Darius attempts to charge and continue attacking. He pulls his spare hand axe from his sheath on his back so that he is dual wielding again. And swings at whoever is in his way between him and the Demoness. At least, that’s his plan.
Initiative. – 3

11:03, Today: Darius rolled 22,10,12,10 using d20+3,d6+6,d20+1,d6+6.  Dual Handaxes, Single Attack. – 22,10,12,10

Bronn continues believing he should just leave the demon and her minions alone.

Darius realizes the demon is right; Moon, Mac and Tenzing do need help!  He turns to go help them.

Instead of attacking, the mace-wielding xvart gets a scared look on his face.  He turns to run, but Moon's arrows cut him down before he can get very far.

The demon and the spell-caster xvart get out of the room.

Mac, realizing Moon's situation, casts a spell on her.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:47, Mon 06 May.

Bronn returns to the group to help out, wondering what just happened.

Darius too realizes that Moon is very wounded and needs help.  He turns to see if he can help bind her wounds. Or Bronn’s.

Mac's spell more than did the trick- Moon is right as rain.

The two spellcasters had gone out the door, and not knowing Bronn was under a spell, she asked, "Like, are we chasing or searching?"

The had just left, so chase was a possibility, especially since following could be easier if that exit went to the cave with the shrieking mushroom, which might help tell them which way to go, or not go.

But some of her companions had heavy armor, which might make pursuit untenable.

Then again, gnomes had stubby little legs. They might not run very fast.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:58, Mon 06 May.

Tenzing pokes the ratman with his spear.

"Unfortunate creature, this; afflicted with a horrible disease, I suspect."

"Why chase her? she's beaten. Running. Meh, let's grab the loot and tell that shit town she's gone."

“I agree. Let’s clean up what we’ve already taken care of. We drove the Demoness off and wounded her. We’ve decimated her guards. She’s no longer a concern. Let’s collect the loot here and then back track to the couple of areas where we left dead xvarts and loot. We are due for dinner and rest at our camp site. We did good!”

"I don't, like, mind tricking the hella rude townies, but, they did, y'know, have people die. She totally just ran out of here, but there're lots of tunnels still. She could be gathering up the rest of her blue gnomes and the bumpy bufus, either to like, come against us, or, like, the town. If we leave for, y'know, good after saying we got rid of her and she, like attacks the town, that would, ummm, be totally bad for our future rep. It'd be like 'am I gonna hire you? As if! No way- you're all, like total liars and losers.'"

"So, like, I don't mind resting and dinner, but we should really, y'know, make sure she's gone before saying she's, like, gone."

"Ayiii!! What manner of hells is this?!?"

The party turns to see what has caused Mac's alarm.

Still lying prone, and still apparently dead, the ratman appears to be transforming, its rat features replaced by human characteristics.

“That RatMan didn’t scratch you, did it, Moon?” Darius asked, as he processed what was happening to the dead RatMan…

"That's, like, totes no gnome," Moon said, stating the obvious, as her mind ran through what could have happened if it had bitten her. Unlike for humans, lycanthropy is generally fatal to elves and other demihumans. She was not sure if that was a kindness or a curse.

"Ugh, like, no- he used that wicked dagger the whole time," she added, responding to Darius as much as assuring herself.

“Oh. Good! So it was just a flesh wound?”

"A deep, deep, stabby flesh wound, fer sure," she replied. Since Jarmoc had completely sealed and healed the injury, she could joke about it, hiding any sign of how shaken she was to have been that close to the death.

Bronn watched the thing transform back into its human self. "Somehow, he still looks like vermin to me," Bronn quipped. He looked around. He shrugged. "Damn townies paid little for risk to life and limb," he observed. "Demoness is gone, blue guys dead, let's load the corpses up on a wagon and claim the reward. No need to chase her now. Oh, sure she'll set up somewhere else and someone else will have to deal with her but these folks won't starve. Job's done." Bronn seemed oddly calloused about the whole thing...

Mac uses his foot to turn the human (if that's what he is) over. He's rather young looking.

"I dunno if we need to load up all them blue guys; let the rats 'ave 'em, I say.  But this one we should take.  Could be one of the townsfolk for all we know."

He looks around.

"We can also search this room an' the bedroom we came through; that, an' all the stuff in that first room's quite a haul."

"Oh, we're lootin' the place to the ground," Bronn agreed. "What the townies are payin' us will keep us in the lap o' luxury for half an hour, so that loot is going to pay for my week's visit to the brothel. Maybe get some new boots, too."

Mac starts the looting with the man/former ratman, but all he has is the dagger he used to attack Moon.

Moon doesn't think the job is done, since the demoness isn't gone as far as they know- just out of this cave, and there could still be blue gnomes in other unexplored areas.

But since it does not seem they are pursuing now, she sets her mind to looting.

While she does not see a need to take the ratman along, she has no problem with Mac doing so.
She does think they should bring a blue gnome back to show the townsfolk that the problem was not demons, but gnomes.

The dagger was all the ratman had, but since he used it instead of rat fangs, there might be a reason, so it can be taken along.
She set about to searching the room. Gnomes are noted illusionists, and she still thinks the slutubus was a gnome using illusions to look like a demon, so maybe her spellbooks were still here to be found. Illusionist magic was different than mage arcane magic, so she would not be able to use them, but it would prove her theory, and no doubt the group could make considerable gold if they found someone to sell the books to.

The dead blue guy had a nice mace and a nice gold ring.

The chest at the foot of the bed contains 500 gp, 1000 sp, and 3000 cp.

The desk is surprisingly empty . . . although, one of the drawers is locked.  Moon unlocks it and finds the spellbook she anticipated finding.

---

There is nothing more in the prior bedroom.

---

In the first big room, behind the throne were the two bedrooms.  In them, seroius searching reveals a total of 150 gp, 600 sp, a pearl and two (yes, two!) spellbooks.

There are also four gems on the throne itself that seem embedded; Bronn thought to remove them (which he could have done) but he thought nimble(r) fingers were called for.

The spellbook upstairs and these down here, Moon is crushed to know that they are probably all for illusion magic and of no use to her, but resolves to give them a look over anyway, just in case, when we have more time and she can memorize read magic.

She will try to remove the gems from the throne carefully as Bronn had asked her to do earlier.


(ooc)
You mentioned it needs dextrous fingers to remove the gems in msg #386, but not what should be rolled.
So I made a simple dex check- Moon succeeded by 8, but if a different roll is needed can do that, or if you prefer to roll that is fine.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:29, Fri 10 May.

Moon is excited to learn the spellbooks found in the bedrooms off the throne room are magic user books.

She then uses her tools to carefully pry the rubies and emerald off the throne.  She does her best, but thinks she may have damaged the rubies.

She frowns, not happy that the gems did not come out perfectly. But with a sigh, she realizes nobody else would have done any better, and might have been worse, so she could only be happy with what she had.

And she was very happy and surprised to identify some of the books as being mage instead of illusionist. She had no spells in memory, so could not read them now, nor cast a spell to see what items, like the nice mace and nice gold ring, might be enchanted.

There was still some looting to be done- upstairs they had left a few bodies and rooms unsearched as they had been in pursuit, so they could go and search those now.

There were the fanged hobgoblins  who used the net trap, and the room with all the jars and beakers. So those could be searched and looted- there was a spellcaster here, so maybe he also had spellbooks squirreled away?

At that point, Moon would also suggest they stop and rest here. If successful, they could use a detect magic on what they had found and also on the jars and beakers in the room, to see if any of them were completed potions.

Bronn nodded, "A rest sounds grand, lass," he agreed. "Fresh start in the morning, finish lootin', burn these vermin and go collect our reward."

”Agreed,” stated Darius, still somewhat awestruck by the earlier Demoness encounter.