chapter 2

[ewancummins]

Kat slips to one side and lets the figure move towards her lantern before levelling her rapier and exploding into a lunge, taking her in from half behind without any warning, trying to impale the figure with a single thrust, hand low at the start of the thrust and swinging upwards to slip the point under those overlapping scales. Once she feels her point drive in, or the creature becomes aware of her, she lets out a wild yell, aiming to rouse the ship!

The armored man jerks as Kat runs him through. He burbles wetly and slumps onto the deck, flopping over onto his back.
Kat's shout to rouse the crewmen rises higher still

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when she gets a good look at the fallen one.
Not a crested helmet—a finned head, yet humanlike, and a wide mouth lined with needle teeth! Some sort of slimy tubing encircles the creature’s neck. The bluish, closely overlapping scales on its body are not metal.

[Lord Skybolt]

Alain on hearing Kats Speaks in command speaking tone(recalling his first days of training at Tarth Moorda) to rouse Klokulf from his sleep . " Klokulf up now, we are under attack ." After that Alain throws on his Mithral shirt as part of his preparation for possible battle to come .

[kintire]

Kat recovers from her surprise, and quickly steps to that pile beneath her hammock, plucking out the chain shirt and dropping it over her head. Then she slips carefully up the steps, a silently as she can, glancing over the rim of the hatch as she approaches it checking if this fish man had confederates... and expecting the answer "yes". Unlikely that a single figure would attack a ship this size.

[ewancummins]

Kat recovers from her surprise, and quickly steps to that pile beneath her hammock, plucking out the chain shirt and dropping it over her head. Then she slips carefully up the steps, a silently as she can, glancing over the rim of the hatch as she approaches it checking if this fish man had confederates... and expecting the answer "yes". Unlikely that a single figure would attack a ship this size.

KATRIN creeps up the steps to the door to the open deck. Opening it just a crack, she peeks through the gap.
She sees something moving right outside the door and quickly she turns aside as the door opens wider, pulled from the outside.
One of the fin-heads steps through, treading on Kat’s toe as it enters.
The creature twists its head toward her, dead-white eyes rolling wildly in surprise--

Kat's blade is quick.
The intruder tumbles down the steps. One of the sailors coming up behind Katrin stabs it with his cutlass for good measure, but it doesn't move.

Peeking out the door again into the rainstorm, Kat sees two more of the finned humanoids at the nearby door that leads into Klokulf and Alain's quarters. Busy forcing the door, the creatures give no indication they noticed Kat's attack on their comrade right next door.

She can get behind one for a surprise attack if she trusts the sailors behind her to handle the other....

[kintire]

kat winces and shakes her foot slightly, then lifts the hatch with care and slides onto he deck. she largely discards hiding, counting on her prey just facing the other way, but her steps are as quiet as she can make them as she approaches, rapier levelled as the rain water flows from her hair and drips from her bare limbs. She eyes the weird things with a lingering trepidation, their misshappen formsd a mockery of the human, and their movements seeming strangely wrong, but she knows from experience that they die as easily as men.

She finishes her approach with a smooth lunge, not as long as she has done before, as she is wary of her footing on the rain slick deck.

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

Alain on hearing Kats Speaks in command speaking tone(recalling his first days of training at Tarth Moorda) to rouse Klokulf from his sleep . " Klokulf up now, we are under attack ."

Klokulf jerks awake, a bit disoriented. He shakes his head, then paws around in the pockets of his day clothes. He pulls out a shred of parchment and recites a prayer, which assembles a spectral coat of black mail about him. The image lingers for but a moment, then fades. Subsequently, he reaches into his haversack, where his hand closes on the haft of his morningstar.

[ewancummins]

The door to the fore-cabins swings open. Alain punches with terrible force, hurling a finned raider onto the rain slick boards. He leaps out and to the left, conjuring a sphere of light that illuminates a wide circle of the main deck.

Klokulf steps out and to the right, swinging his morningstar in an arc to clear his path.

The two men then move back to back and push out from the doorway, knocking down foes with brutal punches and weapon-blows.

Kat slides about on the wet footing, one lucky miss carrying her past the stabbing spear of an enemy.
She quickly regains her balance and drops a foe with two quick stabs.

But the monsters fight on with utter savagery, ripping into the unarmored sailors and downing two in seconds. A third man staggers back, half-turns as if to flee, and then rallies when he sees one pressing down on Katrin. He rushes to help her, swinging his cutlass and screaming over the wind.

Katrin runs her attacker through. It lurches closer, reaching for her face with sharp fingertips, but goes limp and nearly drags the sword out of her hand just as its claws come within an inch of her throat.

Enemies stab and bit and claw at Alain and Klolkulf, but armor and magic saves the men from serious harm for the moment.

Three fin-heads fall back before the party’s counterattack, moving rapidly for the edge of Alain’s conjured light.
One that isn’t fast enough gets hammered by Klokulf’s morning star and staggers past Alain, who spins on his heel and punches it in the neck—CRUNCH! The man-thing flops down with its head tilted at a grotesque angle.

Beyond the light, in the murk of the storm, the adventurers spy other humanoid shapes moving on the deck, over the sides…

[ewancummins]

PARTY STANDS IN AREA 1 NEAR THE SHIP'S BOAT, FORE OF THE GRATING TO THE HOLD

[kintire]

Kat leans over the other fallen sailor and releases the healing energy of her belt into him. She is a little hesitant, as this is the first time she has ever done this, and she doesn't pause to see if it has worked, lifting her head to view the figures slipping about the deck with a slight grin and wild eyes. She slips into the darkness and tries to lose herself in the shadows and the rigging and equipment on the deck, keeping an eye on her more obvious companions, so that any fish that enter battle with them can have an unpleasant surprise...

[ewancummins]

KAT slips into the darkness beyond Alain's circle of light.

Alain and Klokulf get one of the sailors up on his feet and healed to fight on.
And not a moment too soon--fin-men rush in from three sides: port, starboard, and aft. Ten, a dozen, two dozen of the web-footed humanoids, crowding in and knocking into one another clumsily in their eagerness to reach the little knot of humans!

Kat briefly appears at the edge of the light behind the seething mass of scaly flesh, to slit the throat and tube-collar of one of the creatures before vanishing again into the rain and gloom. The thing falls with water and blood spraying from the ruptured tube.

In another second the beings will be upon the little party.

Alain has time to cast a spell or fire his gun before they close.

Klokulf feels the strange calm of psychic battle-awareness come over him, sensing the confusion and bloodlust of the oncoming foes without the tangle of thoughts disturbing his mental equilibrium. He knows just what to do next...

[ewancummins]

ALAIN chants as the creatures close in for the kill...


Just in time, rocks tumble down from the storm overhead, pounding the nearest of the attackers into the splintering deck.
Klokulf batters a fin-man with his morningstar, knocking it back.
More creatures push in, hemming in the little group of defenders, pushing to cut them off from a possible escape back into the cabins.
Alain flicks his knife out and rattles off an incantation as he hurls the blade low at the column charging him.
The steel nicks one enemy and flies along its path, now hidden by darkness and the bodies of the fin-men, but making its passage evident in the gargling howls of injured foes.
Seconds later, the dagger flies back out of the storm and hilt-first into Alain's open right hand, like a falcon returning to its master.
The sailors cheer.
One of the fin-men croaks a command and suddenly the raiders all scramble for the gunwales.

Before even Alain can strike again, the enemy has dropped out of sight, sinking into the dark, storm-tossed waters. Only the dead remain.


Kat returns, clothes and mail dripping with rain, her rapier dark with blood.

Moments later, the shipmaster limps up with the First Mate and two sailors, all of them armed and all in bloody shirts.
He addresses the adventurers,
"We've got to sweep the ship top to bottom, storm or no, to make sure the fin-folk didn't leave us any nasty surprises. Can ye guard the deck with a couple of my crewmen, make sure they don't come back up?"
Before anyone answers, the man bellow for more light, more lanterns brought up.


KLOKULF

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Feels the enemy's thoughts of murder suddenly turn to retreat. It's not panic, really. Much more cold-blooded than that, a rapid calculation of risk and reward by the commander, then the instant obedience of his soldiers. Malicious alien thoughts slide away as the fin-folk sink into the black Moonsea waters.
The sailors are thinking how lucky they are to be alive. And one is admiring Kat in a lascivious way, as if they nearness of death has excited certain primitive impulses in the man's mind.

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

"I can feel them receding," Klokulf reports, breathing heavily as he comes down from the excitement of battle. "They don't think the ship is worth attacking anymore, but it would be prudent to stay on alert, in case their assessment changes."

Locking eyes with one sailor in particular, he says, "Their minds aren't distracting me anymore. Get yours on your work."

[kintire]

Kat steps lightly back to the group, threading between the fallen, eyeing any humans on the deck to see if there are any candidates for the other charge in her belt, and then turning her attention to the fallen fish men to see if there are any candidates for a coup de grace. She seems unconcerned by the driving rain even as it plasters her red hair to to her scalp and neck, and drenches her breast band and loincloth through the links of her chain shirt. She listens to the captain without verbal reply, though she nods once and moves to the highest position she can reasonably reach without making hard to return to the deck and uses her elevated position to observe the ship, checking for any figures slipping over the side.

As she turns, she looks briefly puzzled and Klokulf's last words, then glances at the sailor he is addressing and moves on, looking slightly amused.

[ewancummins]

The crew searches the vessel. Alain helps--and soon he discovers a leak where the raiders augured or bored the hull from the outside below the waterline.
Working fast, the sailors repair the damage and pump out the in-flooding seawater.
No fresh attack comes while the men are working. The storms blows itself out inside an hour.

The dead get a burial at sea, friend and foe alike.


Three days later, the Corby's Prize limps into the small but busy harbor of Hulburg.

With a hearty well-wishing from the ship's complement, the adventurers disembark and lead their ponies down the granite pier into the town of squat masonry houses with steep-gabled slate roofs.
A little crowd of hawkers, drabs, and seedy-looking men of uncertain occupation greets the newcomers with cries, greedy stares, and sly whispers. But a dangerous look from Klokulf sends the lot of them scurrying and the party passes unmolested into the town, searching for lodgings....


END OF CHAPTER