Well, less a gasp and rather more a stentorian bellow of "Here, I'll bet crowns to pennies it was a bloody Penhaligan!" roars the knight as he lunges into the vile-smelling chamber he's kicked open the door to, advancing on the blanket-wrapped bundle with his sword held low, aiming to flick back the corner of the cloth with its tip.

Satisfied that Arkenos was not in danger of expiring soon, but worried nonetheless that his fellow arcanist would be too far gone to be completely healed by his spell, Beren rose to his feet and, sword in hand, followed Adonis in the innkeeper's room.

"Wh ... what?". Brejgun is taken a bit aback at the decisive action of the Knight, and ends up standing in the common room looking from the fireplace to Eldor and then hearing Adonis and Beren entering the quarters of the innkeeper.

"WHAT! What is in there!?", he shouts up at them, a bit impotently, still looking around the room a bit, not entirely satisfied that the winged creature is gone.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:32, Sat 04 July 2009.

Brakkus calls out from the bedroom.  "Fellows, I think we should be sure that the danger has passed.  If I could stand by the last place we saw the beast, mayhap I could sense its presence once more.  But before that, someone should come and tend to Bjorn and Arkenos, give them water at least and wrap them up warm.  They are both sore wounded".

 "I bloody knew it, didn't I bloody know it? - It was a Penhaligan!" states Adonis as the knight prods something dimly seen in the corner of the room and reveals a headless cadaver laying on the floor, his voice a mixture of exultation at having encountered a creature of boyhood horror-stories and disgust at the gruesome reality of the thing.

 Using the tip of his sword he draws the blanket back further, on alert for the possibility of treachery as he does so...
This message was last edited by the player at 14:23, Sat 04 July 2009.

Still with his knife in hand Eldor stands by the grate and thinks back to the fight trying to figure out if his hasty action of releasing his raw elemental power had actually killed the thing.

Adonis manages to pull back the blanket fully without touching what is beneath.   Beren moves closer from the door but in the dark neither of you can make out much.


Eldor inspects the fireplace with Brakkus standing guard. 

Now that the heat of the fight has begun to pass, you can hear that while you slept the wind got up outside and is now fairly howling.  Neither storey of the inn is particularly well made and fingers of cold creep into all of the rooms.

Beren tried to determine what had happened - had the innkeeper been killed recently by the same creature which had assaulted them, or was the corpse older - which would mean they'd have been beset by a kind of shapeshifter?

OOC: 23:17, Today: Beren Sigilchyr rolled 10 using 2d10. Intelligence.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:28, Mon 06 July 2009.

 "Yup, no question of it..." states Adonis with the happy certainty of someone who's solved a riddle and be damned if he's going to allow his mind to be changed by any inconvenient evidence, before the knight starts to sheathe his sword... and realises that he's wearing his smallclothes minus a belt, whereupon there's a brief excursion into grim muttering and he starts out of the foul-smelling chamber and towards the steps once more, "Well, if the excitement is done and the thing dispatched, I'm for my blankets once more!" he declares with great enthusiasm.

Brakkus hears Adonis' declaration and pipes up - he is now back in the middle room tending to the injured. "Did anyone SEE the creature breath its last?" he asks. "In any case, these men are in too bad a state to move until we can get some light on them.  But they will soon get cold - perhaps you might bring a few blankets from the other room, Adonis."

Downstairs the embers which Adonis' had managed to bring to life are dying down again as the wood runs out.

"That's a chilling thought," Beren said. "Visibly we have been greeted and served by an evil creature. Fortunately it did not see fit to poison or drug us." He got back to the side of his friends, tending to the wounded.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:51, Mon 06 July 2009.

" No " replied Eldor " I hit it with every ounce of my energy but I think it fled up the chimney." He headed back up the stairs to collect his fallen bow and came back down.

" I think it is time we saw what is being kept in that locked barn" Not waiting for the others he headed for the taven door and out into the night.

 "Alright, if they're wounded I imagine I can do some fetching and carrying... I'll pick up what's left of the wall while I'm at it, we could do with some more firewood!" states the Knight cheerfully, adding "Everyone stay together until we're ready to decide what to do next!" as he vanishes up the steps, at roughly the same time as Eldor vanishes off into the darkness by himself.

 Once upstairs it's a simple matter to fetch a couple of straw pallettes, blankets - and start pitching them down the steps into a heap at the bottom, then setting about collecting firewood (though not before putting on the padded underclothes meant to be worn with armour.

"Time indeed.", says Brejgun and follows the Elf.

Brejgun shuts the inn door behind him and the sounds of his and Eldor's footsteps soon recede into the night.
[ooc: you two please continue posting in this thread: link to a message in this game]

Adonis passes the blankets to Brakkus who wraps up the comatose Arkenos and Bjorn as best he can.  Regarding firewood, in the main room the only option would be to break up the trestle tables.  The doorway to the kitchen is to the right of the fireplace.

 Pitching the blankets and straw mattresses downstairs is a deliberate action the reason for which becomes clear a few moments later as one of the light wooden doors to the upstairs rooms is wrenched off (with a few persuasive kicks) and offered up as an improvised stretcher "Shall we get these fellows down by the fire and build it up some, then once they're settled we can finish ch..."

 A couple of moments of Adonis looking puzzled follow the broken-off sentence, then he looks at the two downed men, at Brakkus, and lightly taps himself, lips moving through the numbers one to four... and obviously coming up short "Where are the others?"

Brakkus looks up at Adonis' words.

"Well, I heard Eldor say he was going to search outside.  But perhaps if Beren and I take one end of the stretcher and you the other, we will manage to carry them down the stairs one at a time.  I cannot imagine that Bjorn weighs much but Arkenos is a big fellow".

Beren looked at Bjorn and Arkenos, then at his own hands. "I'm not especially muscular, and that's an understatement," the sorcerer commented. "Even Bjorn would be too much for me, I'd wager."

[OOC: 5 in strength ain't much, really.]

 "Did he now the silly bugger?" replies Adonis, harumph'ing softly at the news, "Well, fairies are like that I suppose - flighty and unreliable. Once we've seen to the injured perhaps we'll investigate ourselves." - as ever, it doesn't seem to occur to Adonis that people might not defer to his judgement on the rare occasions when he puts it forth, he's a knight after all.

 Smoothly he starts working on putting the first of the injured men onto the door, a little rough-handed but surprisingly careful, as you'd expect from someone who's seen more than one broken bone come out of a tournament - and as a slight triumph of experience over intelligence he draws off both his belt and those of the wounded men, quickly splicing them into a 'you're not falling off the door' restraining strap before looking up at Bereb, "Well that's alright - one of you fellows take the top side and I'll take the weight - we don't really need to lift 'em, just slide them down the steps carefully so's we can get them to the fire - which whoever's not helping can see to getting going 'till we can find the woodpile."

 ---

 14:01, Today: Sir Adonis Campbell rolled 10,3 using 2D10,2D10. Strength, Agility.

Adonis manages to put Bjorn on the door and binds him tightly to it.  He takes one end of the door and Brakkus lifts another corner.  Then Beren limbers up...

[OOC:19:03, Today: Beren Sigilchyr rolled 9 using 2d10. Agility.
19:03, Today: Beren Sigilchyr rolled 1 using 1d10. Strength.]

You all stagger and slip a little but manage to get Bjorn down the stairs and wrapped up warmly beside what is left of the fire.  He mutters a little and seems to be almost coming round.

[ooc: whoever is going back upstairs to get Arkenos, give me another set of the same rolls please everyone.]

 Returning upstairs with the straps in-hand, a second door is duly procured with the short, sharp application of a firm boot to a fragile frame and Arkenos is carefully slid across onto it, then fastened in place before - as with Bjorn - the door is more or less slid across the floor and down the stairs with Adonis going ahead of it, taking the weight as it slides out over the steps.

 ---

 01:07, Today: Sir Adonis Campbell rolled 7,20 using 2D10,2D10. And again...

Adonis slides the heavier body of Arkenos down the stairs, with Beren and Brakkus guiding the improvised stretcher from above.  When Adonis is on the last step he stumbles and falls backwards.  Adonis himself is only bruise, but the unconscious Arkenos takes a nasty bang to the head as he tumbles onto the floor of the main hall.  He appears to still have a pulse but it is very faint.

About twenty minutes have passed since Eldor and Brejgun left to check outside and you have not yet heard anything.

 Of course, that's why Adonis was on the bottom - so that if there was slippage he'd take the bulk of any bump, but on the other hand, he's currently far more able to take a bump - either way he finishes manhandling Arkenos down to sit on the other side of the firepit from their other wounded soul and then returns upstairs to bring down first the debris from the shattered wall (such of it as was wooden and can be used as fuel) then the remainder of their baggage.

 Actually collecting his armour and putting in on preparatory to searching the remainder of the property - that's the last thing he currently has on his to-do list... A knight is a knight after all, even in shift and trews, but wounded men need care in the here-and-now.