With his companions deeply afraid and nothing in sight beyond the crows, Nyx can do nothing but scan for further signs of where the danger is coming from

Polkitain still caught in the crows gaze knew he had to do something. When he heard it speak and felt the psychic touch he sealed up his mind. Mind Block He tested to see if that helped free him from the paralyzing stare.


06:54, Today: Polkitain rolled 13 using 1d20+1.  Save vs psionics.
only +1 with the penalty but it does make the save.
Ahh I forgot my ME is used for saves vs psionics not PE.
so the roll would have been 2 higher. 15

This message was last edited by the player at 18:25, Sun 10 July 2016.

Samuel uses his exoskeleton's mechanical might to leap into the air and come down with the magical swords blade on the drugged crow that was just possessed.


Using the PA for movement and power.
10:35, Today: Samuel Lund rolled 10 using 1d20+2.  Drugged Crow Attack.
-Mr. GM, go ahead and roll whatever damage you think is appropriate. :-)

Polkitain shrugs off a psychic attack from the possessed bird cawing in front of him. Switching to a more defensive tactic, the hatchling throws up a barrier which seals shut his own third eye. Like the slamming of a door, he immediately feels relief. The terror which froze his actions earlier is gone and seems a little silly in retrospect. He may now act freely and even attack if he wishes. However, he has lost benefit of his perceptive powers of See Aura and See the Invisible. He can no longer track the movements of these entities.

Samuel's leap through the air leads him to one of the crows on the ground. His sword comes down on the crow's body, point-first. The blade severs the animal's head from its feathery body and slides into the dirt below. Samuel alone witnesses the crow-shaped ghost leave the bird's body as if popping out of a bird house. The entity hops away through the tall grass.

Meanwhile, Arulas still perceives an entity at the tip of his psi-sword. With a slight release of pressure, the entity escapes. The bodiless aura looks more like a vague smudge of light across his vision than a target, but he can track its movement towards the nearby body of another one of the crows which Polkitain incapacitated earlier.

Doc is still haunted -- literally -- by the vision of crows attacking him.

Nyx feels a pressure on his brain as if something is trying to get in. The Induce Fear attack is being used on you again. Make another roll to Save versus Horror Factor. This time, the target number is only 13. It would be 14, but Nyx already beat this once, so I am granting him a slight edge.

Kalista and Ethan fall into a random rift. They will fall out when their players are available again.

Samuel runs after the 'ghost crow' and tries to attack it before it can inhabit another body.


20:14, Today: Samuel Lund rolled 19 using 1d20+2.  Ghost Crow Attack.
-Dodge that bird breath.

Despite Samuel's precision, his blade simply passes through the immaterial spirit.

Clenching his teeth Nyx muttered, "Get. Out. Of. My. Head!"

Doc, meanwhile, has completely wrapped himself in blankets trying to get the crows to stop. Nothing was working, this is maddening and he wasn't sure how much more he could take. Something had to be done, he searched out a cargo compartment to try to hide inside of.

I made a mistake. Polkitain can still see the spirits. He can see the one currently flying away from Arulas and towards one of the poisoned birds.

"Sir Arulas, the one below your sword moved it is heading to that one."
Polk pointed off towards it before he focused on the one near him. His body began to glow with white gold divine light again.

"Last chance, return to your world or be ended."

This scene is dragging badly, so let's wrap it up. Here comes the inevitable conclusion.

The spirits retreat. They fly away, not to their own home world, but into the deeper wilderness to regroup and seek out easier prey. The adventurers may take pride in the fact that they managed to banish one of the entities and destroy another before running off the survivors.

Kalista and Nyx both regain their full wits after having won their struggles to control their own thoughts. Doc didn't fare as well, but he feels the phantom experience fade away into a hazy but still unpleasant memory. He emerges from his security blanket with a sore throat from all of screaming and shouting he has done in the last couple of minutes.

Doc will to make a Save vs. Insanity roll. If he fails, he may develop a phobia of crows from his experience.

What really happened: The group was jumped and attacked by a specific species of entity called the Scaring Crows. These creatures possess living creatures like their cousins, Possession Entities, but these monsters are limited to specifically possessing crows and ravens. Scaring Crows feed on fear. Four such entities were hunting in the area when they were attracted to the fear that the horse was experiencing from Polkitain's presence. Four such entities were working together as a pack and mind controlling a larger flock of crows. Scaring Crows prefer to isolate a target and gang up on her, but they couldn't do that this time. The four began haunting the group, beginning with the horses and moving onto the two-legged critters, to see who was vulnerable. Their paralyzing fear is a form of attack with no lingering damage, and it requires a target to first be scared or at least alarmed. This attack sets up the target for the Murdermare psychic assault which creates the Scaring Crows' honey pot of delicious fear. Due to some dice results, only Doc fell victim to the full force of the Murdermare, and that only lasted for a couple of melee rounds instead of the hours that Scaring Crows prefer. The first entity to be defeated was moving from one possessed crow to another when it failed its possession attempt and was booted to its home world as a result. The second entity was destroyed by Polkitain. The third was wounded by Arulas. The third and fourth flew away just now. The mind-controlled crows (those few which survived the hacking and the explosion) recover slowly from their poisoning and disperse during the following few minutes.

Scaring Crows come from the Beyond the Supernatural article written by Stephen Dawes in The Rifter, Issue #44 if anyone wants to look them up.

Polkitain checked on Doc and the others to make sure they were ok.

When he had a chance he asked Samuel if he had any writing tools and paper.
"I would like to write down our experiences as we go along."

Doc, finally calmed down enough to come out of the storage area he'd hidden inside. "Those dang birds gone?" he asked hopefully.


09:36, Today: Doc rolled 8 using 1d20.  save vs insanity. dang....

Polkitain nods, "Yes the spirits have fled. Your safe now."

"Adventuring after the coming of the Rifts sure changed a nice camping trip."

Samuel heads over to Doc, pats him on the shoulder and says, "I have some cough drops in the dinning area, cabinet next to the frig, 2nd shelf. Help yourself."

Otherwise he heads off to get out of his armor and back to whatever he was previously doing.

Polkitain was a bit saddened that Samuel hadn't answered him but everyone was busy and dealing with what had happened.

Polkitain returned outside and was glad that Sir Arulas horse was alright. A brief look around and Polk flew back up to the top of the behemoth and curled up.

Obviously Samuel's concern for Doc, even if it wasn't showing as such, was distracting him.

After he gets his armor off Samuel will bring Polk a data pad to record his experiences on. Should that not be enough, there are pen and paper in the observation lounge storage closet.

Polk looks at the data pad when Samuel shows it to him a little dubiously.

"I don't want to break it, the paper and pen will be fine." Polk quicly recovered from any sulking though he still felt bad at what the crow had said that the fear he created was what drew them.

Polk slithers back into the Behemoth and writes down a journal entry describing the encounter with the crows and what they were able to learn of the experience. He event tried his hand at a bit of art sketching the tree and crows.

"Thank you Samuel." Polk nodded genuinely appreciative.

"Doc, you ok? I have no idea what you saw, but you were acting quite unlike yourself." He looks in the general direction of his horse as well as the rest of the horses. "Let guess you two got the robo-horses."

Doc gives Samuel a nod, "Thanks Sam. I appreciate that." looking over to Sir Arulas Doc shrugged, "Crows everywhere man, picking and pecking at me... terrible stuff man. And yeah, the horse is a robot."

Everyone may continue speaking in-character in this thread, but I am also going to start a fresh thread for the fresh week.

Pokitain looks to Doc, "They fed off fear, Doc I am glad you overcame it. If we ever run into them again try not looking in their eyes. When I placed my wing between one of these fear crow spirits and Lady Kalista it broke the spell the creature had on her."

"I will try and write down everything I can about them, it might help others in the future."

Doc gave Polky an easy smile, "Polky, I got a feelin' I'm gonna start shootin' crows on sight for quite a while now. That was awful. Write down everything you can, but not the part about me cryin' like a girl. Leave that out."

"Right, I will try to what is the word ? Fib, no bend the truth, wait Embellish that's it ! I will embellish your bravery."

Arulas chuckles at Polk. "No Polk just leave it out. Say something like he made a strategic retreat."